Leather Hand observed, “You look moody, my friend.”
The Priest nodded. “We are in the midst of very dangerous times.”
Leather Hand returned his attention to the newly decorated kiva walls. The old gods looked fresh.
Matron Featherstone is dead. The thought rolled around between his souls, and he didn’t know how to feel about the news. Even as he sat there, her ritually prepared corpse was being borne south, through Straight Path Canyon toward Humpback Butte, where her breath-heart soul would fly into the sky.
Seven Stars murmured, “Since the death of the Blessed Crow Beard one tragedy after another has befallen the Straight Path Nation. It has been five sun cycles since his death. Our people have survived the disgrace and exile of Matron Night Sun. They have seen Talon Town—the grandest town in the Straight Path Nation—raided and despoiled. When the Blessed Snake Head assumed his father’s throne he betrayed his people, was murdered by his own warriors. Declared a witch, he was buried in an unmarked grave. No sooner had that been done, than old Featherstone, a halfwit, was declared Matron.”
Leather Hand tightened his grip on his knees. “She was of the Red Lacewing Clan. Next in line after Night Sun. Some Matron. You saw her. Most of her time was spent lying senseless on her sleeping mats, drool leaking from the side of her mouth. Of her waking moments, perhaps one in ten was lucid.”
“May Spider Woman have pity on her souls,” Seven Stars added solemnly.
“May she indeed,” Leather Hand agreed. “Her son, the Blessed Webworm, has barely managed to keep the Straight Path Nation together. My warriors report that rumors pass from lip to lip that the First People are doomed. You know how many villages have revolted; others have turned on their neighbors. I am running my warriors ragged keeping the peace.” In doing so, authority grudgingly had been shifted from the Matrons to warrior governors like Leather Hand. He had the muscle to ensure local obedience.
“Why does that worry you?” Seven Stars asked mildly.
“I have seen the reservation in Matron Husk Woman’s eyes. I’m not sure if she dislikes my methods, or if it is just me she despises.”
“Brutal times take brutal measures. It is the Blessed Sun’s order that placed you in command here. She can do nothing but obey Webworm and Matron Desert Willow.”
“Perhaps.” A pause. “What do you think?”
Seven Stars smiled in amusement. “War and religion are one and the same. Your authority doesn’t threaten me.”
“But it is a change from the way things were.”
“The world is full of change. Think no further than yourself. Have you not changed over the past five sun cycles?”
Leather Hand grunted in agreement. “My mother was a wonderful lady. I can remember the humiliation I used to feel when she called me ‘such a gentle boy.”’
“And were you?”
Leather Hand nodded absently. “Most children are fools, Priest. It took me longer than most to discover how the world really worked. Lessons rarely come as painfully as mine did.”
“A gentle boy?” Seven Stars’s lips raised at the irony. “Is that why the Blessed Sun sent you here? To be gentle, War Chief?”
“Don’t mock me, Priest.”
Leather Hand looked across the freshly renovated kiva and into the eyes of the Flute Player. He had been painted in black, his eyes white with blue irises.
“Do you like the image?” Seven Stars asked.
“Yes. The blood no longer boils in my veins when I enter this place. Of all my duties, overseeing the reconsecration of the kivas has been the most rewarding.”
Featherstone is dead. The thought intruded again. And with her, perhaps, so too was the thlatsina heresy.
“You never believed Sternlight’s prophecy?” Seven Stars asked.
“Never.” Before his death, Sunwatcher Sternlight had told of colorful ancestral spirits who lived in the distant high mountains. “In the end, Sternlight’s new gods couldn’t save him from being taken captive by the Fire Dogs and finally murdered by the great Chief Jay Bird.”
“I’ve always thought the story about that was a little hazy, something about revenge. But to the common people, it has become a legend. Supposedly when Jay Bird’s stiletto pierced Sternlight’s heart, his soul flew out through the wound in a pillar of light and rode the Rainbow Serpent’s column of rising smoke and ash to the heavens.”
“A lie is just like using dog shit to paint a god’s image, Priest. It may be pretty, but in the end it still stinks.”
Leather Hand allowed himself to admire the images painted on the newly replastered walls. The four square roof support columns that rose on either side of the wooden foot drums interrupted his view, but he could appreciate the overall effect.