Leather Hand allowed no reaction to cross his face. “Too bad. She and I might not have agreed, but she served her people fairly.”
Larkspur cocked an eyebrow. “Rumors have begun to circulate. Traders carry the most outrageous stories.”
“Oh?”
“They say that witches fly past the guards in the dead of night, murder the Matrons, and quietly fly away with their heads again.”
“Clever witches.”
“Yes,” Larkspur agreed. “Odd, isn’t it, that these witches are so clever they only seem drawn to the Blessed Sun’s enemies?”
“Curious indeed.”
Larkspur’s voice dropped. “Then perhaps it’s lucky that I serve the Blessed Sun as faithfully as I do.”
Leather Hand looked at her from under his arm. “You need fear no witches here, Matron.”
A faint smile played at the corner of her lips. She gave him a slight bow, took a feathered cloak down from the next peg, and climbed up the ladder to her top-floor room.
He drew the blanket back, used the chamber pot himself, and pulled on the coarse-woven hunting shirt he’d wadded beside the sleeping pallet the night before. His red shirt was tightly rolled inside his pack, as was his war club. He’d dressed thus, looking like just another hunter, since he and his men had filtered into the First Moon Valley by ones and twos. Like him, they, too, kept out of sight, lodged in certain Made People’s pit houses where they were fed, bedded, and sheltered.
He walked around the long room, fingering her dresses, examining her turquoise, jet, coral, and shell jewelry.
Matron Larkspur. The title intrigued him. Heiress of the Blue Dragonfly Clan. She was in line to inherit the clan Matronship should anything happen to Desert Willow. Not only that, from what he’d seen, she was smart.
He lifted one of her dresses, a beautiful black thing with white four-pointed stars, sniffing at the fabric and filling his nostrils with her scent. The future was an uncertain place. There were so few of the First People left, and he was Red Lacewing Clan. If something happened to her husband? An accident, maybe?
Voices could be heard from upstairs. He froze, aware that a man was speaking in low tones. He couldn’t quite make out Larkspur’s cautious reply; then he heard her say, “Stay right there.”
Her body darkened the hatch as she climbed swiftly down the ladder, shot him a warning glance, and grabbed up a small turquoise brooch from a cedar box. As quickly, she was back up the ladder, saying, “Well done. This is for special service. Come back when you have more.”
Leather Hand heard sandals scuffing as the man left. Moments later, Larkspur leaned into the hatch, one eyebrow lifted. “One of my little songbirds just arrived. He tells me that a messenger has arrived from Ironwood. All of the clan elders will be atop the Dog’s Tooth tonight. They are going to have some sort of meeting.”
Leather Hand matched her smile with his own. “Tonight. On the Dog’s Tooth?”
Larkspur nodded. “That nest of vipers has been a thorn in my bed for long enough.”
“What of the Moon People?”
“Do this right, Deputy, and they won’t dare try anything.”
War Chief Wind Leaf found the Blessed Sun absently wandering Dusk House’s plaza. He had just taken Deputy Ravengrass’s report and had been on his way to find Webworm.
“Good day, Blessed Sun.”
“What’s good about it?” Webworm wondered.
“Excuse me?”
“Oh, nothing. I didn’t sleep well last night. Hideous Dreams. Smoke, fire, people screaming.” Webworm gestured with the basalt graver he held. “And voices, whispering, all night long. Can you believe, War Chief, I even got up and checked the Matron’s quarters on one side, and Blue Racer’s on the other to see if people were hiding there?”
“What of my guards? Did they hear anyone?”
“No, nothing. I asked.” Webworm waved it off. “I could see by the man’s expression that he had no idea what I was talking about.”
Now it’s voices? Wind Leaf squinted up at the sky. A hot sun burned down on them, baking the packed earth. As they followed the wall of the great kiva, he took note of the few hucksters who had placed their wares in the shade of the single-story rooms on the south. Others would have retreated to the greater shade of the north wall behind Dusk Town.
He grimaced as Webworm worked on his hideous little carving. Each scratching sound seemed to resonate, grating clear down to Wind Leaf’s bones. The malignant thing was clearly defined now; a coiled serpent inside a broken eggshell. Webworm was using his basalt graver to detail the triangular head.