Free People of the Morning Star by W. Michael Gear, Kathleen O’Neal Gear

While it looked nondescript from a distance, up close she could see it had been woven in an intricate geometric design. A copper falcon and scalp bundle were pinned in his long hair.
    “I need to get out more often.” She gestured absently at the remaining steps. “I used to sprint up this as a girl.”
    “Odd how the passing of winters changes things, isn’t it?”
    She almost frowned at the irony in his voice. “I don’t believe that I know you.”
    “Tishu minko White Finger, Elder. Of the Raccoon Clan, of the White Moiety. I come from Lightning Oak town, an emissary of my great uncle, Minko High Falcon, to pay his respects to the sacred Morning Star.”
    “Ah. I am Blue Heron, Keeper of the Four Winds Clan.”
    “I am both pleased and honored to make your acquaintance, Elder. Your reputation as a competent and capable leader is known far and wide.”
    He touched his forehead in deference and gestured her to precede him. She’d caught a whiff of the curious satisfaction he’d barely masked. Minko High Falcon had chosen his emissary well; the young man seemed almost too familiar in her presence.
    Brushing him out of her mind, she bowed to the guardian posts at the top of the stairs. Her souls, however, remained knotted with worry over Night Shadow Star. That had been her niece, hadn’t it? That booming and hollow voice was just the result of thirst, or perhaps the aftereffects of the datura loosening the young woman’s throat and muscles?
    Piss and blood in a pot! Only idiots fooled around with Sister Datura without supervision. If Night Shadow Star had been in search of a vision, why in Hunga Ahuito ’s name hadn’t she gone to Rides-the-Lightning and asked the old man to purify her, mix the potions, and lead her on a journey to the Underworlds? He, at least, had the training to do such things. But when the unwary and ignorant tried?
    She shook her head, rasping out, “She’s lucky to be alive.”
    Why didn’t I let the porters carry me up?
    She made a face as she glanced back at the long and steep stairs. She was too old to tumble down that. Others had, and all had broken bones. Some were crippled, others dead.
    Breath back, she waited as the Muskogee tishu minko, White Finger, dropped to one knee and touched his forehead outside the gate.
    Foreign he might be, but the young man has more reverence for our ways than we do. What does that say about the decline of Four Winds Clan?
    After he’d risen and entered, she nodded to the tattooed guards standing to either side. Dressed in wooden armor, they held strung bows; quivers packed with arrows hung on their backs. The leather helmets encasing their heads were decorated with bright feathers. Their forelocks, sporting a single white bead in the middle, hung down almost to their noses.
    Entering the gate, she found the courtyard crowded. Everyone had dressed in his or her best. The priests and conjurors were decked out in the symbols of their offices. Clan representatives wore white, red, and black tunics that denoted their affiliation, each sporting the clan totem to which they were subject. The matrons among them wore colorful capes, beaded or quill-worked, furred, or feathered. These draped the women’s shoulders, protection against the evening chill. Off to the side stood the engineers; each bore the symbolic stick-and-string, emblematic of their ability to survey.
    In the center of the courtyard the giant, lightning-scarred, red-cedar pole jutted into the sky like a mighty lance. Blue Heron remembered the day it had been raised. A young woman—token of their respect for Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies—had been sacrificed and buried at the base, a physical representation of First Woman who lived in her cave beneath the World Tree. The entire length of the pole bore carved images depicting scenes from Morning Star’s storied life in the Beginning Times. At the bottom—facing east and carved in relief—was the figure of Old-Woman-Who-Never-Dies’ daughter