Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(14)
“This is excessive,” Iktan whispered at her side. She startled. Xe rarely spoke in public.
“What?” she asked over the din of singing and cheers.
“The Shuttering is a solemn day, not a day of celebration. Carrion Crow was a bit dour, yes, but they were more proper than this. What are they doing?”
She shrugged, annoyed at xir words. “Perhaps they’re just happy to see us, grateful for our service.”
“What service is that, Nara?”
“Was not Kiutue born Winged Serpent before he joined the celestial tower?” She meant it as proof of a shared history, but she could tell immediately Iktan took it poorly.
“We’re meant to set aside such relationships once we join the tower,” xe said, voice dark. “We are not to show favor to our birth clans, and they are not to remember us. Else we invite corruption. Our duty is to the heavens, is it not? They, unlike humans, are constant. Inviolable.” The last word dripped with sarcasm.
“Not now, Iktan. Please.” She was used to xir cynicism, but today was turning into a triumphant day. Couldn’t she relish it for just a little while?
She turned her attention away from xir and back to the crowd intent on enjoying herself, but some of the pleasure at the clan’s greeting had faded, and her old worries returned.
The matron of Winged Serpent had come down from their Great House to greet them in the road. Her name was Peyana. She was elegant, just as Yatliza had been, but Peyana had a vibrancy to her, a liveliness the Carrion Crow matron lacked. She wore a dress of iridescent winged serpent scales for the occasion that undulated like a living skin as she walked. Around her shoulders was a robe of bright green and blue feathers with bits of red and yellow threaded in. Her hair was coiled into two horns atop her head, and jade dripped like green flames from her ears.
After Naranpa and Peyana exchanged the ceremonial greeting, the procession did not stay long in Kun. Soon they had the bridge to Sun Rock at their feet.
“Do we not walk the whole district?” Abah asked.
“Kun is the largest district of Tova and stretches far down the cliffside,” Haisan answered before Naranpa could reply. “No need to walk the whole thing. It would take most of the day! And if we crossed the river there, we would enter the northern half of the city in the Eastern districts, which is all farmland. There is certainly no need to walk there. And the only way back toward the Sky Made districts is through the Maw.” He shuddered theatrically.
“We’ll cross the Tovasheh to Titidi by way of Sun Rock,” Naranpa added. “Then we can walk Titidi and Tsay and back across to Otsa by sunset.” She ignored Haisan’s insult of the Maw.
Sun Rock was a two-hundred-foot-high freestanding mesa in the center of the city. Below and around its walls rushed the Tovasheh river, the life-giving artery of Tova. No clans ruled here on the Rock, and it was only ever populated on ceremonial days and when the Speakers Council met.
The bridge crossing was the longest of their journey but otherwise uneventful. Naranpa wondered how the dedicant from the southern lowlands was faring but didn’t inquire. The day was starting to wear on her, and she was ready to rest. Perhaps she could slip her boots off and rub her feet, if Abah wasn’t looking and judging her impropriety.
Sun Rock felt empty and abandoned after the pageantry of Odo and Kun. Twenty paces from the bridge landing, the ground dropped away to reveal a great open-air circle dug out of the ground. It was shaped like the roundhouses of the clans’ Great Houses but open to the stars, much like the rooftop observatory of the celestial tower. Benches lined its steep stairs all around, and as they passed the eastern entrance, Naranpa called a halt.
She heard the sighs of relief from the dedicants behind her. She took the first steps down into the amphitheater, and everyone followed, spreading out along the benches and calling for water from the servants.
A handful of servants who had trailed the entourage brought forward baskets full of corn cakes, venison, and flasks of water and began to distribute lunch. Naranpa watched the woman who had led the procession with her drum massage her hands before accepting water from a girl in a brown servant’s robe.
Another servant wearing brown approached Naranpa, and she absently reached inside the basket he proffered. She missed entirely the knife he pulled from his sleeve until the flash of the obsidian blade caught her eye as it moved toward her chest. She cried out, but she was too late.
Suddenly she was being pulled backward, tumbling off the stone bench. Her head struck the bench behind her, and shock radiated through her body. Her vision blurred, and she flailed instinctively, trying to fight off whatever or whoever she was certain was going to stab her. But her hands hit only air, and by the time she had calmed enough to see what had happened, she realized Iktan had been the one to pull her back.
And xe had taken her place.
And xe had xir own knife buried deep in the servant-in-brown’s neck.
Naranpa could do nothing but gape.
Until someone screamed, one of the dedicants. And then Naranpa was scrambling to her feet. Hands reached to help her up. She got to standing just as Iktan lowered the would-be assassin to the ground.
“Search them,” the tsiyo called tersely, and it took a moment for Naranpa to realize xe was talking to two society dedicants. The other servants had dropped their baskets and raised their hands wide from their bodies, proclaiming their innocence, as the tsiyo-to-be moved among them, efficiently searching baskets and seeking more weapons.