Nine Killer continued: “Perhaps it’s just that I don’t like Copper Thunder, but I would have expected him to act differently about the murder of a woman promised to him. Hunting Hawk is playing her own deep game. She, too, didn’t seem terribly distressed. Shell Comb, on the other hand, she’s always been a firebrand, and she was ready to order an attack on Corn Hunter, convinced that Winged Blackbird’s warriors had killed the girl.”
“Copper Thunder didn’t counsel war?”
“No. He’s like a jumping spider, waiting, watching from his crack in the bark. He’ll make no move until his prey is in range, and vulnerable.”
“As the sun rises in the east…” The Panther sighed and rotated a shoulder, as if his bones ached.
“You were saying?”
“Oh, nothing.” The Panther waved it away. “All those Comings of the Leaves out on my island, I’d come to wonder why I’d left the world behind. Now, I remember. It was people. The world never changes.”
“We are the way we are, Elder. Descended from Okeus, living in the world he helped to mold.”
“And for that I shall never forgive him.” The Panther chuckled hoarsely. “So, you smell a pack rat in the nut cache, do you, War Chief? Well, I think someone is calling in the mist, seeking to keep us all from seeing.” He scratched under his arm, firelight gleaming in his old eyes. “Who would gain the most from her death?”
“The Mamanatowick. He’d have severed any potential alliance with Copper Thunder—and thrown the Independent villages into confusion in the process. But High Fox had reasons too, he was losing the woman he loved. Maybe even Copper Thunder—he might be playing a game we don’t understand.”
“Rat Willow,” Sun Conch whispered in a low voice.
The Panther turned. “Flat Willow? The hunter who found her body?”
Sun Conch ran her hands over her war club. “He … well, he, too, wanted Red Knot. He had been after her, trying to impress her. When she turned her-eyes to High Fox … They had words. Flat Willow told High Fox to leave her alone or he’d make sure High Fox never set foot on Flat Pearl land again.”
The Panther arched a white eyebrow. “I must have a talk with this young man.”
“A talk?” Nine Killer asked.
The Panther smiled grimly, rubbing his hands together. “But of course, War Chief. As I told you, I will see this thing through, no matter where it takes me. As I found this morning when I arrived, the mist has clouded everyone’s vision—even your own, good War Chief. Now I am curious, and as you must admit, who else but The Panther can see this with clear eyes?”
“And what do you wish of me?”
Panther smiled cautiously. “Two things. First, your help. And, second, the hardest thing of all, War Chief: your continued honesty.”
Things had a funny way of working out, The Panther thought as he and Sun Conch walked across the fallow tobacco fields toward the palisaded walls of Three Myrtle Village. Nine Killer could have been the blustery, arrogant sort of War Chief, the type whose blood pulsed with self-wonder and pride. Instead, the Panther had found him a sober and thoughtful man.
“What do we do now?” Sun Conch asked from a half step behind. Dusk was falling.
“What anyone with sense does to a fire about ready to burn out of control. We splash a little water on it. How can we sniff out this girl’s killer if warriors are killing each other and blood feud is being sworn?”
“Elder?” she said, and caught up to walk at his side. She’d plaited her long hair into a single braid that hung over her left shoulder. The style accentuated the roundness of her face and size of her eyes. “What you said back there, about High Fox—you don’t truly believe he killed Red Knot, do you?”
Ah, what simple innocence filled Sun Conch’s soul. “I told Nine Killer the truth; I’ll take this trail wherever it leads me. I never promised that I would believe High Fox is innocent. If he is, I will do my best to prove it. If I discover that he really did kill her… well, no matter how much you might love a friend, he must suffer for his wrong actions. Or don’t you agree?” She frowned at her moccasins. “I suppose so, Elder.”
“You suppose! My girl, there are three kinds of people in the world: the outstanding, the mediocre, and the truly hopeless. When you came to me, it was with the spirit of the outstanding. Then I hear you mutter such a thing?”
Sun Conch scuffed at the cold dirt of the tobacco field. “I have been asking myself what I would do if High Fox really killed her, that’s all.”