The man released him, and Serapio collapsed forward. He caught himself on hands and knees, breathing hard, wood and chisel still gripped between fingers and palm.
He heard the man cross the room and settle back on the far bench. His voice came from a distance. “Describe the wood to me. Tell me what you feel.”
Serapio took a deep steadying breath. Pushed himself to sitting and turned the wood between his fingers, against his palm. “It feels rough,” he ventured, fighting to keep his voice steady.
“More than that,” the man coaxed. “Concentrate. Use your fingers and your mind.”
“Rough,” Serapio repeated, and then, “Pitted. Jagged along here, the left side, and knotted just below where my thumb is.” He ran the edge of his thumbnail along the knot.
“Better,” the man said. “Now, feel for the creature already inside the block. It’s there, hiding, waiting for you to bring it forth.” A rustle of clothing as the man leaned closer. “Can you do it, Serapio? Can you find the creature inside the wood?”
“Yes.” He ran the chisel along the groove he had mapped with his fingernail, imagining a crow in his mind. Small head, large beak, curving breast, and feathered wings. He dug the chisel into the wood, but it slipped, thrusting under his fingernail instead. He cried out in pain and drew his hand back. Stuck the finger in his mouth and sucked.
“Make the pain your friend, Serapio,” the man urged. “Learn to appreciate it the way you might a lover. Let it become the thing you crave most.”
Serapio knew nothing personally about what lovers did, but he had heard the servants fucking in the room next to his often enough. He did know he wanted nothing to do with suffering and pain. Is that what this man was here to teach him? He didn’t want it, but if it meant he would become what his mother wanted him to, he would endure.
“Now,” his tutor said, “tell me again about the wood. Use different words this time.”
Serapio did.
Time passed. The room grew colder as the sun set, and servants came to light the wall lamps and offer them supper. The man ate but instructed Serapio to keep working since he had not yet earned the right to eat.
Only when the night servants came to ready Serapio’s bed did the man say, “It’s time for me to leave.”
“Are you coming back?” Serapio asked, unsure if he wanted the man to stay or if he wanted him gone forever.
“Yes. I keep my promises.” He clamped a hand on Serapio’s shoulder and squeezed hard enough for his thin bones to shift painfully under his shirt. “Next time I come, you can call me Paadeh. We’ll be friends yet.”
Serapio knew instinctively that this was a lie. Paadeh did not like him. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew it as well as he knew his name. He might be here to honor a promise that he had made to his mother long ago, he might be here to teach him pain so that he could fulfill his destiny, but they would never be friends.
After his new tutor had left, Serapio held his hand to his cheek for a long time, thinking. The blood had dried in a hardened line that flaked off when he tugged at it.
The pain had startled him, but he had already begun to forgive it, make it his friend as Paadeh had said.
He worked on his wooden sculpture long into the night. He fell asleep, hunched forward on his bench. Clutched in his hand was the beginning of a crow. Not wholly formed, just the outline of what it would become, but it was being born nonetheless.
CHAPTER 9
CITY OF TOVA
YEAR 325 OF THE SUN
(19 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)
My observations of the Priesthood of Watchers are that they have become a shell of what they once were. It is an irony of the age that the scientific advances the Watchers once forced upon the masses to quiet the worship of the old gods have now become so commonplace as to begin to make them obsolete. No one denies that they once held center on the Meridian continent and kept us at peace for three centuries, but I suspect that it is only tradition and nostalgia from whence their power flows now. They claim to read the skies, but their work seems mostly a novelty for the upper class. They issue rain predictions, but could not an astute farmer read the soil for himself? Shrewd eyes might turn to the trade cities of the Crescent Sea to find their future. Whether the cities of the Crescent Sea should continue to pay tithe to the Sun Priest is a topic worthy of discussion among the Seven Lords.
—A Commissioned Report of My Travels to the Seven Merchant Lords of Cuecola, by Jutik, a Traveler from Barach
The Conclave had passed into its second hour when Naranpa noticed Iktan slip in through the eastern door. Xe made xir way around the back of the circular room, passing behind the healers to join the tsiyo dedicants on the southern side of the circle. Xe slid into an empty space on a stone bench, as quiet and unnoticed as a shadow after dark.
Naranpa would not have recognized xir if she did not know what to look for, had not realized twenty minutes into Haisan’s droning lecture on Shuttering etiquette that the person sitting in Iktan’s place, wearing the red mask and covered from head to toe by a formless red robe, was not Iktan at all.
An impostor, she thought, just like during the end of the procession earlier. And the impostor sat just as still and just as silent as Iktan always did, so unless they spoke, which Iktan rarely did, why would anyone even suspect? Which made her wonder how often Iktan practiced this deception, and how often xe wasn’t actually in the room when everyone thought xe was.
She watched Iktan, the real Iktan, blend in with the dedicants in attendance, dutifully seated behind the fake priest.
“And so we will meet on the solstice to break our Shuttering,” Haisan was saying, “at dusk on Sun Rock. And this year, the solstice will be marked by the rarest of celestial occurrences. As the year divides into old and new, so also will the earth, sun, and moon align in the Convergence. Over our very heads, we will witness order move to chaos and back to order again. So it is with the heavens, so it will be with Tova. We will bear witness to the cycle of evil rising in darkness to be battled back by goodness and light when the sun prevails.”
It was a stirring speech, and the dedicants and priests stomped their feet in polite approval.
Where had xe been? she wondered. She had expressly told xir not to do anything without her say-so, but trust Iktan to interpret that request in the narrowest fashion possible.
“Sun Priest, if you would like to address the Conclave.”
Well, maybe that was ungenerous. Perhaps xe was investigating. Following a lead or something. Wasn’t that what people did when there was a crime? Or an attempted crime, at least?
“Sun Priest?”
An attempted murder, she should say. It wasn’t simply a crime.
“Naranpa!”
She blinked. Everyone was staring at her. The other three priests (well, Iktan’s impostor), the dedicants, even the servants who stood in waiting around the edges of the circular room.
She cleared her throat, desperately trying to recall what Haisan had been speaking of, but nothing came to mind.
“My apologies,” she said. “Could you repeat that?”
Haisan’s face fell. “Which part?”
“Ah… just the last part will do.”
Haisan flushed, clearly distressed. “I-I suppose I could start with—”
“Nara, are you unwell?” Abah asked, leaning forward.
She was seated directly across from her on the western side of the circle, concern etched on her pretty face.
Naranpa bristled at Abah’s use of her nickname. She’d noticed the woman using it earlier, too. It was a name she most definitely did not have permission to use.
“I’m…” She stopped. She had thought to be dismissive of Abah’s concern, correct her familiarity, but that was not her way. One did not lead through criticism. She rose to her feet. “Actually, thank you for asking, Abah. Now that you mention it, I do have something I’d like to discuss with the Conclave. As most of you know, there was an attempt on my life toda
y.”
She paused dramatically. Not a single gasp of surprise. Well, the rumor wheel had indeed been turning. “The attempted assassin bore the marks of one of the Sky Made clans.”
Again, no reaction from the gathering, so they must all know of which clan she spoke.
She continued, “This happened because to so many we have become faceless bureaucrats, not true servants of the people. We do our duty to chart the stars, but we are also called to mold our world to better mirror the heavens. Order from chaos, good”—she looked at Haisan, finally remembering something he’d said—“good from evil. But that is not accomplished simply in prayer but in practice. It is well and good that we Shutter ourselves to prepare for the sun to return, but what of ministry to the people? Healers accessible not only to the Sky Made but to all? Knowledge of the heavens shared with the common citizen?”
“There are civil institutions for all of that,” Haisan said. “It is the Sky Made’s duty to—”
“But couldn’t it be ours, too? Why do we cede so much to the Sky Made?”
“We do not meddle in worldly politics.”
“I’m not talking about meddling,” she said, frustration clenching her fists. Why was she not more eloquent when she needed to be?
“Then what are you talking about?” Abah asked.
“I just want…” I want us to not become irrelevant.
“Nara…” Abah stood, and all attention turned her way.
Naranpa winced at that damn nickname. Did the woman do it on purpose? She must.
“It is understandable that you are shaken by the events of the day,” the healer continued. “They were terrible! I am still shaken, and it didn’t even happen to me!” She paused, her delicate features flushed with remembered horrors of something that didn’t even happen to her. “So if you need to rest, we can certainly continue this Conclave without you. Perhaps one of your dedicants can stand in for you? Perhaps Eche?”
Naranpa glanced briefly at the dedicant named Eche who was seated to her right. He was one of her favored pupils, handsome if a bit vacuous at times, but his star charts were admirably accurate. She had been leaning toward officially naming him as her successor, as he was the obvious choice. Only recently, he had been late to study, and last week he had challenged some of her weather predictions. Nothing serious, but it had surprised her. Seeing him now, smiling at Abah and then looking back at her as if expecting her to concede to the seegi’s suggestion, his recent behavior changes suddenly made sense.
Abah was fucking him. Naranpa could see it, plain as the moon bright overhead. Which was fine, generally, but not if she was influencing him unduly.
“That won’t be necessary,” she said crisply. “I am able to continue. I would just like the gathered parties to consider my—”
“But Nara,” Abah said, interrupting her, “this attack against you, I think it’s worth acknowledging that it might be compromising.”
Naranpa’s brows knit. “What?”
“This talk you make, of reforms and people and breaking our long-held and sacred traditions? Well, isn’t it possible that someone is trying to kill you for it? And if that’s the case, then maybe you should relinquish the Sun seat. For your own safety.”
Naranpa blinked, shocked. Had Abah just suggested that she abdicate? Hand over the Sun Priest duties to someone else for her own good? The Sun Priest served unto death. To voluntarily give up her place? It was not done.
“I am loath to admit it,” Haisan said, speaking from his seat in the north, “but Abah may have a point.”
Naranpa turned her surprised gaze to the old man. “You think I deserve to die for my reforms?”
“Heavens, no. What I meant—”
“Don’t you have some unsavory connections to Coyote’s Maw?” Abah cut in smoothly.
Naranpa turned back to the woman, her shock morphing to panic. Two thoughts flared hot in her mind. What was Abah doing? And how did she know? “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I’m sorry, Nara,” Abah said, her face the picture of concerned sympathy. “I don’t mean to bring up unpleasant memories, or remind you of difficult times, but your brother? The one who’s still alive? Isn’t he a criminal in Coyote’s Maw? And wasn’t your other brother murdered? I hadn’t considered it before, but isn’t it also possible that what happened today… and before… is related to your family?”
Abah knew of the previous assassination attempt? Did that mean she had a spy among the tsiyo dedicants, too? And now to name it in open Conclave. Iktan would answer for that.
“Both my brothers are dead,” Naranpa said flatly, struggling to keep her voice from betraying her emotions. Her hands she could not soothe, so she crossed her arms and stuck them in the sleeves of her robe.
“Well, we know that’s not true,” Abah countered, stone in her voice.
“It is true to me.” Her voice was cold, but rage boiled close to the surface, throwing off her calm. Bringing up her family? The Maw? It was anathema. The past was the past, and family connections forsaken for divine ones, as Iktan had rightly reminded her only yesterday.
“Ah, perhaps we have strayed from the topic at hand,” Haisan cut in, voice placating.
Naranpa fumed. Oh, now they had gone too far?
“I don’t think—” Naranpa started.
“We can speak freely in the circle, can we not?” Abah asked, voice rising. “We are all siblings here, and none of us a criminal.”
“Oh, fuck off, Abah!” she snapped.
“Naranpa!” Haisan cautioned sharply.
Naranpa bit back a scream. She understood intellectually that Abah had lured her into this fight, she could see it as plain as the summer sun. She knew that Abah, despite her youth, fell squarely into the traditionalists’ camp, but this personal attack was beyond the pale.
Worse, somehow Naranpa had let herself be outmaneuvered by a nineteen-year-old. It burned.
She looked across the circle to Iktan. The real Iktan, two rows behind the impostor. Say something! she thought angrily. But hadn’t she asked xir not to interfere, to let her fight her own fights? And if xe spoke now, everyone would know xe had deceived them. No, she was on her own. And she had to reclaim some of her dignity before she dug herself in any deeper.
“My sincere apologies,” she said, inclining her head toward Abah. “It seems that today’s events have in fact unsettled me. Haisan, if you’ve said all you need tonight, let us conclude this meeting and meet again tomorrow to continue.”
A commotion by the eastern door drew their attention. They all turned, even Abah, who had to crane her neck to see.
A servant, breathing hard and sweating as if they had run up the stairs.
“What is it?” Naranpa barked, temper well frayed despite what felt like a momentous display of self-control. “Why have you disturbed the Conclave?”
“My apologies, Sun Priest,” the girl said, panting. “But there is news. Tragic news! The matron of Carrion Crow, Matron Yatliza?”
“Yes?” Naranpa thought of the thin woman in the black dress earlier that day, dignified yet morose. “What about her?”
The servant hesitated.
“Say it, girl,” Haisan prompted.
“My apologies for bearing dark news,” she said, “but Yatliza Carrion Crow is dead!”
CHAPTER 10
CITY OF TOVA
YEAR 325 OF THE SUN
(19 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)
Just as Cuecola values the sacred power of seven, so do the Tovans esteem the number four. This can be seen in both the Sky Made clans, numbering four, and the priestly societies of the Watchers, also four. The Watcher societies are healer, assassin, historian, and oracle, with oracle holding the highest seat in the hierarchy. I have heard that it is forbidden for the oracle to divine their own fate, but that seems unlikely. What use is a power to read the heavens if it cannot be turned to your own benefit?
—A Commissioned Report of My Travels to the Seven Merchant Lords of Cuecol
a, by Jutik, a Traveler from Barach
Murmurs of shock rippled through the crowd, and even Abah looked stunned. A matron murdered? Surely not, and on the same day an attempt was made on the Sun Priest’s life? It was impossible to see this as a coincidence.
But mostly Naranpa thought of a great aching hole in the heart of Carrion Crow. Their matron dead, one of the four seats of civil leadership vacant. Unrest was bound to follow. The cultists would latch on to it as a sign of something nefarious, likely blame the tower. The rest of the Sky Made must act, and act quickly, to assure the people that things would continue as normal, that whoever had done this would be brought to justice.
And the priesthood must help facilitate it.
“Dedicants are dismissed,” Naranpa said, seizing control of the meeting. “Priests, if you will stay. And you, too,” she said, singling out the servant who had brought the news.
It took a moment, but the dedicants complied, voices still raised in chattering disbelief. Haisan approached, joined by Abah, who to her surprise did not argue at Naranpa’s taking control of the Conclave. Iktan, who had used the cover of the dedicants’ departure to take the mask from xir impostor and hold it in xir hands, as if xe had been wearing it moments ago, joined them.
“How was she murdered?” Naranpa asked the servant.
“M-murdered?”
“Yes. Who killed her? Do we know?”
“N-no, Sun Priest. I mean… no. She wasn’t murdered.”
Naranpa stared, dumbfounded. “I’m sorry, what?”
“The messenger from Carrion Crow said that she was found dead in her bed. No one said she was murdered.”
Naranpa breathed a long, audible sigh, some of her spirit escaping along with her breath, she was sure. Did she feel relief that there was not another assassin loose in the city? Or was it frustration that for a moment she was sure that with Yatliza’s murder, she would be able to convince her fellow priests that Abah and her nasty implications about her family were completely out of line? Both, she realized.
“Tell us everything you know,” Iktan said to the servant. “From the beginning.”
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