“If it hadn’t been for a spider falling from the roof, we’d have never known,” Blue Heron told Rides-the-Lightning as he leaned over Notched Cane’s corpse. “It landed splat on White Rain’s right eyelid and skittered across her face. Startled her so bad she had to get up and away from her bed. Needing to catch her breath, she stepped outside just as Notched Cane cried out.”
They stood in the charnel house where it stood on the elevated platform between the two Earth Clans mounds. A shaft of sunlight illuminated Notched Cane’s corpse, his eyes wide, mouth gaping.
Rides-the-Lightning turned his white-blind eyes on her. “She would have been the Red Wing matron after Dancing Sky, wouldn’t she? A person you were supposed to torture to death. Fire Cat’s sister.”
“Yes?” Blue Heron countered uneasily.
“Most convenient, wouldn’t you say? Had not Piasa demanded the Red Wing be saved, she would not have been sleeping in your palace. Were she not, the spider would have dropped on the floor and scuttled away.”
Blue Heron filled her lungs and shrugged, heedless that he couldn’t see her.
Around her, most of the benches, including the wall shelves, were empty—the dead they had once held having been interred or cremated during the Busk celebration.
“What do you see?” Rides-the-Lightning asked two of his assistants.
“His eyes are clear, Elder.” One of the young men leaned over Notched Cane’s face. “I see no foam on his tongue. Nothing to indicate a struggle.” He ran his hands down Notched Cane’s right thigh and calf. “The muscles are oddly knotted, the limbs stiff as if he’d been dead for hours. Nor do I see signs that he went into convulsions.”
“He did not,” Blue Heron interjected. “White Rain says that he whispered the words, “‘Poison,’ ‘The chip,’ and ‘Can’t feel my body.’ Then she said that he just stopped breathing as if his muscles had quit.”
“Poison?” Rides-the-Lightning wondered, leaning down and sniffing at Notched Cane’s mouth. “There is an odor. Something musty and pungent, but unlike any of the poisons I’m familiar with. This is something different … new.”
She removed the cup from her pack and tipped it so the little wedge of root tumbled onto the bench beside Knotted Cane’s arm. “White Rain told us that when he said the word poison, his eyes flicked down at this. She picked it up from the ground. Said it was wet as if it had been in his mouth. A horn spoon was beside it with some spilled stew.”
“I see.” Rides-the-Lightning’s opaque white eyes were fixed on the shaft of light coming through the gap between roof and wall. “Fine Mist, find something to pick it up. Don’t touch it yourself. Let me smell it.”
“Yes, Elder.” The assistant used two copper needles from one of the defleshing kits to lift the little wedge of what looked like a woody root. He held it just under the soul flier’s nose.
Rides-the-Lightning inhaled, his nostrils quivering like a dog’s. He held his breath for a moment, then shook his head. “I don’t know it. But the odor is the same musty smell as that in Notched Cane’s mouth.”
“Definitely poison?” she asked.
“I do hope you safely disposed of that stew Notched Cane was cooking. And Three Fox, please run to the Keeper’s and ensure that White Rain’s fingers are thoroughly and safely washed.”
The second acolyte turned on his heel and dashed from the charnel house, feet flying.
The old soul flier turned white eyes in Blue Heron’s direction. “You’re sure this bit of root is nothing from your household?”
“I’m sure. Any time Notched Cane wanted to cook something new, he’d try it himself first. He was making stew for the whole house.” She paused. “The guards said that he thought he saw something, someone. That he called out and they reassured him that all was well.”
As the implications sank in Blue Heron took a deep breath, backed up, and sat on one of the benches. Images of Notched Cane slipped up from her memory, along with the hollow awareness of loss. Over the years he’d always been there, his very competence practically ensuring that she never gave him any thought. Meals were cooked, the water jugs full, the fires hot and crackling, the chamber pots never dirty or foul, the house in order.
With a sense of shock she realized she’d never really known him: What he wanted. What he thought. Who he was as a person.
“Who’d want to poison him?” she wondered.
“Him?” Rides-the-Lightning asked. “You said the poison was found next to a spoon and spilled stew? My guess is that your entire household was the target. You especially, Keeper.”
“Foreign poison,” she whispered. “Something so different not even you are familiar with it. A poison no one has seen before. One that no one will recognize.”
“So it would seem, Keeper,” Rides-the-Lightning agreed. “Where do you suppose such a novel means of inflicting death might have come from? And more to the point, who do you think might have delivered it to your stew pot?”
“Horn Lance,” she rasped through gritted teeth.
“Then it would seem, Keeper, that he has pulled so much of Cahokia’s Power into his grasp that he no longer fears retribution from his actions.”
“And if he can act so freely against me?”
“The Morning Star, of course, will be next.”