Blue Heron paused halfway down the long staircase from the Morning Star’s high palace. She hated stairs. Now, however, she took a moment to study the vista. In any direction she looked, the great city spread in a patchwork of buildings, fields, marshes, and sinuous lakes. Between her and the eastern bluffs, the floodplain was filled with mound-top structures alternating with conical burial mounds. Every square of dry ground was covered with farmsteads, clan houses, society houses, granaries, and a maze-work of small fields. The sprawl crowded up against the eastern bluffs; and could she but see beyond the heights, it continued for a hard day’s run in the direction of the distant Moon Temple and mound complex at the Avenue of the Sun’s eastern terminus.
To the south, the Great Plaza spread before her with its chunkey courts, World Tree pole, and the stickball grounds. Lining the plaza were mound-top palaces and temples, society houses, and at the southern end, the twin mounds where Rides-the-Lightning and his Earth Clan priests communed with the dead. From there the Avenue of the Moon ran due south on its elevated causeway to the High Sun Temple complex with its imposing Rattlesnake Mound just visible in the hazy distance.
Beyond that, the road turned southwest toward the Horned Serpent mounds, invisible in the smoky haze. That route, too, was lined with dwellings, as if wherever the city spread its tentacles, settlement followed.
Looking west, her eye followed the Avenue of the Sun as it demarcated the equinox line that ran through Cahokia, past the observatory’s circle of posts and through endless houses to the distant Sunset Temple and Black Tail’s tomb. There the avenue bent west-southwest along the southern edge of Marsh Lake to River Mounds City and the canoe landing. Across the river, and atop the distant western bluffs, Blue Heron could barely make out Evening Star Town where it dominated the mighty river’s bluffs. And beyond that, the endless farmsteads and temple groups continued.
People. Countless people. Farther than the eye could see.
No one could count them. Tens of tens of thousands, from all over the known world.
So great was the city that the various Four Winds Clan Houses had been given authority to govern specific areas. They in turn had granted subdivisions of their territory to individual Earth Clans who administered districts teeming with immigrants who spoke a polyglot of languages and practiced a myriad of odd behaviors.
Despite the differences—and often age-old enmities—worship of the Morning Star tied the chaos of peoples, clans, and Houses together. Disputes were generally settled through sanctioned games of chunkey overseen by Earth Clan subchiefs or their representatives.
Now a Natchez lord was murdered. The Morning Star and Night Shadow Star were apparently locked in another incomprehensible Power struggle. If Blue Heron could believe the warnings, some unperceived threat was coming from the south.
And I’m the one charged with keeping it all from exploding?
Sometimes, on days like today, she wondered where she got the strength.
She minced her way down the rest of the staircase to the Council Terrace where it extended from the great mound’s southern slope. The area was palisaded, the logs encased in a thick coat of clay. In the western half stood the great Council House—essentially Cahokia’s political center. The heart of Cahokia’s cutthroat politics beat within these walls, all overseen by the tonka’tzi, and monitored by the Morning Star’s picked representatives. Here the business of empire was conducted. Embassies from distant Nations were received.
Beside the council house a generous thatch-covered ramada allowed business to be conducted outside when the weather allowed. In its shade stood three daises, the middle slightly taller than its sisters on either side. Perched in the middle, Tonka’tzi Wind sat on her litter. Several of the representatives from the various Four Winds Houses had already gathered.
Blue Heron didn’t need the young runner waiting at the bottom of the steps to redirect her course.
She ran her tongue over the few teeth remaining in her jaws as she walked over and nodded to the assembled nobles.
“What was that business about trees and roots?” the tonka’tzi demanded without preamble. “Did you understand any of it?”
Blue Heron settled herself on the dais to the Great Sky’s right, nodding to the various nobles as she did so.
“Sister, I have no idea at all.” Blue Heron rubbed her thighs, feeling muscles gone tight from the climb and descent.
She gave the others crowding around—curiosity brimming in their eyes—a wave of the hand. “The tonka’tzi and I need to discuss something. If you wouldn’t mind.”
The others touched their chins respectfully and melted away, carefully distancing themselves just far enough for propriety but close enough that they might hear something if either the tonka’tzi or Keeper happened to raise their voices.
Blue Heron gave the closest a narrow-eyed scowl and watched High Chief War Duck’s cousin Ties Wood back up an additional couple of steps. Then she turned to her sister. “Wind, the last time the Morning Star and Night Shadow Star played this cryptic game, half of our family was murdered, and the Powers of the Underworld were almost let loose into this one.”
“You think we’re about to be caught in the middle again?”
“Let’s put it in context: At the height of the Busk, the thief gets a warning from Crazy Frog that someone’s going to be murdered. Something about trouble in the south. The Morning Star gifts the Natchez Little Sun with a cloak. The Little Sun goes back to his quarters. He’s mysteriously murdered and left with a feather in his mouth. Supposedly the sign of a terrible Natchez witch. The cloak is missing.”
“You didn’t mention that up there.” She indicated the palace looming above them.
“I never got the chance.” Blue Heron fingered the wattle on her chin. “Nor did I mention that Night Shadow Star showed up at the Natchez embassy, wandered in with that look she gets when Piasa is whispering in her ear. She glances at the body, says something irritatingly vague about Power and golden darkness, then floats out in that odd walk of hers.”
“Golden darkness? Is that something Piasa told her?”
“I don’t know.” She paused. “Sometimes she scares the piss out of me.”
Wind rubbed a hand over her age-worn face. “We’ve barely managed to tie the city back together after the last time. Blood and dung, why can’t Power leave us alone for a couple of seasons?” She shot Blue Heron a bleak look. “Power’s touched all of our nieces and nephews. Among the ones who’ve survived, one hosts the resurrected god, another’s become a creature of the Underworld, and young Lace is a soul-broken wreck. Thank the spirits my children weren’t chosen for such terrible fates. What is it about our family?”
“You might ask the Red Wing?” Blue Heron said, her thoughts on the whimpering ruin Walking Smoke had made of his little sister.
Wind shook her head. “I still think he’s going to cut Star’s throat some night. And bringing him, armed for war, into the Morning Star’s palace? Did you see that look he gave the living god? He hates us.”
“You didn’t see him when he charged into Columella’s burning palace. He mowed through those Tula warriors like they were dry cornstalks. And then he disappeared into the flames to save Night Shadow Star.” She cocked her jaw. “They both claim they detest each other. But I think Power had its reasons for throwing them together. I thought it was punishment at first. Now? The looks they give each other when they think no one’s watching?”
“That will never happen. He killed the only man she ever loved. And you’ve got his mother and sister hostage.” Wind shot Blue Heron a sidelong glance. “At least we’ve got that much leverage to keep Fire Cat in line. But get back to this murder. What was Night Shadow Star’s reason for going to see the dead Natchez?”
“It’s a hunch, but I think she was trying to tell me it’s a distraction.”
“Some distraction. When the Natchez hear—and you know that some Trader is already breaking his back paddling headlong down the river to tell them—the whole south could go up in flames.”
“My people tell me it’s being talked about all over the city.” Blue Heron could sense something, as if she was missing a subtle clue. “I’ve got the thief out looking for the missing cloak.”
“And that’s another thing.” Wind pointed a bony finger in her direction. “You and that loathsome, woman-hopping thief. How can you stand to have him in the same room? Makes less sense than Night Shadow Star and the Red Wing. At least they’re highborn.”
“Me and the thief?” How did she put this into words? “He’s—”
“Keeper!” A runner—one of the warriors she’d left at the Natchez embassy—came bolting through the gate, caught sight of her, and headed her way. The young man’s face looked stricken. He dropped to his knees, touching his forehead to the matting in obeisance. He was panting, sweat beading on his brown skin.
“What?”
The runner looked up, expression horrified. “The Natchez, Keeper.”
“Don’t tell me a war party just landed at River Mounds.”
“No. It’s…” He swallowed hard. “The Little Sun’s servants. They’re all dead!”