That she had to do so, however, left a burning sting worthy of cactus thorns. Four Winds Clan was more than just the tonka’tzi, Matron Wind, Blue Heron, and, of course, the Morning Star. That so much authority had been concentrated in Morning Star House frustrated her to the bone.
High Dance shrugged as he accepted Flat Stone Pipe’s lie, the expression on his tattooed face smug. “Good riddance to them. The last of the heretics is gone.”
“There are others, good chief,” Flat Stone Pipe said evenly. “The heresy will never be completely dead. The Morning Star may have finally overcome one obstacle. But Power, like all things, must have an opposite. It is the nature of Creation.”
“But where does this new opposition to the Morning Star come from?” Columella asked.
“That, Matron, is the question.” He was watching her with knowing dark eyes. “Conjuring Power carries great dangers. It would have to be done with extreme care.”
“And why are you telling me this?” A constriction seemed to tighten in her chest.
“Because you, my lady, are the strongest and most capable lineage leader. Were Blue Heron given an incentive to look for rivals to Tonka’tzi Red Warrior’s rule, she would look here first.”
Columella stiffened, heart beginning to pound. Lightning blast him, the little man was reading her rising panic. “And what makes you think I might give her any incentive?”
His triumphant smile seemed to split his face; those eyes that knew her so well gleamed. “Why, never you, great Matron.” Then he shifted his slitted gaze to High Dance, saying, “Because as smart as the Matron is, not all of her relatives have the delicate finesse necessary to engage the Clan Keeper in a game of wits.”
High Dance just gave the dwarf a hard and distasteful glare. “I don’t know where you’re going with that.”
“Wherever it is, High Chief, let’s hope it doesn’t entail a square measured to fit your sister’s body.”
Columella, long familiar with her brother’s mannerisms, noted his shock. What are you into, brother?
Fourteen
Seven Skull Shield leaned his head back, singing at the top of his lungs. “Five days she laid with me, riding my shaft as if it were a tree!” The split-cane roof overhead provided relief from the midday sun, and the shell workers often allowed him to loiter in their open-sided workshop. They were Deer Clan men, most of them third-generation bead cutters and shell carvers.
“Her sheath so slick and tight, sucked in my shaft, giving pure delight.” He added facial expressions as he bellowed out his song, hands pantomiming the action.
The men working around him shook their heads and grinned as they continued their shell cutting. The sour-onion smell of roasting shell permeated the air where the discard was darkening in the fire. The rasping sound of the cane drills rose and fell like hoarse cicadas accompanying the high-pitched screeching of chert microdrills as they bored tiny holes.
“Upon my shaft she rose so high, drove herself down, nearly broke my thigh.”
“Blood and thunder, man,” Elder Crawfish declared, “you have a voice like … like…”
“Cracking rocks?” Meander asked as he removed his drill from the piece of clamshell and wet the end of the cane in a pot of water by his knee. Next he rotated the damp end in fine quartz sand until it was coated. This he fitted back in his bow-drill and resumed cutting yet another perfectly round bead from the piece of shell.
“More like wounded and dying dogs,” Right Fist muttered. “And with songs like that, it’s no wonder he can’t keep a woman.”
“I keep them just fine,” Seven Skull Shield replied, overemphasizing his words. “And I don’t have to sing to do it.”
“That’s absolutely obvious.”
“It’s your refined sense of manners,” Meander offered flippantly as he fitted a fine-pointed chert drill tip in his hardwood dowel. With long practice he centered it on the bit of conch he was perforating.
“Surely not his fine looks.” Right Fist screwed his expression into distaste. “With a face like that, not even one of them corn-worshiping dirt women would look twice.”
“Gods, and you know what sort they’ll spread for,” Two Fish said with a gesture as he poured shell scraps into a carry sack.
Seven Skull Shield bellowed a laugh and shook his head. “Looks have got nothing to do with it, you needle-headed clods of mud. You’re overthinking this whole woman thing.” He slapped a hand to his muscle-packed thigh. “Oh, I know. I heard the same old hot blow from my old matron’s mouth. ‘You’ve got to be steady, respectful. Show her family that you’re solid, worthy to sire her clan’s next generation. Convince them you’re going to be a man of status, looked up to in the community.’ And that’s all night shit!”