People of the Weeping Eye(98)

Morning Dew raised her head, staring at him through glazed and disbelieving eyes.

To keep from betraying his frayed control, Smoke Shield bowed his head, shoulders slumping. The room burst with cheers. Then it came to him: The fools misread his distress. They thought he was overwhelmed with the incredible honor just bestowed upon him.





Nineteen

Smoke Shield! I am to belong to Smoke Shield! Morning Dew’s world had stopped, the sounds of the tchkofa grown distant. The universe shrank to the thunderous beating of her heart. A numbness, like a smothering blanket, settled on her souls. Her body had ceased to exist. She heard nothing, felt nothing, souls floating, disjointed and loose.

Morning Dew was barely aware that two young men grasped her ams to carry her from the smoky tchkofa’s interior. The laughter and jeers at her expense had no meaning. As if through another’s ears she heard the slave Thin Branch say something to two women who waited just beyond the tchkofa gate. The sight of them hurrying off through the crowd might have been through a stranger’s eyes. The crowd parted as the men dragged her after them, her senseless feet scuffing the grass.

For three long days she had longed for death, her situation little better than an animal’s. From where she’d been tied to the post, she had watched Screaming Falcon as the Sky Hand abused his body. Some had brought sharpened sticks to pierce his flesh; others jabbed at his belly and chest. People had delighted in slapping Screaming Falcon’s broken jaw. That afternoon Morning Dew had watched in horror as a young woman used a burning branch to singe the hair from his groin. Afterward his genitals had turned red, blistered, and swollen.

Somehow, she had forced herself to watch, her anguish a mirror of his own. When he had blinked back tears and called, “Be strong!” a guard had smacked his swollen and bruised jaw with a war club.

If only they would kill me! The pain would be merciful in its swiftness. She prayed that they might do it before they tortured Screaming Falcon to death. More than anything, she hadn’t wanted to watch that. His continued screams would have been like burning thorns in her souls. The sight of his wounded body, bleeding, blistered, and slowly cut apart, would have broken her.

But nothing had prepared her for the tchkofa. When two men had appeared in the darkness, whispered to the guards, and untied her, she had stumbled along. A desperate hope that ransom had been received from her people imparted a frantic belief that within a hand’s time she would be in a canoe, heading swiftly downriver toward freedom.

Only when she had heard Blood Skull’s words did she begin to fear. But even then, as he talked about carefully selecting whom he would give her to, hope had flickered like a tiny flame. With all the multitudes of Sky Hand to choose from, surely she would go to some influential clan, to some family of special merit.

And then the very sky had come crashing down on top of her. She remembered her legs giving out and the derisive hoots of the Sky Hand. There, among the plates, she had lost all of her wits, the words, No, not him! echoing in the hollow between her souls.

As the men pulled her limp body across the beaten grass of the plaza, she remembered Screaming Falcon’s slurred voice as they took her from the stake: “Be brave! You are Morning Dew! Matron of the White Arrow!”

His cry still rung in her ears.

No, my husband. I am not brave. I have nothing left.

Even the wells of her tears were empty.





Heron Wing hurried through the crowd, Violet Bead behind her. The news had come before Thin Branch appeared at the tchkofa gate. Blood Skull had given the White Arrow matron to Smoke Shield. The news was whispered from lip to lip, so she was prepared for some instruction; nor had Thin Branch’s tersely worded orders taken her by surprise. She quickly asked her cousin to care for Stone, then caught Violet Bead’s eye.

Oh, I know you well enough, Husband. From the time he’d returned from White Arrow Town the summer before, she’d seen the obsession in his eyes. She’d heard rumors of how he asked any traveler from the Chahta lands about young Morning Dew. The miracle was that he had actually managed to obtain her.

“Do you think he planned this entire raid just to take that woman?” Violet Bead asked when they had progressed beyond earshot of the crowd.

“In all the world,” Heron Wing said, “only you and I know the lengths he would go to in order to warm his rod.” She laughed heartlessly. “This wasn’t about revenge. It was about her.”

“And now, he’ll make the most of it,” Violet Bead mused. “Nothing will stop him from being named high minko after Flying Hawk’s death.”

Heron Wing shot a sidelong glance at her co-wife. “The only thing different now is that it will be that much harder for him to ruin that chance.”