"So Old Marmot was bold enough to accuse your father of sacrilege in public? I'm amazed." Nightshade contemplated the starmap on the wall. The arrangements of the Ogres glittered in the flickering light cast by the firebowl next to the Tortoise Bundle's tripod. "And he said he'd seen the evidence for it in the stars. What happened after that? After Old Marmot called you into his room to question you about your father?"
Orenda inhaled, a short, sharp breath. "I—I cried. Tharon heard. H-He made me go back ... to my room. Mother came—to s-sit with me."
"What did she say?"
Orenda's little hands began to shake. She hid them in the red folds covering her lap. "She said she would k-kill Tharon."
Nightshade said nothing, fearing that if she questioned too deeply now, Orenda would retreat into silence again. The list of taboos that constituted sacrilege was enormously long, but for Singw to have made such a statement, Tharon's crime must have been dreadful.
She adopted a different approach. "Your mother was a good woman, Orenda. When I first went to River Mounds, I was fourteen. Singw used to come and talk to me late at night. She was one of the few people my age who had the courage to speak to me."
Orenda's lower lip quivered, and grief shone so brightly in her tear-filled eyes that Nightshade's hatred for Tharon intensified. "What did she s-say to you?"
"Oh, many things. Most of it was about your father. She asked me endless questions of what he was like. Tharon and Singw had been pledged to each other the year before, and your mother was anxiously awaiting your birth so she could marry Tharon and move permanently to Cahokia."
Orenda's eyes widened. "Was M-Mother afraid of him?"
"Oh, yes, very much. I'd told Singw of how Tharon used to hurt me. I'd even shown her the bruises from where he had beaten me with a war club on the same day he'd banished me from Cahokia."
"He beat you?"
"All the time." Nightshade pulled up the hem of her robe and turned her leg so Orenda could see the long scar on her calf. The ridged line of white shone snowy against her brown skin. "I got this when your father received a new knife as a gift. He wanted to try it out on someone. He was so much bigger than I was, there wasn't much I could do to stop him."
Orenda gingerly touched the thick mass of scar tissue. "B-But, Nightshade, you're a priestess. Why couldn't you just k-kill him?"
Nightshade drew up her knees and laced her fmgers atop them. Orenda's eyes remained riveted to Nightshade's face, but her hand fell back to her lap and nervously twined in her robe. The tawny light danced fitfully through her long hair.
"Power doesn't work like that. Oh, I could have killed him, but I feared what Power would do to me to exact justice. You see, when Earthmaker created the world, he made sure that Balance stood as the most fundamental law. If I had killed Tharon for giving me that scar, Power might have blinded me, or broken both of my legs—or worse."
Orenda looked away. In a whisper, she said, "He beats me, too."
"I know."
"Nightshade? Did Tharon ... did he . . ." A glint of terror entered Orenda's dark eyes as she looked up. "What else d-did he do to you?"
"Oh, he hurt me in lots of ways. How did he hurt you?"
"He . . . he . . ." Orenda opened her mouth as though she wanted to answer, but cycles of fear had trained the words to bury themselves.
"You can tell me, Orenda. I promise not to tell anyone else."
"But if he ever f-found out . . . That's why my mother died. She died because I told Old M-Marmot." Orenda bent forward to hide her face in the hem of her red dress and cry.
Astonished, Nightshade's graceful brows drew together. "When he called you into his chamber? That's when you told him?"
Orenda nodded.
"And it was the next night—wasn't it?—that Tharon ordered all of the Starbom to take dinner with him in the temple?"
Orenda didn't respond. She didn't have to.
"Well, your father didn't waste any time, did he?" She reached out and gently stroked Orenda's back. More to herself than to Orenda, she mused, "Your father has always been fond of poisonous plants. When he turned nine, he began collecting things like saltbush, death camas, the pits of chokecherries, and the leaves of hoary peavine. I remember that he used to grind the pits of chokecherries and mix them with death camas to feed to squirrels, just so he could watch them writhe before they—"
Nightshade's ears pricked. The wind whistled shrilly | through the halls outside, but beneath the whistling she heard a muffled scream, then a grunt—as though someone had smothered his victim's face with ablanket, then struck him hard.