Well, except for Night Shadow Star.
I expect Power to bring her to me before the end.
I turn in the darkness, my pack-load of smoked fish sending enchanting odors to tease my empty stomach. Even as I pull one of the oily fish from the pack and sink my teeth into it. I stare worriedly at Night Shadow Star’s palace. I can see it just off to the east across the western plaza.
Where are you? What are you doing, my forbidden love?
Is she even in there? I have heard nothing, seen nothing. She should have been at the Council House when Right Hand and Corn Seed were interrogated. She should have been rushing to and fro, her anxiety goaded to a fever pitch by Lace’s abduction. Of them all, I have counted on her quick brilliance and impetuous emotions to goad the confusion, to incite violent efforts to find me.
We have unfinished business between us, love of my life.
Without her, what I am planning simply will not work. Any chance of success hinges on having them all—each and every one of Red Warrior’s daughters. A sacrifice of such importance it will be worthy of the greatest resurrection ever. Before I can achieve the impossible, First Woman must be placated, convinced of my sincerity. The blood poured on her earth must be rich enough to compensate for the disruption I am bringing to her realm.
And there can be no higher sacrifice than the most influential women of the Four Winds Clan.
Time to see what helpless creatures I have stuck in my web. You see, like this fish I now chew, terror can also feed an appetite.
Fifty
As she came swimming up through dreams, the first physical sensation Night Shadow Star was conscious of was hunger.
She stretched—only to find a blanket tucked tightly under her chin. Flopping onto her side, her eyes flashed open as her full bladder demanded attention.
She lay on her bed. The blanket—a wedding gift she’d shared with Makes Three—half strangled her. The remains of a blinding headache lay partially dormant behind her eyes as she sat up and flipped the blanket to one side.
“Rides-the-Lightning said you were coming back,” a weary voice intruded from behind. She gasped and turned.
Fire Cat watched her through knowing eyes. He clutched one of Makes Three’s bows; ill-fitting armor and a helmet on his head completed his dress. A wicked-looking war club her husband had once used lay beside him.
“What are you doing in my room? Why are you wearing my husband’s armor?” She felt the anger rising hard and bitter.
“I’m following your orders to the limit, Lady,” he replied without inflection. “And, since you’ve awakened alive, with a beating heart, unraped and unabducted, perhaps I was successful.”
She reached up, rubbing her gummy eyes, recalling her last order to him. “And the weapons?”
“If anyone decided they’d take you, I planned on making it as interesting for them as I could.”
“You said Rides-the-Lightning was here?”
“Runners have been coming for him for the last half day. Some emergency with a clansman. He left perhaps a hand of time ago. He said he could feel your souls coming back, that the danger had passed.” Fire Cat’s eyebrow arched up under the rim of the leather-and-wood helmet. “Your Spirit journey was apparently filled with fears and terrors. You only really panicked me once, but there were a couple of other instances when things got frantic enough that I grew hopeful.”
“Hopeful?”
“That you wouldn’t be coming back. That my honor would be satisfied.”
Visions spun through her like wind-tossed matting: Piasa, Horned Serpent, Snapping Turtle in the Underworld. The unleashed memories of that day when the Morning Star first summoned her after the resurrection. Piasa’s voice hissed in her head as she relived the horror and disbelief, almost feeling the physical violation.
She clamped her eyes, fighting back tears, shaking her head in an attempt to clear her sight.
“Here,” he said softly. “Take this.”
To her surprise, when she opened her eyes, he offered her a cup of still-steaming black drink. Anxiously she drank it down; the bitter brew refreshed as it hit her empty stomach.
He stood, pointed at the chamber pot, and said, “I’ll be back in a bit. Food should be ready. If it’s not, I’ll have to bruise a couple of Clay String’s bones just on principle.”
“He’s Four Winds, a cousin,” she murmured.
“So he reminds me periodically. As soon as they catch you alone, the whole lot of them are going to demand you put me back in a square so they can pay me back for the last couple of days.”
“Couple of days?” She rubbed her face, trying to massage away the wooden feeling. “That’s how long I was in the Underworld?”