Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(102)

“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 he 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.

Fresh snow frozen to a thin layer of ice crunched under her bare feet and glazed the hem of her robe. Her breath clogged her nose with ice, and her whole body shivered violently.

It was dark even through her blindfold. She was sure it was night or early morning, that last gasp of darkness before dawn. Dawn on the solstice. She wondered what Iktan was doing, if xe was preparing for the ceremony, or still in bed, or, as she feared despite what she had said to Abah, dead. She shook her head. Even now, she worried about xir fate.