Black Sun

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  “My name is Maaka. I am the one who sent Ashk.” He grinned, his teeth so stained it filled the cracks in his lips and the lines at the edges of his mouth. “I’ve been wanting to meet you, Okoa.”

  Okoa tried to speak, but the words would not come. His vision faded to shadows and shapes. The last he remembered was Maaka dragging him down the street in the opposite direction of the Great House.

  * * *

  “Drink this.”

  Okoa pried sticky eyes open. He was on a bed. Fresh reeds on a raised shelf, blankets that smelled recently laundered. But the room was unfamiliar. There was a man holding out a cup to him.

  Okoa grasped for some memory of the man. Maaka. From the bridge. Who had taken him from Esa.

  His hand shot to his belt, only to find he was naked, a blanket modestly draped over his lower body. He struck, hand shooting forward to knock the cup from Maaka’s hand, and then he was up on his feet, throwing a punch into Maaka’s chest that had the man stumbling back, gasping for breath.

  He didn’t wait for him to recover. He bolted for the door. Ripped it open and pulled up short. Before him was only air, and a drop straight down into the Tovasheh.

  “A sky room,” he whispered to himself.

  Maaka coughed behind him. Okoa looked back. He was dragging himself to his feet, hand to his chest. Okoa took two quick steps back and grasped the man by the nape of the woven shirt he wore. He hauled him over to the door, thrusting his upper body out into the open air.

  “Talk, or I throw you out.”

  “Calm yourself, crow son!” Maaka cried. “Please. We mean you no harm. We saved your life!”

  Okoa frowned. His memory was coming back in pieces. The fight at his mother’s funeral. The Knife who opened up his jaw with what he was sure had been a poisoned blade. With the memories came the dizziness, too. He dragged Maaka back from the precipice and released him. He dropped heavily to the floor.

  Okoa stumbled back to sit on the bed. “Where am I? And who is ‘we’?”

  Maaka rose on shaky feet and walked to the sky door. He shut the door tightly, throwing the lock, before turning to pick up the pieces of the clay cup that had shattered when Okoa knocked it from his hand. The water had spilled, and Okoa eyed it with regret. He was, in fact, very thirsty.

  “You are in my house,” the man said, voice shaking slightly. “Once I realized that you had been poisoned, I brought you here. My wife is a great healer, and I knew you had no time to spare.” Maaka set the broken pottery in a small alcove next to a resin lantern.

  “My apologies, then. I seem to have… overreacted.”

  Maaka waved Okoa’s words away.

  “It is I who should apologize. I should have realized you would wake up distraught.” He gestured toward a door in the floor that Okoa had failed to notice. “Let us go downstairs. There are people I want you to meet.”

  “And water?” he asked, embarrassed.

  “Of course.”

  The younger man stood and secured the blanket around his waist like a wrap skirt, tucking in the loose edge. “Thank you.”

  “It is my honor, Lord Okoa,” Maaka said quietly. He pulled the door open and gestured for Okoa to go first. Okoa did, climbing down the ladder to find a room filled to bursting. Body heat hit him in a wave, and Okoa briefly thought of going back up to the sleeping room. There were at least two dozen people gathered below him. At his appearance, their conversation had halted and all faces had turned up to stare. He saw before him all ages. Elders whose skin had grown loose around their necks and arms, women with newborns on their hips, those whose hair was only beginning to gray.

  He slowed but continued to the ground warily.

  “Lord Okoa,” Maaka said as he pulled the door closed above them and followed down the ladder, “I’d like you to meet the Odohaa.”

  They introduced themselves one by one, telling him their names and something of their families, and what his mother had meant to them, and how sorry they were that she had died. Maaka’s wife had made him a place to sit, placed a jug of water at his side that he gulped from unabashedly, and plied him with food. She had said nothing about the broken cup, although by the looks of their home, they did not have a lot of possessions. Maaka had not said what he did for labor, but if his wife was a healer, she must do well. Which meant they likely gave all their wealth away. Esa had mentioned the Odohaa had focused on charity work in recent years, and here seemed to be one funding source for it.

  After the last Odohaa member had introduced themselves, the room fell silent again. Okoa shifted, feeling uneasy despite the impeccable hospitality he had received. He knew it was time for him to speak, but he wasn’t sure what they wanted to hear from him. He cleared his throat.

  “Thank you to Maaka,” he began, “and to Maaka’s wife.” He had heard so many names today, and the poison, or the antidote, seemed to make his thinking fuzzy. He could not remember her name, and he flushed, embarrassed at his poor manners.

  Maaka’s wife smiled. “You don’t remember me, do you, Okoa? We played together as boys.”

  Okoa studied her face, trying to remember.

  “My mother worked in the Great House. I was older than you, but we got along well, especially at stick games.”

  “Feyou,” he said, placing her immediately. “But now you are a woman.”

  “I was always a woman,” Feyou said. “I just needed some time to become who I am.”

  “Thank you for saving my life. And for the food.”

  She nodded. “You owe me a cup, Okoa. That was one of my best.”

  “My deepest apologies. I swear I will replace it.”

  “All right, Feyou, don’t harass him,” Maaka said, a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “I didn’t bring him here for that.”

  “Why did you bring me here?”

  Maaka glanced out at the gathering and then back at Okoa. “Ashk told me that you refused our invitation outright. I was hoping that if you met us, if you saw who we are, you would not judge us so harshly. I know that among some, the Odohaa do not have the best reputation.”

  Okoa said nothing, and Maaka nodded, understanding.

  “We are people who believe,” Maaka continued, “and practice the same way as our ancestors practiced. We will not let the Sun Priest take that from us.” His voice shook with passion. “But we also must counter violence with violence. We will not let them slaughter us again. We will fight, Lord Okoa, whether you help us or not.”

  Okoa rubbed at his head. The injury on his jaw pulled, and he touched it gingerly. Feyou had coated it with a poultice to draw out the poison, and it felt clammy against his skin.

  “You do know the war college teaches peacekeeping?” he asked Maaka. “War college is a poor name for it.”

  Maaka crossed his arms. “I am not a fool. I have seen the Shield fight. And the way you attacked me when I woke you.”

  Okoa winced. “I did not mean that.”

  “No, Lord Okoa. It was good. You can teach us. And strategies against your enemies. They teach you that, do they not?”

  Okoa thought of another tactic. “But where would you get weapons? You saw what the blade of one Knife can do to a man.”

  “We make our own knives,” he said. “And Feyou can make a poison to rival anything the tower can brew.”

  “I cannot convince you this is folly, can I, Maaka? This is, how many? Thirty? Against the tower? Possibly the other Sky Made should we initiate the conflict. It’s suicide.”

  Maaka grinned, and the people in the room echoed his amusement in friendly laughter. “This is just our war council. The Odohaa tuyon. They are here to meet you, to witness what you have to say. And then they will bring it back to their own houses to share.”

  Okoa did his best to hide his shock but was sure he failed. They had formed a war council? And appointed to it new mothers and stoop-backed elders? Skies, these people were truly insane if they thought they could take on the Knives and the clans and not be butchered.

&n
bsp; Maaka tensed. “From the look on your face, I know you do not have faith, Lord Okoa Carrion Crow”—the rebuke was evident in the use of Okoa’s clan name to remind him of who he was—“but we do. It is the most powerful thing we have.”

  Okoa accepted the scolding. He did not mean to insult them, but this was ludicrous. “Faith is well and good, Maaka,” Okoa said, trying to gentle his words. “But it is easier you pray for the Crow God Reborn to appear than plan to fight the priesthood. Without a god to smooth your way, I can see no path forward for you.”

  Maaka straightened. “We are done waiting for our god to return,” he said. “We will challenge the tower with or without your help, Lord Okoa, and with or without the crow god.”

  Okoa met the eyes of the faces that surrounded him. He saw determination. Ferocity. Pride. All the qualities he hoped for in expressions young and old. The last thing he wanted to do was leave them on their own to die.

  “Very well,” he said. “We will talk more—”

  Excitement rippled through the crowd.

  “—another day.” He held up his hand to quiet them. “I am not saying I will help you. I am saying that I see you now and acknowledge that. So give me time to see what I can do.”

  “But the solstice Convergence comes soon!” someone called from the crowd. “Prophecy says we must strike on the day of the solstice when the sun is weakest.”

  Okoa wasn’t familiar with the prophecy the person was referencing, but he knew the solstice was too soon to form any kind of fighting force.

  “Time,” he repeated. “I will meet with you again soon, Maaka. But let me go home and see my sister. Let me consult my Shield and discover what wisdom we keep in the Great House about this prophecy. Then we will talk again.”

  Maaka looked at him, evaluating. Finally, he nodded. “Until that time, Lord Okoa. The Odohaa will hold you to your promise.”

  “I would expect nothing less. Now…” Okoa rested his hands on the blanket around his waist. “May I have my pants back?”

  CHAPTER 24

  CITY OF TOVA (COYOTE’S MAW)

  YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

  (12 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)

  Dry Earth for Dry Earthers. Sky Made go home!

  —Graffiti on the wall of a Maw establishment

  The Coyote’s Maw was a deep fissure in the earth that ran off the main canyon of Tova. It separated the Sky Made districts from the Dry Earth ones. The canyon was so narrow and so deep it received at most a few scant hours of indirect sunlight a day, sometimes less, depending on the time of year. And even that was limited to the top levels that catered to tourists and Sky Made who came to the Maw to play. Below that, it was perpetual darkness, the only light coming from resin lamps or pit fires.

  Long before Naranpa was born, her ancestors had carved their homes into the sides of the fissure. Why there instead of sticking to the wider and more welcoming cliffsides that would become the Sky Made districts, she didn’t know, despite what she’d said to the dedicant on the bridge on the Day of Shuttering. But she felt a profound irony in descending from a people who preferred perpetual shadow only to rise as the priest of the sun and fall again to nothing.

  The top level of the Maw was the market, and the level below that public gaming and pleasure houses. The third level gave way to houses that were more like caves that stretched back into the solid rock. All of it was connected by ledges that served as a network of looping foot trails that curved sinuously along the walls of the fissure like lines of ribbon hugging the hem of a dress. They were connected by roads so thin that even the widest ones couldn’t fit more than two people abreast and most of them fit only one. The roads themselves ran only the length of any given level. They were connected to each other by ladders for the human traffic and platforms, miniature versions of the gondola, for everything else. Naranpa had lived on the fifth level as a child and done most of her begging on levels one and two, but she knew the Maw stretched down all the way to the river.

  She exited the gondola on the first level directly into the main market. The smell of cooking food hit her first. Rich and dense, the scent of cakes stuffed with corn and peppers and stews of squash, beans, and turkey wafting from the open doors of eating houses and the open pits and shared kitchens that characterized the district. Her mouth watered. She hadn’t eaten such rich food since before the Shuttering, the simple but nourishing meal at Ieyoue’s notwithstanding. And she had never been able to afford this kind of food when she lived in the Maw. But now she returned with a purse full of cacao, more Sky Made than Dry Earth, and she realized she could buy anything she wanted.

  Looking around her, she saw the Maw had avoided a curfew. People filled the streets, some finishing their evening shopping under the glow of torchlight but most already out carousing for the evening’s entertainment. Women in bright one-shouldered dresses that bared skin, despite the cold, and men in leggings and hip skirts adorned with colorful string and embroidery. Music poured from doorways, flute and drum and trumpet, accompanied by singing and the slap of dancing feet.

  She didn’t remember the Maw being this loud and alive, but perhaps her faulty memory was due to the more conservative and reserved life she had been living inside the celestial tower. Twenty-three years of dour penitence to ensure the return of the sun had soured her to such unrestrained celebration. Although she had to admit, it was joyful, primal. There was something about it that felt vital.

  At first when she saw the red ribbon tied around a young woman’s upper arm, she thought nothing of it, but as she traveled farther into the Maw and saw more and more people wearing the ribbon and shopfronts offering bunches of dried marigolds and white shells to burn incense in, she recognized it for what it was: the Maw was still grieving Yatliza’s death. The Sky Made clans had put their mourning regalia aside after the funeral, but Dry Earth had not.

  Naranpa had been raised on the old Dry Earth ways of mourning—turquoise for remembrance and corpse ash in your hair. But all she saw around her was marigolds and incense, just like in the Sky Made districts. It made her sad to see the Dry Earth ways forgotten, but then, who was she to speak? She had left that side of herself well behind. She would be a hypocrite to begrudge the people here their dried flowers when she wore Sun Priest robes day in and day out. Or, at least, she used to.

  “A commemorative ribbon?”

  Naranpa turned to find a woman, clearly a shopkeeper, asking. She held out a narrow band of red string. The same one that half the market was wearing. On a whim, Naranpa took it. She tied it to her arm and then reached into her bag to retrieve a handful of cacao for payment.

  “Only one,” the shopkeeper said with a smile as she plucked the desired number of beans from her palm.

  “I’m looking for someone,” Naranpa ventured. “Perhaps you can help me?”

  The woman looked doubtful, but she glanced at Naranpa’s plain but clearly expensive clothing and nodded.

  “A local boss. He may go by Denaochi.”

  The woman had looked amused before, mildly indulgent, but now her expression went flat. “I don’t want any trouble,” she said, taking a step back.

  Naranpa hastily reached into her bag and pulled out more cacao. “I don’t, either. He’s a… relative,” she said, improvising. “And I’m visiting from out of town. My mother promised his mother that I’d call on him.”

  The shopkeeper gaped. “He’s got a mother?” She made the sign to ward off evil. “No, sir. You seem kind enough, but I wouldn’t go seeking him out.” Her mouth seemed to twist, as if she purposefully was avoiding saying his name. “He’s not who your family thinks he is.”

  Sir? It took a moment for Naranpa to remember how she was dressed. She grabbed the woman’s hand before she could move away. She pressed the cacao into it. The shopkeeper’s eyes widened. It was probably more than she made in a season.

  “I promised.”

  Finally, the woman nodded. “Second level, gambling house called the Lupine. He’s known to frequen
t it. Has his ringers fleecing gulls at the patol table.” She flushed. “You go, and if he wants to be found, he’ll find you.”

  Naranpa nodded.

  “Don’t mention my name, or this shop!” she added hastily. “I don’t want his eye on me.”

  “Of course not,” Naranpa murmured.

  Now she had a lead, and a solid one at that. Iktan was right; it wasn’t hard to find her brother if someone wanted to look. Had she really been that naive to think she was so severed from her past? The thought both comforted her and depressed her as she made her way down the winding path to the switchback that led to the second level.

  She found the Lupine easily enough. A windowless roundhouse built into the cliff wall, only the front half of the circle visible from the street. On its whitewashed wall was the painting of the eponymous tiered purple desert flower. Patrons had to ascend a ladder to enter from a trapdoor in the roof, much like the ceremonial roundhouses of the districts, but this one in the Maw was decidedly secular. A large man squatted at the entrance, a war club resting in one meaty hand. He eyed Naranpa as she climbed the ladder.

  Here was the test. The reason she had chosen to dress in a masculine style. She knew the gaming houses were often segregated and hoped she had made enough of an effort to pass. As she reached the roof, she kept her head down and lifted her purse to show that it was heavy with cacao.

  The man took in her disguise, and his mouth turned down, unimpressed. But then his gaze traveled to her full purse. With a half-hearted grunt, he opened the trapdoor to let her pass.

  She peered inside but couldn’t see much. A powerful waft of rich tobacco and fermented cactus beer hit her full force, and she swayed. She caught the big man grinning and steeled herself to the task at hand.

  She took the ladder rungs one by one until her feet hit the stairs that circled the inside wall. She stopped a moment to orient herself. Below were male voices raised in conversation. Already there were crowds gathered at the gaming tables. Boys, and she suspected a fair number of girls dressed like boys, ran between tables, carrying food and drink and wagers back to the bosses. The bosses sat on a balcony overlooking the whole room hidden behind a cloud of smoke.