“Is it ever simple between a man and woman?”
“Absolutely positively never.”
She tensed, taking a deep breath. The wind hammered at the house. “This coupling business. It’s always been an unpleasant experience.”
“Doesn’t have to be.”
She hesitated, then sat up in the dark and pulled her brown shirt over her head. “If you hurt my knee doing this, I’m going to rip those stitches right out of your face.”
“Sometimes your charm leaves me dazzled.”
He wriggled out of his own hunter’s shirt and stretched out beside her. Every muscle was rigid, as if she were primed for combat instead of love. She spread her legs, whispering bravely, “I’m ready.”
“For the moment,” he said softly, “let’s just hold each other. I want to feel your heart beating against mine, and your breath against my neck. Then you need to touch me, gently, as I touch you. We have plenty of time, you and me.
“Careful or your knee.” He reached out, pulling her tense body onto his. Sighing, he hugged her to him, her falling around them like a veil.
After tonight, you’ll never call me Stumpy again
As the wind moaned past Cactus Flower’s little house, Spots lay awake. She was sleeping with her head on his shoulder, her arm draped over his chest. Her firm brown thigh lay atop his groin, her right breast soft against his ribs.
Angry gusts pattered sand against the north wall of the house, and he could smell dust on the wind. Outside he could hear the matting on the ramada flapping, and something rattled as it blew away.
He breathed deeply, taking in the scent of her hair. He had watched her turn down a Trader’s offer that afternoon when the man offered her an abalone pendant in exchange for a night at her place. It seemed that every time he was around, she was mysteriously unoccupied. Even more odd, she no longer even hinted that he Trade any of his goods in exchange for her bed.
He found a lock of her hair, running it around his finger. By the bloody gods, he’d come to enjoy this. It was more than the wondrous sensations she conjured from his shaft. He enjoyed the sparkle in her eye, the anecdotes she told about the Fire Dogs and First People, the Hohokam, and the Tower Builders. She just seemed to know so much.
From the moment they returned to her little farmstead, they talked—and talking was remarkably easy with her. He had learned that her father had been a Trader and that she’d grown up in a town down along the border with the Fire Dogs. She’d just passed her tenth summer when a mysterious coughing disease sickened most of the inhabitants. Cactus Flower’s mother had asked her father to take her north, away from the miasma. When they’d returned the next spring, her entire lineage—mother, aunts, and uncles—had perished.
“So I just traveled with Father from then on.”
He smiled at that, amazed at the differences between his upbringing and hers. He’d never been more than three days’ travel from his mother’s house. Cactus Flower had been from one end of the world to the other. Had seen the Rainbow Serpent where it belched out of the ground, had visited the Hohokam cities with their ball courts and river-wide canals. She had followed the trails north into the land of the Tower Builders, and had tried her hand at their ceremonial game of divination: They rolled stone balls across their pit house floors as they Sang and prayed.
“Then Father was killed,” she’d said simply. “It was a river crossing. Among the Hohokam, I learned to swim. He didn’t.”
As he stroked her hair, he could almost sense the presence of the sharp quartzite knife where it lay hidden in his pack beside the door.
Tomorrow would be the day. He would slip it to Nightshade when the opportunity presented itself.
And then what? He swallowed hard, hearing the patter of wind-driven gravel against the house walls. A fine filtering of dust hung in the air, muting the scent of her hair. It ground between his teeth, and he could feel it on his face.
Choices. Nightshade’s benediction and curse balanced between his souls. He could slip her the knife, and then come home with Cactus Flower. Together they would kindle the dinner fire, make a meal, and then she would take her clothing off and entwine her soft brown body around him.
And Nightshade? Was she really a witch, or a madwoman?
What makes her think she can defeat Webworm?
Fifty-three
A howling wind ripped over the weathered sandstone cliff behind Talon Town, whirled past the column of rock called Propped Pillar, and made a low moaning, as though the very stone was tortured.
Leather Hand stood atop Talon Town’s fifth-floor roof and stared up at the black sky. He ran his fingers over the smooth stone of the serpent-in-egg carving Webworm had given him. His souls were slithering around inside him—as if his gut were mimicking the carving. It was an eerie feeling, perhaps stimulated by the snake’s head he rubbed under his thumb. Or perhaps his souls were hearing the cries of the dead. The First People had been living in this canyon for hundreds of years; their Spirits called from the stone, log, and soil that composed Straight Path Canyon.