High Dance watched Bead step out into light. He looked exhausted as he stared absently at the shrine in the back of the temple; his face appeared oddly blotched from smeared paints. He wore a simple hemp-thread shirt that hung just below the crotch. Sandals were on his feet. His hair was tied behind his head and hung loose down his back. The faintest slump of his shoulders implied disappointment.
The man arched his brows, took a deep breath, and asked, “You received my token?”
High Dance reached into his belt pouch and displayed the broken half of a wooden bead between his thumb and forefinger. “I was a little surprised by the directions your runner gave me. Here? At the edge of the swamps?”
“Among all these unwashed and uncaring dirt farmers.” The man nodded. “People who’d never remember the likes of us, and of whom no one would ever think to ask questions.”
“And the old man outside the door?”
“Blind and deaf. Removing him might have drawn attention I’d rather avoid.”
“You only sent half of a bead.”
Bead pursed his lips and stared at the packed clay of the temple floor. “For reasons I don’t understand, Power has taken a hand in our mutual undertaking.”
“Mutual?” High Dance slipped the bead half into his pouch.
“At the last instant your clansman Cut String was killed by Lady Night Shadow Star. Up until a moment before Cut String acted, she’d been lying naked and groggy on the Earth Priest’s floor. Apparently she was writhing in the delirious grip of Sister Datura. Though wracked by the dry heaves, she nevertheless got to her feet, wandered out into the rain, and arrived just in time to use Five Fists’ bow and arrows to kill your relative.”
“You seem very well-informed.”
“Let’s say that Power whispers to me on occasion.”
“Then maybe you’d better rethink your ‘Power.’ If what you say about Cut String is true, he’s not ‘my man.’ I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Bead’s forehead lined. “What if you had the ability to—”
High Dance barked, “I don’t appreciate whispered accusations about Evening Star House having anything to do with attempts on the Morning Star’s life!”
Bead frowned, his forehead lining. The smudges of color mottled his brow. “You do know that they will be coming, don’t you? Sniffing around for clues, their agents asking discrete questions.”
“They’ll find we had nothing to do with this.”
“Curious … and double curious.” Bead’s cunning eyes fixed on High Dance. “Yet here you are, meeting with me, a willing conspirator in the overthrow of the Morning Star?”
“Let’s say I had no love for the tonka’tzi or his spawn. Morning Star House has cost us too much over the years.” High Dance flashed his hand in a dismissive gesture. “That someone used a kinsman in an attempt to assassinate the Morning Star is worth knowing. But you, Bead, claimed that I would know the actions of your hand. What, exactly was I supposed to have seen?”
“The tonka’tzi is dead.”
“In his sleep we are told.”
Bead’s face twisted in a distasteful grimace. “What is it about those people? Can’t they do anything right? I left that arrogant Red Warrior and his sulky little wife with their throats gaping wider than an idiot grins! The whole of Cahokia should be torn and shaking in horror!”
“You killed the tonka’tzi? We heard the Great Sky died in his sleep, that when his wife awakened beside his lifeless body, she took her own life to accompany his souls to the Sky Path and the Land of the Ancestors.”
Bead rubbed the back of his neck, pacing irritably. “I’ve dreamed this.… Dreamed it for years. Each step, taken so carefully. The order of their deaths just so. And then as the waves of fear and terror flow across Cahokia, then … Yes, that’s the moment Power shakes and trembles. The moment when the grand sacrifice will splinter the Underworld and sunder the Sky!” His eyes were blazing like fire rocks, his fist knotted and raised, muscles standing out on his sweat-damp skin.
High Dance stiffened at the passion. “You almost sound as if you knew the tonka’tzi. That it’s personal between you.”
“The great Red Warrior Tenkiller! Whose fire ignited when the reincarnated Morning Star’s hot semen first shot into Magic Woman’s fertile loins! And what did he in turn sire? Nothing but descending orders of ash and charcoal.”
“It’s not wise to use the name of the dead. Doing so not only attracts the attention of the life-soul as it struggles to begin the journey to the Realm of the Ancestors. Naming the dead draws bad luck.”