“Dune, this is silly—”
“No. You’re silly. I’ll keep my promise to your father, boy.”
Snake Head dropped his arms. “My father is doomed, then.”
“Your father is saved.”
“His soul will be wandering—!”
“His soul will be free.”
“But, Dune, you—”
“Enough!”
“Dune, I’m the Blessed—”
“Do you truly wish to cross me, Snake Head?” Dune’s eyes had taken on a frightening gleam.
Snake Head glared for the briefest of moments, then he swallowed hard and turned away.
The fire went out of Dune’s faded eyes. His shoulders hunched forward. As if each step hurt, he slowly made his way back to Crow Beard’s side and slumped to the floor, staring at the dead Chief’s emaciated face.
“You haven’t heard the last of this,” Snake Head promised as he stalked from the room, passing Ironwood without a glance. He ducked through the door, glared up at the rain, and climbed down the ladder to the fourth story.
Ironwood watched the rain fall.
It splatted the roofs and stippled the wet plaza where the slaves sat before their spluttering fire. A pleasant whisper of raindrops filled the night, and the fragrance of soaked cedar wafted on the wind.
Ironwood turned. “Did you mean what you said? About Snake Head and our enemies?”
“I mean everything I say.” Dune pulled Crow Beard’s blanket up and tucked the edges around his throat.
“Did you Dream it? How do you know that he—”
“I don’t have to have visions to know the boy is treacherous, Ironwood. All I have to do is draw up the worst possible thing I can imagine, and surely Snake Head has thought of it.”
Ironwood stared somberly at the dead Chief. “Is Crow Beard truly dead? Or on another Soul March to the afterworld?”
Dune braced a hand on the floor and met Ironwood’s eyes. White hair blazed orange around his head. His deep wrinkles rearranged themselves. “Dead as a soulless rock.”
Ironwood exhaled hard. “Do you really think you can free Crow Beard’s soul against his son’s wishes? Snake Head is, after all, the new Chief, and he has warriors to enforce his…”
Dune reached for his pack, pulled it close and rummaged around inside. He drew out a big chert cobble. With a grunt, he lifted it and slammed it into Crow Beard’s face.
The crunching of bone made Ironwood jump.
Dune hefted the rock again and brought it down hard a second time. Bone snapped and grated. He left the cobble in the pulped hollow where Crow Beard’s nose had been. “There,” Dune said as he wiped his hands off on the blanket. “That ought to do it.”
Ironwood studied the rock in the caved-in face. “Yes.” He nodded. “I wager it will. One way or the other.”
Dune rose on rickety knees and hobbled across the room; the holes in his brown robe revealed patches of wrinkled skin. “Tomorrow, I’ll need to send a messenger to Poor Singer. Since you never managed to tell me I’d be responsible for caring for Crow Beard, all of my burial herbs and tools are at my house. Someone will need to bring them to me.” He thumped his walking stick on the floor. “Can you arrange a runner for me?”
“At dawn, if you wish.”
“I do wish, Ironwood.”
“I’m sure Sternlight will allow us to use his slave Swallowtail. He’s a reliable boy.”
“Good.”
Dune placed an aged hand on Ironwood’s arm, squeezed weakly, and ducked outside into the misty shower.
Anxiety gnawed Ironwood’s nerves. Somewhere close by, Crow Beard’s ghost walked.
Ironwood exited the chamber and turned right, walking westward across the rooftop. Pools of water glistened in every irregularity in the plaster. The cliff rose like a black wall to his right, and above it, thunderheads billowed, blotting out most of the stars. Another dove-colored veil of rain swept down into the canyon. The little fire in the plaza wavered and hissed. The slaves huddled closer together, extending their blankets to protect the flames.
Ironwood climbed the ladder to the fifth-story roof and sat cross-legged in the rain, peering at the fires that flickered across the lowlands. Hundreds of them. Straight Path Canyon had neither the farmland nor the water to provide for the masses who had migrated here to be close to the sacred First People. Still, they came. He gazed down at the silver stream of water slithering through the wash. When the wind gusted just right, he heard flute music—faint, lilting. Perhaps it came from Kettle Town.
Ironwood held his cape closed around his throat and blinked against the raindrops. He longed to sit here until the cold lanced his bones. Maybe when his flesh felt as icy as his soul, he’d be able to think straight again. He’d been stumbling around like a fool, not knowing what to do or how. Feeling lost.