People of the Morning Star (69 page)

And with a violent twist of her body, she capsized the canoe. Even as they spilled into the cold water, his hands reflexively clamped on her throat.

Sixty-four

Columella’s palace roared like a cyclone. Flames, sparks, and smoke rose torchlike into the falling rain. The whole roof cascaded down into the walls with a cracking and banging barely drowned by the fire’s howl.

Blue Heron’s cowed servants had rushed up to her immediately after she and Seven Skull Shield had descended the stairs. Now they all huddled around, holding the rain shield over her head where she squatted. Beside her, Columella crouched, knees together, a stunned and devastated expression on her face as she watched the fountain of flame shooting up from inside her walls. Her children, soaked and shivering, watched the palace burn with terror-bright eyes.

The dwarf, Flat Stone Pipe, stood, his small arm over Columella’s shoulders. His pug face was soot-streaked, eyes swollen from the smoke.

“Close one,” Blue Heron told Columella. “From what I saw of the inside, you didn’t want to live there anyway. Walking Smoke’s sense of décor was somewhat limited.” She paused. “Sorry about your brother.”

“What possessed him? To risk everything … his children. My children! All of Evening Star House! I’d hang him in a square myself!”

“How long ago did Walking Smoke contact you?”

She shook her head absently, then at a nudging from Flat Stone Pipe, came to her senses. Eyes narrowed, she gave Blue Heron a hard look. “Pus and blood, but you’re clever.” Then she laughed humorlessly. “No, Keeper, I had no part in this. Granted, I’ve got my own pots in the fire, but this was High Dance’s doing. And worse, the fool had no idea who he was dealing with. He only knew him as ‘Bead.’ Neither Flat Stone Pipe nor I had any idea who he was. I was taken by complete surprise when he walked in with his warriors yesterday afternoon.” She shook her head. “Am I
that
incompetent?”

“Maybe we all are.” Blue Heron shot her old adversary a measuring look.

Columella’s bitter lips curled. “Oh, I think there was more than enough collusion in Morning Star House to go around. Sun Wing, for one. She bragged to Walking Smoke that she’d ‘given him’ the Lady Lace and fed him information on your investigation.”

Blue Heron looked over where her niece, untied, some use of her limbs restored, cowered under a blanket held by warriors. The young woman looked sick to her stomach, eyes focused on some distant terror.

“I think her life is going to take a turn for the worse, Cousin. The Morning Star trusted her.”

“Did he?” Flat Stone Pipe asked in his high-pitched voice. “The Morning Star plays his games like a master fisherman, with baited lines running all directions. While he sets the hook with one line, he’s letting a fish run on the other to better reel him in.”

On her other side, Seven Skull Shield, holding a split of cedar over his head yawned.

“Tired, thief?”

“Too long since we had any kind of sleep or food. Seems like a lifetime since we were sitting out back of your palace. And I’m cold to the bone.”

She spared the palace another look as something cracked inside the walls and more sparks shot up. The rain seemed to intensify.

“I’m glad you showed up when you did, thief. It’s an irritating admission, but I think once more I owe you my life.”

He gave her a sidelong appraisal, grinning, most of the blood washed from his blocky face. A new bruise reddened his forehead. “You didn’t do so bad yourself. I had him, you know. You really didn’t need to bash his brains out.”

“Yes I did.” She smacked her lips distastefully. “As much screaming and howling as you were making, I’d have done anything to shut you up.”

“Why are we sitting out here in the rain,” he asked. “There’s a perfectly good Four Winds Clan House right over there. It’s got a big veranda. I’ll bet the roof is rainproof, and there’s a roaring fire inside.”

“There’s a reason I keep you around, thief.” She gestured, allowed Seven Skull Shield to help her up, and ordered, “Let’s go someplace dry where we…”

At the edge of the plaza, the clacking cadence of a marching squadron barely preceded the arrival of tight ranks of warriors as they emerged from between the Snapping Turtle Clan charnel house and its conical burial mound.

All around her, people were climbing to their feet, arms crossed on their chests, shivering in the rain. Everyone watched the squadron as it trotted across the spacious plaza, the warriors ducking their heads by the rank as they touched their foreheads and passed the World Tree pole.

Blue Heron walked out, smiling as Five Fists Mankiller—marching in the squadron first’s position behind the two-headed eagle standard that denoted Morning Star’s squadron—stopped short, shouting orders.

The squadron second shouted a repeat of Five Fists’ commands, and moved his arms in the choreographed gestures of command.

Heedless of the rain, the formation broke, lines of warriors wheeling, trotting forward, and turning until the clustered knot of survivors was surrounded.

Blue Heron stepped up to Five Fists, two of her porters trying to keep the rain shield over her head.

“Good to see you, old friend. Your timing’s a little late. Where’s War Duck’s squadron?”

“Disbanded at the river on the Morning Star’s orders, Keeper.” The tension in Five Fists’ eyes indicated he was unhappy about something.

She pointed back at the burning palace. “We could have used your help about a half a hand of time ago.”

He was looking around at the crowd. “I see the Lady Sun Wing. Where is Lace?”

“Walking Smoke killed her. Offered her blood to Piasa, and chopped her and her baby into pieces before spreading them on the floor.” She hesitated. “Since when did Morning Star put you back in charge of a squadron? Thought that was Lightning Eagle’s honor?”

His speculative eyes roamed the crowd again, then returned to hers. Rain was spattering from his wood-and-leather helmet, the feathers that normally decorated it were sodden and sagging.

“Is this everyone who was in the palace when Walking Smoke was attempting the ritual?”

“It is.” She lifted a hand. “Well, everyone but Night Shadow Star, Walking Smoke, and the Red Wing.”

“Where are they?” Five Fists lifted his hand, fingers flexing in the sign language of the squadrons. His war second stepped close, waiting.

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure if they escaped the palace or burned in the back. The last I saw, they’d gone into Columella’s personal quarters, but the wall was on fire. The smoke pretty thick. The Red Wing went in pursuit. The thief, however, tells me there was a tunnel back there. They may have escaped that way.”

“Take twenty warriors. Find them,” Five Fists ordered his second.

The man touched his forehead, wheeled, and charged off ordering, “You twenty. With me.”

She watched the warriors race off around the edges of the mound. “What’s going on here, old friend? Something about this just has the wrong feel.”

“I am sent to return everyone to Cahokia under guard. Morning Star’s personal orders, Keeper. Everyone.”

“So, it’s like that, is it?”

“I’m afraid so, Keeper.”

She glanced sidelong at Columella and the dwarf. “Yes, he does play with a great many baited lines, doesn’t he?”

She just never thought she’d be one of the ones he finally reeled in.

Sixty-five

“No!” Fire Cat screamed as Night Shadow Star’s canoe flipped over. He couldn’t believe it. He was no more than a hard stone’s throw from overtaking her. Close enough to have seen her undress and apparently offer herself to that soul-sick and twisted brother of hers. It hadn’t made any sense.

And then she’d deliberately rolled the canoe?

Fire Cat rose to his knees, using his weight behind the paddle to drive the canoe forward. In the slashing rain, he searched the roiling river’s surface. Night Shadow Star’s canoe had canted back onto its side, waves breaking over the rain-dimpled curve of hull.

She had to come up soon. So did Walking Smoke.

And when he does, I’m taking this paddle and driving it through the top of the abomination’s head.

Fire Cat slicked bloody water from his face and pulled his soaked hair back. Doing so made him flinch as his torn scalp protested. His burned skin stung like a thousand bees had been at him. A weary fatigue lurked in his very bones. He could feel cold eating at his core, triggering the first shivers to run down his goose-fleshed arms.

“Come on, Night Shadow Star.”

Daring the slick and sloping sides of the hull, Fire Cat stood, balancing, as his canoe drifted up to the swamped dugout. The river’s surface, rain-hammered, roiling and rippled by the breeze, had turned into an opaque maze of expanding rings. It reflected a leaden gray, the murky water impenetrable.

“So what, Fire Cat? Do you dive in yourself? Swim down? Try and find her?”

With a palm he wiped beaded water from his face again, raindrops still pattering on his bare head. Braced as his legs were, he locked his knees to keep them from trembling.

He pursed his lips, squinting around. She’d been under for too long. As a boy he’d spent enough time diving in the upper river to know how precarious the currents were when they ran deep. She could be anywhere within a bow shot by now.

“Come on, Piasa. She says she serves you? Give me a sign.”

Even as he said it, he started. Beneath the surface the water flashed a weird blue, as if cerulean lightning had flickered. His canoe rocked as though a wave had lifted the bow, in defiance of the flat water around him.

He dropped to his knees at the last second, weaving to balance the now bobbing canoe. His heart hammered frantically against his breast.

“What in the name of…”

Bolts of real lightning flashed down from the heavy gray clouds. Four blinding flashes—the deafening explosions like hammer blows—wove a pattern around him as they struck the river. He had a vision of instant steam, boiling water, and a bellow of pained rage from below.

What should have been a blink of the eye seemed to stretch into an endless agony. Unimaginable energy pulsed around him, bore him up, and expanded as if to fill the world. A whirlwind of emotions tore through him: rage mixed with exaltation, defeat, and surprise, all spinning and confused.

Like a slap to the soul it ended, left him stunned and flattened, facedown in the sloshing water where it washed back and forth in the bottom of his pitching canoe.

Terrified, heart racing, he cowered against the sodden wood and blinked. Afterimages of black and white lay behind his half-blinded eyes. His ears rang with a high-pitched tone. The air carried a steamy sulfurous odor. Raising his head, he looked around. Rain now slashed down with vengeance.

Night Shadow Star’s swamped canoe, its hull in splinters, was charred.

“By
Hunga Ahuito!
” It had been a direct hit.

Shaking, his teeth chattering, he pawed cold rain from his face and struggled for breath. How long did he stay? How long did he search?

No one could hold their breath for that long. She had to be down there, drowned, her body drifting along the dark bottom, her long hair spilling in a black, undulating wave as she slowly tumbled, loose limbed, her dark eyes sightless, her mouth open and filling with silt.

He saw it by chance, having the entire river to search. Just a bobbing dot—like a ball that barely popped to the surface only to recede.

Desperate, the paddle clutched in shaking hands, he drove his canoe toward the spot, orienting himself by the distant roofs of River Mounds. Tracking the progress of the current, following by instinct.

There! Once again he caught a glimpse: a head, yes. But was it Night Shadow Star’s?

The ache in his blistered shoulders knotted into a cramp, his physical effort barely keeping the cold at bay. His scorched hands had started to hurt, and his belly suffered from a nauseous tickle. Exhaustion was sucking the last reserves from his souls. Try as he might, ignoring the pain of his burns was no longer possible.

Again the head bobbed up, closer this time.

With three hard strokes he pushed his canoe forward, timing it … and yes. He reached down as the head bobbed up, twined his numb fingers into hair, and lifted.