People stood in a wide ring, held back from the base of the mound by a cordon of red-dressed warriors. The mood in the crowd remained somber.
Even from his elevated perch, Seven Skull Shield could sense the people’s uncertainty, could read it in their shifting bodies, the way they leaned their heads close to whisper their suspicions.
“What do you think?” Fire Cat asked as he stepped out onto the veranda.
“They’re unsure. Apprehensive.” Seven Skull Shield gestured at the crowd. “Look close and you’ll see it, like a faint ripple running through a pond.”
“And you know this? How?”
“I’m one of them, Red Wing.”
“What does that mean, one of them?”
“For a dead man, you ask a lot of questions.”
Fire Cat shot him a measuring sidelong look. “Blue Heron says you’re a common thief.”
“Bah! Common? Red Wing, I could have lifted one of your wives right out of your bed while you slept in her arms. And there’s nothing common about talent like that.”
“My wives have been taken as slaves, thief. I am told their labor and bodies now serve Four Winds masters.”
Seeing the man’s pain, he said, “Power must not favor you, Red Wing.”
“Obviously it does not. And as much as I’d like to choke that smug expression off your ugly face, my lady requires your presence.”
Seven Skull Shield hesitated just long enough to give the Red Wing his most offensive smile. “Don’t start what you can’t finish alive and well, Red Wing. I’ve heard all about your precious honor. I grew up in a different world. Where I come from, I learned to do whatever it takes to stay alive.”
He glanced at the Piasa and Horned Serpent guardian posts. The things looked so lifelike they sent a shiver through him. Then he brushed past the fuming Red Wing and entered the main palace. The great room had taken his breath away when he’d first stepped through the door. Nothing had changed. The opulence remained every bit as stunning.
Just a couple of these pieces Traded down south would set me up for life!
Behind the fire pit with its glowing embers, and seated on their litters, were Blue Heron, Matron Wind, Lady Sun Wing, and Night Shadow Star. Off to the right a man named Dead Bird, who served the Morning Star, waited with a frowning face. Blue Heron’s berdache assistant, Smooth Pebble, and Night Shadow Star’s head of household, Field Green, stood behind their respective ladies. He wasn’t sure who the other people present belonged to.
“How is the crowd?” Blue Heron asked as he walked closer and stopped just back of the fire.
“Tense, Keeper. Unsure.” He bit another bite off the small loaf. Good. The woman had sprinkled some walnuts into the dough.
“You heard no rumors?”
“Oh, plenty. Mostly idle speculation about divine justice from the Sky World. A couple of the ignorant two-legged turds came up with the notion the Morning Star blasted the tonka’tzi over some slight, or found him unworthy, or some such. About what you’d expect. The important thing is that no one is mentioning assassination. By moving as fast as you did, you’ve taken the opposition by surprise.”
“How is that?” young Sun Wing asked, an arrogance in her voice.
He took another bite of bread, chewing as he studied her. She looked like an overdressed child atop her litter. No one that young and stuffed so full of self-important goose excrement should be given her kind of authority. “Lady, if the assassins wanted to create panic they’d have picked people working the crowd to whisper rumors. No one’s doing that, not at the tinder points.”
“What’s a tinder point?” Her too-pretty face tightened in disdain.
“The places people like me gravitate to. Concentrations of the curious, the lunatics, and the slightly addled who can’t wait for a disaster and want to be the first to see it happen. They are the ones anticipating that first spark, anxious to blow it into a bonfire that will flare out of control.”
Night Shadow Star, her poise recovered from earlier, asked, “If they had the opportunity to sow discord, why didn’t they?”
Seven Skull Shield ripped another bite of bread from the loaf, talking through a full mouth. “They thought you’d panic.”
“We almost did,” Blue Heron muttered under her breath, gaze unfocused as she considered what he’d said. She glanced up as Five Fists’ burly form darkened the door.
The broke-jawed warrior gestured his respect and dropped to one knee, saying, “I escorted the tonka’tzi’s household staff to the Trader this one suggested.” He indicated Seven Skull Shield with the barest tilt of his head. “I think they believe our story that we’re removing them from Cahokia for their own safety. The Trader has enough muscular young men to ensure they will be delivered to the supreme chief of the Kadadokies at the Yellow Star City.”