People of the Morning Star(140)
“I thought he was dead.”
She felt the quiver of fear around her heart. “No. And, cunning and twisted as he is, it’s up to me to find a way to kill him before he can do more harm.”
* * *
The sick feeling in High Dance’s stomach had nothing to do with bad food. In fact he’d barely touched his breakfast that morning. As he strolled across the Evening Star town plaza, he tried to look relaxed, but the broken half of a bead in his palm felt as poisonous as unprocessed coontie root.
As he passed the charnel house mound, one of the Tula seemed to detach himself from the eagle guardian post. The man fell in behind him; sunlight glistened from a chert-studded war club in his right hand.
High Dance fought the impulse to say something. As if it would do any good; the accursed Tula couldn’t speak a word of civilized tongue.
As he passed behind the engineers’ mound and society house, yet another Tula stepped out and followed.
“Yes, yes,” High Dance muttered. “I’m coming.”
The broken bead might have been a hot pebble, burning against his skin.
At the warehouse, two more Tula nodded to his “escort,” as if giving their assent that he might enter.
“I’m a high chief of the Four Winds Clan, you barbarian pond scum.” A spear of anger warmed his breast. Then he glanced at the war clubs dangling from their hands. As quickly, any desire to protest drained away.
The warehouse door was painted with Four Winds design, marking it as his clan’s property. But the door was opened by yet another Tula who gestured him inside.
To his surprise, the Tula warriors within were clustered around the door, all in the process of checking weapons, inspecting arrows, some swinging war clubs as if to loosen their shoulders.
“You’re probably asking how you’ve come to this,” Bead told him as he emerged from behind a knot of warriors. He had a paint palette in one hand and was just putting on the finishing touches—radiating lines of blue—on a Tula’s face. To the side, a nervous-looking messenger held a copper-clad staff that looked suspiciously like those carried by the Morning Star’s messengers.
Bead had painted his own face to resemble Piasa’s. Both eyes were surrounded by yellow circles similar to the Water Panther’s; black, three-forked patterns surrounded them to designate the Underworld. Black lines on his cheeks evoked whiskers, and his nose, like a cougar’s, was pinkish brown. The black line drawn around his mouth mimicked the big cat’s, and was accented by a touch of white on his chin.
It came to High Dance that he’d never seen Bead’s face without some sort of paint on it.
“What do you want this time?” He glanced over to see Lace, still atop her platform, eyes closed as she breathed in and out in obvious agony.
He’d never cared for the Morning Star’s House, thought them all stuffed with shit and over-full of themselves. Nevertheless, watching young Lace’s misery touched something inside him. She was kin. And she, personally, had never done anything to offend him.
He pointed. “You might want to change her bonds. Seated like that can’t be good for her. She could end up crippled, perhaps lose that baby.”
Bead frowned and cocked his head as he considered her. “Yes,” he remarked thoughtfully. “She could.”
“Well?”
Bead, as if interrupted in mid-thought, asked, “Well, what?”
“Are you going to do something about lady Lace’s bonds?”
After more consideration, Bead told him a flat, “No.”
He turned back to the Tula he was painting and carefully finished the last blue line on the man’s left cheek.
“Why am I here?” High Dance demanded.
After a long enough pause to be irritating, Bead asked, “Have you seen your sons today? Fast Thrower and White Stem? I believe those are their names. Oh, and that cousin of theirs, Panther Call. He’s your irritating sister’s oldest boy, isn’t he? I’ve heard she rather fancies him.”
Cool premonition blew through High Dance. “No. I haven’t seen the boys today. Brown Bear Fivekiller, my war chief, is looking after them. He’s…”
High Dance stopped short as, at a gesture from Bead, one of the Tula reached behind a basket and rolled something round, heavy, and irregular across the packed clay. Loose hair flew in every direction, the spongy flesh giving. The stub of neck brought the thing to a halt at High Dance’s feet. Blood and fluid dripped from severed tissues.
Even though the angle wasn’t right, and the thing lay canted, High Dance could see half-lidded and sightless gray eyes; the lips were drawn back to expose blood-caked teeth. Familiar tattoos could be discerned beneath the wildly loose hair.