As Night Shadow Star approached the foot of the staircase leading up the ramp to her palace, it was to find a knot of Itza warriors surrounding the Natchez Little Sun. They stood just out from the bottom stair, beyond reach of the Four Winds warrior who kept people from bothering her.
As she approached, one caught sight of her, nudging his companions and pointing. They laughed, obviously amused. The big Itza warrior, the one with the snake tattoos, was grinning, as if savoring a victory.
The Natchez had Fire Cat’s loincloth and cape hung from the end of his chunkey lance. Using it like a banner staff, he waved them back and forth.
She felt her heart harden, Piasa’s voice oddly silent as a slow fire began to burn around her heart.
“Greetings, Lady!” the Natchez known as Wet Bobcat called, eyes glittering with mirth. “Good to see you. We came to see where the ahau Thirteen Sacred Jaguar would be living two days from now.” He glanced up at the palace. “Not as nice as the Morning Star’s, but it will probably do for the time being.”
“Let me order them removed,” Clay String protested where he followed behind.
“You would have warriors beat my future husband’s servants?” she asked in a cold voice.
“Why not?” he asked reasonably.
“If I answer that, I might be tempted to follow your suggestion, Clay String.”
Instead she walked up to the leering men, a deadly stillness between her souls. “Natchez. Take these vermin and remove yourself from this avenue.”
“We are guests of the Morning Star,” Swirling Cloud replied, bowing low and touching his forehead in a mockery. He looked up the stairs. “Your simpering slave doesn’t appear to be much, does he? Wretched chunkey player.” He pointed at the snake-tattooed Itza. “My companion here is named Red Copal, after the Powers of the color and the incense they burn in his homeland. If you ask submissively, perhaps your future husband will assign him to protect and accompany you. Surely it will be an improvement over that naked and trembling worm that used to wear the clothes hanging on my lance.”
Swirling Cloud lowered the lance, but when she reached for Fire Cat’s clothes, he flipped them up with a twist of his wrist.
A considerable crowd had gathered.
“I might indeed submissively ask my new husband for something,” she told him with a smile, and narrowed her eyes to slits. “It is the custom of the Itza to grant sacrifices for special occasions, is it not? Given the stakes behind this marriage, perhaps I should ask for Red Copal’s heart to be cut from his chest.”
She pointed. “Right up there. At the head of my stairs and within sight of Piasa and Horned Serpent.” Fixing her gaze on Swirling Cloud’s she added, “You and I could make wagers on whether Red Copal’s corpse would tumble all the way down the stairs to the dirt here.”
Swirling Cloud’s expression thinned, violence behind his eyes. “You take chances, Lady. As High Pine discovered to her misfortune, one’s future can become a fleeting thing if she should make the wrong enemies. Nor are you the only living sister to the Morning Star.”
She smiled warily, nodding to herself. “I hear between and beneath your words, Little Sun. Your meaning is clear. But the making of enemies works both ways. Nor would Lord Thirteen Sacred Jaguar find my sister a suitable wife. Her souls are scattered and broken. Her nights and sleep are filled with terrors that leave her weeping. Or perhaps such a woman would be more to his liking than one that comes with Power and anger in her souls?”
“Thirteen Sacred Jaguar could care less about your souls or your sister’s.” He leaned close, his smile as piercing as a deer-bone stiletto. “His only concern is if that noble sheath of yours will carry his seed to your womb. And should that become a problem, your sister need not have any wits to serve a similar function.”
She felt a flicker of fear, like a chilling tendril that slipped up through her gut. “One day I will see you on your knees, Natchez … a bloody stump where your neck now supports your head.”
“Brave words, Lady.” He laughed, flicking his chunkey lance to dash Fire Cat’s clothes at her. “As brave as your slave’s words before he lost everything that was his to wager.”
She caught Fire Cat’s clothes with a quick grab, watching as the Natchez led the leering Itza warriors off toward the plaza.
As she started up the stairs, something made her stop, turn. She lifted her eyes and saw a figure high on the palisade wall that surrounded the Morning Star’s palace. While she couldn’t distinguish features from that distance, sunlight glinted in a polished copper headpiece.
So, Morning Star, the stakes are raised. I know what I am willing to give up in order to prevail. Do you?
Another shiver ran through her as she hurried up the stairs to the sanctuary of her palace—or at least it was a sanctuary for the little time that remained before Thirteen Sacred Jaguar would call it his home.