He faked a cough, bending, ready to leap when a war club was laid over his shoulder. “The Keeper just said bring you,” the cock-jawed warrior reminded firmly. “She didn’t specifically say you needed to be conscious or have all your bones unbroken.”
“Why, I’m happy to accompany you,” Seven Skull Shield told him with a disarming smile. “Wouldn’t miss it.” He paused. “Um, this isn’t about Spring Flower, is it? I never touched the girl. Fact is, I was as surprised as any when she drew me into that room. It was all just ruse on her part, you know. She’d been seeing that other man. What’s his name? Short Wing something? She only lured me in to take the blame if she was…”
“Who?” the cock-jawed warrior asked.
“Not Spring Flower?” He gave the man another of his disarming grins. “Um, you wouldn’t mind if we stepped up closer to the litter? Just to ask a few questions?”
“If she wants talk, she’ll tell you. If not, you’ll follow along politely and quietly.”
For a sense of humor as limited as yours, she must have had to pay extra. Seven Skull Shield kept his wide smile in place and hurried forward, noting that each of the guards mimicked his movements perfectly.
“Um, Matron? Excuse me.”
She glanced down from the litter, head cocking again in that birdlike manner of curiosity. “What?”
“Well, I … um, Matron, is there something I could explain to you? Surely you’ve confused me with someone else. Whatever your granddaughter may have told you, I—”
“I have no granddaughter, so perhaps you’re the one confused?”
“Ah,” he touched his forehead, bowing slightly. “Perhaps you’re concerned about the blessed statuettes from First Woman’s temple? I might have information on their whereabouts. If you would be kind enough to allow me a couple of hands of time, I believe I could manage to have them back on the altar before—”
“First Woman can take care of herself,” the woman replied sharply.
“Then, great Matron, surely there is some special service that you have in mind?”
“Actually, there is not. Nor am I a Matron.” She was riding faced forward, eyes on the bustle of traffic, refusing even to waste a further glance on him.
“Then, um, Keeper? Clan Keeper?” That’s what cocked-jaw had called her. “Am I to understand you want to hire me for a special project? Perhaps something that a woman of status such as yourself might shy from doing? Perhaps a bothersome relative? Some rival that might need a … shall we call it, a change of perspective?” That had to be it. “I assure you, I can be most discrete. And, subject to your instructions, not even the Morning Star himself could ever pry—”
“I deal with my own rivals,” she stated flatly. “And I certainly don’t need the likes of you to cover my tracks.”
The surety with which she said it left no room for doubt.
“I um … well, what could you possibly need me for?”
“That,” she answered caustically, “is the single question currently dominating all of my thoughts.”
At the wave of her hand—and the immediate gesture of cocked-jaw’s war club—he backed away, as puzzled as he’d ever been.
“Who is she?” Seven Skull Shield hissed out the side of his mouth.
“The clan keeper,” cocked-jaw growled.
“What clan keeper? Which clan? One of the immigrant ones?”
“Are you always this stupid?”
Seven Skull Shield gave the man an irritated glance of his own. “Actually, no. For the life of me I can’t figure out what I might have … I mean, seriously. She’s a clan keeper? Which clan? Who does she serve?”
Cocked-jaw gave him the look he’d give an insect. “She’s the clan keeper of the Four Winds Clan, and she serves the Morning Star. Personally.”
Seven Skull Shield stumbled, panic settling in his chest as he looked past the warriors at the woman perched so regally atop her litter. “She’s … You mean, the Clan Keeper? And she wants me?”
“Apparently so, but I am completely baffled as to why.”
Fifteen
With his distinctive clan tattoos covered in tawny face paint, and dressed as he was in a plain tan hunting shirt, High Dance Mankiller should have appeared anonymous. Instead he felt as conspicuous as a coral snake in a brownware bowl. He’d always been a noble. His lineage house had been in charge of Evening Star town since Petaga was overthrown and the town renamed. From the time he was a boy, he’d been trained to step into his father’s position as high chief of the Evening Star House. The position carried a great deal of authority by itself, but his father had always fumed under the yoke of the tonka’tzi’s rule and the unbridled authority of the Morning Star. That the latter had been reincarnated in the tonka’tzi’s lineage, Father had claimed, was but a matter of luck.