Callo had whipped the men into movement, and already they were falling into place, ten on each side picking up their paddles, Callo at the bow as watch to guide them out. She strode down the middle of the ship past the reed-covered cabin in the center and between the rows of men with paddles raised. She silenced conversation as she passed. She could feel the eyes on her, the murmurs of “captain,” and she realized she had a reputation among the sailors and not all of it was bad. By the time she took her place at the stern of the ship, hands on the tiller, she was smiling.
She spared one last glance at the shore and caught sight of Pech. He looked livid, stomping his feet and shouting something she couldn’t hear. But Balam had his arms spread and was blocking Pech and his men from the pier, and that’s all she needed to know.
“All drop!” she shouted, and as one, the crew dipped their paddles into the water. “Count two… and away!”
“Lead out!” cried Callo from his place, and the canoe moved. “One. Two. One. Two.”
The men echoed him with precision. “One. Two.” And again.
“Good and steady,” she said.
There was outraged clamor from land, but she ignored it. Already they were moving, sleek and easy through the water on the strength of the paddlers, and as Cuecola became smaller and smaller behind them, so did her cares. She’d have to properly introduce herself to the crew later, once they were well gone, and share the news that they would break for open water once she’d mapped their course. But all in all, it was not a bad end to a morning that had started in jail.
She laughed, loud and brash, as saltwater sprayed from the paddles and wet her face. Maybe being Teek was lucky after all.
CHAPTER 7
CITY OF CUECOLA
YEAR 325 OF THE SUN
(20 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)
The crows that flock around the Great House have a sense of cooperation and fair play. I have noticed that they will work together both with their own and even with a creature unlike themselves to achieve an end. But beware, the crow is also a trickster and will take the greater share of the reward, too, if he thinks he is able.
—From Observations on Crows, by Saaya, age thirteen
Serapio had arrived at the Cuecola harbor before sunrise. Lord Balam had insisted on bringing him early to the ship, so they had woken well before dawn, breakfasted on unfamiliar foods, and come to the harbor.
Serapio did not mind it. He had been in Cuecola for two days, newly arrived from Obregi, but he had waited ten years to be on a ship to Tova and had no desire to linger in the foreign city that under a layer of fragrant black copal smelled of blood, hot stone, the sweat of laboring men, and sour ambition.
In truth, his journey had begun the day he was blinded. That had also been the day of his mother’s death. Both had happened under a swallowed sun, and his journey would end under much the same sky in a brief twenty days—ten years and uncountable miles from where it had begun in Obregi.
The ten years in Obregi without his mother had not been easy. Many of them were marked by his father’s benign neglect, and those that were not had instead been informed by the intentional cruelty of his tutors. Love, after his mother’s death, was not a thing he knew.
But he did have something that others lacked, something he would have willingly traded for love had the bargain ever been offered. He had purpose.
“A man with a destiny is a man who fears nothing,” he whispered to himself.
He had said the same to Lord Balam. When the pilgrims who had brought him from Obregi to Cuecola had dropped him at Balam’s doorstep, the lord had inquired about his past and his tutors and, of course, his mother. Serapio had told him as much as he thought prudent and kept the rest to himself. He did not think Balam truly wanted to know about the horrors of his childhood or what he had endured to arrive at this point. A morbid curiosity did not justify an inquiry into his pain after all, and pain it was. But Serapio did not dwell on it. In twenty days, none of the brutalities of his childhood would matter.
But first he had to get to Tova.
An hour after Balam had left him on the ship, he had heard the crew arrive. They had readied the craft all morning, their tread heavy and their voices loud as they dragged large things across the wooden deck and tended to the ship’s hull. Once he had heard a sailor with a thick unfamiliar accent ask another about the “priest in the hut,” but his companion had quickly hushed him and told him that was “Balam’s business and none of ours.” Serapio had determined he must be the priest in the hut and frowned at the misnomer. But otherwise, the morning had been pleasant. No one had bothered him, and he found himself appreciating the almost company of the men. His previous travel companions had been pilgrims who had sworn a vow of silence.
Around midday he heard more than just the banter of sailors preparing for a voyage. There was a confrontation of some kind on the docks, a handful of voices raised in argument. One he recognized as Lord Balam’s.
Concerned, Serapio pulled a small skin bag from around his neck and opened it. He licked the pad of his index finger and dipped it inside. Star pollen clung like shattered light to his wet skin in a fine sheen of silver dust. He pressed his finger against his tongue and sucked it clean. It had a slightly bitter taste, sharp and acrid.
The effect of the drug was almost immediate. Dark light infused his body, rushing through his bloodstream and opening his mind like a night-blooming flower opening to the moon. He threw his mind out and found a willing host. The crow launched from the tree, climbing skyward, until Serapio could see everything as if from above.
There below him in dock was his ship with the crew. They had all stopped in their work and were facing landward, looking at the pier. They leaned against upright oars or sat on the edge of the railing, as if watching a play.
Serapio urged the bird farther.
Men stood arguing, Lord Balam among them. The others he did not know. One was stout and sweating through his woven shirt despite the mild weather, a sash of office tight across his middle. Another man was bare-chested and bejeweled, with a tail of gray hair peeking from below a short box-shaped headdress. His attire marked him as a man of wealth, but he was otherwise plain.
The crow turned back toward the boat. And Serapio saw her.
She was striking, hair the color of plums that trailed to her waist in thick coils. Skin brown and smooth and face wide and attractive, but her mouth was flattened to a thin line in what looked like rage, and something roiled from her body that pulsed with energy, wound and waiting. It was so real, so alive, he could almost hear it. A song like the echo caught in a seashell one of his tutors had brought him from his coastal travels, or the shimmer of a rainbow after a summer rain, tangled between the hills of the valley where he grew up.
He sent his host circling closer, curious to know more.
The woman turned, tilting her head up to look at his crow. Serapio caught a glimpse of her eyes. White sclera, but her irises were a swirl of colors, like various paints stirred in a pot. Teek, he thought, just like from the children’s stories, before she whistled sharply.
His crow pulled up at the sound, squawking a sharp retort. A flap of black feathers and a cry of surprise, and Serapio was expelled from his host. He rocked back in the chair, gasping. He pressed a hand to his ear. It was wet. He dabbed at it gingerly and touched the liquid to the tip of his tongue. Blood. Somehow she had not only thrown him from the crow but had followed his connection back and made him bleed.
He laughed, breathless with surprise. He had never felt anything like it.
He forced his breathing to slow, but his mind was still bright with possibility. How had she done that? Cast him out of his own creature? It was a useful thing to know, if only to make sure it never happened again.
He wiped his face clean with the edge of his black robe and adjusted the blindfold that covered the stitched flesh that sealed his eyes shut.
More shouting, but this time is was an all clear, and men were hauling ropes aboard whil
e paddles dipped into the sea. They were moving. The star pollen was still in his veins, and he thought about seeking out another crow so he could watch the great ship leave Cuecola, so he could glimpse the path before him, but he decided against it. There would be plenty of time in the coming days to see the sea and get to know the crew. And the captain.
CHAPTER 8
THE OBREGI MOUNTAINS
YEAR 317 OF THE SUN
(8 YEARS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)
It is said that crows can remember the faces of men who hurt them and do not forgive. They will carry a grudge against their tormentor until their deaths and pass on their resentment to their children. It is how they survive.
—From Observations on Crows, by Saaya, age thirteen
The boy sat cross-legged on the wide stone terrace, his thin body nestled among the crows. There were at least a dozen of the large black birds around him, pecking and squawking and turning their heads this way and that. One perched on a bony knee, another on his jutting shoulder. Three fought for place on his outstretched arm, eating scraps from his cupped hand.
He murmured words to them, bare whispers of his own loneliness, apologies of how little food he had to share with them intermixed with confessions of his own gnawing hunger, soft inquiries about the larger world outside his room and what it was like. The crows answered, telling him of how the snow was growing deep on the nearby mountains and how the cold winds rattled through their nests and how the sun weakened and the nights lengthened.
He held his free hand out as a large, broad-chested crow with a notched beak and a sleek sheen of feathers dropped something that glinted in the morning sun into the boy’s palm. The boy ran a thumb across it, feeling for the shape and size of it. He hefted it a few times in his hand and smiled. Pleased with the gift, he added it to the small pile of treasures he had already collected that morning.
“Is it always this way?” a voice asked from behind him.
The boy stiffened. A stranger had spoken. He didn’t receive many visitors. In fact, besides his father’s weekly visits, he rarely had any company at all beyond the servants and the guard who stood outside his door.
“Yes,” said a second voice.
The boy tensed, nostrils flaring. That voice he recognized.
“He prefers to sit outside with the birds,” the second voice continued, something bitter in the tone. “I thought to forbid it after—”
“No, don’t. Do nothing,” the stranger said quickly. “I’ll talk to him now. Alone.”
“I cannot leave you alone with… the boy.”
The boy. Not my son. Serapio’s fist clenched, anger and shame warring inside him. His father left him alone all the time. Why would now make any difference?
“Lord Marcal,” said the stranger, voice patient, “I am here to help your son. Do you not trust that?”
“I’m not worried you will hurt him,” his father said, voice dropped to a whisper that he no doubt thought Serapio couldn’t hear. “I am concerned he will hurt you. He is… unnatural.”
“He is a child.”
“Fourteen. Not so young. And perhaps you don’t understand. Loss of sight is not his only affliction…”
“I understand enough. Now, let me work.”
His father hesitated and then said, “I will leave a guard by the door. Call for him should you need anything. I’ll be back after my duties to check on you.”
“It won’t be necessary.”
“I… well, if you are sure…”
“Quite.”
And then there were steps, hurried, like his father couldn’t wait to be gone. Which left the stranger here alone with him.
“Hello, Serapio.”
A crow pecked at his hand. He dug into his pocket and pulled out another handful of crumbs. The bird squawked happily. It was joined immediately by its compatriots, and the food quickly disappeared.
“Who are you?” the boy asked.
“I’m here to help you.”
“I don’t think you can help me.”
The man chuckled. It was not a kind sound. He imagined the man standing in the doorway that led out to the terrace, leaning against the frame, studying him. The man set Serapio on edge, which made his birds fuss and flap.
“Are you another healer?” Serapio asked. “Someone come to poke and prod at my eyes?”
“Oh, I’m not here to help you see again,” the man said. “I suspect that would be a waste of time. You’re going to have to let that hope go, boy.”
Serapio cocked his head, curious. No one had said that to him before. Spoken so plainly about his fate. It was always platitudes and false comforts which inevitably led to whispered incredulity that his own mother had “ruined” him and what a monster she must have been.
“I don’t have false hope,” he countered quietly.
“Of course you do,” the man said, patiently. “Life is a series of false hopes. We all have misplaced hopes until we learn better. I did.”
“What do you want?”
“I’m here to prepare you for your destiny.”
“I already know my destiny.” He pulled more food from his pocket, and the notched-beak crow landed on his palm. He knew it was him by the weight of him, the particular sound of his hungry caw.
A pause from the stranger, and Serapio knew he must be considering his words. “Tell me.”
“I’m meant to be reborn a crow.”
“And then?”
No one had ever asked “and then?” They all just assumed him mentally ill, head full of fanciful delusions of flying or escaping his maiming.
“They speak to me, you know,” the boy said.
“Not surprising. They know one of their own. And what do they tell you?”
“Mostly crow things. Of pleasant hunting grounds and the joy of flight. Of family and lost things, too.”
“You must know something about that last bit.” It was the first note of sympathy that Serapio had heard from the man.
He nodded.
“What else do they tell you?”
“That I’m one of them. That just like their great ancestor, I have swallowed the shadow of the sun. They call me Grandfather Crow sometimes, although I am not so old.”
“An ancestor, eh?”
He lifted a knobby shoulder in a shrug.
“What else do they call you, Serapio?”
He hesitated. “When my skin is too cold, Nightbringer. Or Suneater, sometimes, when I’m angry. They say that my body is cold, but my anger is hot.”
“All this you have learned from the crows?” He sounded surprised, like he had not expected that.
“They are my friends. I have earned their trust.”
“And what did your mother call you?”
Serapio twisted from where he sat on the stones to face the stranger. “Did my mother send you?” he asked.
“Your mother is dead.” The man’s voice was flat and unsympathetic, a man making a statement of fact. “But yes, she did send me, after a fashion. Arranged for me and two others to come should her work succeed.”
“You mean me,” Serapio said. “I am my mother’s work.”
“What did she tell you?”
“That I would be a god.”
The stranger was silent for so long Serapio thought he might have left undetected.
“You are a strange one,” he remarked, finally. “Come in. I have something here for you.”
Serapio heard the man’s footsteps retreating into the room. He considered ignoring the command to follow, but his curiosity got the better of him. He whispered a farewell to his friends, stood to dust off his hands and pants, and made his way to the bench he knew to be just inside the door. He took a seat.
“Take this.” Something pressed against his knee, and Serapio grasped it. It was rough bark and thick, as long as his hand and as wide. He flattened his other palm against it.
“A tree branch?”
“And now this.”
Something else at his kne
e. He took it, feeling a handle and a wide blade, blunt and tapered on the end. “A knife?”
“A chisel. I’m going to teach you how to carve.”
“Why?”
“It is only a tool, a means to an end. Now, when was the last time you used your hands?”
“I just used them to pick up this chisel and wood.”
A sharp blow struck his cheek. He cried out, collapsing to the floor. The crows outside shrieked. He raised a trembling hand to his face. It came away wet with blood, a thin slice of skin ripped free from the kiss of some weapon he didn’t know. It stung where the flesh was exposed to air. Rage bubbled up inside him, not cold at all, and he opened his mouth to call his crows.
“Bring them down on me, and I’ll strike them, too. I don’t want to hurt them, or you, Serapio, but you will respect me. Do you understand?”
Serapio snapped his jaw shut. To hit him was one thing. He would not risk his friends.
“Let’s start again,” the man said. “Wood and chisel.”
Serapio fought back tears and tried to ignore his bleeding cheek. He weighed the raw wood in his hand and the chisel in the other. He thought of throwing them at the man. But then what? Where would he run to avoid another blow? And his birds. The man might hurt his birds.
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” the man said. “I can smell your self-pity from here. Do as I say, and we’ll get along fine. I’ll only hit you when you need it. I am reasonable, after all.”
Serapio didn’t answer.
Quick steps, and Serapio knew another blow was coming. He shied back as the man’s hand gripped him by the hair, pulled him to his knees.
“You talk about destiny,” he hissed, “but are unwilling to suffer to achieve it? You won’t get to Tova if you are afraid, Serapio. I will make your mind strong, hone your ability to endure pain, if you let me. Or do you wish to stay on this terrace and rot with these keepers of yours?”
The stranger shook him, making his head bob back and forth like a reed in the wind. “I will suffer!” Serapio cried, voice high and frightened.
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