People of the Morning Star (25 page)

“Snakes, we think.” Five Fists studied them uneasily. “Perhaps to blind them to the assassin’s presence?”

“Assassin?” she asked, a sudden shiver running down her spine. Then she was past him, sprinting for the partially open door. “Blessed Spirits, no!”

She burst into the palace great room at a dead run. The horrified looks on her father’s attendants barely registered; they huddled on the sleeping platforms against the south wall. Matron Wind waited by the door in the rear, putting out an arm and ordering, “Stop, niece. Blue Heron’s not ready for your…”

Night Shadow Star batted her aunt’s arm out of the way. She burst through the doorway and stopped cold. For the moment she could only gasp for breath, aware of the coppery stench of the blood. So much blood …

Blue Heron stood over the bed, head cocked, her right hand held protectively at her throat. A stranger, a rough-looking man dressed as a commoner, lurked at one side of the room. He glanced her way and fixed his gaze on her as if he’d never seen a woman before.

“Lot of blood isn’t it?” Blue Heron remarked almost casually as she straightened from Red Warrior Tenkiller’s body. A second corpse lay beside him, slightly curled against the back wall: Yellow Aster, his third wife.

Night Shadow Star stared in horror at her father’s gaping throat wound. The wide cut exposed the tube of his windpipe and the severed bundles of muscles and tendons. An impossible amount of darkening blood gleamed on his chest and soaked the bedding. Even as she watched, it continued to drip onto the floor. Yellow Aster’s throat, too, had been slashed. Her sightless eyes had already gone gray behind dilated pupils.

Night Shadow Star tried to catch her breath, and despite gasping, remained oddly starved for air.

“Whoever it was, no one heard a thing,” Blue Heron continued, eyes narrowed to slits. “And he was definitely different from the one who tried to kill me earlier tonight. Had to be two of them. My killer would have had blood under his fingernails if he’d done this before he came for me.”

“You … Your killer?” Night Shadow Star’s voice sounded weak as her reeling souls struggled to comprehend, much less accept the notion that the crimson-drenched corpses on the bed belonged to her father and his wife.

“There were two,” Blue Heron gestured at an ugly stitched wound in her throat before pointing at the gory corpses. “This one succeeded. Look at the wall.”

Night Shadow Star turned, her shock deepening as she took in the image someone had drawn in blood on the cane wall: a snake, long and sinuous, the head triangular, the tail ending in a blotched representation of rattles.

“Like the black snakes on the guardians’ eyes?” she mumbled, trying to find herself in the stunned horror. Then she returned her stumbling gaze to the caricature of her father’s corpse. “Who … Who’d do…?”

“This?” Blue Heron rubbed her hands, expression bitter. “The snake indicates Underworld Power was invoked by the killings. Piasa is your Spirit, Niece. He’s one of the masters of the Underworld. Four Winds Clan and the
tonka’tzi
are allied with the Sky World.” She shot Night Shadow Star a hard look. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Niece? Any …
revelations
from your dreams?”

Night Shadow Star could only stare at her father’s remains. Memories of him came flooding back: his laughter when she’d been a little girl; the times he’d spoiled her with trinkets; his strong arms as he’d held her after she’d fallen down the palace steps; the relief in his eyes at her wedding feast; and the pain he’d felt at her grief over Makes Three’s death.

Gone.

All gone.

“Night Shadow Star?” Blue Heron demanded attention, her eyes like black stones in her implacable face.

“He was your brother,” she whispered. “Are you so unmoved by his murder?” She felt her heart tearing in her breast.

“I’ll grieve when I have time. For the moment, all of our lives are in danger. I must know. Where were you this night?”

“In my palace.” The words were choked in Night Shadow Star’s throat.

“Which of your attendants could swear to that?”

The absurdity of the question shook Night Shadow Star out of her disbelief. “What … What are you asking?”

“You’ve tied yourself to the Underworld. You whisper of Piasa himself. And the murderer here, as well as the one who tried to murder me tonight, are aligning themselves with the serpents.” She pointed to the bloody snake painted on the wall.

“You think I…” She knotted her fists, hot tears of rage and grief silvering her vision. “He was
my father!
”

“She was with me,” a subdued voice said from behind.

Night Shadow Star turned, dismayed to discover Fire Cat’s muscular body filling the doorway. Before she could find her voice, Blue Heron asked, “Doing what, Red Wing?”

His gaze didn’t waver as he met Blue Heron’s. “Struggling, Clan Keeper. Battling with her souls over whether to drive a chert knife into my heart.”

Blue Heron fingered her chin thoughtfully, then winced, obviously having pulled the wound at her throat. She glanced disdainfully at her fingers, fixing on her dead brother’s drying blood. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then: “Tell me, Red Wing, do you have agents in Cahokia? Men who’d be capable of treachery like this?”

Still reeling, Night Shadow Star physically stepped back at the look of hatred in Fire Cat’s narrowing eyes. “If I did, Keeper, they wouldn’t be painting snakes with your blood. The design on that wall would be a great red wing, and we’d have started with your nephew up on his private mountain.”

“You speak blasphemy!”

He shrugged and countered, “Blasphemy is where you find it. I think its living atop the great mound.”

Blue Heron’s eyes glittered, her expression tightening into an enraged mask. “Five Fists, take this
thing
out and tie him in a square. I want him to die slowly, over a moon if you can—”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Night Shadow Star finally found her voice. “He’s mine.”

“Blood and spit, why?”

“Piasa has a twisted sense of humor to go along with his cruel streak.”

“I need to hear more about that.”

She felt the beast curl inside her chest, prodding her to look again at the bodies.

“We both do. So far, however, Piasa hasn’t bothered to inform me just what his reasons are for saving this bit of filth.” Night Shadow Star’s grief-laden thoughts began to coalesce. “We’re distracting ourselves.” She pointed at the corpses. “Who did this? Why now?”

Blue Heron took a deep breath, raising her hands in agreement. “Yes, yes. But I have one last question.” She looked at Fire Cat. “What is your purpose in this, Red Wing?”

Again his eyes never wavered as he said, “While hanging in the square, I pledged my life, honor, and souls to serve Lady Night Shadow Star. I am the son of Matron Red Wing, maybe the last of my clan. My vow is inviolate, and once bound, I do
not
go back on my word.”

“Even though you hate us?”

“Even so, Clan Keeper.”

“And you are not part of a plot to commit these … atrocities?”

He smiled humorlessly. “Unfortunately, I am not.”

Night Shadow Star snapped, “Since you
claim
to serve me, whatever your blasphemous opinions concerning the Morning Star, you will
keep them
to yourself. That is my will. Do you understand?”

He nodded. “I understand.”

If nothing else, at least she could respect his honor.

She asked, “If you were going to act against us in this fashion, Red Wing, who would you contact in Cahokia? How would you proceed?”

He glanced at the bloody corpses, rubbed his jaw, and said, “I’d look for someone in the Four Winds Clan. Each of these ‘houses’ you’ve established to run a part of this giant city is still composed of greedy and ambitious lineages. Your”—he made a face—“Morning Star may have brought peace to the warring factions, but it is nothing more than a fragile patch over deep and festering resentments.”

“A name?” Blue Heron prodded.

He gave that odd, one-shouldered shrug. “Which houses have you humiliated the most?”

Blue Heron said nothing.

That could be any of them,
Night Shadow Star thought as she glanced again at her father’s dead body, fought back the ache of grief, and rubbed the new welling of tears from her eyes. “For the moment, aunt, we’ve a bigger problem: the
tonka’tzi
is dead. The people have to be told something. If we admit assassination, the entire city might explode.”

“Dead in his bed,” Blue Heron agreed. “That’s all they need to know. And in the interim, Matron Wind can assume his place as
tonka’tzi.
”

For the first time the man standing in the rear of the room spoke. “Then you’d better act quickly. I counted seven of the
tonka’tzi
’s personal attendants out there. As soon as they walk out of that room, their jaws are going to be flapping. If there are any you can’t trust to keep their guzzle-traps shut, you need to remove them immediately. Otherwise, someone’s going to wag his tongue.”

“And it will spread like a wind-driven prairie fire,” Blue Heron agreed.

Night Shadow Star tightened a fist on her grief and forced herself to study the stranger. He was big, muscular, perhaps in his early thirties, with an oddly blocky face and strong jaw. He wore only a nondescript, smudged, and grease-stained shirt that hung to mid-thigh. His hair was pulled up in a simple bun and held in place by two wooden pins.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Blue Heron arched an eyebrow. “You ordered me to find him. I thought you wanted me to locate him for a reason.”

She frowned, trying to make sense. “I did?”

The man gave her a lecherous grin accompanied by an insolent wink. “I’m known as Seven Skull Shield.” He touched his forehead with just enough brevity to leave her unsure if it had been a measure of respect, or an insult.

Seven Skull Shield? He’s this despicable person?

“It was just words,” she whispered.

“What words?” Blue Heron asked. “Heard where?”

“Piasa told me. I was talking to you at the stickball grounds.”

“He
speaks
to you?”

Images of pain and terror spun around her memory like a whirlwind. She felt Piasa’s shadow stir within her. In that instant, she was back in the Underworld, living it again. The horror, the pain and terror …

“Seek the same blood!”
The words boomed inside her skull and her vision shimmered into a silvery gray.

Dazed, she came to, the room spinning out of fragments of the vision. The choking odor of Piasa’s hot breath surrendered to the scent of blood and death.

To her surprise, it was Fire Cat who steadied her, supporting her weight where she leaned weakly against him.

“Piasa,” she murmured hoarsely.

“What just happened, Niece?” Blue Heron demanded as she stepped forward, hands clasping Night Shadow Star’s shoulders as if to stabilize her.

“I was there again … being eaten alive.”

“What? In the Underworld?”

She blinked, scrubbed at her eyes, trying desperately to understand. Piasa stirred somewhere deep in her souls. “Seek the same blood, that’s what he said.”

Blue Heron turned her attention to the crimson gore covering the corpses and bedding. “He took some of their blood? Is that what it means?”

Seven Skull Shield pointed at the serpent on the wall. “Perhaps he did and then painted another of those someplace in the city.”

Night Shadow Star took one last glance at her father’s body. His horrified eyes were wide, dry, and gray in death. His mouth, blood-filled, hung open. The lips were pulled back to expose teeth stained crimson. Trickles of blood had run from his nostrils and left trails across his tattooed cheeks.

“I have to leave,” she almost cried. “Now. Take me home. I’m going to be ill.”

“I’ve got her,” Fire Cat insisted, supporting her weight as she struggled to walk. Grief and horror, mixed with the flickers of visions of the Underworld, left her so weak she couldn’t even protest help from the man she hated.

Who is doing this? Will I be next? The questions kept echoing in her head.

Now you begin to understand,
Piasa’s voice reverberated hollowly inside her.

Twenty-one

Climbing the long flight of wooden steps to the high mound top on which Night Shadow Star’s palace stood, Seven Skull Shield looked back at the crowd. People ebbed and flowed in the Great Plaza as they watched the
tonka’tzi
’s palace burn. A line of warriors kept them back; Traders and vendors, always alert for advantage, were working the fringes, offering food, trinkets, and keepsakes.

A somber disbelief lay over the crowd—that sense of shared awe at being in that place, at that time, to see the last earthly remains of the Great Sky Red Warrior’s presence go up in thick black wreaths of smoke.

Walking among them had been Seven Skull Shield’s idea, and the conversations he’d overheard had tickled something in his souls. He’d always been one of the mob—as eager as the next person to catch a hint of gossip about the doings of the high and mighty. That he was on the inside—and knew the truth—while the poor clods around him had no clue titillated him something fierce.