Anger twisted Hiyawento’s face. Sindak didn’t budge as Hiyawento leaned close and growled, “You’re asking for a stiletto in your heart.”
Sindak stared into those blazing eyes for several moments, assessing, before he replied, “Do you want to twist my head off and kick it around for the village dogs?”
Through gritted teeth Hiyawento said, “Yes!”
“Then you’re sounding more like your old self. You must be feeling better. So I’m leaving now.” He turned his back on Hiyawento and walked away.
When he’d gone twenty paces without an arrow in his back, he dared to exhale.
In another ten paces, he heard Hiyawento call, “Sindak?”
“Yes?” He turned.
Hiyawento wiped his eyes with his hands. His voice was stronger, if hollow. “How did the war council vote today?”
Sindak waited as Hiyawento tipped his head back and stared at the first campfires of the dead that gleamed along the Path of Souls. He seemed to be gathering his strength to speak.
“The vote was unanimous to attack the allied Standing Stone villages before they can get organized to attack us. The matrons promised to return with their final decision as soon as possible. I expect a decision tomorrow.”
“Did anyone speak for peace?”
Sindak frowned. “No.”
Guilt ravaged his face. He looked back at his dead daughters. As evening deepened, their small white faces picked up the wavering gleam of the fire. “This is just what Atotarho wanted. I played right into his hands.”
Sindak didn’t respond. If the chief had been responsible for the deaths of the man’s daughters, he was right. It was a calculated move designed to eliminate Hiyawento’s influence. And it had worked. If Hiyawento had been there, Sindak suspected the vote would have been split and never referred to the Ruling Council.
To silence Hiyawento, Atotarho was willing to murder his own granddaughters.
Hiyawento called, “War Chief?”
“Yes?”
Hiyawento wiped his face on his sleeve. “If you wouldn’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you could help me carry my little girls home.”
Sindak walked back. As Hiyawento scooped up Jimer and clutched her to his chest, Sindak gently lifted Catta into his arms. Her small body had grown stiff.
They silently walked around the marsh trail. Just before they reached the Coldspring palisade, Hiyawento halted and turned to gaze at Sindak with bloodshot eyes.
“I want you to answer a question. Do you believe Ohsinoh is Hehaka?”
Sindak tightened his hold on Catta’s cold body. “I think so, yes.”
Hiyawento didn’t say a word. He just walked for the palisade gates.
Forty-four
High Matron Tila sat wrapped in hides on her bench, her back propped against the wall of her compartment. Without that support, she would have dissolved like a fistful of earth in a thunderstorm. The excruciating pain in her chest had left her trembling. She did the best she could to hide it as she looked at the old man pacing before her. Atotarho’s crooked body made his movements more of a careening than a simple placing of one foot in front of the other. His gray hair, braided with rattlesnake skins, shimmered.
She listened to his walking stick thump on the hard-packed dirt floor. She had known him his entire life, but she had never hated him more than at this moment. The emotion was so powerful it felt like a dark miasma enveloping the world, turning it into something monstrous. The expression on his gaunt skeletal face told her something had surprised him, and he didn’t like it at all.
Tila whispered, “Don’t bother to deny it. I don’t have the strength for lies. Did you know he’d kill your granddaughters?”
Atotarho’s wrinkled lips pursed. He didn’t answer for a time. Finally, he shook his head, and the circlets of skull on his black cape flashed. “No.”
His voice was genuinely troubled, but he’d perfected that tone over the long summers, so she had no idea if he truly regretted his actions or not. “You’ve turned your daughter against you for good. There’s nothing you can do now, or ever, to redeem yourself in her eyes. Do you realize that? You’ve lost her completely.”
“She doesn’t know I was responsible. She must think it was witchery, or perhaps—”
“You’re a fool.” Tila watched him try to indignantly straighten his hunched back without success. “She is my granddaughter. I guarantee you she will concentrate all her efforts on destroying you. You don’t have long to rule, Chief.”
Atotarho leaned heavily on his walking stick. In the firelight, the snake eyes tattooed on his fingertips seemed to wink. “I’ll find a way to make it up to her. Perhaps start placing suggestions that her husband should be promoted to a higher position on the Ruling Council—”