Chapter 13

Y had been pushed out. The shouting of Dean and Hannah took turns overlapping, their voices like a pair of fighters locked mid-grapple. Since the fighting centered around Y he'd felt inclined to make himself scarce, and so he now wandered about behind the hotel in Hera.

He stood in a wide lot across from a cattle pen. Never had he much cared for the bleating of cows in the night, but in this instance even their noisy commiseration faded to background noise in the wake of Hannah and Dean's skirmishing.

He didn't get it. When they got to the bank he was to be the one to go in like a lost pup asking about his mother, whereupon the person referred to as "the contact" would intervene claiming to recognize him as her nephew. From there he would be quickly spirited out of sight to the vault. Once opened, Hannah Percy and Wyndell would join him in evacuating the bank, securing it and collecting whatever they could from the vault. The whole procedure was to encompass fifteen minutes. This was Dean's vision.

Y agreed with Hannah's objections to the plan. How exactly would this woman get Y into the vault? How would they coordinate this with the woman? Oh, she's known about it? So this has been planned via correspondence for how long? And so we now have a loose end, a potentiality for blackmail? How thoroughly exactly had Dean and Will discussed this? Or had they really bothered to think about it at all? Whenever you make a plan, the first thing you ought to do is start breaking it down. If it can't hold up to scrutiny then it needs be scrapped. And this plan, Hannah contended, did not hold up to scrutiny. Too many what-ifs, too many variables. It was going to get them all killed.

Y was starting to really not like Dean Hollis. Sure, Dean had his good points, but he was too prideful, too cocky, too angry. In all his years Y had never seen a temper more terrifying than Dean Hollis's. Whenever his anger started up the man's face turned bloodred and his jaw clamped shut so tight it looked like his teeth might soon explode from between his lips due to the pressure. And his eyes...his eyes became like a demon's, glossy and black as obsidian and rich with hate. Dean had a lot of hate.

It was too bad, really, as otherwise Dean was a rather decent fellow.

He stepped towards the wooden fence line of the pen but he was not looking at the cattle. His eyes went to the horizon and he thought on his father whose own temper used to frighten Y, when he was small. His father's smile could evaporate in an instant, replaced with a snarl that was deadly. His voice took on a piercing edge, his hands balled into fists and his arms flailed wildly. His mother used to come rushing with her chest puffed out, putting herself in his direct path in order to calm him, and it worked. She rolled her eyes and regarded as inconvenience or annoyance the same tyranny which petrified Y. She had looked like a master of men in those moments, master over all. And his father found his heart in those moments, softening with laughter at jokes made at his expense. It was men, his mother said, men who were always angry, always wanting to fight. Testosterone, she wagered, was an intoxicant.

"It began as an anger manufactured, you understand," his father told him once. "Now I can't seem to shed its grip." He had been humble, ashamed, sincere. Yet still, there was nothing he could do.

Dean's voice bowled with a jolting uptick in volume. Y looked back and saw that the back door was flung open, from which Dean's ranting escaped. A silhouette then slammed the door shut, and Y heard an aggravated groan. It was Hannah.

She spotted him presently and approached him in a huff. "I suspect you heard about all a that," she said to him. She loomed over him, appearing a few feet taller than she actually was. Her hands were on her hips.

"I heard it, but I didn't listen."

Her hair was a bundled mess falling across her face. Her iron expression relented. Her scrunched brow straightened and her taut lips widened. She took a deep inhale through her nostrils and looked down for a moment, as if changing her mind about something.

When she spoke again her voice was like someone else's. It sounded kind, almost affectionate. "That's alright anyway, 'Y'. You ever gonna tell us your real name?"

Y glanced at her but he wanted not to look at her. He sensed he was seeing something he wasn't supposed to. The grown women he knew back home put on certain airs of dignity and unbreachable privacy. Not this Hannah. She was as open as a James Copper book.

He shrugged. "Maybe, if it feels right. Part of me is hoping I forget it."

"Listen to that." She tousled his hair with her hand. She was probably smiling. "Won't you tell me at least?"

"I guess if you really wanted to know it, but I ain't sure it makes all that much of a difference."

"You're right. It probably doesn't."

He had an anger in him too. It was like a slithering snake, weaving in and out and around him in clandestine subconsciousness, ready to spring whenever Y least expected it. He realized it fed on self-pity, on hopelessness and the frustration of being an entity of choices, of free will yet wholly incapable and ignorant at the same time. Anger was a trap.

"I did want to talk to you in private, before we get to Wilmington. About this job, Y, you have to promise me something."

"Alright."

"Hey, I mean it," her voice sharpened. Her hand swatted his arm. "When the time comes, you just follow me, ok?"

Y was looking at her now, his face twisted with confusion. "Is that what you two were--?"

"No. It's what I'm telling you, and you alone. This ain't going to go the way Dean--the way we are thinking. I got a plan of my own, and it ain't right you suffer for...so you just do as I say, hear?"

"I hear. I think."

"You better, Y. Now I'm going for a walk. Maybe a drink. Maybe a fight. Some dumb fool out here might get cute, give me an excuse to stab something. Anyway, get to bed. You'll need the sleep." Without another word she left him standing at the fence, looking at the hotel.

The light from Dean's room, visible through a window next to the door Hannah had come out from, was blown out. Even the cattle seemed to have settled down.

Y turned and looked at the horizon again. He didn't know how he should feel about what Hannah had said, but he knew it was important. Thinking on it, he wondered if it wasn't Hannah whose fury he should fear, and not worry a second over some loudmouth showboat like Dean Hollis.

Black Heart, Chante Sapa, pulled down on the floppy black brim of her hat to better keep the falling rain out of her face and kept going. Her moccasins were silent on the wet ground. In the driving rain she wore her blue stroud dress with the dentalium shell yoke, a formal dress which she wore now for its power and not its spectacle. To further bolster herself in the cold night, she wore her buckskin gloves with the seed-beaded calico cotton cuffs and one of Panther Sprung's capes of mastodon hide, this one tanned and treated a dark sable. Tucked into her concha belt was a silver-plated Peacemaker revolver, her handmade tomahawk and an assortment of variably-sized knives.

She had set off after dinner with Panther Sprung without a destination in mind. She knew that she was headed South and East but that was all. She would not allow herself any further speculation. No more questions. Instead she focused on chewing the hurt. How had her birth mother put it once? The fat was in the fire. It was too late to turn back--Black Heart was decided.

Kuroctu was a single burning light in the darkness over her shoulder. Panther, Igmuwatogola, Wind of the North, Redwind, whatever he wanted to go by--he brooded in his tipi. He was alone with a broken mind. His daughter's death had made him a coward. A coward! Black Heart had lost her mother and her father as a little girl and swore her life to dying honorably, for them. She gave up her life as a child. Could Panther boast even a fraction of that spine?

Ah, well once he could. The days had come when fearsome Igmu could tear the head off a moon bear, or wrestle a ground sloth. There were stories saying he used to sit from his favorite tree, the one now dedicated to his pitiful Ojinjintka, and pick off waiscu as they traveled by. He tolerated none within the bounds of the Hills, the sacred place now called New Attica.

New Attica. She liked the name. Some of her fellow Ixopaw refused to call it so. They sneered and cleared their throats if the name was uttered in their presence. They despised its association with Hassidius Drake.

That was how Black Arrow made up her mind about where she was going. Drake. He understood. He knew. Where Panther Sprung faltered Drake was resolute. Where Panther Sprung urged her to help him sneak the Ixopaw away, from the Holy Land of Creation no less, Drake provided hope of resistance, of a righteous violence. Drake insisted on Wakinyan, where Panther preferred to avoid.

Black Heart stopped a moment and observed her trail. It was a treacherous descent downward, with bends round steep ledges and rock all slick with rainwater, she needed to keep her eyes ahead of her and her mind receptive and flexible. Digging into the pockets of her dress--one her grandmother Wignuke Waste Win had sewn generations ago--she produced her smoking instrument, carved from bison bone and packed with a mix of Eastern tobacco and plains Grass from the Cheyenne. She smoked and fought tears and shook and shuddered and smoked again. The rain eased back and she leaned against the bark of the tree and closed her eyes until at last the rain broke and moonlight cracked a grey cloud. She stood listening to water drip from the tree. Somewhere a murder of crows flapped their wings and cawed. Black Heart continued her journey.

She had not told Panther Sprung she was leaving. He had raised her from her naming day, had taught her to hunt and to fight despite her womanly lessons. He'd taught her to shoot a bow and she was sometimes called the best shot. She didn't know if she really was but she was proud and thought Igmu was proud and so went around boasting of her shot. She participated in the sport of shooting in the past and beat the best men sometimes. Not always, but sometimes and on those sometimes she won the whole tournament and Igmu beamed a proud smile with his teeth like diamonds and his eyes like honey. He embraced her and kissed her head. Those were times she thought he loved her.

But now she was grown she had lost something in his eyes. He looked at her with sadness, not scorn or hate or disapproval but with sadness, with the absence of something.

He had looked at her thusly in his tipi and said:

"I am beholden only to Wakan Tanka, to Wakinyan and to the Ixopaw. Only they can chide me, and they do. Only they can make me regret or weep or fail, and they do. I say to you that next time we are invaded we will not have the help of Sitting Bull or Crazy Horse but will be left alone to fight, and it will be our end, and those of us left alive will be marched South and out of these lands, and the lands will be plundered and defiled by the greedy hands of the waiscu and their Free Nation regardless of our Holy beliefs, of our traditions and protests and deaths and suffering. You would say to the spirits that the razing of our people is better than the razing of the ground we live upon and expect their favor? You would ask them to forget the children and the elderly with their innocence and wisdom so that you, Black Heart, may kill more waiscu? Ah, you would die, little girl. You would die and save no one, and in your death would you see the death of your home, eaten by flames and swallowed up by the hard, evil voices of the conquerors come to do it. I could not save you, nor could our creators, nor our ancestors."

He stopped suddenly and stared down, as if within himself. She had heard him and been rocked by his assuredness. If he was so resolute about their failure than he was beyond her reach. Or perhaps she was beyond his. Perhaps it didn't matter.

He would never fight with the spirit of Ojinjintka still after him, still in his mind. She realized he never loved her, not as Black Heart.

She had come nearly halfway down the trail when she came upon a surprising scene. Here at a calamitous bend stood a horse in the night, its skin shiny and wet. The beads on its saddle belonged to only one woman, and before Black Arrow could even move from the horse she was almost bumping into Robe Whispers, formally Naomi of the Stars, a woman close to Black Heart since they were small girls together.

"Black Heart! What are you doing out here?" asked the young woman. She had large eyes and even in the dark they shown like miniature moons.

"I should wonder the same of you," said Black Heart. "But I am looking for tracks. You know how difficult it is for me to feel safe."

"We are both far from the village. I am seeking the Dragon Orchid, for the matrons. They are to consider my joining of their ranks." Even in moonlight, it was evident she was blushing.

"You are to become a matron? This is fantastic!"

"It is," Robe Whispers said. "If I cannot seek out my orchid in the Night, then I cannot seek wisdom at all. Truth be told, I don't believe wisdom is so close to an orchid. I would make a pathetic matron, in my own opinion."

"Never matter that. You must be strong, Robe Whispers. You have always been a fast learner and have always possessed a quick mind. You'll do well."

"Are you going somewhere, Black Heart?"

"I am."

"It feels like I shouldn't have seen you. I can't explain it, exactly, but..."

"It is good that you have," said Black Heart. "In the morning, of you see our Chief, tell him that you have, won't you?"

"Tell him that I saw you here, on the trail, in the middle of the night?"

"Yes, please do. I would owe you."

"It will be done, Black Heart. Should we expect you'll be gone?"

"Yes," Black Heart answered. "I will be gone, but not for long. Understand?"

"Yes, but be careful!"

"You as well."

As she departed she felt a bit of shame over her jealousy of Robe Whispers, for whom honor and respect seemed always to come as gifts to her younger compatriot, but put it aside at once. There was great honor in being a matron, but even greater honor in saving New Attica.