Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(38)

“The mirror?” she asked from somewhere above him and to his right. He expected her to be angry with him, but her voice was calm, interested. “Where did you learn to do that?”

“I…” He thought about his hand resting on the mirror, the vision of his mother, and the knowledge that he could call on the darkness to help him. “What exactly did it do?”

“You threw a shadow, crow son,” she said, and now he heard something in her voice, a reverence. “You loosed a stream of darkness right at my face. It was like being blinded.”

“Blinded,” he said, voice silky with sarcasm. “I seriously doubt that.”

She barked a laugh and came closer. She kicked him in the arm. Lightly, only enough to get his attention. “I’m helping you up. Take my hand.”

He stuck his arm out, and two hands grasped him, wrenching him to his feet.

“How’s your eye?” he asked, curious but not remorseful.

“The healer said it isn’t permanently damaged, but it hurts like seven hells.” He caught a bare thread of admiration in her voice. “Just know that if I was really trying to kill you, you would have already been dead ten times over before you launched your attack.”

“So you say.”

“Shall we go again?”

“No,” he said, choking on a half-laugh. “My jaw aches. And I bit my tongue.” He frowned, the obvious coming together slowly in his rattled brain. “Is that what you’re here for? To teach me how to fight?”

“Ah, so you’re not completely devoid of sense. Yes, to fight. Paadeh trained the mind, I train the body. But I know nothing about this shadow magic. That’s Powageh’s shit. He was always the mystic among us.”

“My third tutor,” he said, remembering the name. He hesitated and then asked. “And when will Powageh come?”

“Don’t know. Not my business. This”—she bent to pick up something and shoved it against his chest—“is my business.”

He wrapped his hands around it. It was the staff. Or spear. Or simply a very long piece of…

“Is this bone?” he asked. He ran a hand along the smooth surface. It was porous and yielded when he pressed his thumb against it. “It’s not wood.” That he was sure of.

“Bone it is,” Eedi admitted. “A true master spearmaiden’s weapon, harvested from the ice fields north of Hokaia and reinforced with blood magic. You can’t have it because it’s mine, but I’ll teach you to use it. As both a weapon and a seeing aid. And then you can make your own.”

She picked something else up and touched it against his hand. He took it. It was his crow, the one he had thrown at her. It was still unbroken.

“Shall we begin?”





CHAPTER 14




CITY OF TOVA

YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

(18 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)

Truly the Sky Made clans are the best of Tovan society. Graceful and stately, they remind me of our own Seven Lords of the Seven Houses. I have inquired as to whether my host among the Sky Made might wish to visit Cuecola and was told that they already lived at the center of the universe and need not travel outside it. I found such an answer ill informed but kept such thoughts to myself.

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



To Naranpa’s surprise, all of the Sky Made matrons, including Yatliza’s daughter, agreed to meet at the celestial tower. She expected Golden Eagle to balk at the very least, because Nuuma always preferred to have her way, but all sent back messages that they would meet her an hour before sunset.

She arranged for the meeting to take place in the observatory at the top of the tower, the same space where they held the Conclave. The walls of the circular room displayed the sacred mosaic that depicted the Treaty of Hokaia and the investiture of the Sun Priest. Along the southern wall lay the jaguar of Cuecola crushed and bleeding from its mouth, nose, eyes, and ears, vivid red tiles meant to represent blood. The east depicted the fishwoman of the Teek, her head cut from her body and only slightly less gory than the dead jaguar. The spear of Hokaia was the simplest of all, a long bone spear broken into pieces and cast down on the ground. And finally, in the east, the only intact city totem—the sun of Tova. It was in ascension, rising to rest atop a great golden throne. And surrounding the foot of the throne were the totems of the four clans: crow, eagle, winged serpent, and water strider.

In the center of the room on stone pillars rested the drum and the sacred bundle of cedar branches that had been used in their procession the previous day, the power of above and below endowed within them.

All of them, the mosaic with its unsubtle history and the objects in the center, were reminders of the dominion of the priesthood. The Sky Made may hold the civil power in Tova, but they were nothing compared to the celestial authority that the tower commanded over the whole of the Meridian continent.

She took her seat on the bench in the east. She had brought in four other seats, spare and wooden, and arranged them in a fan shape radiating out from her in a semicircle. They were simple stools used by dedicants. Another not-so-subtle reminder of who held the power here. She had thought about forcing the matrons to sit on the floor but decided that bordered on insult, and she had not reclaimed enough of the Sun Priest’s former mandate to risk it. The stools walked a fine line as it was, but an acceptable one.