People of the Moon(21)
“Matron? You didn’t come out to greet him?” Wind Leaf asked.
She shot him a sly smile. “I’m afraid I shall be spending way too much time with him as it is.” Her shapely brown hand reached out, the fingers tracing the lightest of caresses down his arm. “If I should become … bored, will you be standing guard tonight?”
He chuckled under his breath. “Yes, Matron.”
She shot a glance at Webworm’s weary party as it trudged closer. “I’m sure the Blessed Sun will be more concerned with sleep after his long journey then he will with me.”
“That will probably be the case, Matron.” He watched as she walked across the roof, hips swinging. Her white skirt flashed in the midday sun. The thick black wealth of her hair glistened as it swayed to her step. Back straight, head erect, she walked forward down the ladder that led onto the third floor as though it were a stairway.
He had always admired her perfect balance, be it physical or political. She was well suited to her position as the most powerful woman in the world.
The construction of Sunrise House was physical proof of how their world had changed. Back in Straight Path Canyon, Talon Town had occupied the place of prominence. Dedicated to the sun, and ancestral home of the Red Lacewing Clan, it had been larger, more imposing than Kettle Town. Here, at Dusk House—dedicated to the moon—the Blue Dragonfly Clan controlled the powerful western side of the world.
Dusk House was physically smaller than Kettle Town had been. Instead of Kettle Town’s five hundred rooms, Dusk House only had four hundred, but these were newly constructed, open for storage and occupancy. None had been ritually sealed by the Matrons, or filled with refuse. So, in actuality, Desert Willow’s people had more utilizable space available to them. When—as would eventually happen—they needed more rooms, additions could be built on to Dusk House as they had to Kettle Town.
Now he looked at Red Lacewing Clan’s legacy: Sunrise House was symbolic—a mere shadow of the building Talon Town had been.
The world has changed. Father Sun rides lower in the sky. Sister Moon is in ascendance.
His gaze followed Desert Willow as she left the eastern gate and strode toward Sunrise House. She might have been weightless, so light and airy was her walk. By the blood in his veins, she was a stunning woman. He could feel his pulse quicken. To still it he returned his attention to the party winding its way through the cornfields.
A sudden silence came from the construction site. Wind Leaf noticed that Yellowgirl had stopped fiddling with her strings. She turned her square face and thick-shouldered body to watch the Blessed Sun’s approach. The master mason was a middle-aged woman, broad through the shoulders and muscular. Her breasts were small, flat, and wide set; she kept her hair bobbed short.
When she glanced back at the slaves, it was to find that they, too, had stopped to watch. Across the distance, Wind Leaf heard her bark, “What are you doing? Wasting Father Sun’s light? We can finish three more courses of stone today!”
How like her.
From habit he turned, looking up the Great North Road where it ran across the flat terrace to the uplands. There another of the large towns had been laid out. The successor to Center Place, it remained nothing but a pattern of sticks driven into the cobble terrace with lengths of string stretched between them to mark walls and rooms. Given the drought, the political unease, the rumors of rebellion, and the other troubles, talk was that not enough workers could be mustered to quarry the stone to build it.
“We may resort to adobe bricks,” Yellowgirl had told him sourly.
“You’re joking,” he’d replied.
“Oh?” she’d asked warily. “I suppose you have a couple hundred workers hidden away somewhere? Or did you just think you’d send your war parties out to round them up at the waggling of the Blessed Sun’s finger?”
He couldn’t, of course. Even slaves had to eat. And that was the fundamental problem.
He squinted up at the searing ball of the sun. White and hot, the god scorched his face—burned into his eyes. Summer had been brutal. The dryland fields had wilted, the tender young corn stalks now brittle and fit for nothing more than winter fuel. The bean plants, those that still survived, were short, stunted, and well past the date for flowering.
Nor had winter been of much help lately. He could almost believe the stories that circulated about how Old Woman North was withholding the snows, keeping the buffalo from calling them down. She had sent a numbing cold rolling down out of the north last winter, but little in the way of snow. For days the land had been gripped by a deep dry cold, the temperature never above freezing. But instead of drifting snow, the cruel winds had only traced patterns of dust from the friable soil.