Ironwood glanced about, studying every shadow, but he saw no ghosts, just swaying spikes of yellow grass and eroded slick-rock.
Holy roads angled off in every direction, intersecting each other, sometimes running parallel courses, but all converging at the heart of the town.
Dune stopped suddenly. “Listen. Do you hear it?”
Ironwood turned his right ear to Wind Baby. “Yes. It sounds like … shouts … eddying on the gusts of wind. What—”
“Run ahead! Hurry!” Dune waved his walking stick. “I’ll catch up!”
Ironwood’s sandals pounded as he trotted down the road past Center Place to the canyon rim.
For several moments, no sound except Ironwood’s footsteps and a muted roar like faraway thunder came to his ears, but as he neared the rim, threats and shouts rose above the general frenzy. A woman screamed, “Let her go! Crow Beard … a witch! We all know it! How many innocent people … murdered in the past sun cycle?”
An explosion of voices answered.
Ironwood peered over the edge. Two hundred hands below, Talon Town’s plaza writhed with people shoving each other, shouting. Slaves moved among the crowd, their tattered brown clothing contrasting sharply with the brilliant reds, blues, and yellows of the elite. Curious. But they wouldn’t be there if their masters had not given them permission.
Ironwood clenched his fists. What could have caused…? Crow Beard is dead. Yes, it must be. People always panicked after the death of a Chief. If not handled quickly, their rampaging emotions could lead to hysteria, violence, and killing.
Anxiously, Ironwood looked back down the road. Dune seemed to be trying to hurry.
Ironwood waited.
Dune wheezed as he stopped at Ironwood’s side and peered over the edge. Wind flipped his white hair over his ears. “So…” Dune said quietly. “He’s finally dead.”
“That’s the only answer.”
“What are they saying? I can’t make out any words.”
“They’re shouting that Crow Beard was wicked.”
“Well, that’s true enough.” Dune raised a bushy white brow. “I’d throw a slab over him myself if…” An unnerving intensity entered Dune’s faded eyes.
“If what?”
“Hmm?”
“You said you’d throw a slab over him if—what?”
Dune took Ironwood’s arm and guided him along the rim toward the stairway cut into the canyon wall just above Kettle Town.
“If I hadn’t promised that I wouldn’t.”
“But he deserves it, Dune. Why would you help an evil man ascend to the skyworlds to become a god? I shouldn’t think that you would wish—”
“Because.” Dune squinted down at Kettle Town, east of Talon Town, and almost as large. People crowded the roofs, working, talking. Many stood peering anxiously at the turmoil in Talon Town. “On his eighteenth bornday I told Crow Beard I would free his soul after his death. He was a good man, then. The promise made sense. Despite the monster he’s become, I must keep my word.”
Ironwood led the way eastward along the canyon rim to the stairway cut into the cliff face above Kettle Town.
Dune halted at the stairs and took a deep breath. “I’m ready. Let’s climb down.”
“I’ll go first,” Ironwood said, and climbed over the edge, descending as quickly as he could. Dune eased over, taking the stairs with care. When the cliff face grew too steep for steps, a ladder, coupled with handholds, let Ironwood down onto the rounded tower that supported the ladder’s butt.
Voices rose from Kettle Town. People shielded their eyes to stare.
“Look!” a woman shouted. “It’s Ironwood! And the holy Derelict! Dune! It’s Dune and Ironwood!”
A roar of adulation went up, and people ran to the hanging balcony on Kettle Town’s north wall, others flooding out of the entries to gather at the base of the ladder Ironwood was climbing down.
The instant Ironwood stepped off, an old woman, Moon Bright, the Matron of Kettle Town, pushed through the crowd, her silver brows a solid line across her wrinkled forehead.
“Come,” she said, and gripped Ironwood’s arm. She led him through the crowd to a place where they stood alone, and whispered, “I have terrible news. Before he died, Crow Beard forced Night Sun to admit she had given birth to a child sixteen summers ago. He—”
“What?”
“Let me finish!” Moon Bright’s eyes blazed. “Snake Head ordered his mother confined in the Cage.”
“The Cage?” Ironwood whispered. The room had neither windows nor doors. The only light came through a small opening in the roof, which was sealed when prisoners were being held there. “Hallowed gods.”