Normally the ride down the grand staircase would have worried Clan Keeper Blue Heron. She perched atop her litter, borne as it was, step by step, by her porters. While the lower stairs were nowhere as scary as the high staircase that led to the heights of the Morning Star’s great mound-top palace, a fall and tumble here would still break her old bones, not to mention her neck.
After four days of feasting, ritual, and the affairs of state, she felt so exhausted she could barely keep her eyes open, let alone worry. Not even the Morning Star’s cryptic mention of another pardon during the Busk seemed important.
“I know you will do your duty.” Of course she would. As if the Morning Star had any doubt, since his will was literally life or death. She’d barely avoided hanging in the square herself during Walking Smoke’s reign of terror last spring.
She was the Four Winds Clan Keeper—the person who kept and ensured the clan’s order and discipline. She’d heard herself referred to as “the poisonous old spider that lurked in the Morning Star’s shadow.” A description that delighted her. The other Houses and the subordinate Earth Clans both feared and respected her.
More than anything she wanted to sleep.
For the last quarter moon, from the moment she’d awakened, to the last instants before she’d been carried home to fall into bed, her days had been consumed with one ritual event, council, or reception after another.
And through it all, her spies had been reporting to her trusted house manager, Smooth Pebble, who in turn had relayed the information to her. It had absorbed her attention. Politically, the Four Winds Clan remained fragile in the wake of Walking Smoke’s murderous rampage. Even with the monster’s death, distrust among the major houses was at an all-time high. Columella, Clan Matron of the Evening Star House, had barely managed to maintain her authority over the western bank of the river.
Now, with the conclusion of the New Fire ceremonies and the cooking of the green corn, Blue Heron could finally relax. The dancing, feasting, and rekindling of the sacred fires had gone without a hitch. Her own palace had been cleaned and swept. The floor sported a new mat covering. Her central fire had been extinguished and relit by a brand carried from the Morning Star’s personal fire.
The Powers had been appeased. The world made right.
He pardoned another exile? Who?
They’d reached the ground now, her bearers stepping past the warriors who guarded the stairs and out onto the Avenue of the Sun. Blue Heron closed her eyes as her porters bore her through the slow-moving throng toward her mound-top palace.
“Make way!” the warrior in charge of her guard called. “Make way for Clan Keeper Blue Heron!”
She cracked an eye open, wondering at the crowd who, even at this late hour, clogged the great avenue. Rot take them, didn’t they have homes and families? What were they all doing this late at night? And after four days of ceremonies, games, fasting, and sweating?
Why wouldn’t he have brought the name up with all the others?
Her litter proceeded slowly, turning north past Lady Night Shadow Star’s mound-top edifice. In the darkness she could barely make out her own palace where it stood on the northwestern corner of the Four Winds plaza.
We’ve exiled thousands to the colonies. Why did he mention this particular one?
She barely felt her bearers carry her up her own stairs, past the eagle guardian posts, and to her veranda porch. If she just …
“Keeper?” Smooth Pebble’s voice came softly, as if through a haze.
Blue Heron blinked awake. When had she dozed off? She hadn’t even felt her porters set her litter down. She grunted and allowed her aide to help her to her feet.
On tottering legs, she made her way into her palace, glancing about at the tidy interior with its wall-mounted sleeping benches. All in order, the storage boxes and pots were neatly stowed beneath; the newly woven cane floor was bright yellow and unstained with mud, food, or ash.
“Pus and blood, I’m tired.”
Smooth Pebble asked, “Would you like anything? Mint tea? Perhaps something to eat?”
“Piasa take me, berdache, I’ve been feasting since sunset. If I eat another bite my belly will split open like an over-packed old sack.” She waved Smooth Pebble down. “I’m going to bed. If any damn fool tries to wake me, tie him in a square and burn him to death for stupidity.”
“Yes, Elder.” Smooth Pebble barely managed to stifle a smile. She was berdache, a female soul inhabiting a male body. For two tens of winters, Smooth Pebble had been an able lieutenant in the discharge of Blue Heron’s affairs.
Old Notched Cane was the other aide she depended upon. He watched over the house and made sure that the fires were kept burning, that food was cooked, waste carted out, and water brought in.
Walking past the central hearth to the rear of the great room, she stepped through the door into her dimly lit personal quarters. Her attention fixed on her bed where it was attached to the back wall. Her blankets looked good.
She dropped her cloak on the floor and had just slipped her skirt off her hips when a familiar voice said, “I appreciate the gesture, Keeper, but you’re a little old for my tastes.”
Heart hammering, she blinked in the gloom, locating the dark form seated on one of her storage boxes. “Thief? Is that you?”
“As if anyone else could be?” He cocked his head as he studied her naked body. “I think we’ve got a problem.”
Blue Heron placed a hand to her startled heart, taking a deep breath. “How, by Piasa’s swinging balls, did you get in here?”
“Wouldn’t be much of a thief if I couldn’t,” he told her with a grin. “But don’t take it out on Smooth Pebble. She’s had enough on her shoulders these last days.” He gestured toward the main room. “I approve of what she’s done with the place. If only the real world could be cleaned up so easily.”
“Your irreverent tongue is going to get you hung in a square one of these days.” She raised a hand. “I’m asleep on my feet. Tell me what I need to know and get your pus-dripping body out of my sleeping quarters.”
“You know Crazy Frog?”
“That weasel who gambles on chunkey and cons innocent Traders out of their wares over in River Mounds City? What about him?”
“He came to find me tonight.”
“Thought he didn’t like leaving River Mounds City.”
“He doesn’t.” Seven Skull Shield crossed his muscle-thick arms, his block-like face grim. “He said that someone important is going to be killed tonight. He didn’t know who, or why, or where, just that it was going to happen. Something two Traders overheard. Something important enough that it got one of them killed and the second ran. Something about the south and what’s happening there.”
She tried to blink the fatigue from her eyes. “You lost me.”
Seven Skull Shield ran a hand over his craggy face as if he, too, were tired. “It might be nothing, Keeper. Crazy Frog said he just had a feeling in his guts that it was important. Important enough that if it went wrong, he wanted you to know that he’d made a special trip to warn you.”
She sighed, dropping to her bed. “But no idea who?”
“None. Just someone important.”
She yawned, rocked her jaw, and shrugged. “Take whoever you want, warn the war chiefs, especially Five Fists and War Claw, that something’s afoot. Maybe I’ll have an idea after I get some sleep.”
He nodded, rising to his feet. “I’ll see to it.”
He started for the door, stopped, and glanced back, an eyebrow arched speculatively. “You know, Keeper, for a woman your age? You’re not without your physical charms. Even for a discerning man like me who has an in-depth appreciation of the fine female form.”
He ducked the black ceramic cup she threw at his head and was out the door.
“Ought to have you hung in a square to teach you some respect,” she growled as she flopped onto her wooden-frame bed.
Nevertheless a faint smile crossed her lips as she fell into exhausted slumber.