All around him lay skeins of different fibers Traded from everywhere. Hemp, basswood, and cedar bark made up the majority of the rough fibers. Combed cottonwood down for fine lace and hanging moss from the far south were some of the more exotic wares. Pounded and separated sinew had its own place as did a water jar in which lengths of intestine had been sunk. Bales of buffalo wool and human hair hung from the rear wall.
Where morning sunlight shone through the door, Black Martin sat on a tattered blanket, a length of tanned buckskin spread over his thigh. His lined brow had deepened into a pensive frown as he concentrated on slicing a narrow strip, or plait, from the hide. He followed a faint black line made from stretching a soot-covered string over the hide and snapping it. For this fine work he used a freshly struck obsidian flake.
“Obsidian is expensive stuff,” Seven Skull Shield noted. “Lots of demand for it. Some of the societies insist on obsidian for their blood-letting and scarification rituals.”
“I don’t have much trouble getting it,” Black Martin noted. “The societies, they have to offer services. Surveying, healing, telling fortunes, and casting spells.” He grinned up at Seven Skull Shield, which exposed gaps in his bad teeth. “Me, all I have to do is offer a Trader one or two of my ropes. No one in the world makes better ropes than I do. I test each one for strength.”
“All ropes break eventually,” Seven Skull Shield noted.
“Which is why we’re always making more,” Big Fish replied as he carefully stretched fibers around his flyer and spun it. The rotating disk twisted another length of cord.
“Look at this.” He gestured at the coils of string and cord around the room. “Can’t make enough fast enough. That pile of hemp over there? A Deer Clan man brought that in. Wanted a new fish net by the new moon. If I had five more skilled men, I might keep up.”
“You’re not doing so bad, you still have a granary full of Traded corn left over from the winter,” Seven Skull Shield noted. “Best Trade it before it molds.”
“And you’re not doing so poorly yourself,” Wild Hare shot back. His brow raised skeptically. “We’ve heard all kinds of stories about you. Unbelievable things. That you’re tied in tight with the Morning Star up on his mound. That you’ve been driving that tree trunk you call your pisser into the Four Winds Clan Keeper. Bit old, even for you, isn’t she?”
“Um, that’s not exactly the case.”
“Figured as much,” Black Martin noted, lips twitching as he kept an even pressure on his cut. “No way a woman with her kind of authority and prestige would look twice at a bit of human flotsam like you. High Chiefs are more her type. If half the rumors can be believed, she’s been married to most of them at one time or another.”
“Say,” Wild Hare noted, “just why are you here?”
“Thought I’d come and make your lives happy with my songs.”
“I’d rather hang in a square than hear you sing. The only time we see you is when some husband just missed catching you in his wife’s bed. Usually you’re in here with us because he and his clansmen are out there somewhere, prowling around with war clubs in their hands and blood lust in their hearts.”
“Thought we were your refuge of last resort,” Black Martin agreed. Then he stopped short, his careful work forgotten. “Pus and blood! The Four Winds Clan isn’t after you for bouncing the Keeper up and down on that shaft of yours, are they?”
Seven Skull Shield rubbed his face wearily. “Haven’t you been paying attention? The assassinations? The Morning Star’s brother coming back, trying to resurrect Piasa in his own body? Palaces burned, searches for missing women?”
Wild Hare peered at him from under lowered brows. “Yes, something. Who has time for gossip? We’ve got orders to fill. Traders are going to be flooding in with fiber and looking for finished cord and rope. We’re getting a reputation. People up and down the river value our rope and cord. And then there are the new people who will be moving in. More dirt farmers come to praise the Morning Star and play chunkey with their crummy little clay chunkey stones. That means the clans are going to need more cord and twine to bind thatch, hold rafters together, tie up latrine screens, hang doors, mend packs. Ropes to erect guardian posts, lift logs … a thousand things. Pus and blood, man, we have important things to attend to.”
Seven Skull Shield threw his head back and laughed. Then he sang, “She grabbed my hard shaft, it left me half daft…”
“You worry me,” Wild Hare noted. “I’d think you were here to find out if I knew you’d been in my wife’s bed. Unfortunately, she’s one of the only women in Cahokia who has the same high regard for you as she has for fresh dog shit when she steps on it barefoot.”