“Nara!” Iktan called, and xe was at her side, pulling her into an embrace. It was a rare show of public affection and one that likely made her look weak, but she didn’t care. Xir arms were strong and solid, and the warmth of xir body against hers meant xe was very much alive.
“You’re alive,” she murmured.
“Yes, I’m fine. It is hard to kill me, Nara. You should know that.”
“I do,” she said, laughing. “And I’m grateful for it.”
They broke their embrace, and Nara looked around the room, cheeks flushed and tears in her eyes. “My apologies for interrupting.”
“It’s no interruption,” Haisan said with a gentle smile. “We are glad to see you well.”
“Let me take you to your rooms to rest,” Iktan said.
“No, you are in Conclave. I’ll join you. I feel like I’ve been gone an eternity.”
“We were just finishing,” Abah said, her mouth curved in an indulgent smile. “Let Iktan care for you. You’ve had such a difficult time, Nara. I can send a healer later if you like.”
“That’s not necessary,” Iktan said, dark eyes cutting to the seegi. Abah only smiled wider. Like a cat who ate the bird, Naranpa thought.
“What’s happened?” she asked, suspicious.
“I’ll explain later,” Iktan whispered close to her ear. Xe turned Naranpa toward the exit.
Naranpa frowned. She had obviously missed something important, but she wasn’t sure what. But Iktan’s hand was firm against her back, so she let xir lead her away. Once they were back in her rooms, she asked, “What’s happened, Iktan? Abah looked much too satisfied.”
“I’ve asked them to send you up some tea.”
“I don’t need tea. I need to know why you were in Conclave.”
“Nevertheless.” A knock on the door, and moments later xe returned with a tray holding a clay pot and two short cups. Xe set the tray down and poured her a cup.
The smell of lavender, fragrant and soothing, filled the room. She smiled despite herself. Tea did sound wonderful. She took the cup when offered. Let it warm her hands before she took a tentative sip. It was too hot to enjoy. “Now, tell me what you were discussing.”
“Nothing important.”
“It looked important. Important enough for you and Haisan to argue about it.” Of course, they would argue about the color of a spring sky, but she didn’t mention that.
Iktan licked nervously at xir lips, a gesture she had never seen from xir before. “We were discussing retaliation.”
She almost dropped her mug. “For what? Against whom?”
“He was going to harm you. Harm the Sun Priest. Something public must be done, and swiftly.”
Her hands were shaking too badly to hold her cup. She set the tea down on the table beside her.
“Who?”
“Okoa Carrion Crow.”
She had expected it, had known it would be him. She was relieved he was still alive. She thought they had connected, if only for a moment, and perhaps that meant that the tower could begin to heal the wound between it and the clan. But this had only rent the wound wide open.
“He wasn’t going to harm me. It was a misunderstanding. Someone pushed him on the ice. Did you not see?”
Iktan frowned. “He meant to strike you.”
“No…” She stood, pacing across the room. “No, Iktan. He had complimented me. He was only going to thank me.”
She could feel Iktan’s mood shift, the caregiver replaced by the exasperated commander of her guard.
“They want you dead. How many more times must they try before you believe it?”
“You told me the assassin on the Day of Shuttering may not have been Carrion Crow.”
“I said not to rush to conclusions. But now it seems clear enough.”
“Does it? I don’t know…”
“Have we traded places now?” xe scoffed. “You convincing me Carrion Crow is innocent?”
“I don’t think Okoa meant to harm me.”
“Because he’s young and handsome?”
“What? No. No! He’s ten years too young for me and more interested in birds than women. I have absolutely no—” She laughed, incredulous. “Skies, are you jealous, Iktan?”
“Not jealous,” xe said. Iktan touched a hand to her face, cupping her cheek. “I thought you were dead, Nara. That I had failed you.”
“Oh.” She let herself relax. “No. You didn’t fail me. I’m fine.”
She kissed the edge of xir hand, and then came up on her toes to kiss xir lips. It was a familiar gesture born of old habits and rebirthed by her exhaustion. The minute she did it, she regretted it. But the damage had been done.
“Nara…” Iktan gently pushed her away.
“Oh.” Her voice was fluttery. She pressed a hand to her chest. “I-I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking. I’m just…” She exhaled. “I’m sorry.”
“There’s something else I need to tell you.”
“About your new lover? It’s none of my business, really. I was out of line.”
Xe frowned. “My…? No. The Conclave was concerned you wouldn’t agree to a public retaliation against Carrion Crow.”
“And they were right. I won’t.”
“Any action the tower takes must be unanimous, as you are well aware. So… we voted.”
Her stomach dropped. “Voted on what exactly?”
Xe looked apologetic. “Eche will take over your duties as Sun Priest until further notice, and Haisan and Abah will be at his side to ensure his success. Golden Eagle has already agreed to send in a contingent of household guards to bolster the tower’s security until we can bring to justice the ones responsible for these attempts on your life and to aid the tsiyo in any future action against the Crows.”
“What?” She turned, mouth open in shock.
“I know it is difficult to accept, and we did not come lightly to the decision.”
“We? You agreed to this?”
“We all did.”
She backed away, eyes wide. Looking for some escape. Not just from Iktan and this room but from this moment. Minutes ago she had been weeping with relief to be back in the tower and among those she thought of as her family. A contentious family, perhaps, but hers nonetheless.
Her back hit the wall behind her. Her hands were shaking, and she fought for air. The room spun.
“Breathe, Nara,” Iktan said, voice concerned. Xe reached for her, and she pushed xir hard enough that xe stumbled.
“No! I…” Her voice trembled. “You cannot take this away from me!”
Iktan’s black eyes were unhappy, but the set of xir jaw was uncompromising.
“We already have.”
* * *
Xe left her there alone with a promise to have a servant bring her a meal later on and a tsiyo on the other side of the door. Ostensibly to guard her but undoubtedly to keep her inside her room.
She sat on the bench for hours, watching the sun move across the room. She realized her gambit to restore the Sun Priest’s power had truly failed. In fact, she had somehow made things worse. Perhaps you didn’t want it badly enough, Nara, she thought to herself. Or perhaps you wanted it for the wrong reasons. But that felt like a lie. Her motivations had been pure. She had only ever thought of how to grow the priesthood, how to raise up the people of Tova. And now the worst had come to pass. Talk of retaliation against Carrion Crow, allowing the Golden Eagle guard into the sacred tower.
“It is a path of destruction,” she whispered to only herself. The priesthood had walked this path before and ruined countless lives. Perhaps Abah and Haisan and even Iktan could not see the damage that striking Carrion Crow would do, not only to the clan but to the city, to themselves.
But she could. She had lived side by side with Kiutue for years, had become his pupil and confidante. She knew only death came from death. But what could she do to stop it? She was locked in this damn room with no one on her side and no resources.
Unless.
It took her a day to decide, but once she had, it was not so difficult to obtain the things she needed. Most of them she already had in her room. Warm clothes, a woven belt she unraveled that would substitute for rope in an emergency, an old eating dagger that made a serviceable weapon, and her climbing shoes.
She waited to go until the sky was truly dark and the moon had not quite cleared the eastern mesa. She dressed warmly, thick leggings of woven cotton and a bulky formless jacket with a heavy cowl that covered her head and shadowed her face. She bound her breasts to flatten them and tied up her hair in a single topknot. She slipped thin climbing shoes on her feet, specially made from lambskin and cut to hug her toes individually. They were expensive and rare and were the tools the tsiyo used to scale walls. Iktan had gifted them to her long ago, a joke between them about her childhood spent climbing the intimidating cliffs of the Maw, but she had never had occasion to use them. She felt a pang of guilt that their first employment would be to defy her once friend, but she saw no other way.
She left by the window. As a young child she had loved climbing the Maw and searching out tunnels and secret passages with her brothers. She was good at it—small, lightweight, and fearless. She remembered her brothers’ lessons well: read your route, don’t forget your feet, arms straight and legs bent. She repeated them to herself now and hoped it was as the old ones said: one never forgot how to climb.
She pulled herself through the window, the chill slapping her senses awake. The night was cold and quiet. She tasted snow in the air and knew it would come again by dawn to turn the stones around her to slick ice.
She balanced on her toes along the thin ledge, fingers gripping rough stone. The only light to guide her was the glow of a resin lamp she had left burning in her room. It was not enough; she would have to climb through the dark.
She cautiously ran a hand across the outside wall. The rock beneath her fingers was rough. She found a niche a few paces above her head for a handhold. She wedged her fingers in and pulled herself out and over, finding a place for her foot. She reached again and repeated the process, moving up a few arm’s widths before switching directions and moving slowly down the wall. She was out now, exposed to the open air, and exhilaration thrummed through her body, her pulse loud in her ears. She moved slowly, methodically, nothing like her old self who had fearlessly scaled the Maw. But she did move, and she smiled grimly as she passed a row of narrow windows that marked the third floor. Only two stories to go, she told herself. Nothing for a Maw brat.
Wind caught at her clothes and hair, a gentle but insistent reminder that to fall now would mean broken bones at the least, death if she was unlucky. But she wasn’t unlucky, and soon enough her feet touched solid ground.
Naranpa laughed breathlessly. Part of her, that part that was all too aware of her failures, couldn’t believe she had done it. She dusted off her lightly scraped hands and shook her head. A swell of pride bubbled in her chest. It was a simple thing, but it felt good. She had had a problem and she solved it. It wasn’t so hard. A manageable danger rather than the precipice of future decisions that lay ahead. A little risk on a rock wall was much more favorable than what she had to face next.
The bridges leading back and forth from Otsa were not guarded, so it was easy work to cross the grounds of the celestial tower and make her way across the bridge to Tsay. The streets were empty, the curfew still in effect as far as she knew, so her greatest worry was being spotted by a roving guard. She pulled her hood up and kept to the corners, picking alleys over wide thoroughfares as she worked her way toward Titidi.
It was a long hour before she crossed the bridge into Water Strider territory, and another two hours across the district, but she finally found herself standing cliffside in an open-air park looking across the canyon at the Maw. She wasn’t sure how long she stared across at the place of her birth, her childhood, as a swirl of emotions warred within her. Coming here had been a desperate decision, one she felt compelled to make. But now, facing the place, knowing what came next, she hesitated. Was this folly? Surely. Would she even be welcomed? Recognized? All her doubts loomed large, but so did her desperation.
“There is only one way to know for sure,” she murmured, and made herself move.
At the edge of the park the only transportation to and from the Maw from Tova proper waited. She had used it once, at thirteen, and had never looked back. Now, at thirty-three, she would use it again, unsure of what she would find on the other side.
Rather than an easily accessible bridge, the way across to the Maw was a gondola. Although the term gondola was generous. The transport was more of a platform, maybe thirty paces wide and twenty paces deep, made of wood and connected to a thick cable of ropes that arched overhead to attach to a similar pier on the other side of the crevasse. The crevasse itself was narrow, no more than fifty paces where the airlift crossed, but the drop was three, perhaps four, times that. All that separated her and the other passengers from certain death was a flimsy wooden waist-high rail.
She paid her toll in cacao from a small leather pouch tied to her belt and crowded onto the gondola with the other passengers. Most were Dry Earthers, people who lived in the Maw or the Eastern districts farther out. They had all no doubt spent the day as servants in the Sky Made houses and were now trudging their way home, something she had witnessed her mother do countless times. There were a handful of colorfully dressed scions of the Sky Made clans in their recognizable clan colors, obviously unfazed by the curfew. They were the loudest, shouting and laughing and passing clay bottles of imported xtabentún between them. They were undoubtedly headed to the Maw for the debauchery it offered, gambling houses and pleasure dens and enticements that the more respectable parts of the city banned.
Naranpa frowned at the scions. Fools lining other fools’ purses. All for a taste of oblivion, be it found in drink or risk or between someone’s willing thighs. Such things had never appealed to her, perhaps because she had grown up seeing the ruin it made of people’s lives. Now, as the last person who could fit squeezed onto the gondola and she stood cheek to jowl with so many strangers, she felt it even more deeply. A pang of homesickness, not for the Maw but for her spacious and well-scrubbed rooms in the celestial tower, washed over her.
The gondola lurched forward, some inebriated scion screamed in delight, and Naranpa focused on maintaining her balance as she crossed into Coyote’s Maw.
CHAPTER 23
CITY OF TOVA
YEAR 325 OF THE SUN
(13 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)
Beware, beware the bitter Crow
The Knives dealt them a bloody blow
Crows hope to bring the Sun down low
A plot that surely ends in woe.
—Children’s rhyme heard in Tova
It was chaos on Sun Rock. He had only meant to grip the Sun Priest’s arm in respectful greeting, as unlikely as that had seemed at the time. But then someone had struck him from behind, and his foot had slipped, and that damned Knife was there, an open blade in their hand.
Okoa had flung an arm out, enough to throw the assassin’s aim off and stop the knife from burrowing into his heart where the Knife was no doubt aiming, but the blade had still sliced across his jaw, opening him up. The pain had burned, shocking and immediate, and Okoa had screamed.
His scream had brought the Shield and the Knife and their tsiyos, and before he could quite grasp what was happening, it had descended into violent chaos.
Chaiya was there, throwing Okoa out of the line of attack.
“To your matron!” he shouted. “Get her safe.”
Okoa’s instinct was to argue, to push his way back into the fight, but his training took over, and he ran back to his sister, calling two Shields to his side as he did.
Esa stood stunned mere paces from the sky bridge. She had been about to cross when the fight broke out.
“What is happening?” she shouted, alarmed.
“Home,” Okoa commanded grimly.
&nbs
p; “Oh, skies. Okoa! Your face!”
After the initial stinging pain, he’d forgotten about his injury.
“It’s nothing,” he said. “First we get you safe.”
She nodded, smart enough to grasp the situation, and he and the two Shields with him surrounded her and pressed through the crowd on the icy bridge. After the second time Esa almost slipped on the treacherous crossing she paused to rip the hem of her overlong dress away. She had it half gone before Okoa drew his knife and quickly cut the rest. They continued, and after what felt like an hour, they crossed onto Odo soil.
“Take her to the Great House,” he ordered the two men with him.
“What about you?” she asked, voice high with concern.
“I’m going back.”
“Okoa! No! You’re covered in blood.”
He looked down. She was right. The blood from the wound had dripped from his jaw to cover his neck and chest. Suddenly, he felt dizzy. The bridge swayed, and he wasn’t sure if it was from the rush of people still crossing over or because his vision was failing.
“Esa,” he murmured, unsteady.
“I’ve got him.”
Okoa looked up to find a man standing beside him. A Crow in white, around Chaiya’s age, his black hair cut in a straight bang and shaved to skin on the sides and shoulder-length in the back. Fresh red dye outlined the haahan on his bare chest. A cultist.
Okoa started to protest, but the man ducked under his arm and braced his body against his, slinging Okoa’s arm over his shoulder.
“Take the matron to the Great House,” he directed the Shield as if he was one of them. “I’ve got your captain. We’ll follow behind.”
The men nodded and hustled Esa away, who had no time to protest one way or the other.
Okoa swayed.
“I have you, crow son,” the man said.
“Who are you?” Okoa asked, voice slurring. He really was dizzy. A thought occurred to him. Had the blade been poisoned? Oh, skies, that treacherous Knife.
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