Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(23)

Serapio snapped his jaw shut. To hit him was one thing. He would not risk his friends.

“Let’s start again,” the man said. “Wood and chisel.”

Serapio fought back tears and tried to ignore his bleeding cheek. He weighed the raw wood in his hand and the chisel in the other. He thought of throwing them at the man. But then what? Where would he run to avoid another blow? And his birds. The man might hurt his birds.

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” the man said. “I can smell your self-pity from here. Do as I say, and we’ll get along fine. I’ll only hit you when you need it. I am reasonable, after all.”

Serapio didn’t answer.

Quick steps, and Serapio knew another blow was coming. He shied back as the man’s hand gripped him by the hair, pulled him to his knees.

“You talk about destiny,” he hissed, “but are unwilling to suffer to achieve it? You won’t get to Tova if you are afraid, Serapio. I will make your mind strong, hone your ability to endure pain, if you let me. Or do you wish to stay on this terrace and rot with these keepers of yours?”

The stranger shook him, making his head bob back and forth like a reed in the wind. “I will suffer!” Serapio cried, voice high and frightened.

The man released him, and Serapio collapsed forward. He caught himself on hands and knees, breathing hard, wood and chisel still gripped between fingers and palm.

He heard the man cross the room and settle back on the far bench. His voice came from a distance. “Describe the wood to me. Tell me what you feel.”

Serapio took a deep steadying breath. Pushed himself to sitting and turned the wood between his fingers, against his palm. “It feels rough,” he ventured, fighting to keep his voice steady.

“More than that,” the man coaxed. “Concentrate. Use your fingers and your mind.”

“Rough,” Serapio repeated, and then, “Pitted. Jagged along here, the left side, and knotted just below where my thumb is.” He ran the edge of his thumbnail along the knot.

“Better,” the man said. “Now, feel for the creature already inside the block. It’s there, hiding, waiting for you to bring it forth.” A rustle of clothing as the man leaned closer. “Can you do it, Serapio? Can you find the creature inside the wood?”

“Yes.” He ran the chisel along the groove he had mapped with his fingernail, imagining a crow in his mind. Small head, large beak, curving breast, and feathered wings. He dug the chisel into the wood, but it slipped, thrusting under his fingernail instead. He cried out in pain and drew his hand back. Stuck the finger in his mouth and sucked.

“Make the pain your friend, Serapio,” the man urged. “Learn to appreciate it the way you might a lover. Let it become the thing you crave most.”

Serapio knew nothing personally about what lovers did, but he had heard the servants fucking in the room next to his often enough. He did know he wanted nothing to do with suffering and pain. Is that what this man was here to teach him? He didn’t want it, but if it meant he would become what his mother wanted him to, he would endure.

“Now,” his tutor said, “tell me again about the wood. Use different words this time.”

Serapio did.

Time passed. The room grew colder as the sun set, and servants came to light the wall lamps and offer them supper. The man ate but instructed Serapio to keep working since he had not yet earned the right to eat.

Only when the night servants came to ready Serapio’s bed did the man say, “It’s time for me to leave.”

“Are you coming back?” Serapio asked, unsure if he wanted the man to stay or if he wanted him gone forever.

“Yes. I keep my promises.” He clamped a hand on Serapio’s shoulder and squeezed hard enough for his thin bones to shift painfully under his shirt. “Next time I come, you can call me Paadeh. We’ll be friends yet.”

Serapio knew instinctively that this was a lie. Paadeh did not like him. He wasn’t sure why, but he knew it as well as he knew his name. He might be here to honor a promise that he had made to his mother long ago, he might be here to teach him pain so that he could fulfill his destiny, but they would never be friends.

After his new tutor had left, Serapio held his hand to his cheek for a long time, thinking. The blood had dried in a hardened line that flaked off when he tugged at it.

The pain had startled him, but he had already begun to forgive it, make it his friend as Paadeh had said.

He worked on his wooden sculpture long into the night. He fell asleep, hunched forward on his bench. Clutched in his hand was the beginning of a crow. Not wholly formed, just the outline of what it would become, but it was being born nonetheless.





CHAPTER 9




CITY OF TOVA

YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

(19 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)

My observations of the Priesthood of Watchers are that they have become a shell of what they once were. It is an irony of the age that the scientific advances the Watchers once forced upon the masses to quiet the worship of the old gods have now become so commonplace as to begin to make them obsolete. No one denies that they once held center on the Meridian continent and kept us at peace for three centuries, but I suspect that it is only tradition and nostalgia from whence their power flows now. They claim to read the skies, but their work seems mostly a novelty for the upper class. They issue rain predictions, but could not an astute farmer read the soil for himself? Shrewd eyes might turn to the trade cities of the Crescent Sea to find their future. Whether the cities of the Crescent Sea should continue to pay tithe to the Sun Priest is a topic worthy of discussion among the Seven Lords.