“It makes no sense,” she cried. “I’d never seen that Casqui before in my life. How did he know who I was? How did you, for that matter?”
“As for me, you might have saved yourself the effort and shouted it out. A Four Winds lady possessed of Underworld Power, accompanied by a battle-scarred Red Wing? Who could they possibly be? The only question being why they might have hired White Mat and be traveling up the Tenasee.
“Beyond that, you know too much about the river, the country, the people. Tell me, how many minor Four Winds nobles know who the Timucua are? Let alone that they live down south in the peninsula? But Night Shadow Star was being trained for the Matron’s chair. She would know. And after Fire Cat went back to take down those Cahokian warriors? You slipped, called him Fire Cat a couple of times when you weren’t paying attention.”
She turned far enough to give him a hard look. “So why play along?”
“It’s the smartest way to travel. But that brings us back to the Casqui. You’re right to ask how he’d know to be looking for you. That, in turn, leads me to ask, what’s this all about? What’s in Cofitachequi? And why are you, of all people, headed there? Last I heard, you and the Red Wing were the darling heroes of Cahokia. Or did the Morning Star turn on you after you saved his souls from the Underworld?”
“You think I should trust you?”
“Seven Skull Shield is really a friend of yours?”
“Why bring him into this?”
“Answer the question.”
Her chuckle was filled with dry humor. “There are only two men alive whom I would trust with my life. Seven Skull Shield is one.”
“It must be some story. By that I mean whatever absurd scheme he was involved in that brought him to your attention without getting his sorry carcass hanged in a square.”
“It was Piasa who whispered his name into my ear. Seven Skull Shield has done me great service. Been there when I needed him. I owe him.”
Winder was silent for a moment. “Three.”
“What?”
“There are now three men whom you can trust with your life.”
“That’s a bit brazen, don’t you think?” But Piasa was flitting through the corner of her vision, almost dancing with each throbbing of her headache. She barely caught the satisfied gleam in the creature’s yellow eyes as they turned into a flare of sunlight on water. The effect was like a hot lance driven through her skull.
“Beautiful woman like you, I can guess how Skull looks at you. And a Four Winds noble? Sister to the Morning Star? Niece to that Keeper he’s so fond of? You must be like nectar to a bee.”
“If you think that, you don’t know Seven Skull Shield. Or at least, you don’t know the man he has become.”
“You really mean that. Unbelievable.”
“Then, like I say, you don’t know him.”
“Oh, I do. And yes, he cut me down from that square. I’m not sure how he avoided taking the blame for that.”
“He bought your freedom with the Quiz Quiz War Medicine.”
Winder almost missed a stroke with his paddle, then laughed bitterly. “Figures. He had it all the time, did he?”
“That’s my understanding.”
“Blue Heron knew?”
“Fire Cat told me that she was as surprised as anyone when Seven Skull Shield pulled the war medicine out of some canoe and slipped it over his shoulder after freeing you.”
Winder shook his head. “Bet he hid it at Wooden Doll’s. That it was right there, probably in the same room. I can be such a fool sometimes.”
“Hiring yourself to the Quiz Quiz wasn’t one of your brightest moments.”
“It should have been simple.”
“Nothing ever is.”
“I guess not. Take the way he talked about the Keeper and you. I thought he’d been hit in the head too many times. That his souls were scrambled beyond any good sense. And then I watch you, traveling as a common Trader, paddling like an honest woman. I see the love you have for that Red Wing, watch him sacrifice himself for you. Watch you talking to the Spirits in your head. I begin to see what Skull sees in you. Why he trusts you.”
“I’m just me.”
“So why are you going to Cofitachequi, Lady?”
“To kill my brother, Walking Smoke.”
“Haven’t heard of Walking Smoke being in Cofitachequi. If your brother was there, I’d suspect that some word would have come down the river.”
“He’ll be calling himself something different. You’ve heard of some new chief? Perhaps a sorcerer or shaman? Someone using Power for selfish purposes, offering sinister services, probably involving human sacrifices?”
At Winder’s silence, she turned, found him watching her with intent and dark eyes.
“If I had known that was who you were after, I would have turned you down back at Big Cane Town and stayed with my wife.”
“So, still want to be that third man?”
“I’m having second thoughts, Lady. But I’ve had second thoughts before and never been smart enough to quit when I’ve been ahead.” He gave her a humor-free smile. “I just hope I’m not being as stone-headed stupid as I was with the Quiz Quiz.”
“Oh, you’re not.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’m telling you right up front, this will not only be dangerous, but difficult. Anything but simple. In fact, I suspect that killing Walking Smoke is going to end with my death.”
Sixty-three
The fact that it took three days spoke volumes about Spotted Wrist’s abilities as Clan Keeper. But come he did, marching down the avenue that separated Blue Heron’s palace mound from the base of Morning Star’s great mound.
He strode purposefully forward, dressed in a gaudy eagle headdress, a flowing white cloak of finest dogbane fabric trailing in the breeze. A white, scalp lock–style apron hung to a point between his knees, a Spirit Bundle tied to its front.
At Night Shadow Star’s he pointed, sending a detail of the troops who followed him up the stairs to hurry past Piasa and Horned Serpent and into the palace.
Sitting on her veranda, watching, Blue Heron could well imagine the tumult they were about to turn loose on her niece’s palace. Green Stick wasn’t the kind who took easily to strangers ransacking his lady’s home.
As I am going to have to take to the ransacking of mine, she realized as Spotted Wrist continued on, his face grim. Behind him came a troop of ten remaining warriors. At the foot of her mound, five split off, trotting to encircle her mound, thereby cutting off any escape.
Blue Heron sat on a low bench, her back to the palace wall, shaded by the eave of her thatch roof. In her hands she held a ceramic cup filled with mint tea. Freshly brewed from leaves Smooth Pebble had Traded for that morning down in the Great Plaza.
“Trouble coming,” she called through the door. “We’re about to be searched. Cause the Keeper no grief.”
Dancing Moon appeared in the doorway, saying, “Him? You’re going to let that butcher into this house?”
“I know what he did to you and your family. You have to promise me. You’ll leave dealing with him to me. And if anyone has to go to war with him, Fire Cat has first call. You hear me on this? And you’ll keep your daughters out of it.”
Dancing Moon chewed on her lips. Hard enough that it had to draw blood.
“I mean it,” Blue Heron insisted. “He’ll be dealt with. But this is not the time, nor the place.”
“Yes, Lady,” Dancing Moon said with reluctance. “Daughters. Come. I need you out here on the porch where the lady can remind us not to spit on the Cahokian trash about to defile our home.”
“Our home?” Blue Heron wondered as the Red Wing women filed out and took their places along the wall beside her.
Smooth Pebble stood in the door, asking, “Lady?”
“You either. Don’t cause me trouble.”
The berdache lifted her hands in surrender. “Me? Wouldn’t think of it.”
Spotted
Wrist appeared, having sprinted up the stairs. He bowed low as he passed the Eagle guardians at the head of the stairs and led his remaining warriors down the short walk. Drawing to a stop just shy of the veranda, he demanded, “Where is he?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
A keen delight mixed with the anger in Spotted Wrist’s eyes. “Funny that you don’t have to ask who. The fact that you know to whom I refer condemns you.”
“Just because you are an idiot, you don’t have to act like one. Given my networks, I was informed before first light the day he was rescued. You didn’t find out until midafternoon. And even then, it was through one of your warriors. One who hadn’t even been in your palace that night. The others were still stumbling around the plaza figuring they could find the thief and have him locked up again before you learned he was gone.”
With a gesture, Spotted Wrist ordered, “Squadron Second, search this place.”
“You’ll rotted well stay out of my palace,” Blue Heron protested. “I give you my word, as a noble and lady of the Morning Star House, of Black Tail’s lineage, that the thief known as Seven Skull Shield is not in my palace. I give you my further word that I did not carry him out of your palace. And, beyond that, if he was rescued, it was by friends of his. The thief has associates in River Mounds City, Evening Star Town, Horned Serpent Town, Serpent Woman Town, as well as in communities up on the bluff. While he could be anywhere, I’d suggest that you start at the canoe landing and work your way out from there.”
“Your word?”
She nodded, looking back at his suddenly uneasy warriors. “You men, you heard me. I gave my word as a lady of my lineage, that the thief isn’t here. If the war leader disregards my honor, it will be—”
“Search this palace,” Spotted Wrist snapped. “Tear it apart if you have to.”
“—an affront to the Morning Star House and my lineage,” she finished. The words struck home—she could see it in the warriors’ eyes as they hesitated.
“Well, go on!” Spotted Wrist snapped.
“War Leader, er, Keeper?” the squadron second began.
“Do it!”
Blue Heron narrowed her eyes to slits as the uneasy warriors pushed past Smooth Pebble, who remained defiantly in the doorway.
“You had better find him in there,” Blue Heron said as the sound of a breaking pot could be heard from inside. “If you don’t, it will be all over Morning Star House that you essentially called me a liar, and that you insulted my honor.”
“Your honor? You were supposed to help me. Remember? Your deal with Rising Flame? That you would advise me on the duties of Clan Keeper in compensation for the right to stay in your palace here.”
“You will recall that I tried. Did my best for a whole moon long after you made it clear that my advice not only wasn’t wanted, but would be entirely ignored. You, after all, were the Hero of the North, and what need had a man of your military ability to listen to some old woman?”
Spotted Wrist glanced dismissively at Dancing Moon and her daughters. “If you ask me, you’ve been corrupted, tainted by heretics. You and that insolent niece of yours, your whole House. You forgot why we fought in the north. What it took to subdue those pus-licking Red Wings.”
Blue Heron held up a restraining hand, adding, “Don’t!” as Dancing Moon started forward with murder in her eyes.
“Well, I see you’ve got the pond scum trained to heel at least. Almost as good as you could do with a dog.”
From inside, something else fell with a crash. She could hear the squadron second order, “Easy! You want to wind up in a square if this goes wrong?”
Blue Heron slitted her eyes. “You know, this means war between us.”
“You declared that the day you stole the thief.”
“And I give you my word that I didn’t turn him loose. That I never laid eyes on that cage I heard you had him in. For that matter, I’ve never so much as set foot inside that palace of yours.”
All of which was true. She’d just shouted through the door.
Spotted Wrist, of course, wasn’t buying it.
Something else crashed inside, made Blue Heron grind her few teeth.
The squadron second appeared in the doorway. “Uh, Keeper, there’s no one here. We’ve looked everywhere. Checked the floor for hidden chambers, searched all around the foundation and under all the beds. Even looked in all the storage boxes large enough to hold a man. He’s not here.”
“Search it again.”
The squadron second shot Blue Heron an apologetic glance. As if he were in physical pain, the man turned and reentered the palace.
“You really don’t know when to stop, do you?”
“Keeper, you said it yourself. There’s no going back for either of us now.”
“May Hunga Ahuito have mercy on your soul.”
“I was thinking the same thing for you, Blue Heron. You and your heretic-loving kind have had it your own way for far too long.”
“Find the Koroa copper yet?” she asked mildly.
And with that, Spotted Wrist followed his squadron second into the palace great room, where the sounds of smashing pottery and the crashing of chests grew louder.
Sixty-four
Fire Cat led the way out of the forest, nodding to people and calling greetings as he and Blood Talon passed through the fields and into the outskirts of Canyon Town.
Fire Cat took in the traditional Muskogean bent-pole structures around the square, then he noticed the chunkey court, rude thing that it was. So how ingrained was worship of the reincarnated god here?
Some sort of assembly seemed to be in progress at the Tchkofa in the center of the plaza.
“What’s all that?” Fire Cat asked, gesturing toward the crowd around the Council House.
“Some excitement,” a Koasati woman told him in Trade pidgin. “A man was murdered, another badly injured. Happened a couple of nights ago. It was a violation of the peace. The mikko and the clans are trying to work out what happened and who was responsible.”
“Any ideas about who it was?”
“The man who survives says it was the River Fox and some Cahokian woman who were at the bottom of it. That he was hired by a Casqui Trader to abduct the woman and take her to Cofitachequi.”
Fire Cat stopped short, staring at the Koasati woman. She looked to be about thirty, had that worn appearance that came from bearing and caring for too many children. “So, did the woman get away?”
“She did. The wounded man, a mixed-blood Trader with a bad reputation around here, says that a party of men attacked him and the Casqui in the darkness. Took the woman back and vanished into the night. They’re still looking for the Casqui, but he seems to have disappeared.”
“And what about the River Fox and the Cahokian woman?”
“Took their packs in the middle of the night, and they’re gone. Maybe on the river with some Cherokee Traders, maybe on their own, or maybe down one of the forest trails that lead south.”
“What is she saying?” Blood Talon asked.
The woman shot him a disdainful glance, taking in his wounds and tattered breechcloth.
Fire Cat relayed the woman’s information.
“What do you think?” Blood Talon asked.
Before replying, Fire Cat thanked the woman and started into town. “Winder might be a scoundrel, but he is no one’s fool. He thinks his best chance to lure Night Shadow Star into his bed and get all the Trade is to get her to Cofitachequi quickly and safely. He also has to prove his competence, be charming, and earn her gratitude.”
“You’re saying that a common Trader thinks he can seduce Night Shadow Star?”
“Well … he was Seven Skull Shield’s best friend once upon a time. They grew up together, which means they’re sort of like two halves of the same walnut. And you didn’t see Winder when he thought I wasn’t looking. So, yes, he thinks he has a chance.”
“But she’s a lady! A noble.”
“Which means what?”
Fire Cat gestured around. “You’re in Canyon Town, and Cahokia is somewhere half a world away.”
Blood Talon shook his head. “No wonder you’re worried. Night Shadow Star is traveling with some lowly Trader? Alone? He could do anything he wanted with her. And there’s nothing she could do about it.”
“I already told you, Winder is no one’s fool.”
“I don’t understand. You said he’s a scoundrel, a common—”
“Just because he’s a scoundrel doesn’t mean he’s not smart.” Fire Cat waved a finger. “The man didn’t become the renowned River Fox by acting impetuously. No, trust me, he’s playing the long game, biding his time, winning her trust and affection.”
“And that doesn’t worry you?”
Fire Cat shrugged. “Squadron First, there’s risk in everything, but after all we’ve been through, I’ll put my trust in my lady.”
Blood Talon had his hands on his hips, staring around Canyon Town. In terms of towns, it really wasn’t much to look at. And the crowd at the Tchkofa looked about to break up.
“So, what do we do?”
“Find a canoe headed upriver and offer our labor as paddlers in return for passage. That, or steal one come dark.”
Even as they watched a man was led out of the Tchkofa, a wrapping around his wounded head. The fellow wasn’t going freely.
Within moments the locals had ripped his clothes off, tied him up in a square at the edge of the plaza, and began beating him with sticks.
“Who do you suppose he is?” Blood Talon asked nervously, his own recent torture on his mind given his expression.
“I’d say he’s the fellow they were interrogating about Night Shadow Star’s abduction. It’s true, they really do take the Power of Trade and the peace seriously here. My guess is that if we end up having to steal a canoe, we should be most judicious in how we do it.”
Walking to the edge of the terrace, Fire Cat stared out over the Tenasee’s green waters, his eyes following the river’s course upriver through the mountains until it vanished around a bend.
Star Path--People of Cahokia Page 38
