“He does make a grand figure,” Tonka’tzi Wind noted as she watched the Itza being offered succulent bison calf, deep-pit roasted and served with walnut bread and sweetened squash. Ample black drink, currant jams, varieties of steaming paddlefish, baked crappie, beeweed-seasoned squirrel, turkey with mint, coontie root breads, hickory and acorn mash, greens, and other delights had been offered to the Itza one by one.
After each, Thirteen Sacred Jaguar had said something to Horn Lance, who proclaimed, “Marvelous,” “Exquisite,” “Delightful to the tongue,” or some other appropriate remark.
Blue Heron paused from giving a baked duck leg a working over with her remaining teeth. “I’m not sure what he’s saying.” She gestured with the greasy bone. “You’ll notice that the Itza’s voice doesn’t quite carry the conviction Horn Lance imbues it with. That overdressed foreigner could be saying it tastes like dog shit for all we know.”
Wind gave her a dismissive glance. “You judge too much by the company he keeps. Were his translator anyone but Horn Lance, you’d at least give him the benefit of a doubt. And so what? He’s no threat. His Chichen Itza is a world away. What if these supposed cities of stone are real? They’re as harmless to us as we are to them. Or do you really think they could paddle an army around the gulf shores, and then up the Father Water?”
“That doesn’t worry me.”
“What then?”
Blue Heron glanced at the Morning Star, seated on his panther litter and licking bear grease from his fingers after finishing a piece of nut bread. The living god’s evaluative gaze had remained on the Itza the entire night, at least when he wasn’t casting furtive glances Night Shadow Star’s way.
The tension between the three of them almost crackled. Nor had Night Shadow Star partaken of the feast—an insult to the living god had it been anyone else. Though she and the Red Wing had seated themselves, they still clutched their weapons.
To Blue Heron’s way of thinking, when Night Shadow Star turned her eyes on the Itza, she might have been watching a coiled water moccasin rather than a foreign lord armed with no more than his gaudy outfit and feathered-snake standard.
“Why does my back begin to prickle when the living god and Night Shadow Star are at odds over Power?” Wind muttered as she used a splinter to pick at the venison stuck between her teeth.
“Because you’re a smart woman.” Blue Heron glanced at the Natchez Little Sun, seated back with his warriors, laughing and stuffing his face with cornbread.
Wind followed her gaze. “No sign of the cloak? What’s wrong with your thief these days?”
“Neither he nor I believe the cloak is going to turn up in any of the usual places. After he and I talked this morning, I listened to what my spies had to report. If one of the Four Winds Houses had it, there’d be at least a hint. The Earth Clans wouldn’t touch it on a dare.”
“Those Natchez back there hadn’t even arrived when Nine Strikes was killed. Your thief saw them come ashore.”
“All of them? Do you have a count I don’t know about? And so what if Swirling Cloud and Horn Lance arrived the same time as the Natchez delegation? A thousand Natchez agents could have come ashore within the week prior to their arrival, and we wouldn’t have a clue.”
“Then where’s the cloak?”
“Somewhere we can’t possibly find it.”
“Destroyed?”
Blue Heron shook her head. “I don’t think he’s that pragmatic. No, indeed. I smell arrogance and vanity behind this. They think we’re blind, dumb, and stupid.”
“I thought you said you’d been frustrated at every turn?”
“I have been. And they know it.”
“So?”
“That’s their mistake. The one that’s going to bring them down.”
“Excuse me, if they’re that much ahead of us—”
“They’re smug enough to make a mistake … like keeping Nine Strikes’ cloak as a trophy when they shouldn’t have.”