People of the Morning Star (39 page)

“Tula? Is that some rank? A society?”

“A people. Wild tribe from out in the southern plains west of the Granite Heart mountains.” He seemed to be enjoying himself. “There are so many different peoples come to Cahokia now. Who would have thought the world had so many nations and languages, eh?”

“How could you tell these were Tula? I’ve never even heard of them.”

He grinned again, exposing his pink gums. “By the bows! And they didn’t speak a word of Cahokian tongue. Now, that’s not saying they’s Tula themselves, but their bows were of Tula make. Made of flats of Osage-orange-wood. Laminated with some thin sections of horn. Recurved … and very potent. That’s why that arrow is so long.” He pointed to the tall baskets bristling with finished arrows. “See. We sell different lengths, made to match a bow’s pull. That’s why that last basket is empty. They bought every last war arrow we had in that length.”

“If they didn’t speak Cahokian, how’d you know what they wanted? Signs?”

“No, no, no. The younger man, the noble, he spoke Cahokian. Had his face painted in a light gray to cover his tattoos. Like the Tula, his hair was wound into a twist and pinned with bone pins. He wore a buffalo calf-hide cloak, fabric breechcloth, bare feet.”

“You said young?”

The old man shrugged. “To me, anybody looks young anymore. Maybe he was in his midtwenties? Medium-sized.”

“Do you know where I can find him?”

The old man spun the arrow again. “I have no idea. The canoe landing is right over there. For all I know he’s on the river and headed back to Tula. Or he could be renting a house within an arrow-shot of this place. It’s like a big bustling ant hive here.”

“How many arrows in total did he obtain from you?”

“Seven tens, and three.”

And we recovered three tens and six from around Night Shadow Star’s palace.

“What did they Trade, elder Gray Mouse?”

The old man pointed to a shelf filled with shell, wooden carvings, bowls and jars, several quivers, a copper relief of Morning Star, and on the end, two effigy bowls that represented Piasa. It was to the Piasa bowls that the old man pointed. “Those,” he said.

Seven Skull Shield stepped over, lifted one of the bowls off the wood plank, and cocked his head as he inspected it.

The round body of the bowl was slipped in red on top, black on the bottom. Punctations indented the flaring flat rim. Piasa’s rattlesnake-hatched tail had been artistically rendered as a looplike handle on one side, the diamonds painted in red-and-black patterns. Piasa’s neck had been sculpted from the other. The prominent head extended high and alert, the tooth-studded jaws agape, nose curled in a snarl. Mica-inset eyes glittered in the light, surrounded by a black three-fork design.

Seven Skull Shield arched an eyebrow. “From one of the great nations in the southern valley. Maybe Casqui? Perhaps Pacaha? Or could be one of the Keegwaltam clans?”

“You know that style?” Gray Mouse asked.

“They like this design.”
But why Piasa?
He frowned uneasily. Just because that voluptuous Night Shadow Star was supposedly possessed by the Spirit Beast didn’t mean the Water Panther was behind everything. After all, it was the value of the effigy bowls that mattered, not the design.

“Elder Gray Mouse, these bowls are worth a fortune.
Two
piasa effigy bowls for seven-tens and three of your long war arrows?”

Gray Mouse’s grin grew even bigger and rearranged the man’s wrinkled face into a mass of bent lines. “Noticed that, eh? He and his two warriors had pulled out samples of the arrows, looked them over, and were talking and nodding. The young noble reached into a sack, withdrew those two effigy bowls, and asked if we had a Trade.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Gray Mouse agreed. “Who was I to say no?”

Seven Skull Shield sucked his lip as he inspected the Piasa bowl. The Spirit creature’s mica eyes stared back malignantly in the subdued light. “What happened next, elder?”

“I had the arrows carefully tied into a bundle to protect the fletching and points, and they left.”

“These Tula, what do they look like?”

“Tall, muscular. They don’t cut their hair after any particular fashion and don’t shave their scalps. Most notable of all, they don’t have tattoos.”

“None?”

“Not that I saw. But there were only two of them. If they were really Tula.”

No tattoos. Just like the assassin whose brains I knocked out as he was trying to kill Blue Heron.

Thirty-three

The palace was oddly silent. Some presence brought Fire Cat awake where he lay on the sleeping bench. In the dim light, he looked up to see Night Shadow Star’s dark form looming over him.

“Not the knife over my heart again, I hope,” he managed as he fought back a yawn and stretched his tired muscles.

He heard her stifle a bitter laugh. “No, Red Wing. I have been struggling with myself. Field Green has been with me for years. Looking back, I never treated her the way I should. Or told her the things she should have heard. Her body has been carried to her clan’s charnel house. The priests are seeing to her. I have asked that she be buried in her clan’s mound with honors at the summer solstice. I will be at her interment and tell her ghosts the things I should have said during her life.”

He studied her through a narrowed eye. “She’d appreciate that.”
Why are you telling me?

Night Shadow Star shifted, and he could see her rubbing the back of her neck, as if perplexed.

Finally she took a deep breath, and he tried not to notice how it accented her breasts.

“Your quick reflexes last night … But for them I would have been dead.”

“It was a well-laid-out ambush.”

“I wanted to let you know … I’m not blind to what you did. Nor ungrateful. Were it up to me, I’d release you from your bond. Not that it would do you much good since Morning Star would probably have you back in a square again, and the clans and families of the warriors you killed have their own vendettas.”

“I would take my chances.”

She chuckled in dry amusement. “I suppose you would.” A pause. “I do not understand this, but perhaps for those very reasons, Piasa insists you and I will both die if I release you from your oath. He’s given me visions of death, of great blasts of water bursting into the sky to mix with lightning lancing down from torn clouds. Tornados race across Cahokia, and in the flying debris, thousands of people murder each other.”

“Charming.”

He could see her dark eyes as they fixed on his. “Piasa’s insistence that I hold you confused me in the beginning. I think that now, for whatever reason, and no matter how great the pain and hatred between us, our world and everything we cherish, hangs in the balance.”

“What are you getting at?”

She seemed to struggle for words, gesturing her impotence. “I think … the pain and anger that separates us is too great to bridge or forgive … but that somehow we’re connected. Essential. Power’s grand joke in the struggle to come.”

“Did your brother tell you this? Or the Water Panther in your souls?” He tried to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.

“That’s just it,” she told him coolly as she stood. “Last night, I learned that no matter what my heart desires, I need to respect you. Perhaps, Red Wing, you could do the same for me?”

And with that, she turned, striding purposefully for her quarters.

Fire Cat, suddenly ashamed, rubbed his brow with thumb and forefingers. “You could have put me in my place with a war club, Lady. But it wouldn’t have smacked me down with the same weight your words just did.”

Sitting up, he pushed the blanket back, and stared thoughtfully at her doorway.

So, what are you going to do about it, Fire Cat?

*   *   *

Matron Columella swept into the Evening Star palace great room, ordering, “Leave us!”

The people in the room turned, reading her expression through startled eyes, then looked back at High Chief High Dance where he sat on his litter atop the dais. He had draped his left arm over a pulled-up knee, his muscular right leg straight. Since this was a formal session, he’d painted his face in blue with striking white diagonal lines down his cheeks. A polished copper headpiece rose above a scalp bundle pinned at the crown of his severely pulled-back and greased hair.

With a languid gesture of his left hand, he waved the various dignitaries, recorders, supplicants, and messengers out. As they filed past, Columella saw them trying to read her expression through sidelong glances. High Dance sat as if frozen, his dark and knowing eyes meeting her burning gaze. Only when the door was lifted shut to seal them from prying eyes did she stalk forward past the fire, climb the dais, and bend over to glare into his slitted eyes.

“Who is he?”

“Who?” He cocked his head as he met gaze for gaze.

“You’ve never been smart, brother. Tricky, yes. But smart? Never. Who is this man you’ve been meeting?”

“Why would you think I’m meeting some man?” He had adopted that bland and totally emotionless look—the one that had betrayed his lies since they were children. That he refused to so much as change his posture further infuriated her.

“Fine. Let’s say you’re not sneaking out, painting your face dull brown, donning a commoner’s clothing, and strolling off to immigrant neighborhoods to meet some mysterious man at trading bazaars, or seeking out dirt-farmer temples dedicated to First Woman. Who, then, could this man be who looks just like my brother, sleeps in my brother’s bed, and copulates with his wives before these forays? Because this man who isn’t you has also quietly insisted that Brown Bear Fivekiller have at least two warriors remain awake through the entire night while others, in pairs, patrol the palace grounds. I’m sure you’ll have an idea of this mysterious stranger’s identity.”

“You sound distressed, sister. Are you not sleeping well yourself?”

“You’re playing with fire, High Dance. Blue Heron is sniffing around us like a hunger-thin dog around a rabbit den. Attempts have been made on the Morning Star and the Clan Keeper. The
tonka’tzi
has been murdered in his bed. To cap the pot, so to speak, I’ve just learned that someone came within a whisker of skewering Lady Night Shadow Star last night in an ambush. Her household head, Field Green, some guards, and most of her porters died under a hail of arrows shot from the darkness. She barely got away with her life.”

She sighed, sank down at the foot of the dais, and stared at him from under a raised eyebrow. “What have you done?”

“Nothing that you or your little shrunken bed-toy need to concern yourselves with. I’ve had communications with someone whose interests may be aligned with ours. That’s all.”

“Communications. With ‘someone.’ After which you’ve had runners dispatched to the Earth Clan chiefs all up and down the west side of the river. I hear that you’ve asked about the readiness of their squadrons … should they need to be called up.” In a tart voice, she asked, “Planning for a little war, are you?”

“Not in the slightest,
Sister.
But should any social unrest break out, it wouldn’t be prudent for Evening Star House to be caught by surprise. I simply asked how long it would take the Earth Clans to assemble their squadrons. Nothing more.”

“Stop it, High Dance. Right now. Whoever this stranger is, he’s poking at the living god himself. Jostling that wasps’ nest will bring ruin to us all.”

“I thought you didn’t like the
tonka’tzi
? Thought you’d do anything to knock his lineage off the Great Mound so you could move Evening Star House into the high palace. My understanding was that you detested Matron Wind, and that copperhead of a Clan Keeper of theirs.”

She spread her arms, disbelief in her wide eyes. “Is
that
the total of your comprehension? All right, the
tonka’tzi
has been assassinated. One down. Now, supposing your shadowy assassin kills the Morning Star, Matron Wind, Blue Heron, and entire family in one sweeping attack. What then? Tell me, brother, how do you see this unfolding?”

“Cahokia will be shocked and leaderless.” He touched the tips of his fingers together and flexed them. “Before the others can react, we move the squadrons under our command to control the great plaza, occupy Morning Star’s palace and the Council House. Our squadrons are ready to defend the Four Winds Clan House the moment we install our lineage heads into them.

“At the same time we have runners crisscrossing Cahokia, informing the other Houses of our dedicated effort to maintain order. We plead with them to call up enough of their own squadrons to ensure that the Earth Clans—and especially the immigrant settlements—don’t panic. If we’re lucky, by the time they manage to get their squadrons assembled, enough rioting will have broken out that they have to stomp out their own little fires. Meanwhile we’re effectively installed at the center.”

“And you think the Morning Star squadrons won’t resent our people marching in?” She gestured impatience. “Let alone how the other Houses will react.”

He shrugged. “By the time they can finally catch their breath, we’ll already have begun the ritual to reincarnate the Morning Star into one of our own young men. Once that is done, the sacrifices will have been made. The dirt farmers will be employed building the new ridge mound. We’ll have made our offerings to the Underworld and Sky World to celebrate the successful return of the Morning Star. Once that’s done, Cahokia will be ours.”