The Casqui

There are three of them. A Casqui, who is the leader, a Yuchi, and a mixed-breed fellow who’s half Hiawasee and part Muskogee and a bit Shawnee.

I have to hand it to Fire Light. He still has no clue about who I am. I scare the man down to his bones, but through my goodwill, he really thinks he’s going to go home. That once he’s there, back in the graces of his clan—his sister being Four Winds Clan matron—he will finally rise to his proper place in the hierarchy that governs Cahokia.

He has brought me the Casqui and his two companions. I’ve enjoyed their arrival. The three of them came trooping in, looking dangerous. Or trying to. I’ve seen the kind so many times. They think they’re bad. The sort who aren’t frightened by any comeuppance short of the square. Especially when it’s anything Spiritual.

They don’t know who they really are. Not the deep cracks and crevasses between their souls. Down in those dark shadows is where the stories they were told—and believed as children—still live. Sometimes it just takes the right lever to pry them free.

I find that lever when I let them see me staring into the well pot I’ve made out of one of the little girls’ skulls. The blood is dried and blackened, of course, and the surface is no longer smooth and reflective as it had been.

“There is a woman coming,” I tell them. “She comes with a single man, transported by canoe up the Tenasee. She is a Cahokian noble. A woman by the name of Night Shadow Star, though she will be traveling under another name. Passing herself off as just an ordinary traveler. You will know her by the tattoos on her cheeks. The Four Winds, two spirals on each side of her mouth. She is young, early twenties. She will come bearing Trade packs.

“You know the Tenasee, the points through which all must pass. Go, watch. And when you find her, bring her to me. Unharmed. Unmolested. That latter will be a difficult challenge for you, I’m sure. If you deliver her here, your semen dripping from her sheath, I will give you each a single shell and send you on your way. Within a moon, your shafts will burn and begin to rot from the inside out.

“Bring her to me fit, unused, and I shall give you Joara.”

“What about the orata that lives here?” the older Casqui asks.

“He is no longer here,” I reply. “He has, as he says, ‘relocated’ to Cofitachequi to build a new palace and, as he says, ‘wants to help his brother better govern’ the nation. But even if he were, he would accede to my request. Declare you each an orata, and the town would be yours to rule and govern as you saw fit. Placed as it is, on the route to the sea and the crossroads of major Trading trails, you could live quite comfortably for the rest of your lives.”

“What makes you think we’d want that?” the second asks.

I lift my ruined eyebrow—well, as much as it would lift given the scar tissue. Doing so does absolutely wonderful things to my expression. Makes it almost monstrous instead of simply hideous. “What do you want? Why are you slipping up and down the rivers? I think it’s because you have nowhere to go. Here I can make you oratas, and you will never have to suffer privation again.”

“We just take your word for that?”

“Just bring me the woman, in the condition I ask. I’ll give you Joara as well as all the Trade she carries. You will be both rich and landed.”

“That’s all there is to it? Take her away from one man? Bring her here with her sheath unused?”

“Must be a pretty important woman,” the mixed breed finally chimes in, his hard black eyes on mine. Of them all, he seems the least intimidated.

“I’ll warn you now. She reeks of Power. In fact, you might want to carry her with a sack over her head. And when she talks to the Underworld, you really don’t want to be listening in.”