Black Sun

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  Chaiya was probably right. The last time he and Esa had spent any time together they were teenagers. He had certainly changed, so why not her? Strange to think he was twenty and she twenty-two and about to lead the clan.

  “Will you stay on as the captain of Esa’s Shield?”

  “No,” Chaiya said, voice heavy. “I failed your mother. It would be shameful for me to stay on. Besides, Esa has asked for you to become her captain.”

  “Of course.” Okoa pushed back from the table, limbs jittery, restless. He knew the time for him to take Chaiya’s position would come eventually, but he had imagined it happening decades from now.

  “I’ll need to come back for the funeral.” He turned to Chaiya. “There will be a funeral, won’t there?”

  “A citywide funeral, three days hence, upon our return.”

  “Good. That’s good.” He paced back and forth, trying to grasp the facts. His mother. She was gone. Truly gone. And now he had to go home and serve his sister.

  “We will arrange to have your things sent home,” Chaiya said. “They’ll come by boat down the river and along the coast, all the way back to Tova.”

  “It will take months.”

  “It can’t be helped. You and I will ride Kutssah back to Tova tomorrow morning. We’ll return in time for the funeral.”

  “Good.” Okoa swiveled on the ball of his foot and turned back the other way. He stopped in front of Chaiya. “Then I guess that’s it.” It was an awkward thing to say, wholly inadequate, but he had never lost a mother before and was unsure what one said at these times. For a moment, he did wish Esa was here. For all her ambition and obsession with propriety, she was still his big sister. She would know what to say.

  “Sit, Cousin,” Chaiya said. “There’s one more thing.”

  Okoa stopped his pacing. He didn’t sit but folded his arms across his chest and leaned against the wall behind him. “Go on.”

  Chaiya reached into the fold of his shirt and withdrew a sheet of slim yellowed paper. It had been folded and sealed with the glyph his mother had used to sign her name to official documents. He handed it to Okoa.

  “What is this?” Bark paper was rare in Tova, imported from Cuecola. The process for making it was laborious and lengthy. Most paper was kept by the celestial tower for its records and star charts, but the Sky Made clans each had a store of its own for civic matters.

  “Yatliza entrusted it to me upon your birth.”

  “My mother gave this to you when I was born? How could that be? You must have been a child.”

  “I was thirteen. A child, but not much of one. I had received my first egg, hatched Kutssah, and if you recall, my mother had already died.”

  Okoa remembered now. He did not recall Chaiya’s mother because Okoa had not yet been born when his aunt died, but he realized this letter was probably meant to be held in trust to her. In her absence the letter had gone to her only child, Chaiya. And now it came to him.

  “What should I do with this?” he asked, looking at Chaiya for guidance.

  “Open it. Read it.”

  Okoa held the paper to his chest. It was his mother’s last words, but they were words that had been written twenty years ago and not meant to be read until this day. What had his mother thought to write upon the birth of her son? Words of love, no doubt. Of the future. Perhaps simply an echo of the star chart that all Sky Made had drawn by the priests upon birthdays and funerals.

  “Should I open it now?”

  “If you like.” Chaiya’s eyes watched him, and Okoa felt a sudden shiver of foreboding. He trusted his cousin with his life. But something, a feeling he couldn’t name, told him to wait.

  He tucked the paper into his shirt, his pulse spiking with anxiety. “I think I’d like to read it first alone. You understand.”

  Chaiya’s eyes narrowed, more in hurt than suspicion. He stood abruptly.

  “Of course,” he said smoothly. “You are right not to trust me.”

  “I-I’m sorry, Cousin. I do trust you, of course I do. But I just need to read this alone.” He couldn’t explain his sudden discomfort, but he knew to trust his instincts, and his instincts were telling him Chaiya was not telling him something. Not lying, but not being honest, either.

  Chaiya’s anger softened in understanding. He grasped Okoa by the shoulder, shaking him roughly, a gesture of camaraderie. “I’ll bunk with Kutssah out in the open air tonight. Meet me at first light in the aviary. We have a long flight back to Tova, and with Kutssah carrying us both, we will move slower.”

  “Can she bear both our weights? We are not small men.”

  “Of course, Cousin. I would not have come all this way if she could not.” He smiled, showing red-stained teeth.

  Teeth like a predator, Okoa thought. And stained as if for ceremony. Or battle. Which didn’t help his calm.

  Chaiya embraced him in farewell. Okoa wondered if the older man could hear his elevated heart rate.

  “Tomorrow, then,” Chaiya said.

  “Yes,” Okoa agreed. “Tomorrow. First light.”

  Once he was sure Chaiya was well on his way back to the aviary, he left the mess, taking the back way and weaving through the high-grass fields until he arrived at the barracks. It was only a few hours past sunset, although it felt like it couldn’t possibly be the same day Chaiya had arrived. Hadn’t weeks passed? Years?

  All the other cadets were still at the evening meal, so he quietly crawled onto his straw sleeping mat. He pulled a small box from his nearby belongings, struck flint, and lit resin to cast a weak light, enough for him to read by.

  The seal broke cleanly. In all those years, Chaiya had not tampered with the letter or tried to read it. He felt a pang of guilt. Perhaps he was misjudging his cousin, being unfair. But Okoa had not imagined that glimpse of Chaiya’s face as he left that was considering, calculating, and completely sober.

  He carefully unfolded the paper, which had gone cracked and stiff in the intervening years. On the paper was a single symbol. Okoa’s eyes widened.

  He had been wrong. These were not words of love or sentiment, things said from a mother to a son upon his birth. These words were a warning. A prediction.

  He ran a finger over the ink.

  On the paper was a single glyph: the glyph of life with a diagonal line breaking the symbol in half, shattering “life.”

  It could be interpreted in a number of ways—a life ending, a life changed or cut short or cut in half. And it was most likely meant as a warning for the child Okoa, a reading of the stars upon his birth, a warning about his possible fate.

  But Okoa didn’t think so.

  For him, the glyph was clear.

  His mother had been murdered.

  CHAPTER 16

  THE CRESCENT SEA

  YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

  (19 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)

  Impress a man today, and he’ll expect you to impress him tomorrow, too.

  —Teek saying

  Xiala’s morning had gone well enough. She had risen early to chart their course for the day, the sun indicating the eastern horizon at her back. Every captain of a vessel had a way to map their course, most using the methods they learned under the apprenticeship of other captains. These captains were from Cuecola or the coastal cities along the Crescent Sea. But Xiala used the way her mother and aunts had taught her, the Teek way to read the sea, as ancient and true as the ocean herself. It was part instinct, part memorization, and all observation. Not so much looking as knowing what to look for. She was confident she could find her way to anywhere on land across the open water within a dozen square miles.

  Dawn was the most important time of the day for navigating, when the sun squatted on the horizon. With the sun low, its line of light stretched long and narrow along the water, an easy path west to follow. Once east and west were marked, she knew north was to her right and south to her left.

  As the sun climbed in the sky, its path of light would widen, too diffused to be the sole source of
determining direction. So Xiala studied the waves, too. Their shape and swell pattern and the path they followed toward the shore. And she noted the wind, and from where it came, and marked that direction. She looked for seabirds leaving the shore to fish in the deep atolls, and later she would mark their paths home and she would know which way land was.

  All of this she did, holding the details in her memory, knowing that keeping track of these markers throughout the day would keep them alive, and losing track of them would mean death. When she was satisfied that she had plotted their course north-northwest toward the Tovasheh and there were enough ways to know where northwest was once land had slipped from view, she called for the first shift to drop paddle.

  Callo echoed her command from the bow, and the men shouted it back to them both. And they were away, pulsing through the waters, headed for open sea.

  The men were in surprisingly good spirits. Xiala’s gamble on the feast and good sleep on the cay having paid off. They came back that morning with smiles and happy greetings, hauling Patu’s cooking supplies and newly filled pots of fresh water. The mood was bright with anticipation of a new day that felt full of the promise of adventure, so infectious that Xiala couldn’t help but feel some of their optimism, too.

  She had expected someone to mention Serapio’s strange appearance last night, but no one did. Perhaps they were willing to ignore it, or pretend like it never happened, to keep the peace.

  When she had first turned to face Serapio, she would have sworn a great black bird hovered above him, its head blocking the moon and its wings flaring out as wide as the ship behind it. It had chilled her to the bone, sent a primal fear screaming through her brain that had made her forget to call her Song. If that bird had wanted to reach down and rip her limb from limb with its massive black beak, she would have stood there with her mouth hanging open and let it.

  And if the bird wasn’t enough to terrorize, there was the man himself. The black robe like a shroud, the bandage over his eyes, the red-stained teeth. He was a nightmare vision, something out of a children’s cautionary tale.

  But then the Obregi had spoken, and all her fear evaporated on the tide of his stilted Cuecolan and his awkward hello. It was as if a veil had been lifted, and suddenly she could see he was young and strangely eager and, above all, human. She was about to invite him to join the crew when Callo threw the ward against evil, and Xiala realized the veil may not have lifted for everyone. She’d hustled the Obregi to the ship as fast as she could after that, sat with him through a brief but surprisingly pleasant meal, and finally ushered him off to bed with an understanding between them. The suggestion for him to dress as the others and join the crew on deck the next day had been an impulsive one. A hope that perhaps without the nightmare trappings to distract them, the crew would see what she saw, which was a strange man, most assuredly, but only a man.

  She had been wrong.

  Serapio appeared just as the sun breached the horizon in full, and it was as if the sun, upon seeing him there, hesitated. Shadows fell across the ship without clouds to prompt them and the wind that had been barely a breeze moments ago picked up in earnest. It rattled the reed awning and sent chop against the hull violently enough that Xiala had to spread her feet to stay standing. Others were not so lucky. Poloc slid across the rowing bench, arms flailing. Baat, who was sitting between Poloc and the wall of the canoe, tilted seaward, hitting rough up against the rail, barely avoiding going overboard.

  Then the world seemed to hiccup, and the sun found its course again and everything was as it had been—light, no shadows, no wind—except the waters still beat against the wooden panels starboard. Proof she had not imagined it.

  Serapio had done as she had advised. He wore a thigh-length laborer’s skirt wrapped around his waist, held in place by a string belt. His hair, which had been hidden by the cowl last night, was the black of a starless night and fell to his spare shoulders in a windswept mass. He still wore the cloth over his eyes, as she had suggested. But she had not thought to ask what the rest of his body looked like.

  Scarred, Balam had said. And she had conveniently forgotten, perhaps too charmed by his strange manner.

  But scarred he was.

  Someone none-too-skilled had taken a knife to his upper body and carved. On his bare chest was the bird she had seen last night, but in skeletal relief with gaping eyeholes and a sharp beak that pointed down toward his stomach. It was a crow’s skull that started at the dip in his throat and covered his chest. It had been recently outlined in red dye, which made it stand out even more. Arching across his back were great wings, the feathers painstakingly detailed. They, too, had been outlined with red dye. There were other scars, too, on his arms and legs, each of them suggesting flight in some way.

  “Mother waters,” Xiala murmured. If she had had any doubts about seeing that great spectral crow above him last night, they died immediately. And then she remembered another crow, one that hovered above her with preternatural intelligence, and she knew his was the face she had seen on the pier before they set sail. He had something to do with that crow that had watched her, although she wasn’t sure how. She rubbed at her arms, suddenly chilled despite the warmth of the morning.

  The crew had fallen silent. She didn’t know if they had seen the same vision that she had last night, but certainly this would not allay their superstitions. She stepped forward, unsure what she would say or do, but knowing she had to do something.

  “Odo Sedoh.”

  It was Loob who had spoken. Xiala turned to him. He was sitting on a row bench facing Serapio, his eyes wide.

  “What?” she asked.

  Loob looked to her and then around at the crew. “Odo Sedoh.” His voice was breathy with awe. “The grandfather crow.” He turned to Serapio. “You say you are Obregi, but this I recognize from Tova. My wife is from Tova. Not Crow clan.” He shook his head adamantly, as if such a thing was unthinkable. “But I know it. The Odo. The Crows. That’s you.” He pointed at Serapio.

  Serapio had turned his head toward Loob when he started talking, listening but still standing just outside the small shack where he slept, as if ready to make a retreat should he need to.

  “That is I,” he said.

  Some of the men were muttering, words that sounded angry, but Loob cut them off.

  “No, you don’t understand!” he said loudly, coming to his feet. “If the Odo Sedoh travels with us, if we are taking the Odo Sedoh to Tova”—he nodded vigorously as if the truth of their mission had just occurred to him—“then we are blessed. We travel with a god’s favor to the Holy City.”

  “Not my god,” Patu said, and Xiala was surprised to hear him speak. She had never taken him for being a religious man, or even one of the more superstitious ones like Callo.

  “Your only god is your stomach,” someone said. It was Baat, Loob’s friend. “What do you know of gods?”

  Patu was staring at Serapio, arms crossed and chin jutting forward like a petulant child. “I give my offerings to the jaguar god. The Cuecolans do not know this crow god.”

  “We aren’t in Cuecola,” Baat said, sounding exasperated. “Besides, your jaguar god has been dead three hundred years. It’s blasphemy to talk of jaguar gods these days.”

  “Baat’s right,” Poloc said. “Cuecola pays tithe to the Sun Priest, does it not?”

  “And not all of us are Cuecolan,” Loob added.

  “What does it mean?” Callo asked. The others turned to him. He had walked up between the row benches from the bow of the ship. His eyes were fixed on Serapio, and his jaw was tight. “To worship this god. What does it mean? Blood? Fire? What does this crow desire?”

  “It doesn’t matter what it desires,” Xiala said. The crew turned toward her. “What matters is that we take this man to Tova as we promised. As Lord Balam paid us to do. And then we are done.”

  “Are you a Watcher?” someone asked.

  Serapio visibly shuddered as if the suggestion offended him.

&
nbsp; “He is a blessing,” Loob answered. “I tell you now. Between the Teek and the Odo Sedoh, we are surely favored!” He slapped Baat on the shoulder, laughing. Baat grunted good-naturedly and turned to his paddle, the matter settled for him.

  Xiala took a chance. “All right, then,” she said, clapping her hands together sharply. “Everyone has now seen, so back to work. All to row. We have a sea to cross.”

  That seemed to break the spell, and the crew took back up their paddles. Callo still stared, but now it was at her, not Serapio. She cocked her head. Problem?

  His eyes flickered, jaw still tight. She waited for him to say something, but he turned his back to her and went back to the bow without another word. She waited until he was past the reed awning and out of her direct line of sight before walking over to Serapio.

  He turned his head to her as she approached.

  “You did not tell me about this last night,” she said once she was before him, voice cast too low for the crew to hear. She gestured to his body.

  “About what?”

  “Your… scars.”

  “You did not ask.”

  “Ah.” She clicked her teeth, irritated. Maybe it was her fault, in part. She had asked him to come out and bare his skin. But he could have told her what they would see, should have told her. “You’re lucky Loob recognized your scars.”

  “We call them haahan.”

  “Whatever you call them, that could have gone a different way.”

  He pursed his lips, as if contemplating her words. “I don’t think so.”

  “No? Is that one of your secrets, too? Telling the future?”

  Some emotion rippled through his body. “No,” he said flatly.

  She frowned. Had her words meant something more than she thought? She reined in her anger. It had all gone well in the end, perhaps even better than she could have hoped for, thanks to Loob and his wife. And Serapio was still their honored guest.