Fire Cat moved as if his souls were made of wood. Carved like the images of Hunga Ahuito on the temple roofs, and just as unfeeling. Some remote part of him ensured that breakfast was made, that it was taken to Night Shadow Star before the Keeper came to collect her for her ceremonial preparation. Marriage—like everything in life—required the proper ritual.
When he dared to glance in, Night Shadow Star was busily going through her boxes and storage baskets, sorting garments.
“Lady? Can I be of assistance?”
“There are things I don’t want others going through.” She hesitated, fingers running over the fine fabric of a shirt he recognized as once having belonged to Makes Three. “When I’m finished could you carry these things to my storage room? Perhaps rearrange the boxes so they are on the bottom?”
And away from casual rummaging by Itza or Natchez fingers.
“Of course, Lady.”
Her voice was small when she said, “Thank you.”
Fire Cat glanced at the rest of the household staff, reading their worry.
“It will be all right,” he told them, trying to force a smile.
“Will it?” Clay String asked while the others raised questioning eyebrows.
“She knows what she’s doing,” he insisted without belief.
It was Winter Leaf who said, “You brought her back to life … for a while at least.”
“Thought you all didn’t like me.” He bent over the breakfast pots, scraping what was left into a single jar.
“We don’t,” Clay String told him with an absent smile. “But we’re expecting to like the Itza even less.”
He paused, looking at the man. “She is going to need us more than ever. All of us.”
“And how do you, Red Wing, think you’re going to be able to find the strength to just smile and take it? Yesterday you were on the verge of weeping over the loss of a chunkey game.”
Fire Cat took a deep breath. “I’ll find it. Somehow.”
Clay String spread his hands wide. “You’re the great war chief who destroyed entire Cahokian armies. If you can’t save us, who can?”
He stared down, flexing the muscles in his right arm, watching them bulge under his sun-browned skin. Something had gone wrong. As if a shadow of witchery had tainted his very flesh. Like a deep-rooted fungus that sucked at the marrow of his bones and muscles when it came to chunkey.
The solution lay just beyond the fringes of his conscience. Elusive. If he could just reach out, grasp that fleeting understanding …
Clay String’s desperate voice intruded: “Whatever you have to do, Red Wing, we’re all depending on you.”
“Whatever?” A swelling emptiness sucked at his heart.