Black Sun

by Rebecca Roanhorse

“Don’t do it out of obligation,” she shot back, angry.

  He frowned. “I don’t. I…” He paused, his expression troubled.

  “Let me leave you to talk,” Aishe said, tying off her knot. As she passed Xiala, she touched her arm. “My invitation stands. Go to the Standard Dog near the Titidi Great House, someone will know it, and ask for me. They’ll tell you how to find me.” She squeezed gently, and then she was gone, leaving Xiala alone with Serapio.

  Xiala crossed her arms and waited for him to speak.

  His voice was hesitant, unsure. “I don’t ask you out of obligation, Xiala. I ask because I want to spend my last day with you.”

  Every excuse vanished from her mind as her heart cracked. “Mother waters, Serapio,” she whispered softly. “Why do this? Why? Aishe’s uncle doesn’t care about you. These Odohaa sound like opportunists who would only use you. You’re so young. You’ve barely lived. You don’t have to do this!”

  “This is all I can do. I thought you understood that.”

  “I do, but…” She bit her lip, holding back the words she had said a dozen times before in the past two days. “Oh, hells,” she muttered. “Who am I to convince you that life is worth living? I’m a mess. I’ve got nothing to offer you, nothing to show for my years. I can’t even go home.”

  And it made sense to her all at once. Serapio, for the first time, was coming home. To a people who didn’t know him, to a house he could never truly live in, even if all he could do was die for them. He would suffer what he must suffer because for one brief moment he would be more than himself. He would be all of Carrion Crow, the fist of his people, the sharp beak and talon of his god, and he would not be alone. And, Xiala knew well, being alone was no life at all.

  “Will you spend the day with me or not?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said. “I will not leave you until you ask me to.”

  He smiled, truly smiled. And her heart cracked a little more.

  * * *

  They left behind their travel companions and headed up the steep steps to the Holy City. Xiala had heard Tova floated in the clouds, but she had not quite understood what that meant until now.

  “Mother waters,” she murmured. “Look at this place.”

  Titidi had begun its solstice celebration in earnest, despite Aishe’s claim that the holiday crowds were thin this year, and the district’s streets were lined with people. Many were dressed in skirts dyed the bright blue of a summer sky. Others wore furs and cowled robes to keep out the cold. Musicians played on the street, and the sounds of flutes and drums filled the evening air.

  “Describe it to me,” Serapio asked. “I want to know.”

  She smiled. He sounded like he had the first night he had asked her to explain Teek sailing to him, as curious as a child.

  She told him of the people and the musicians and the beauty of the district itself. The gardens, frosted white with snow. The channels of running water that bordered the road, the great waterfall that ran through the district and that she could spot just to her left farther up. “There are trees here. Some kind of fruit tree, although now they are barren. And they’ve hung paper lanterns from them. All colors. Red, blue, green, yellow, and orange. Purple. More. They glow, Serapio, like stars against the night sky.”

  “And that scent. What is that?”

  She breathed deeply. “Bonfires everywhere. The scent you smell is the wood they burn.”

  “It’s almost sweet.”

  She inhaled again. “Spice and nuts?”

  “No. Those I’ve smelled before. Something else.”

  She looked around and finally spotted what he must be smelling. She laughed. “Chocolate. Is that it?”

  “Is that the same as kakau? I’d like to have some.”

  She led him over to a man selling the drink and bought two small cylindrical cups, one filled with the thick foamy drink.

  “What do you want in it?”

  “Chile.”

  “The hottest one,” Serapio added.

  She smiled at the vendor. “The hottest, then.”

  He added chile to the empty cup in her hand, and then she poured the drink back and forth between the cups in a long trail to let the ingredients mix. Once she was satisfied, she divided the rich liquid in each cup equally. She took a sip, and it burned her tongue.

  “It’s hot,” she warned, but Serapio had already drained half his cup.

  “What do you think?”

  “Oh,” he said, sounding happy. “It’s very good. I had something like it once before, but this is even better.”

  “They call it the food of the gods.”

  He smiled. “I know. What else?”

  She led him through the district, past children holding foot races and people dancing in the streets. She described it all to him—the ridiculous and the sublime, and he soaked it all in. As the sun began to set, they stopped at a stand where a woman was giving out candied figurines of the sun. Xiala took a figurine and gave Serapio half.

  He bit into it enthusiastically, and dark honey dripped down his chin.

  “Careful,” she warned him, reaching out to catch the slow trickle before it could dirty his clothes. He grasped her hand before she could pull away. She froze, her breath catching in her throat.

  He raised her hand to his mouth and began to lick the honey from her sticky fingers. Her whole body trembled. He paused with her thumb above his bottom lip.

  “I never enjoyed food before I met you, Xiala,” he said softly.

  “Serapio…”

  “Shhh,” he said.

  She held her breath as he continued to clean the sweet substance from her fingers one by one. And when he was done, he pressed his lips to her palm once before he let it go.

  She exhaled loudly. “Seven hells,” she murmured.

  “There’s something I want to give you.”

  “All right,” she said, her voice shaking.

  “The bargeman told me of a travelers’ inn somewhere near. I’d like to take you there.” He told her the name of the house. “I need you to lead us.”

  “What are you doing, Serapio?” she asked, voice unsteady. Her whole body felt weak, and all she could think about was the feel of his mouth against her skin.

  “I’m giving you a gift. Let me do that.”

  He held out his hand, and she took it, and they found their way to the inn.

  * * *

  Xiala had not known what to expect, but she had not expected this in all her years. The travelers’ inn was built over a natural hot spring, and Serapio had secured a private room where the water gathered in a deep pool and steam came up through wooden slats in the floor.

  Once the innkeeper had led them to the room and Serapio had locked the door, he took her to the wooden bench in the center of the room and sat her down. Carefully, slowly, he undressed her. Once she was nude, he led her to the bath, and she climbed in. She sank into the warm water with a sensuous sigh, closing her eyes and letting the tension and ache and sorrow of months fall away.

  He washed her hair first, using the fragrant soap from a nearby bench to lather her head, his long fingers caressing her scalp. Once her hair was clean, he wet a cloth, added more soap, and washed her body. He started at her feet and worked his way up, slowly and attentively, taking his time.

  The sleeves of his robe soaked through, so he pulled it over his head, discarding it in a corner. Through heavily lidded eyes she admired him. He was lean, perhaps a little too lean, but the haahan that covered his arms, chest, and back were softened in the low light of the bathing room. They told a story, she realized, of loss and sorrow and remembrance. He wears his people’s pain, she thought, and it is strangely beautiful.

  But that only made her think of tomorrow, which made her brokenhearted all over again, so she closed her eyes and concentrated on his touch.

  His hands followed the line of her body upward, massaging her calves and thighs, and when the cloth grazed the place between her legs, he paused
. She opened her legs wider, an encouragement.

  The first touch of his fingers shivered through her lower body like the kiss of lightning, hot with shock. She reached down to guide his hand, showing him what she liked. He followed her lead, and their hands moved as one. Slowly, the sensation became a warm hum that built until it crested. A wave of pleasure broke over her, and she moaned.

  “Serapio…”

  She clutched at his arm and tried to pull him closer, but he stopped her with a gentle kiss against her knuckles. He took her trembling hand, laid it across her belly, and continued to wash her. Each arm, fingers to elbow to shoulder, and across her breasts and finally the back of her neck.

  When he was finished, he wrung the water out of the cloth and hung it across the bathing bench. She watched as he replenished the coals that warmed the room and set out a cup of cool water for her.

  He gathered his wet clothes, took up his staff, and kissed the top of her head.

  “I lied, Xiala,” he whispered. “You were the one who gave me a gift.”

  And then he was gone, the door falling closed behind him.

  Xiala sank into the bath and wept, her tears mingling with the bathwater and turning it to salt.

  CHAPTER 35

  CITY OF TOVA

  YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

  (1 DAY BEFORE CONVERGENCE)

  Even when armed with blade and bow, even with an army of a thousand at her command, a spearmaiden’s greatest weapon is her tongue.

  —On the Philosophy of War, taught at the Hokaia War College

  “There’s a man here to see you.”

  Okoa looked up from the book he was reading. He sat in the library in the Great House, surrounded by ancient books made of bark paper and stones inscribed with words he could not read. Most of it was in Cuecolan, a language he was only passingly fluent in. And the celestial tower housed the books he really wanted to read, but it was surely closed to him now.

  Although perhaps not. The message he had received from someone claiming to be the Sun Priest still sat in a drawer in his desk. He had read it a dozen times and still not been sure what it meant. It contained only three glyphs: Storm, Betrayal, Friendship. He had sent a message back asking for a chance to meet but had heard nothing, and then he had been distracted by the work before him and his promise to the Odohaa and a hundred other duties as the new Shield in a city on the brink pulling at him.

  “Who is it?” he asked, rubbing his tired eyes. He half expected it to be Maaka asking why he had not returned. Okoa thought it better to cultivate a relationship with the Odohaa, at the very least so he could keep a watchful eye on them. He didn’t want to be surprised by some midnight raid against the celestial tower that ended in horror. Another reason he was here in this library digging through these texts, looking for… he wasn’t sure what. Something to convince Maaka that the Odohaa should bide their time? Or at least not take up weapons? He felt like a hypocrite. He was the one who had dismissed their belief in a resurrected god as folly, but now that they seemed to be shifting their sights to a more pragmatic solution to their vengeance, he found himself desperately wishing for some kind of sign the Crow God Reborn might be more than a madman’s prayer.

  “He says he’s a bargeman from Water Strider but his grandfather was Carrion Crow from one of the lesser families. He says he has news you will want.” The servant paused, hesitating.

  “Go on.”

  “That the Odohaa would want.”

  That got his attention. He stood, pushing away from the desk. “Bring him to my private office. I’ll receive him there.”

  The servant hurried off, and Okoa made his own way back to his rooms. He didn’t want to discuss Odohaa business in a place where eyes and ears could be watching. It was bad enough Maaka had dragged him away and he had not returned to the Great House until the next day. Esa had been mad with worry, and Chaiya, his eyes blackened and his arm bandaged from wrist to elbow, had hugged him as if he had expected to never see him again. He had explained what happened and discovered two Shields had died before the fighting had been broken up by Golden Eagle’s guard.

  “They owe us for our dead,” Chaiya had said. “And the injury to you.”

  “And they will pay,” Esa had assured them both. “The Sky Made Council will see to it. The proper way.” Which meant payment in cacao, not blood.

  After the riots, it seemed more and more citizens were sympathetic to the Odohaa, if Okoa believed the snatches of conversation he heard in the hallways. It worried him, which pushed him all the harder toward finding a solution. He just wasn’t convinced he would find it in books.

  The man was there waiting when he arrived.

  “I was told you have news for the Odohaa?”

  The man blinked. “Yes, Lord.”

  “Go on, then. I haven’t much time, and you’d best not waste it.”

  The man looked taken aback at his blunt manner, but he visibly rallied. “I have seen him.”

  Okoa frowned. “Seen who?”

  “The Odo Sedoh.”

  Okoa’s shoulders slumped. As much as he wanted to believe at this point, he found it impossible to think the Crow God Reborn was traveling down a barge on the Tovasheh. He rubbed at his neck, lips tight with disappointment. “Listen, I am sure you think—”

  “No!”

  He looked up, alert, hand going to the knife he kept at his side.

  “Please,” the man said, raising his hands in innocence. “I-I know how I must sound, my lord. That you must get people like me coming to you all the time. But there was a man on my barge who…” His voice drifted off, and his eyes took on a sheen that Okoa recognized from the gathering at Maaka’s home.

  “You should have seen him fight. He said he had been trained by a spearmaiden of Hokaia.”

  Okoa snorted. “Impossible. They rarely train men at all, and they would never train someone not at the college. I was just there. I can count the men trained by spearmaidens on the fingers of one hand.”

  “Not just a spearmaiden but a Knife of the tower.”

  “A tsiyo?” That was even more outrageous, insulting even. He leaned forward, rubbing at the place on his jaw that was still healing. “He lied to you. No one but a tsiyo trains a tsiyo. It is a sacred order. It is not done.” And they are our enemies, he thought. But he dared not say it to a stranger.

  “I saw him fight!”

  Okoa exhaled, frustrated. It was plausible this bargeman had met a man who was a good fighter, great even, but his claims were clearly a fraud.

  “And he said he was the Odo Sedoh?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “I said he was. He said he came from Obregi, had the Obregi look about him, too, but he bore the haahan, and the blood teeth, and crows dogged his steps.”

  “Crows?”

  The man nodded. “They came at his call. He talked to them, and…” His voice faltered as if he doubted his own words. “I think he used them to see. He did not catch me spying on him, but I watched him sit in his room alone lost in a trance, and I believe he flew with the crows.”

  “Farseeing.” It was a magic he had heard of practiced by the sorcerers of the south, usually with the aid of a stimulant called star pollen.

  “He was blind, my lord.”

  Okoa sat back, thinking. He was intrigued. The prophecies he had been combing through for the past week were vague and mostly useless. Religious rantings about old gods and blood magic. But they had all mentioned being able to commune with crows.

  “And where is this man now?”

  “Here, my lord. In the city. He told me he plans to confront the Sun Priest and her Watchers tomorrow at the solstice.”

  Okoa almost fell from his seat.

  “Seven hells, man. Lead with that! Guard!”

  The sentinel at his door stepped forward. “Call the Shield to me. I have a task for them. Go!”

  The guard ran, and the old bargeman smiled. “So you believe me?”

  “I believe this man, whoever h
e may be, is dangerous. He sounds mad, but a false god is just as deadly as a true one. This city is on knife edge after Sun Rock. If he confronts the Sun Priest and can fight half as well as you seem to think, it will point right back to us, and we’ll pay for his folly.”

  “He won’t fail!”

  “So you say. But I’ll find your Odo Sedoh and decide for myself.”

  “You will see,” the man said, nodding.

  “I will.” And if I have to kill him to keep us all safe, Okoa thought, so be it.

  CHAPTER 36

  CITY OF TOVA

  YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

  (THE DAY OF CONVERGENCE)

  Today I name Naranpa as my inheritor. Many of you, including my own Knife, object to this appointment, but you must trust that in my old age, perhaps I read a future in the heavens that you cannot. You may think her a puzzling choice, and you would be right. But often greatness comes from unexpected places.

  —From the Oration of the Sun Priest Kiutue on the Investiture of Naranpa in Year 325 of the Sun

  Naranpa was on a bridge. That much she knew.

  She had slept on a dank stone floor. Her captors had dragged her down into the deepest reaches of the tower to levels she didn’t know existed, remnants of the old city Tova was built upon. She kept foolishly hoping Iktan would show up, xir smooth emotionless voice calling out these brutal men and serving them back their own brutality in blood. She had always chided Iktan for xir murderous ways, but oh, what she wouldn’t give for a little of xir violence now.

  They’d come to a halt finally, and she’d been commanded to wait. Fervid conversation around her she couldn’t follow, and then her hands were tied, eyes blindfolded, and gag tightened before she was unceremoniously tossed into the cell and left alone. She’d lain there for what must have been hours in the silence, nothing for company but the sound of water somewhere far off and her own breathing.

  Finally, she slept.

  She was awoken by the sound of the gate opening and rough hands dragging her to her feet. They marched her up the same steps she’d come down previously until they came to a door. The door opened, and a blast of freezing wind hit her full force. She shuddered and hunched over, trying to keep in some of her heat, but it was useless. They hauled her out into the cold.