People of the Silence (71 page)

Sternlight laughed, and Ironwood turned back to watch them coming down the trail. They were talking. Ironwood saw their mouths moving, saw Cornsilk smile, but couldn’t yet hear their words. They both wore their long black hair loose, and a faint dust-scented breeze teased it around their faces. The sunlight slanting across the canyon turned Sternlight’s white robe pale gold, and flowed into the folds of Cornsilk’s yellow dress like liquid amber. What a beautiful young woman she’d become.

Absently, he noted that he’d twisted the tail of his best shirt into a wrinkled peak and tried to smooth it. He looked up at Brother Sky to calm himself. Among the clouds, black spots of eagles soared and dove, their shrill cries carrying. Sternlight had patiently explained to Ironwood all the things he’d told Cornsilk, and the many things he had not.
“She’s confused and overwhelmed, Ironwood. Be gentle. Let her tell you how she’s feeling. She has many questions.”

His heart thundered as they came closer. Perspiration dampened his flat nose. He’d worn his best shirt, the beautiful buckskin with porcupine quill chevrons across the breast and down the sleeves. The turquoise wolf pendant that Night Sun had given him hung around his neck, and his gray braid was tidy.

Less than fifty hands from Straight Path Wash, Sternlight stopped and nodded at the boulder where Ironwood sat.

Cornsilk glanced at Ironwood before turning back to Sternlight and saying something.

Sternlight placed a hand on her shoulder, nodded to Ironwood again, and walked toward Talon Town.

Ironwood rose to his feet. She had her back to him, watching Sternlight. A honeyed gleam lit the five stories of town and brightened the faces of the people who walked around on the roofs. To the west, where Father Sun still blazed, slaves climbed up from the wash with dishes and water jugs in their arms. Children followed behind, squealing and throwing sticks for barking dogs. Gray Wood, the slave master, brought up the rear. Though he did not have his bow nocked, it hung over his shoulder, and he carried an arrow in his hands as a warning. His red shirt flapped in the breeze.

Cornsilk turned, met Ironwood’s eyes, and filled her lungs with cool damp air. She walked toward him.

Ironwood braced his feet. She had his own arching brows, and golden skin, but her pointed nose and large dark eyes belonged to Night Sun.

She stopped a few paces from him and said, “Hello, Ironwood.”

“Hello, Cornsilk.” A strange surge of emotion ran through him. He’d never called her by her name before, not to her face. He gestured to the patch of grass that encircled the boulder. “Will you sit with me for a time?”

She nodded and sat down a cautious ten hands from him. Her yellow dress spread around her, and her long hair touched the grass. Ironwood leaned against the tan boulder, which stood half as tall as a man.

“Did Sternlight have any trouble passing the guard?”

“No. It was Gnat. He didn’t say anything.”

“Good. I thought it better to talk out here, where we wouldn’t be overheard. I’m glad that—”

“Ironwood,” she interrupted, looking frightened, “let me say at the beginning, that I’m proud to be your daughter. You are a legend among many of the villages, and when my father—the … the man who raised me—spoke of you, he always smiled, and respect filled his voice. I know you are a good man, and you have taken good care of me. For that, I thank you.”

Ironwood’s heart might have been wound in rawhide. “Beargrass was the best warrior I ever knew, and a good friend to me. I knew you would be safe and happy with him.”

Cornsilk cupped her hands over her knees. She seemed to be searching for the right words. “When anyone in our village said bad things about you, Beargrass always defended you. He said people could not possibly understand the pressures you faced, and that they should wait to see what happened in the end. He trusted you, Ironwood.” She sucked in a nervous breath. “Because of that, I trust you.”

He nodded. “And I trust you, Cornsilk, because you are Beargrass’ daughter, in heart, if not in body.” Ironwood forced himself to smile. “Sternlight said you had some questions you wished to ask me. I hope I can answer them.”

She looked up at him with round eyes.

He waited.

“Ironwood, why did you send me away? You were War Chief, a powerful man. Couldn’t you have kept me with you?”

He clenched his fists. A swallow went down his tight throat. “There is so much to say, and yet so little. Cornsilk, I—”

“Didn’t you want me?”

“I wanted you with all my heart.” He reached out and placed his right hand over hers. Her fingers felt cool and frail in his grip. “From the moment I saw your beautiful face, I loved you. But I had seen twenty-nine summers, and was the new War Chief, and I knew that if I kept you there was a good chance we would both be killed. I suspected, as well, that your mother would be condemned to death. I think Crow Beard would have demanded it.” He lowered his hand. “And perhaps rightly so.”

“Did you love her? My mother?”

Ironwood’s face slackened as he searched Cornsilk’s dark eyes. “I
still
love her. After you were born, she refused to see me. I understood and accepted her reasons, but it didn’t change the way I felt about her. Crow Beard returned—” He paused and asked, “Sternlight told you about that? About Crow Beard’s being gone for ten moons?” When she nodded, Ironwood continued, “After he returned, Night Sun and I passed each other every day in Talon Town, but neither of us spoke. We pretended nothing had happened. We had to.”

“So no one would suspect about me?”

“Yes.” He fought the urge to rise and pace back and forth. “Despite our care, there were still rumors. Fortunately, the rumors never reached the First People elders, or else they refused to believe them. I don’t know which, and it doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that you understand I had no choice. Cornsilk, I would have done anything to keep you with me—except risk your life or your mother’s life.” He shifted to sit cross-legged before her, gazing into her eyes. “The two most difficult things in my life were letting Sternlight take you from my arms the night of your birth, and seeing Night Sun every day for the next sixteen summers without being able to touch her. But at least I knew you were both safe.”

Cornsilk watched him from beneath long eyelashes. “But, Ironwood, if you and Night Sun loved each other so much, why didn’t you just run away together? Surely you could have found a safe place to live and raise me?”

“Duty, Cornsilk. Responsibility.” An ache swelled his chest. The frail vessel of his heart had never been able to hold this emotion. He could stand face-to-face with death without blinking an eye, but not this—not this powerful mixture of grief and futility. Cornsilk watched him curiously. “I begged Night Sun to leave with me. But she is not only Matron of Talon Town, she is the Matron of the First People. The women in her family, the Red Lacewing Family, have guided and nurtured the First People for seven generations. Her other daughter, Cloud Playing, was three summers old at the time, too young to take over as Matron. Night Sun had no choice. Her first responsibility was to her people.”

Cornsilk tucked a fluttering lock of hair behind her ear. “So, Night Sun chose her people over you and me?”

“No. She thought you were dead, Cornsilk. Night Sun chose her people over
me.
” Ironwood picked up a pebble and tossed it into the drainage. It plopped into the muddy water and colliding silver rings bobbed toward the banks.

Cornsilk frowned at the grass. “Ironwood? I—I have something to ask, but it may offend you, and I don’t wish to—”

“Ask. I’ll tell you the truth, to the best of my ability.”

She wet her full lips, then lifted her gaze to his. “I don’t understand how it happened. Night Sun is the highest of the First People, and you are a Bear Clan man. How did … I mean, was I conceived here in Talon Town?”

He shook his head. “Not even I would have been so bold.” A faint smile came to his face. “This is how it happened. Before Crow Beard left on the Trading mission, he ordered me to stay with Night Sun every moment, never to let her out of my sight. That meant that when she left on one of her Healing trips, to tend the slaves in the nearby villages, I had to accompany her.”

“You went with her?
Alone?
”

“I had no choice. My Chief had ordered me to. Believe me, I would never have risked it without direct orders.” Ironwood tipped his face to the dwindling sunlight. “On the seventh night of that first journey, we camped east of Spider Woman’s Butte. We roasted a cottontail and shared it while we talked and laughed. It was such a wondrous time, almost unearthly. After only a quarter moon alone with her, I loved her desperately, Cornsilk. I swear I think I would have killed if someone had tried to take her away from me then. We loved each other for the first time that night, and I’ve always believed that’s when you were conceived. It might have been later, but I don’t think so. I
felt
something that night, as if a new light had entered the world.”

Cornsilk turned to look eastward. Father Sun had vanished beneath the canyon rim, but the last vestiges of his radiance threw a soft lavender halo over the cliffs. From this side view, Cornsilk looked all the more like Night Sun. Especially the Night Sun of his memories, in her twenty-seventh summer, with long black hair and a glint in her dark eyes.

Cornsilk bowed her head and creased her yellow dress with her fingernails. “I—I don’t know what to do, Ironwood.”

“What do you mean?”

“Does my mother know that I’m here? Sternlight says you and I are supposed to eat supper with her tonight, but has anyone told her who I am?”

“Sternlight and I have both spoken with her. She wanted to see you immediately, but I asked to speak with you first.”

“Does she think of me as her daughter, or—or just someone—”

“You
are
her daughter,” Ironwood said flatly. “In fact, when she thought she was going to die, she asked me to tell Cloud Playing to divide all of her belongings with you, including the lands around Talon Town. You are the only daughter Night Sun has left. And…” He hesitated. “That brings me to the last thing I must tell you.”

“What?”

“Night Sun and I can’t stay in Talon Town any longer. One way or another, word of this is going to get out. If Snake Head can prove you are Night Sun’s daughter, he can order her killed, and the elders will back him up this time. Therefore, we are planning to go away together, tonight. Late. Do you wish to come with us? We could be a family, Cornsilk, for the first time.…” When she didn’t answer right away, he went on, “On the other hand, by the customs of the First People, if Night Sun leaves Talon Town, you will become the new Matron.”

Cornsilk’s eyes widened. For a long while, she just stared at him.
“Blessed Spirits, I don’t wish to be Matron of Talon Town!”

“Don’t make your decision too quickly. I know it must seem overwhelming now, but in a few days—”

“Ironwood, I was raised as one of the Made People. I wouldn’t even know how to act among the First People! I would be an embarrassment to them! I—”

He put a hand over hers, speaking quietly, but with authority. “Take some time, Cornsilk. You may refuse the honor, but you owe it to yourself, and perhaps to Poor Singer, to consider it carefully.”

“To Poor Singer?” she asked in confusion.

“You seem to care for him. If you were to marry him, you could proclaim Poor Singer the new Blessed Sun. I won’t tell you that it would be easy. You’re a hidden child, and I’m a Made man. A great many of the First People would resent that, but if you accept your mother’s property, you control it, and Talon Town.”

“Poor Singer’s greatest dream,” she said with a smile, “is to go home to Windflower Village and help his people.”

“And you, Cornsilk? Do you wish to go with him?”

She gripped handfuls of her yellow skirt. “He hasn’t asked me to, and I—I don’t know if I would go even if he did.”

“Well, let me pose another possibility.” Ironwood propped his elbows behind him and leaned back. As evening settled, insects swarmed up from the wash, creating a glittering cloud over their heads. The sky had turned a gray-blue. “If you decided to stay here as Matron, you could name another man to rule. Sternlight, perhaps, or—”

“Sternlight? I could name Sternlight as the Blessed Sun?”

Ironwood nodded. “That would be your right, as Matron. I don’t know that Sternlight would accept. I think he is contented to be Sunwatcher, but he might, and it would be a boon for Talon Town if he did.”

She seemed to be thinking it over. Two upright lines formed between her brows. “But would that be wise, Ironwood? Many of the Made People believe Sternlight is a witch. I know it isn’t true, but naming him as ruler would frighten many people.”

“My daughter”—he smiled warmly—“you are thinking like a clan matron already. The people’s needs first. You may be right. That isn’t something I can advise you about. Myself, I’d choose Sternlight instantly. But he’s my best friend, so I’m not a good judge.”

“What about Snake Head? He’d make trouble, wouldn’t he?”

“Ah, Snake Head…” he said through a long exhalation, and scowled at the sky. “He’s a scorpion, a poisonous predator always willing to turn on his own kind.”

Cornsilk smoothed her fingers over the soft spring grasses. “Ironwood?”

“Yes?”

Cornsilk pulled on the leather thong that encircled her neck and drew a small red bag out. Untying the laces on the bag, she poured a black object into her hand and held it out to him. “Do you know what this is? I found it inside my pack. Poor Singer didn’t put it there, nor did I, so someone in Talon Town must have. But I’ve never seen anything like it before. Have you?”

Ironwood took the tiny black jet carving and scrutinized it in the poor light. The inlaid coral bead flashed, and he thought he saw a spiral serpent, but darkness cloaked the details. “No, I haven’t. It’s excellent workmanship, though, from what I can see. But I don’t think it’s Straight Path artistry. Looks more like Hohokam, or maybe even Fire Dog.”