Black Sun

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  She stood there awkwardly, eyes downcast, the heat of embarrassment coloring her cheeks. Grateful that perhaps he couldn’t see her. But who was she kidding? He was studying her. Listening to her heartbeat, sensing her growing mortification, smelling her arousal or whatever he did to read her so well without the benefit of sight. She thought seriously about having more balché to numb her embarrassment but decided against it, and then commended herself for her amazing feat of will.

  “Tova,” he said, urgent.

  She glanced up. His hair was tousled from her hands, his lips slightly swollen from being pressed against hers. Definitely a man but perhaps a bit of a monster, too? The same could be said of her. And did it matter at all, these labels and categories, when it was just the two of them here, together?

  “I’ll get you to your meeting with the Sun Priest,” she said finally. “I made a promise, after all.”

  He seemed satisfied by that. “Do you want to tell me a story?”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, surprised at his request. “No, Serapio,” she said, another laugh wanting to break free from the hurt place in her heart. “No stories tonight.”

  “All right. Shall I sit with you, anyway? While you Sing to the sea?”

  She rubbed at her missing pinkie joint. He was dangerous, unfathomably attractive, and clearly on some single-minded mission that made him entirely unavailable. Oh, Xiala, she thought, tell him to go away. Say no. Say. No.

  “Sure.” She dropped to the captain’s bench and patted the space next to her. “I’ve even got a story for you. About a doomed mermaid and the mysterious lover who rejects her. You’ll like it. I swear.”

  CHAPTER 27

  CITY OF TOVA (COYOTE’S MAW)

  YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

  (8 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)

  The people of Tova have a love for gameplay. It is manifested most in the varied gambling houses of Coyote’s Maw, and in a very popular dice game called patol. Patol is as popular in Tova as the ball court is in Cuecola. I thought the game only an amusement at first, but my host informed me that the play itself was sacred. They consider it another way to unite earth to the heavens. I pointed out that it was most often played for cacao. He adamantly objected and explained the philosophy to me and with all due patience, but I failed to understand.

  —A Commissioned Report of My Travels to the Seven Merchant Lords of Cuecola, by Jutik, a Traveler from Barach

  Naranpa thought the golden-haired man would lead her to the balcony where the bosses sat, but instead he took her farther into the gambling house, well past the half-circle walls that marked the front of the roundhouse. Slowly, the crowd thinned, patrons and runners and the smell of drink giving way to empty halls, the scent of earth, and semidarkness.

  Resin lanterns were staggered along the floor to light the way. They glowed faintly, only enough to show one where their feet should go. They didn’t ward off the foreboding growing inside her, and it did nothing to counter the reality of going farther underground. Adrenaline from the patol table still lingered in her veins, but now it was making her tired, disoriented, wary of every shadow. The ground sloped down, deeper into the heart of the Maw.

  The man glanced over his shoulder once to check on her. She gave him a reassuring nod, but he had already turned away. She found herself struggling with the limited air. Breathe like a Dry Earther, she admonished herself. The air is less here, so deep into the rock. So stop gulping like a spoiled Sky Made. Have you been away that long, Nara?

  “How much farther?” she finally asked, her voice thin.

  “Not much farther.”

  She forced herself to concentrate and mark the route in her head, a thing she’d done hundreds of times as a child. Back then, it had been instinctual, but now she found it exceedingly difficult. Before long she couldn’t remember which way they’d come, and she was quite sure she would not be able to find her way back alone.

  This is on purpose, she thought, to intimidate me. Remind me that I have no power here. That this place is not mine anymore.

  They came to an abrupt halt. “Here,” he commanded.

  She peered through the shadows. “Where?”

  He gestured her forward, but she couldn’t see anywhere to go until she looked down.

  They stood at the lip of a hole. She saw now that there was a ladder protruding from the opening. Narrow wooden poles stretching up to her knees. She would have to sit with her feet dangling over the edge, reach forward until she was almost falling, and grab the poles.

  “You want me to climb that?” she asked, disbelieving.

  He nodded.

  “Is there another way?” She thought of her adventure on the tower wall earlier. After all the walking to get to the Maw, she was already fatigued and dreaded scaling that wall again upon her return.

  “I am instructed to tell you that the true Nara could climb anything.”

  She barked a laugh. “That was twenty years ago,” she protested.

  “Twenty-three,” a voice called, so loud and clear she could have sworn the speaker was standing next to her. “Come down, Sister.”

  “Denaochi?”

  “You’ve gone to all this trouble to find me,” her brother said, amusement in his voice. “What’s a few more steps?”

  She looked at her guide, but he stood, implacable.

  A game. Denaochi was playing a game with her. Fine. She would play.

  She sat, grimacing at how hard it was to lower herself to the floor with any sense of dignity. She let herself fall forward and grabbed for the poles. Her whole body followed, too fast, and she slammed into the ladder, a curse on her lips. She scrambled until one foot was planted on the first rung. And then the other. The narrow rungs dug uncomfortably into her feet, her climbing shoes offering little protection.

  The climb was shorter than she anticipated, a mere six steps down into the darkness. She could still see golden-hair above her, almost close enough to reach out and touch his foot if she’d been a bit taller. There was a tunnel to her right, the entrance just high enough that she didn’t have to duck to go through. But she was short. Most people would have to bend their necks, perhaps even hunch their backs, to enter. He makes them come to him humbled, she thought.

  She walked through, but just like the climb down, the passage was brief, and after only a handful of steps, the space opened wide.

  She stood in a room bigger than most in the Maw. Certainly bigger than the two-room cave house she had grown up in. It was twenty paces across both ways, and resin lanterns hung from the ceiling well above her head and diffused soft light down into the room. It was spacious and well lit by Maw standards, but still small and claustrophobic to her acquired Sky Made sensibilities. There was a large table that served as a desk in the center of the room, and behind it stood a seat-backed chair of foreign import. A Tovan-style bench sat in front for guests. She sensed more than saw someone in the far corner of the room, seated on the floor. They were hidden in the shadows, clearly an observer, perhaps some kind of security. But she didn’t have time to analyze it further as her little brother, and it could only be him, greeted her.

  “Welcome, Sun Priest,” he said, his tone wide and mocking. “I would have had a feast prepared, but I didn’t know you were coming.”

  She ignored his jibe. She had expected as much, and likely deserved it. What she hadn’t expected was the flood of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her. Her breath caught in her throat, and she blinked rapidly, fighting back sudden tears.

  She hadn’t seen him since he was six, but she would have recognized him anywhere. It was those eyes. Big and black and liquid, ringed by delicate lashes even now. Her mother had always said Denaochi had the prettiest eyes of them all. He had been a lovely child, but now, as an adult, she could see that much of that loveliness had long been driven out of him. He was lean now, the way the coyotes on the eastern plains were lean in winter. He looked hollowed out, a
man of perpetual hunger. His black hair was greased back from his face and razored short above his ears. A long thick scar cut across one cheek from ear to nose, proof that someone had once come close to killing him. He wore a lip plug and matching jade earrings. Layers of jade, turquoise, and coral necklaces looped his corded neck over an elaborately embroidered shirt. An expensive mantle of porcupine quills splayed out across the back of his chair.

  “Ochi,” she said, opting to greet him by his childhood nickname.

  He stared. “Are you crying, dear sister?”

  “It is good to see you,” she said, simply. “I have missed you.”

  He scoffed, but there was something rough in his voice. Grief of his own? She could only hope.

  “Are we starting our reunion with lies, then?” he asked.

  She flinched. Of course, he was bitter. He had every right. She had left at the first opportunity and never looked back. “I truly mean it. It has been too long.”

  “Twenty-three years by my count. I could possibly provide you with the exact day count, to the hour, if you like.” He leaned forward, folding his hands on the desk before him. “But keeping calendars is your job, is it not, Priest?”

  She made herself walk to the bench and sit across from him. This close, Naranpa noticed that he was missing three fingers on his right hand, two completely and one cut off at the second knuckle, and his hands themselves were riddled with burn scars, as if they had been held in a fire.

  She suppressed a shudder. His eyes flickered, as if he had caught her gawking.

  “Do you hate me, then?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said, gaze meeting hers, “but I understand why you left us. I would have done the same had I been given the chance.”

  She closed her eyes. She had meant to come to her brother unbent, proud of her decision to get out and never look back, of her years of service to the priesthood. But she had been lying to herself, and all the shame of her abandonment overwhelmed her. “I am sorry I left you alone.”

  “Alone?” He slammed a hand against the desk so hard she jumped. Whoever, or whatever, sat in the shadowy corner behind him startled, too, letting loose a small chittering cry. It made the hair on Naranpa’s neck rise. “You misunderstand, Sister. I was never alone.”

  “But… didn’t they die?”

  “They? You can’t even bring yourself to say their names? Do you mean your forgotten family?”

  She raised her head. “They were never forgotten!”

  He wagged a finger at her. “See? I knew it. I told Mama that Nara would never forget us. Off to her fancy tower, a place among the Sky Made, but she was a good girl and would never forget her family. I kept telling her that on her deathbed, in fact, as the coughs rattled through her lungs and stole her away.” His voice had grown cold. “And when a boss tossed Akel from the cliffs for skimming his winnings to pay for Mama’s medicine, I told her that again. And when that same boss showed up at our door and demanded payment, and the only thing we had to pay with was me, I told her then, too. And when that first Sky Made scion offered more cacao than we’d seen in a year for one night with me in that pleasure house, I know for a fact that I whispered that to the pillow he held against my face.”

  A wave of nausea rolled over her. “You worked the pleasure houses?” Now her memories of what a beautiful boy he had been seemed sinister, tainted.

  “Is that so shocking? The Maw makes all of us whores for the Sky Made.”

  Is that what he thought of the priesthood? Whores for the Sky Made?

  “Not always by choice, I admit,” he continued, his voice still dispassionate, as if simply catching up with an old friend. “And only until they realized that I had a taste for more violent bed play. For a while, that became my salvation, I’ll not deny it, and I served my time in houses that catered to clients of particular taste, but then I met a man who paid my debt.”

  “To own you?”

  “On the contrary,” Denaochi said. “To set me free.” He smiled, but it was a bitter thing, twisted and dark, and she knew for a fact that the benefactor, if that’s what he had been, was dead by Denaochi’s hand. No, this was not her sweet little brother anymore. The suffering she had left in her wake had formed him, warped him into who he was. Was this her fault? Her doing? Or would it have all happened the same with her there? Would she have been the one taken into the pleasure houses to pay Akel’s debt instead? Would she be the murderer with blood on her hands?

  Her brother straightened on a deep inhale, eyelids fluttering open and closed. “My apologies. My anger makes me lose myself. I was a child then, but that was a long time ago. Nevertheless, seeing you again, after all these years…”

  She bowed her head, more tears lining her eyes and her hands folded in her lap. “I was a child, too,” she whispered. “A selfish one. And I am sorry.”

  He leaned back, watching her. Looked as if he might speak again, but instead clapped his hands to break the dark spell his memories had woven around them.

  “But we are children no longer,” he said with another breathy laugh. “Either of us. Look what you’ve become.” He gestured expansively. “The fucking Sun Priest of Tova!”

  Not anymore, she thought. She said, “And you, the most notorious crime boss in the Maw.”

  “You flatter me,” he said, a smile as cold and insincere as any the Sky Made matrons had mastered twisting his mouth.

  And suddenly Naranpa realized she had made a mistake seeking out her brother, as if after all this time they would know each other at all, and that he would have any sympathy for her. It was folly of the highest order. Arrogance on her part, even.

  But you are here for a reason, Nara, she reminded herself. A reason bigger than your shame and discomfort with your past. She had shrunk down in her seat as if his words had been physical blows for her to dodge, but now she straightened. She took a deep breath before she spoke.

  “I’ve come because I need your help.”

  Denaochi steepled his fists under his chin and leaned forward. “I’m listening.”

  She could feel sweat on the back of her neck, and her heart raced under his gaze, but she forced herself to keep going. “Tova is in danger. And it needs your help.”

  “The city needs my help?” His voice was flat with disbelief. “I thought you said that you needed my help.”

  “Yes, I need your help,” she admitted. “In order to help the city,” she added hastily. “I need you to help me help the city.”

  A lopsided smile curved his lips. “What could I possibly offer the Sun Priest? You have assassins at your call, healers to do your bidding. The Sky Made matrons don’t take a shit without consulting your star charts. What help could I give you? I’m sorry, the city. Unless… it’s these very people who are the problem.”

  She swallowed.

  “That’s what it is, isn’t it?” he said, voice soft with surprise. “You’ve been betrayed.”

  She thought he would laugh, mock her for her humiliation, but he only stared.

  She smoothed her hands across her lap. “I seem to have acquired quite a few enemies, it’s true.”

  “Anyone who rises as you have will collect them like flies.” He leaned back, fingers tapping against his chin. “They hate you, don’t they? Because you’re not Sky Made, no matter how hard you try. You can’t quite wash that Dry Earth stink off your skin, can you, Sister?”

  She did not enjoy his all-too-prescient insight, but she knew he was not wrong. “I have had my challenges in the tower, I admit, but I want to be clear, Ochi. I am not here for me. I came to you because the city—”

  He waved a hand, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling. “Oh, this talk of the city. I know you mean it, Nara. I see your sincerity. But they’re trying to kill you, aren’t they? Your precious priesthood wants you dead.”

  She shook her head. “Not the priesthood. The Crow cultists. An assassination attempt was made on my life. Two attempts. We caught the last man. He was killed before he could be
questioned properly, but he bore the haahan.”

  “Carrion Crow does hate you,” he acknowledged with a little more speed than she liked. “They would not hesitate to murder the Sun Priest, slaughter the whole tower if they thought they could get away with it. But they are much too smart to attempt an outright assassination. They know the other clans would turn against them. Plus, they bide their time for spiritual reasons.”

  “Waiting for the return of their god,” she said, waving the nonsense away like the delusion it was.

  “Be glad they’ve put their vengeance in the hands of an angry god and not taken up knives against you.”

  “You just said they weren’t fools. Taking up weapons against the tower would be foolish, indeed.”

  “Exactly. I would suggest that if someone is trying to kill you, then you look a little closer to home.”

  She knew what he was implying, but it sounded preposterous, particularly in light of her recent dethroning. “If the priesthood wanted me dead, they have a hundred times a day to kill me in a myriad of ways.”

  “Ah, would any of them put the blame on Carrion Crow? But with the murder of their matron, perhaps they have decided they can no longer wait.”

  Had she heard him right? A chill slid down her back. “Yatliza died in her bed.”

  He tsked, waving a finger at her. “They pulled her body from the river. I have people close to every matron who report to me. It is the truth, although Carrion Crow is trying their best to keep it secret. The new matron and her Shield are no friends to the cultists, and my guess is if the cultists knew their matron had been murdered, Tova would run with blood. Their own blood, perhaps, but the damage would be done either way.”

  “But…” She shook her head. Murdered? “That can’t be right.” Skies, did Iktan know? She flushed, feeling like a fool. Of course Iktan knew. The question was why xe hadn’t told her.

  Denaochi narrowed his eyes, at first in confusion and then in mirth. “You really didn’t know? How interesting. I assumed the priesthood were the ones responsible for her death.” He smiled, darkly amused. “I think you’ve been trusting the wrong people, Sister. But, you see, you’re not entirely wrong about Tova being in danger. There’s a storm coming, true enough, but not from where you think.”