Well, there was nothing to do now but face the consequences and try to recoup her losses in the next round. And if there was no next round and it all went up in flames, then so be it.
She straightened the cuffs of her yellow robes and smoothed a hand down the wide skirt before squaring her shoulders and marching to the terrace.
* * *
She spotted Eche first. He was facing away from her so did not see her enter the terrace. He was resplendent in the Sun Priest’s raiment, an ankle-length skirt of deep yellow, embroidered at the hem, and overlapping wrap with darker yellow sunbursts. He wore the same cloak she did. His was the original, the one her mentor had worn, meant for broader shoulders and a taller body. Hers had been remade new to fit her smaller, more feminine stature. Both were the white of dawn at the shoulders and back, progressing to a deep star-dusted black by the time it reached the knees. He wasn’t wearing the Sun Priest’s mask—small miracle. She would not have put it past Abah to sneak into her room and steal it, considering everything else she had done. But Eche did have his thick black hair tied back in a club with yellow string, and his fresh face was smiling, no doubt.
He was chatting with Nuuma, the matron of Golden Eagle. Naranpa watched as Eche said something that made Nuuma laugh and touch a hand lightly to his arm. Needless to say, Nuuma had never touched her with that kind of familiarity. And why would she? They weren’t friends, Naranpa had never said anything particularly witty to her, and she wasn’t even Sky Made.
It occurred to her that Eche came from the Golden Eagle clan, and Nuuma, now well into her forties, had probably known him since he was born. Watched him grow into a fine young man and join the priesthood to rise to his rightful stature. Skies, she was probably proud of him.
And now that she thought of it, Abah was Golden Eagle–born, too. No wonder they wanted her out. She didn’t belong the way they did. For all she knew, they were all related.
“Feeling better?” asked a voice from behind her.
She turned to find Ieyoue, matron of Water Strider, behind her. Ieyoue had traded her clan blues for a long dress of mourning white, and around her shoulders hung a black-and-white skunk-fur short cloak. It was a touch flamboyant, like the woman herself. Around her wrist she wore a red ribbon, a sign of respect for Carrion Crow’s loss. It was a well-orchestrated ensemble. Respectful but not conservative. Sad but not needlessly so. Naranpa had always found her to be the shrewdest of the matrons.
“I am, thank you,” she said quickly. She glanced over her shoulder to see Eche still talking to Nuuma Golden Eagle. “What did Eche tell you?” She hoped her inquiry sounded innocent enough.
“That the strain of the day had caught up with you and that you had asked him to take your place. I thought it strange, since you were the one who had sent the invitations to begin with, but then he told us of the assassination attempt on Sun Rock. Skies, it must have been terrible.” She said it all well enough, the right touch of concern, a hint of true outrage. But Naranpa could see her brown eyes were eager, searching her face for some sign of conflict or subterfuge.
Ieyoue could make an admirable ally or a dangerous foe. Unfortunately, she didn’t know the woman well enough to know which, and she was entirely out of trust.
“It was terrible,” she agreed, putting some of the fright of the moment into her voice. “But the Knives handled it. He never got close,” she lied. Did you send him? she wondered suddenly. If not, do you know who did?
“Well, I for one am glad to hear you are well, Naranpa. Eche did an admirable job paying Yatliza proper respects. I think the funeral he and Haisan planned will be appreciated by all. But…” She hesitated, leaning in. “He is quite young.”
“Barely twenty-five,” she agreed.
“He will make a fine Sun Priest one day,” Ieyoue continued. “But today is not that day.” The Water Strider matron widened her eyes meaningfully. “I hope I haven’t offended you. I know he is your chosen successor, after all.”
“Not yet,” Naranpa corrected. “There are other dedicants who may be a better choice. One day.”
Ieyoue made a show of thinking about it.
“Well, you would know who best serves the Watchers.” She looked pointedly at the two behind Naranpa. “Seems that it may be difficult to tell the difference between yellow and gold for some, and those of us who are neither would prefer to keep the colors separate. Such a clash can ruin one’s entire ensemble. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Naranpa could have kissed her, but instead she only allowed her lips to curve in a small smile. “I find a splash of blue or green can do wonders.”
“Or perhaps one need not use color at all.”
“There truly are so many options.”
Ieyoue nodded sagely. “I had only stepped out to pay my respects to Haisan. He’s in the archives working on what will certainly be a very long speech extolling Yatliza’s merits.” She gestured back to the terrace. “Did you mean to come in?”
“No,” Naranpa said, making a spur-of-the-moment decision. She realized now that the matrons already knew that Eche had usurped her, and Water Strider, at least, did not approve. She was equally sure that Nuuma was thrilled, and she would work out the balance with Winged Serpent and Carrion Crow another day. For now, this was enough.
“Give my regards to the other matrons, if Eche has not already. And I will see you at the funeral.”
“Of course,” Ieyoue said. “I am glad we had this chance to talk. It was, as always, illuminating.”
They exchanged polite bows and Ieyoue went back to the terrace while Naranpa went the other way. Only when she was halfway down the hall on her way back to her rooms did she realize Ieyoue had made a joke.
CHAPTER 15
OUTSIDE THE CITY OF HOKAIA
YEAR 325 OF THE SUN
(16 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)
Lose one child to war and receive four generations of peace.
—Words inscribed over the war college at Hokaia
The news of his mother’s death came to Okoa on the back of a great crow. He was in the war college training field just west of the aviary, the spread of the larger campus laid out behind him, when he spied the corvid’s approach, its black wings catching the afternoon sunlight. He always marveled at these creatures his clan claimed as their namesake. Its wings seemed not enough to support its weight, never mind the rider on its back. But Okoa knew from his own experience that their patron crows could do just that and travel the miles east from Tova to the flat green grasslands of Hokaia in a fraction of the time it took to cross the same distance on boat or foot.
Okoa placed his training spear in the rack and used the edge of his cotton shirt to rub the sweat from his eyes. He had hoped to get another hour of practice in before night drove him inside, but he knew that rider and whatever message he brought was meant for him. Practice would have to wait.
Eyes still on the approaching rider, he jogged toward the aviary. It was nothing like the great aviaries of Tova. Those were proper aeries, great stables high in the cliffs around the city. Each Sky Made clan had one, save Water Strider, who kept their namesake beasts in a cave system closer to the Tovasheh river. But Golden Eagle, Winged Serpent, and Carrion Crow preferred to be close to the sky.
The war college accommodated the riders of Tova’s Sky Made clans as best they could on the wide flat plains of Hokaia by constructing large wooden holding pens. The pens were laid out in a series of circles, each one two acres in diameter, with hitching posts, feeding troughs, and high open fences that served as walls. Plenty of room for the beasts to land but not to stay for any length of time in any kind of comfort. After all, Tova’s Sky Made scions were accommodated in Hokaia, as were all who came to study the ancient arts of warcraft, but no one wanted the Tovans to get too comfortable bringing their creatures there, most of all the native Hokaians.
Some enterprising students had hung clan banners by the gates to each pen, likely brought from home. First was the crow’s-head skull on
a field of red, next the outline of an eagle in flight against a sheet of gold, then the sticklike insect on blue, and finally the green twist of a winged serpent. Okoa headed to the red banner. Once inside the pen, he looked up, hand shading his eyes from the setting sun, to watch the crow and rider land.
He grinned as the bird hovered briefly above him. Its talons were large enough to crush his head as if it were no more than a melon. It flexed them as if in greeting before it dropped to the grass beside him. A great gust of breath poured from its mouth, smelling like the corpse of some animal it had eaten during the journey, and it shook its massive head, feathered mane glossy from care. It let out an ear-blasting squawk, and Okoa laughed.
“Well met, Kutssah,” he said, patting the beak that the bird offered up. Seeing the creature made him miss his own mount terribly. His own Benundah would be five years old come spring, a great blue-black beauty Okoa had cared for since her hatching. But Benundah had not made the journey with him to Hokaia. There was nowhere for the bird to stay long-term, and it would be unkind to separate her from her kin for the years Okoa spent here, so far from Tova.
“Ho, Cousin!” a voice called from the beast’s back. “Stop making Kutssah soft!”
“Ho, Chaiya,” Okoa answered, his smile spreading even wider. “Kutssah is a warrior, like her rider. No amount of petting will change that. Isn’t that right, Kutssah?” He rubbed the crow’s beak again until she nudged his hand, contented.
“Soft!” his cousin repeated, laughing as he slid from his mount. He was tall and broad-shouldered, same as Okoa, muscles thick on his arms and shoulders from handling his mount and war training. He pulled his feathered helmet from his head and shook out his hair. His hair was more sun-lightened brown than Okoa’s midnight black, and he wore it tied back from his face in a series of intricate interlocking twists. Okoa preferred the Hokaia style of wearing two matching braids tight against the head and trailing down his back, a sound fighting style and better than the looser styles popular in Tova. But beyond the small differences, the cousins could pass as brothers. Square-jawed, broad-faced, with a touch of sensuality around the lips and mischief in the high arching eyebrows.
Chaiya’s panther-hide riding trousers were stained from heavy wear, as were his hide armor and the edges of the high-collared shirt that showed around his unshaven neck. It was a familiar uniform, one Okoa himself had worn before and ached to wear again.
He liked Hokaia, appreciated the education he was receiving here in strategy, leadership, and hand-to-hand combat. He was honored that it had been he who was chosen to attend the war college after Chaiya. But he had lingered at the school too long, a year past when he should have returned, and he was ready to go home. He wanted to see the cliffs of Tova again, to walk its bridges and wander its streets that ran through the clouds. He wanted to see his mother again, and perhaps even his sister. And he wanted to see Benundah.
“What brings you to Hokaia?” he asked.
“It is good to see you again,” Chaiya said, pulling him into an embrace. His cousin’s armor had acquired a thin sheen of ice from his time in the sky, and it chilled Okoa where it touched his skin.
A shudder rocked Chaiya’s body. Okoa untangled himself from Chaiya’s heavy arms, alarmed. He searched his normally steady cousin’s face. “What is it? Why are you weeping? Skies, what has happened?”
Chaiya was the toughest of all their brood. Stone-faced and impossible to upset. Loyal to the clan above all else, a soldier in a city that did not particularly require or appreciate soldiers beyond the ceremonial. But Okoa had always appreciated him, always admired him. He had molded himself after his older cousin, wanting nothing more than to follow in his footsteps and become one of the matron’s Shield when Chaiya retired. The tears running down Chaiya’s broad cheeks frightened him like nothing else could.
“Is it Benundah?” he asked. “Has something happened to her?”
Chaiya swiped at his eyes with the back of a leather-covered hand. “No, Okoa,” he said with a wry chuckle, “it’s not Benundah. She is fine, although she misses you.”
Okoa felt relief, but it was short-lived. Benundah was well, but if not his crow, then what? Something had upset his normally unflappable cousin. “What then?”
Chaiya took another deep breath and seemed to settle himself. “Can I leave Kutssah here? We should talk inside.”
“Of course. I have forgotten my manners. There should be food in the mess.”
“And something to drink to take the chill off.”
“Tea, but nothing stronger. At least not officially. But I am sure I can find us a bottle of xtabentún somewhere.”
Chaiya smiled as he secured Kutssah to a hitching post in the pen. “I’m not a student anymore. I’m not worried about getting caught with forbidden drink.”
Okoa flushed, feeling like a teenager again. “Of course not.”
“Never mind,” Chaiya said, waving a hand. “I’ve brought my own.” He gestured with the rug saddle that he’d lifted off Kutssah’s back. Attached was a leather sack, and after he’d laid the saddle across a nearby bench, he reached into the bag and extracted a pile of fabric. He unfolded it to reveal a clay flask.
“Ten years since I’ve walked these grounds,” the older man said, his voice wistful with melancholy. He unstopped the flask and took a long drink. “I didn’t think I’d ever come back. But Kutssah is swift, and I volunteered to bring you the news.” He proffered the flask toward Okoa.
“What news?” Okoa asked, taking a deep drink. At first, the alcohol was sweet on his tongue like summer fruit, but it had a long tail that burned down his throat like chipped glass. He coughed and handed the flask back.
Chaiya slipped the flask into a holster on his belt. He took off his gloves and slid them in beside the flask. “Inside,” he said, motioning Okoa forward through the cedar gate. “I’ll explain it all once we’re good and drunk.”
* * *
“Dead?” Okoa repeated. He wasn’t sure how many times he had said the word, wasn’t even sure he knew what the word meant anymore. But every time he said it, Chaiya, who was sitting across from him, big hands wrapped around a cup, nodded and said nothing.
“Are you sure?” Okoa asked.
They had found an unoccupied table and two stools in the far corner of the common eating room; two bowls of berry-sweetened toasted knotweed and accompanying marshelder bread sat before them, Chaiya’s empty. Around them swirled the noise and energy of the hundred cadets and officers whom the war college fed and housed, but Okoa felt like he and Chaiya were utterly alone, tucked in some bubble of space and time that existed outside of Hokaia and the reality he had always known.
“Are you sure?” he asked again.
And once again, his cousin nodded.
“How?”
“Suicide, Cousin,” Chaiya said gently. “But we’ve told the Sky Made Council and the priests that she died in her sleep.”
“Why?”
“Your sister thought it best. She worried there would be a scandal.”
“But…”
“She jumped off the terrace of her private rooms in the Great House. I guarded her door that night myself and no one entered. There’s no other way she could have ended up in the Tovasheh. Her body washed down the river, and the monks who live below found her body.”
“The monks.” Okoa knew of them. A sacred order that lived far east on the banks of the Tovasheh and subsisted off whatever they pulled from the river. Sometimes that was a body, which they carefully cleaned and wrapped and reported upriver for payment. Most bodies that ended up in the Tovasheh were from accidents. The cliffs of Tova were known to claim their share of victims. Drunkards who went over the edge after a night of carousing in the Maw, foolish teenagers who dared each other to climb impossible rock faces, and, occasionally, a suicide. There was no shame in it, particularly among the elderly or the very ill. Only grief, potential lost, and those left behind.
“But my mother was none of th
ose things,” Okoa said.
“None of what things?”
Okoa looked up from the mug he had filled with whatever was in the flask. It was now empty, but Okoa clung to it anyway, like an anchor. His cousin was weeping again, silent tears running down his cheeks, but his own face was dry. He wasn’t sure why.
“My mother wasn’t ill or old. She was in her prime. Why? Why would she jump?”
“I don’t know. These last years have been hard on her, Okoa. With you gone and the cultists gaining power. She confided in me many times that she was tired.”
Okoa flinched. “Was this my fault?”
“I didn’t mean to suggest that.”
“No, I should have been there,” Okoa said, voice barely above a whisper. “I should have helped her. Instead I lingered here too long, playing war games.”
“No, Okoa.” Chaiya’s voice was firm. “You are a man. Your place, your honor, was here. Yatliza had me as her Shield, so what could you have done? It was your sister’s duty to ease your mother’s burdens, not yours. She is the one who will rule after your mother, so she is the one whose responsibility it was to care for her.”
“Esa is not me,” he said flatly, citing the obvious but meaning much more. He remembered his sister as striving, obsessed with Sky Made politics and prone to gossip and fretting about fashion. It did not surprise him that her first concern upon learning about their mother’s death was to cover up her suicide to avoid scandal.
“She’s matured since last you saw her, Okoa. She will never have your warmth, will never be the people’s favorite the way you are,” he said, and Okoa flushed at the compliment, “but she is a good woman. She will be a good matron.”
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