People of the Morning Star(133)
Bead started walking upslope toward the warehouses, and placed his fingers thoughtfully on his cheek. “Perhaps, when they’re eye to eye, the dwarf employs some remarkable dexterity with those tiny little toes?” He shook his head. “Doesn’t seem possible, given that they’re but nubbins. Ah, but when you go back to the original question about why your sister comes off as such a shriveled and dried persimmon, that would make perfect sense.”
“I told you to stop it.” High Dance fumed, but when Bead shot him a sudden, dangerous look, his anger was quickly smothered by a cool resurgence of worry.
They reached the warehouse area where it stood at the highest part of the levee north of the River Mounds. Glimpses of War Duck’s high palace were periodically visible between the rooftops as they wound between the buildings.
Bead stopped at one of the warehouses, shot High Dance a smile, and said, “Come on in. Let me show you what you have only dreamed about for … oh, all of your life.”
With that he opened the split-plank door and gestured High Dance to enter.
The very act of ducking into the dark interior took all of High Dance’s courage. For all he knew, a couple of Bead’s wolves were waiting in the gloomy interior, bows drawn, or war clubs lifted. If they struck him down there would be no witnesses. No one would have the slightest clue about what might have happened to him, or where or when he disappeared.
Just this once, could that meddling little pest of a dwarf have one of his spies following me?
But no blow fell. Instead, Bead’s two guards slipped in and off to one side while Bead refastened the door, deepening the gloom. The only light filtered indirectly through the gap between the roof and walls, blunted by the overhanging eaves.
It took a moment for the room’s contents to come into focus as High Dance’s eyes adjusted. Boxes and packs of what looked like Trade goods were stacked to either side of the door, as if ready to be moved at a moment’s notice. The back of the room appeared vacant but for a…?
He squinted, at first unsure of what he was seeing.
“Go ahead!” Bead almost chortled, clasping his hands in expectation. “Go look up close.”
A sense of foreboding rising in his breast, High Dance warily crossed the packed-clay floor, realizing that what he saw was a litter chair atop raised poles, and upon it was a reclining figure.
His eyes were adjusting now, and as the gloom gave way, he stopped short at the sight of a pregnant young woman, naked, artfully tied to the litter. She stared at him through terrified wide eyes, her hair disheveled, a cloth gag in her mouth. He made her to be in her late teens, the ropes passing just under her enlarged breasts and over her hips. The young woman’s arms were tied down on either side of the litter, as were her ankles. The sight of her distended navel, popping up like an acorn on her swollen abdomen, struck him as incongruous.
“I don’t understand,” High Dance said as Bead walked up beside him.
“Ah, perhaps you don’t. One of my wolves, Bleeding Hawk, is missing. Which may mean a complication. We need a new warehouse, and well, your Evening Star town is a bit more secure. As I proved today at the canoe landing, you can see who’s coming and going on the river. Here? In this warren of buildings? Why, they could come from any direction, at any time.”
He had no more than said that when the door opened, and one of the wolves entered, his eyes narrowed to slits, as if to pre-adjust his vision to the gloom. He closed the door and crossed on quick feet to communicate something urgent in his guttural tongue.
Bead snorted an amused laugh, then glanced knowingly at High Dance. “Poor Bleeding Hawk has indeed run into trouble. A half squad of Four Wind warriors just raided the first warehouse we rented when we got here.” He looked around unhappily. “We’ll be needing that new location sooner rather than later, I’m thinking.”
“And you just expect me to give you an Evening Star warehouse to hide this woman?”
“I’m sure you will. And you disappoint me, calling her ‘this woman.’ I thought you’d be bouncing from toe to toe, delighted in victory.”
“I don’t understand, Bead.”
“Look close, oh noble chief.” The words were laced with scorn.
High Dance did, discounting how her tear-stained cheeks were puffed out by the gag, how her eyes were swollen from weeping, and grief. Something about the lines of her face, the high brow …
“Pus and blood! Lady? Lace, is that you?”
But she just stared back at him, a bright and half-mad terror burning behind her eyes.
Forty-nine
From a great distance, Night Shadow Star slowly returned to herself, as if to find a stranger’s body and soul in place of her own. It might have been an instant that she’d been gone, or a lifetime. Like fading echoes, images from her memories slowly evaporated from her souls.