Seven Skull Shield climbed the wooden steps to the Keeper’s palace. A weariness weighted his legs, his heart like a rotten log in his chest. Normally, he’d have noticed everything, always searching for an opportunity to take advantage of one of the inattentive persons thronging the Avenue of the Sun. Today, as if in a daze, he could barely remember the trip. Only some comments about a lot of dead Natchez and an Itza, whatever that was.
As if he walked beneath a cloud, his thoughts centered on Wooden Doll, and the feel of her body against his. How she’d looked into his eyes. Of the ways that things might have been different if he’d known what he was losing all those years ago.
I’m alone.
The thought stunned and wounded him.
His touch of the forehead might have been mocking as he passed the eagle guardian posts on either side of the Keeper’s walk.
A collection of people waited on the Keeper’s veranda, most of them spies come to report on the doings among the other Four Winds Houses, or the Earth Clans under their thumbs.
Unfazed, he passed through them and stepped into the Keeper’s palace. Uncharacteristically, he didn’t cast a single covetous glance at the fine fabrics, the perfectly rendered sculptures, or the embossed copper plates that lined the walls.
Smooth Pebble stood by the fire, giving instructions to Notched Cane. The berdache glanced up, a sudden hope in her eyes. Hurrying forward, she asked, “Any news on the cloak?”
“Nothing.”
Smooth Pebble’s expression fell.
He asked, “Where’s the Keeper?”
“Out back. But you’ll have to wait your—”
He grabbed a loaf of bread and a bottle of water from the platter by the fire, turned, and started for the door.
“She demanded to be left alone,” Smooth Pebble insisted as she hurried after him.
“It’s not an ‘alone’ day,” he returned over his shoulder as he stepped out into the sunshine. Odd, he’d thought it a cloudy day on his walk back.
Heedless, he forced his way through the press on the veranda and followed the mound top around the south side of the Keeper’s palace. He had some vague awareness that the palace walls had recently been replastered.
He found her sitting on the southwest corner, her back to the wall, feet propped, a bowl of embers beside her as she puffed on her old stone pipe. Her gaze was fixed on the crowded Avenue of the Sun where it ran off to the west on the other side of the Four Winds Plaza.
Without looking up, she growled, “I said I wanted to be left alone.”
He passed in front of her and lowered himself to prop his back against the wall beside her.
She shot him an evil glance. “Is your hearing as bad as your manners? You rotted well better have that cloak, and better yet, the two-footed bit of dirt that killed the Natchez.”
He ripped a piece from the bread and stuffed it into his mouth, giving it a couple of chews before he washed it down with water from the burnished brownware bottle. “No one has seen so much as a feather off that accursed cloak.”
“Then why are you here?”
“Because I’ve got nowhere else to go.” The words surprised him.
She took a pull on her pipe. “That’s the last thing I needed to hear, thief.”
“That makes two of us.”
Her chuckle was devoid of humor. “I thought there was always a young wife waiting to give you a place. And what about all of your thieving friends?”
He ripped off another piece of goosefoot bread. “Suddenly, they prefer to keep their distance. Seems I’m too close to the hated Four Winds Clan.”
She grunted, her eyes on the flow of goods and people on the Avenue across the way. “Doesn’t matter. The cloak’s not going to show up among your conniving comrades.”
“It’s not?” He gazed out to the west, past the temples and society houses, beyond the observatory, to where a smoky haze obscured the distant Marsh Elder Lake and the stippled pattern of buildings along the Avenue of the Sun.
“That Natchez delegation you warned me about yesterday? Seems they had a spate of mysterious deaths down south among the Quigualtam chiefs. There’s a new Great Sun and White Woman. Nine Strikes would have taken his brother’s place as the Great Sun. No one seems to find it odd that the Natchez arrived here, having already replaced him with someone from a different lineage.”
“Convenient.” He munched the bread thoughtfully.
“More than that.” She knocked the dottle from her pipe before repacking it with tobacco. “Your Natchez delegation is outraged. Seeking every advantage it gives them. And better yet, they came to announce that an Itza lord is coming to Cahokia.”
“What’s an Itza lord?”
She threw him an irritated look. “They’re a very Powerful and distant people who live across the gulf. If you believe the stories, their Chichen Itza is bigger and grander than Cahokia.”
“Then why have I never heard of them?”
“Maybe it’s a bigger world than you thought, thief.” She used two sticks to pick up an ember and light her pipe. “So the Morning Star orders me to find the murderer—and to do it pus-licking quick. In case you haven’t noticed, the Morning Star likes his orders to be carried out. If they are not, there are consequences. And who knows what the arrival of this Itza really means, or what its implications are? I’m in the middle of a deep game. Morning Star and Sky World Power are playing for goals I don’t understand. And then there’s Night Shadow Star and Piasa. Each with an agenda.”
She paused. “Maybe the sacrifice of an aging Keeper is an acceptable loss compared to what might be gained.”
“I see.”
“And worst of all? Horn Lance is right at the bottom of it, working behind the scenes like a clever fox.”
“Who’s Horn Lance?”
“An old husband I had banished for skullduggery once upon a time. Piasa alone knows what he gifted to the Morning Star to be pardoned during the Busk.”
Seven Skull Shield washed down the last of his bread as Blue Heron puffed on her pipe. He said, “Sounds like this Horn Lance pushed a stinging thorn under your skin.”
“Accused me of being a dried-up old hag without friends. I’ve got friends. People who don’t care that I’m the Keeper.”
He smiled at the way she said it, as if convincing herself. “I thought I did, too. According to them, I’m nothing more than your tool. Headed for a square before the next full moon. You’d think I was sick with foaming mouth disease the way they couldn’t wait to get away from me. Men whose lives I’ve saved. Even Black Swallow.”
“I did have his fingers broken for taking those stolen statues.” Her expression turned bitter. “Maybe I am too dangerous for people to be around. In that case, you’d better run, thief.”
“Hand me your pipe, and I’ll consider it.”
“You know how I feel about my pipe. Just because I did it once doesn’t mean … Oh, pus and rot!”
He took the pipe she offered and pulled on the sweet tobacco. Being Keeper had its advantages. She got the best of everything, not the rude mixture Traded at the canoe landing.
He exhaled with contentment as the Power of Sister Tobacco eased his tension. “I heard something about a bunch of dead Natchez.”
She grunted, taking her pipe back. “I did some asking around. Seems it’s an honor to go to the afterlife and serve the Little Sun. One of them strangled the others, and then hung himself. On top of everything else, Rides-the-Lightning and his priests are up to their chins in dead Natchez. He’s trying to prepare the bodies according to Natchez ritual so that we ‘don’t give offense.’”
“It’s the talk of the city,” he agreed. “Do you think that’s what the Little Sun’s murderer was counting on? That in addition to the murder, a mass suicide would create a sensation? Distract us even more?”
“Could be. Their lord is suddenly dead. They’re alone in a foreign city surrounded by strangers. It’s their custom to die with their lord. What else would they be expected to do? By Piasa’s swinging balls, that’s brilliant.”
She turned, meeting Seven Skull Shield’s eyes with desperation. “So far, they’ve boxed us in at every turn. If I don’t figure a way out of this…” She smiled wearily. “Well, I make you this promise, thief: If there’s any way, I’ll give you enough warning so you can get away. I don’t want you dying in a square beside me.”
“That bad, huh?” So, he did have at least one friend in the world. Who would have thought it would be the Keeper?
“Worse,” she muttered.