Ironwood’s stomach knotted. “Are you suggesting—”
“I’m suggesting she was fond of you at one time,” Snake Head answered through a mouthful of food. “That’s all.” He finished his corncake and brushed purplish blue crumbs from his hands onto the floor.
“Snake Head—”
“I have finished with you. I am the Blessed Sun. Leave, now! Or I shall call the guard and have you removed!”
Snake Head turned his back and walked to the macaw cage. He spoke softly to the bird. It answered him in a low hostile squawk.
Ironwood ducked out into the sharp night air and strode across the fourth-floor rooftop, his sandals rasping the plaster surface. He knotted and unknotted his fists as he went, jaw clamped tightly.
What could he know? Nothing … nothing at all. It’s a bluff, a baiting game, a way of toying with people to see what he can flush from cover.
He climbed down the ladder to the fourth story and walked warily to Sternlight’s chambers. Every nerve prickled, the way they did on a high ridge just before lightning struck.
He ducked beneath the door curtain. Sternlight glanced up from stirring the hot coals in his warming bowl. His white shirt flowed around his feet. Crow’s feet pinched the skin around his weary brown eyes, and loose black hair draped his hunched shoulders.
The room was painted with thlatsinas, and one of the beautiful masks—the Badger Thlatsina, with its raven feathers—hung over Sternlight’s bedding, as if gazing down fondly on him. Baskets and beautifully painted pots stood along one wall. Overhead, sacred herbs hung from the roof poles, bathed now in the dry incense of cedar smoke.
“Well?” Sternlight asked softly. “Does he know?”
“About the child? No. I don’t think so.”
Sternlight slowly rose to his feet. He had known Ironwood for far too long not to hear the unspoken words. A frown lined his brow. “But he knows about … what?”
Ironwood exhaled hard. “Perhaps about his mother and me.”
Sternlight’s facial muscles went slack. “Hallowed thlatsinas, then he might be able to guess the rest.”
* * *
“He shoved me into his warming bowl!” Mourning Dove turned to look over her naked shoulder at Creeper and damp black hair framed her round face. “He was like one of the Wild Men, throwing things, shouting, beating me!”
As soon as she’d been released by Snake Head, she had begged the warrior standing guard over the slave chambers to bring Creeper. He’d thrown on a blue shirt, gathered some Healing supplies, and run across the plaza.
Ten slaves in tattered brown clothes sat on the floor encircling Creeper and Mourning Dove, watching in silence. A few small bags, containing their pitiful belongings, rested beside their sleeping mats on the floor. In its wall holder, a single cedar bark torch sputtered, coating their worried faces with reddish light, highlighting knitted brows and clamped jaws. One old man, Lark, buried his face in his hands.
Swallowtail sat to Creeper’s left, hugging his knees to his chest, rocking back and forth like a wounded animal. The tall boy’s face resembled a wooden mask, but the look in his eyes, which had fixed on his mother’s injuries, was like a bludgeon. Creeper kept glancing at him. He could see the hatred growing darker, more violent by the moment; it was probably eating the boy alive.
“You’re safe now, Mourning Dove.” Creeper smoothed a salve of mallow and fat over the burns on her back. The fist-sized blisters oozed. He had to fight to keep his hands steady. Rage ate at every nerve in his body.
Snake Head is becoming more and more unpredictable and arrogant. For the sake of the Straight Path nation, someone should …
Mourning Dove flinched when Creeper suddenly rubbed too hard. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry, Mourning Dove.” He patted her shoulder.
She hung her head and sighed. “It’s all right. Thank you.”
Creeper concentrated on gentleness, covering each blister, each open wound.
The faces around him had gone dour, hopeless. These were slaves. They knew the futility of objecting to brutality. As did Creeper, as one of the lowly Made People. Creeper would bring this incident up at the next council with the First People elders, but it would do no good. Someone might chastise Snake Head, or mention in passing that he shouldn’t have hurt Mourning Dove. Snake Head would just laugh—Creeper had seen it before. Many times.
Swallowtail leaned back against the white wall and serenely closed his eyes, appearing to have gained control of himself. His face was slack. Then Creeper saw his arms. The knotted muscles bulged and twitched beneath the fabric of his brown shirt—as if he were dreaming of beating someone to death with his bare hands.