People of the Silence (47 page)

“It was unmarked, undecorated. Even the arrowhead was plain. Just a triangular sliver of obsidian. It could have been anyone’s.”

A fragment of legend rose from the dark caverns of memory, but just as she was about to reach out and grab it, it flittered away. The swelling in her chest had begun to suffocate her, and she teetered for balance.

Creeper put a gentle hand on her arm. Concern tightened his plump face. “Are you well, Blessed Featherstone? Do you wish me to escort you back to your house?”

“No. Thank you.” She patted his hand as her balance returned. “I’m all right.”

“Perhaps I could take you to your son? He’s on the other side of the crowd.”

“I would appreciate that, Creeper. I’m not as steady on my feet as I once was. If a dog runs in front of me, the wind of his passing might knock me over.”

Creeper slipped his arm through hers and led her around the ring of gawking children. He took slow even steps to make it easier for her, and she held tightly to his arm. It felt good to have him close, to feel his warmth flowing into her and his hard muscles bulging beneath her hand. Creeper could be such a comfort.

Sternlight trotted through the front entry, his white shirt gleaming. Long black hair streamed over his broad shoulders. People behaved as though the witch himself had just flown down from the heavens. They hushed, and faded back, clearing a lane for him as he rushed forward and dropped to his knees, disappearing from Featherstone’s view.

Sternlight said something too low to hear.

Dune’s distinctly gruff voice answered, “What! Burn her? That’s not necessary! I’ll do a ritual cleansing for everyone involved. Let’s just place her in the kiva, beside her father. We will decide what to do after speaking with Snake Head and Night Sun.”

A pack of three dogs loped up to sniff Featherstone’s freshly washed dress. They liked the scent of yucca soap. “Get away!” she shouted, and jabbed at them with her walking stick.

“Go on!” Creeper yelled. He leveled a kick at the curs.

The pack leader deftly dodged the moccasined foot, and the dogs regrouped, skulking behind with their tails between their legs, sniffing the yucca soap from afar.

Featherstone looked up at the golden cliff that rose behind Talon Town. Despite the springlike weather, frost clung in the shadowed crevices, tracing the sandstone like icy veins. Rock doves perched on the rim, cooing and strutting in the sunlight. They had just began mating and uttered the sweetest sounds to each other. Propped Pillar seemed to tilt precariously toward the town. Someday it would crash down and demolish dozens of rooms. Featherstone just hoped she wasn’t here to see it. They had built a wall around its base to strengthen it, and every morning and evening, clan leaders placed prayer sticks on the wall, hoping to appease the pillar’s menacing Spirit.

The crowd split suddenly. People shoved each other as they backed away, muttering. Dogs scampered and yipped, trying to evade the recoiling tide of people.

Ironwood carried Cloud Playing’s body toward the First People’s kiva, which lay inside the line of rooms that separated the halves of the plaza. Steps light, weather-beaten face somber, Dune followed behind him. Sternlight brought up the rear. They entered the doorway to the altar room, the aboveground antechamber to the kiva, and disappeared.

Featherstone frowned. She searched the crowd. “Where is Snake Head? I heard Ironwood call for him earlier.”

Creeper’s mouth tightened into a white line. Creeper hated Snake Head. So did everyone else, including Featherstone. She suspected, however, that Creeper’s dislike ran deeper than her own. She just longed to knock the arrogant young Chief to his knees and bash him in the head with her walking stick a few times, to help straighten him out. Creeper, she feared, wanted to see Snake Head dismembered before his eyes. What had Snake Head done to rouse such emotion in a man so gentle?

Creeper said, “The slaves couldn’t find him. He may have gone to one of the nearby towns for the day.”

“Without telling anyone? That doesn’t sound likely.”

Creeper looked down at her through dark worried eyes. “I know.”

They peered at each other in silence, then Featherstone glimpsed Webworm and her attention shifted.

Her son broke away from his warriors and solemnly strode toward her. He seemed to be favoring one arm. Blood soaked his red shirt. It clung to his chest like a second skin. Red streamers had dried on his long legs. Misery lined his face.

Featherstone let go of Creeper and hobbled to meet her son. In a quiet voice she asked, “Are you all right?”

“Oh, Mother,” Webworm whispered. “I can’t believe it.”

Featherstone reached out and touched his bloody hand. “She would not have wished you to suffer. She loved you too much.”

Tears blurred his eyes. He quickly cast a glance at his men and forced a deep breath into his lungs. “Mother, I—I must find Snake Head. Forgive me, I have duties to perform.” He bent down and kissed her forehead. “I will see you soon.”

“I’ll have supper waiting when you return.”

Webworm smoothed his fingers down her cheek, nodded respectfully to Creeper, then trotted across the plaza. She watched him until he went out the entryway, and the slant of the afternoon sun struck her eyes painfully.

She turned. Creeper stood where she had left him, hands clenched at his sides.

Featherstone made her way back. “I have some spruce needle tea steeping in my chambers. Would you like to share it with me?”

“Of course I would. Thank you. We must talk anyway.”

“Must we? What about?”

Creeper took her arm and headed her slowly across the plaza, taking care not to rush her. He knew each of her aches and pains by heart—she’d complained about them enough, he ought to. “There is talk…” He lowered his voice and cautiously looked around. “About who the witch is.”

“Is this Made People talk?”

“
Slave
talk.”

Featherstone narrowed her eyes. The worst rumors began with the slaves. After all, they worked in nearly every chamber, overheard dozens of conversations a day, and usually knew enough facts to piece together some very unsettling fictions. On occasion, they pieced together even more unsettling truths.

“What name are they bantering about? Sternlight again?”

People seemed to enjoy making up stories about the great Sunwatcher, despite how much they hurt him, or perhaps because they did. Though Webworm believed every bad thing said, Featherstone refused to. Many summers ago, when Webworm accused Sternlight of witching and murdering his own sisters, she had urged him to let it go. When she’d lived among the Fire Dogs, she’d seen many Straight Path girls—girls who’d supposedly “vanished” without a trace. Featherstone strongly suspected that both of Sternlight’s young sisters had been captured by enemy raiders.

Creeper leaned down and whispered, “
Snake Head.
They say he’s the witch.”

Featherstone squinted at the five stories that loomed above her. People sat cross-legged on several roofs, whispering behind their hands. For days people had been walking about like ghosts, frightened to breathe lest some witch snatch their breaths and drag their souls from their bodies. Snake Head had ordered all visitors to stay away, out of fear that they would spread the witchcraft rumors, and everyone in Talon Town would be charged with witchraft.

She tapped her walking stick on the ground. “Snake Head’s warning to visitors might be fuel for those rumors. I wouldn’t pay them much attention.”

“It doesn’t matter what I believe.” From the corner of his eye, Creeper shot her a worried glance. “Imagine what would happen if the Made People villages thought the new Blessed Sun was a witch.”

Featherstone stopped dead in her tracks. She gazed into Creeper’s strained face. “That is too terrible to conceive. The First People would have to support the new Blessed Sun, and that would give the Made People a reason to accuse all First People of being witches, and then—”

“The Made People would be terrified.”

“… And terror has always been a good reason for murder.”

Creeper clutched her arm tenderly. “I will protect you from my people, Featherstone. You mustn’t worry—”

“Then you don’t have a single brain in your head, Creeper. You ought to run like a jackrabbit and save your own hide.”

“You didn’t”—a smile warmed his round face—“when the Fire Dogs grabbed my wife and son. You tried to fight them off. And you were just a girl.”

Creeper’s wife had fought like a caged mountain lion, trying to protect their two-summers-old son. Featherstone had run to protect them, firing her bow until her quiver was empty, then waded into the battle with her deerbone stiletto. Two of the cursed Fire Dogs had fallen to her skill before the others grabbed her and forced her to the ground. Knowing that death awaited her, Featherstone had braced herself. But the tall muscular Mogollon War Leader, Crooked Lance, had been so impressed by Featherstone’s courage he’d claimed her as his personal slave.

She lived today because she’d fought for Creeper’s family.

Creeper leaned down and peered into Featherstone’s eyes, probably wondering if she’d gone “vacant” again; sometimes she lost herself in the past. “Blessed Featherstone?” he called softly. “Are you here with me?”

She ran her tongue through the gap where her two front teeth had been and sighed. “Yes, I was just thinking, that’s all. Did I tell you your wife, Red Mask, fought like a lion? She was a brave girl, Creeper.”

He patted her hand in a very gentle way. “Yes, you told me. I have kept your words in my heart for many summers, Featherstone. They warm me on cold lonely nights.”

Featherstone clutched his arm tightly and said, “Well, come along, let us go and sip some of that tea I promised you.”

*   *   *

Night Sun woke in blackness.

Silence breathed all around her. For a long frightening mo ment, she didn’t know where she was, then understanding returned. Without a smoke hole to let in light, the darkness became a living monster. She felt it moving around her, gliding along the curve of the walls, ghosting close enough to stare her in the face from a hand’s breadth away. The monster sucked at her eyes and ears until she feared it might drain the life from her body.

Pulling the blanket over her shoulders, she sat up and leaned against the cold wall. The dampness had vanished, which meant the days had warmed, though she could feel no change in here. This bleak room remained cold, night or day. Longing filled her heart. The first sprigs of grass and wild onion must be up. It took only a few warm nights to coax them to sprout. What she would give for a thick turkey and onion soup filled with blue corn dumplings.

Her beloved son had ordered that she be fed nothing but a single bowl of watery corn gruel a day. It had grown very unappetizing.

Moccasins thudded on the roof, and the covering over the hole slid aside. Night Sun looked up. The scarlet fires of sunset blazed through the drifting clouds and pierced her eyes like daggers of ice. She quickly closed them, but just that moment of vision had filled her with desperation. In a few more days, she would be willing to kill to get out of here—even if it meant walking to her death.

The knowledge had dawned slowly: Her son intended to kill her.
He is Blessed Sun now. He might be able to do it.
She prayed to the thlatsinas for just a few moments of freedom, so she could grab the first man who walked by and marry him—just to knock Snake Head off that pedestal.

She shook her head. Too late, much too late now.

The ladder’s foot thumped the floor in front of her. She slitted her eyes as tiny cyclones of dust whirled in the reddish gleam.

Ironwood climbed down.

Night Sun had seen no one but slaves for the past three days. She smoothed her long silver-streaked black hair away from her triangular face.

“What’s happening?” she asked, and wondered when her voice had grown so hoarse. “Has Snake Head decided my fate?”

“No,” Ironwood answered softly. “I’m sorry.”

Ironwood stepped to the floor, unslung a small pack from his shoulder, and knelt in front of Night Sun. From the pack, he removed a small buckskin bag and a jug. His pale golden skin looked pink in the dusky glow. He had tied his long graying hair back with a cotton cord and wore a clean red shirt. He smelled of soap. He must have just finished bathing. But sweat beaded on his flat nose and across the deep furrows in his forehead.

Night Sun frowned at the taut muscles bulging beneath his shirt. “What’s wrong? Why are you here?”

“You must have heard the commotion in the plaza today, and I thought you might be worried. Webworm returned from his raid on Lanceleaf Village.”

There was a terrible pause. The nostrils of Ironwood’s flat nose flared.

Blood surged in her ears. “And?”

“I just finished speaking with him.” Ironwood filled his lungs. “He killed Beargrass and Beargrass’ son.”

“And our daughter? What of Cornsilk?”

Ironwood pulled a piece of turkey jerky from the bag and handed it to her. She ate it ravenously, relishing the smoky flavor.

“I honestly don’t know. Webworm says he left no witnesses, as he was ordered to do. I…” The bag of jerky in his hand wavered. He lowered it to his lap. “I can’t believe she’s dead, but I must know.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Go to Lanceleaf Village as soon as things have settled down here. Someone may have escaped the raid. Maybe I can find—”

“Do you know what she looks like? Have you ever seen her?”

He shook his head. “But Beargrass had relatives in the nearby villages. I’ll find them. Surely, they will know.”

As though he’d suddenly lost his appetite, he set the jerky bag aside, slumped to the floor, and slid over against the wall beside her. He smelled clean and faintly flowery. After studying the floor for a long moment, he opened his mouth to say something else, then closed it. When he turned and looked at her, Night Sun’s blood went cold.

“What is it?” Suspicion swelled like a black bubble in her chest. “Tell me.”

Ironwood laid a gentle hand against her hair and anxiously searched her face. “Night Sun … Cloud Playing is dead.”