Hunting Hawk sucked at her few stubby front teeth. Okeus, tell me, did I do the right thing?
She let her gaze travel around the warm room. Shell Comb—perpetual problem that she was—sat to the right of Copper Thunder. With a bone awl, she poked holes into a deer hide apron. As each set of holes punctured the supple leather, she used a stingray spine needle to sew on a tubular blue bead. Cut from quahog clamshell, these were the very valuable beads her people called peak. The number of them that Shell Comb now sewed on the apron was worth a clan’s ransom.
Yellow Net was directing Quick Fawn as she laid out the bedding for the guests. A’s Hunting Hawk watched Yellow Net work, she couldn’t help but notice the woman’s concise action, the way she composed each thought before she implemented it. Young Quick Fawn had inherited that same sense of deliberate competence. Perhaps it was in the blood, passed from mother to daughter. But, then, what had happened between her and Shell Comb? How could Shell Comb have turned out the way she did? In any comparison Hunting Hawk made between her niece and her own daughter, Yellow Net seemed so much more efficient. Yellow Net carried herself with reserve, whereas a won ton abandon had plagued Shell Comb since infancy.
Okeus help us all if I die too quickly and Shell Comb becomes Weroansqua. Hunting Hawk ran aching fingers through the ruff on her dog’s neck. She wished her sons had lived. Brown Jaw, her oldest, had had a clever head on his shoulders. He would have made a worthy successor to her, had Stone Frog’s Conoy not killed him in a raid. Her second son, Green Clam, had broken his leg in a bad fall. Despite its having been set, evil had entered the leg where the splintered ends protruded through the flesh. Green Clam had lasted almost three moons, the last one punctuated by fevered sweats and chills, his mind wandering in and out of delirium.
Okeus, you have treated me unfairly when it came to my children. Only Shell Comb had lived to follow her, and of Shell Comb’s children, only Sea Nettle and Red Knot had survived. Sea Nettle now lived in Duck Creek Village, the farthest west of the Independent villages. Sea Nettle—happily married to the Weroance of Duck Creek—had declared emphatically that she would have nothing to do with her mother or Flat Pearl Village. No communication had passed between them for many Comings of the Leaves.
Of course, information still shuttled back and forth like the very winds. Sea Nettle was nevertheless Greenstone Clan, and she’d borne four children, two of them girls. From the reports, Sea Nettle’s offspring were well thought of, responsible, and all potential leaders.
So, should I call Sea Nettle here? See if she would inherit? Hunting Hawk mused distastefully on the question as she watched Shell Comb’s eyes straying to Copper Thunder, lingering on his broad shoulders, and the way his muscular thigh jutted to one side.
No! No matter what, I cast the reeds long ago, and I shall bet on what I could grab. Sea Nettle turned her back on me. That was her decision. I shan’t go crawling to her, now. Curse the girl, anyway. She’d cut the ties with mother, home, and this very Great House. Well, by Okeus, she could live with the consequences!
Her old dog moved uncomfortably, and Hunting Hawk realized she’d knotted her fist in the bitch’s hair. In apology, she patted the animal and returned to stroking the soft fur.
She studied Copper Thunder, reading anger in his flashing black eyes. The Panther had unleashed a maelstrom in the Great Tayac’s soul, and that brooding fury, in turn, stoked a deep-seated worry in Hunting Hawk.
He’s capable of anything. One by one, she considered her options. Were she to order it, Nine Killer would ambush the man and kill him and the handful of warriors left in his retinue. In one fell blow, she’d have solved the problem of Copper Thunder. Next, she could pin Red Knot’s murder on the Great Tayac, and fight a sporadic but prolonged war with the upriver villages. To do so would add even more pressure to the alliance than the constant attrition caused by Water Snake and Stone Frog.
The second option was to go ahead and let Copper Thunder kill The Panther. Canny as the old man-had been in his manipulation of Copper Thunder, he’d forgotten one important weakness: People thought him a witch. A smart Weroansqua like Hunting Hawk could poison someone’s food with may apple root until they became sick, then reluctantly admit in public that she’d caught the old man casting spells. Mayapple was a tricky poison. She’d have to measure the dosage perfectly. Among the Lenape, a boiled concentrate from the root was the preferred means of suicide. She need not fear repercussions; with a witch, accusation by a Weroansqua was as good as a death order. After they’d executed The Panther, the sick person would slowly recover and she and Copper Thunder would be vindicated.