Eighty-seven

The fact that she was dressed as a dirt farmer, with her starburst tattoos covered by a thin brown smear of paint, had begun to wear on Blue Heron. All of her years, she had been trained in the reality of politics. This wasn’t the first struggle for political control that she’d ever found herself in. Only the most dangerous and deadly.

She missed her palace, the prestige, good food, and fine clothes. Someone would pay for this.

Spotted Wrist had cunningly taken most of Cahokia without anyone being the wiser. At least not until his squadrons were dispatched and strategically placed. Military messengers were trotting back and forth, providing the Keeper with intelligence on what each of the Houses was doing.

Well, all but Evening Star House. There the central plaza was being fortified, squadrons called up, every precaution being taken prior to Spotted Wrist’s inevitable invasion. That would happen in a matter of days given that two of Spotted Wrist’s squadrons were camped at the canoe landing. All they were waiting for was the requisite number of heavy canoes to be assembled to allow the individual sections to make the crossing in sufficient force to take the town.

With all that hanging in the balance, Blue Heron had come here, to the Recorders’ Society House where it stood atop its mound facing the Great Plaza on the west and overlooking the Avenue of the Sun on the north.

She had been accorded a rather disdainful welcome by a fresh-faced and way-too-young apprentice, forced to sit for a couple of hands of time in the sun, and finally ushered up the steps to the society house. She hadn’t been allowed past the veranda. But, to her surprise, when she requested to see Master Lotus Leaf, the old man himself had appeared, asking, “Yes?”

She handed him the string of beads.

Taking them, Lotus Leaf thoughtfully ran them over his gnarled old fingers. A curious frown crossed his brow. “Where did you get these?”

“Traded them. For firewood from Morning Star House. Had to. We were right under Spotted Wrist’s nose.”

“This is Mallard’s work. He’s Morning Star’s recorder.” Only then did he really look at her, a sudden light coming to his eyes. “You’re supposed to be dead.”

“Good. And you haven’t seen me alive, either. What did Morning Star want me to know?”

“The beads say this: ‘All is not lost. Work from the shadows.’”

Lotus Leaf pointed. “You see this single copper bead? The way it is positioned in the string, it can mean either, ‘The southern copper is the last solution’ or ‘Save the southern copper until the last.’ Mallard wouldn’t have strung them this way if he hadn’t meant both.”

The southern copper? Did he mean the Koroa copper?

“And this final section: ‘You do not fight alone.’”

Blue Heron took a deep breath. For the first time since the fire, she felt a sense of relief.

Turned.

From her position on the Recorder’s veranda, she could just make out someone standing on the southeastern bastion atop Morning Star’s palace wall. Across the distance and elevation, she could see the glint of sunlight on a copper headpiece.

Even her old eyes saw the living god incline his head, and most uncharacteristically, touch his forehead in salute.

“I guess we’ve got a chance after all,” she mused.

“They will kill you if they find you,” Lotus Leaf noted.

She gave him a knowing grin. “They already tried. Time for me to get even.”

“I wish you luck, Keeper.”

She took the string of beads, stood, and said, “Thanks, I’m going to need it.”

And with that she descended the stairs to the Avenue of the Sun and its crowds of Traders, hawkers, pilgrims, and farmers. No one looked twice at her. She was faceless, invisible.

And this was Cahokia.

Where she knew how to wage war in the shadows.