People of the Morning Star(57)

Night Shadow Star stared in horror at her father’s gaping throat wound. The wide cut exposed the tube of his windpipe and the severed bundles of muscles and tendons. An impossible amount of darkening blood gleamed on his chest and soaked the bedding. Even as she watched, it continued to drip onto the floor. Yellow Aster’s throat, too, had been slashed. Her sightless eyes had already gone gray behind dilated pupils.

Night Shadow Star tried to catch her breath, and despite gasping, remained oddly starved for air.

“Whoever it was, no one heard a thing,” Blue Heron continued, eyes narrowed to slits. “And he was definitely different from the one who tried to kill me earlier tonight. Had to be two of them. My killer would have had blood under his fingernails if he’d done this before he came for me.”

“You … Your killer?” Night Shadow Star’s voice sounded weak as her reeling souls struggled to comprehend, much less accept the notion that the crimson-drenched corpses on the bed belonged to her father and his wife.

“There were two,” Blue Heron gestured at an ugly stitched wound in her throat before pointing at the gory corpses. “This one succeeded. Look at the wall.”

Night Shadow Star turned, her shock deepening as she took in the image someone had drawn in blood on the cane wall: a snake, long and sinuous, the head triangular, the tail ending in a blotched representation of rattles.

“Like the black snakes on the guardians’ eyes?” she mumbled, trying to find herself in the stunned horror. Then she returned her stumbling gaze to the caricature of her father’s corpse. “Who … Who’d do…?”

“This?” Blue Heron rubbed her hands, expression bitter. “The snake indicates Underworld Power was invoked by the killings. Piasa is your Spirit, Niece. He’s one of the masters of the Underworld. Four Winds Clan and the tonka’tzi are allied with the Sky World.” She shot Night Shadow Star a hard look. “Is there anything you want to tell me, Niece? Any … revelations from your dreams?”

Night Shadow Star could only stare at her father’s remains. Memories of him came flooding back: his laughter when she’d been a little girl; the times he’d spoiled her with trinkets; his strong arms as he’d held her after she’d fallen down the palace steps; the relief in his eyes at her wedding feast; and the pain he’d felt at her grief over Makes Three’s death.

Gone.

All gone.

“Night Shadow Star?” Blue Heron demanded attention, her eyes like black stones in her implacable face.

“He was your brother,” she whispered. “Are you so unmoved by his murder?” She felt her heart tearing in her breast.

“I’ll grieve when I have time. For the moment, all of our lives are in danger. I must know. Where were you this night?”

“In my palace.” The words were choked in Night Shadow Star’s throat.

“Which of your attendants could swear to that?”

The absurdity of the question shook Night Shadow Star out of her disbelief. “What … What are you asking?”

“You’ve tied yourself to the Underworld. You whisper of Piasa himself. And the murderer here, as well as the one who tried to murder me tonight, are aligning themselves with the serpents.” She pointed to the bloody snake painted on the wall.

“You think I…” She knotted her fists, hot tears of rage and grief silvering her vision. “He was my father!”

“She was with me,” a subdued voice said from behind.

Night Shadow Star turned, dismayed to discover Fire Cat’s muscular body filling the doorway. Before she could find her voice, Blue Heron asked, “Doing what, Red Wing?”

His gaze didn’t waver as he met Blue Heron’s. “Struggling, Clan Keeper. Battling with her souls over whether to drive a chert knife into my heart.”

Blue Heron fingered her chin thoughtfully, then winced, obviously having pulled the wound at her throat. She glanced disdainfully at her fingers, fixing on her dead brother’s drying blood. For a long moment, she said nothing. Then: “Tell me, Red Wing, do you have agents in Cahokia? Men who’d be capable of treachery like this?”

Still reeling, Night Shadow Star physically stepped back at the look of hatred in Fire Cat’s narrowing eyes. “If I did, Keeper, they wouldn’t be painting snakes with your blood. The design on that wall would be a great red wing, and we’d have started with your nephew up on his private mountain.”

“You speak blasphemy!”

He shrugged and countered, “Blasphemy is where you find it. I think its living atop the great mound.”