Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(44)

Once he was sure Chaiya was well on his way back to the aviary, he left the mess, taking the back way and weaving through the high-grass fields until he arrived at the barracks. It was only a few hours past sunset, although it felt like it couldn’t possibly be the same day Chaiya had arrived. Hadn’t weeks passed? Years?

All the other cadets were still at the evening meal, so he quietly crawled onto his straw sleeping mat. He pulled a small box from his nearby belongings, struck flint, and lit resin to cast a weak light, enough for him to read by.

The seal broke cleanly. In all those years, Chaiya had not tampered with the letter or tried to read it. He felt a pang of guilt. Perhaps he was misjudging his cousin, being unfair. But Okoa had not imagined that glimpse of Chaiya’s face as he left that was considering, calculating, and completely sober.

He carefully unfolded the paper, which had gone cracked and stiff in the intervening years. On the paper was a single symbol. Okoa’s eyes widened.

He had been wrong. These were not words of love or sentiment, things said from a mother to a son upon his birth. These words were a warning. A prediction.

He ran a finger over the ink.

On the paper was a single glyph: the glyph of life with a diagonal line breaking the symbol in half, shattering “life.”

It could be interpreted in a number of ways—a life ending, a life changed or cut short or cut in half. And it was most likely meant as a warning for the child Okoa, a reading of the stars upon his birth, a warning about his possible fate.

But Okoa didn’t think so.

For him, the glyph was clear.

His mother had been murdered.





CHAPTER 16




THE CRESCENT SEA

YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

(19 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)

Impress a man today, and he’ll expect you to impress him tomorrow, too.

—Teek saying



Xiala’s morning had gone well enough. She had risen early to chart their course for the day, the sun indicating the eastern horizon at her back. Every captain of a vessel had a way to map their course, most using the methods they learned under the apprenticeship of other captains. These captains were from Cuecola or the coastal cities along the Crescent Sea. But Xiala used the way her mother and aunts had taught her, the Teek way to read the sea, as ancient and true as the ocean herself. It was part instinct, part memorization, and all observation. Not so much looking as knowing what to look for. She was confident she could find her way to anywhere on land across the open water within a dozen square miles.

Dawn was the most important time of the day for navigating, when the sun squatted on the horizon. With the sun low, its line of light stretched long and narrow along the water, an easy path west to follow. Once east and west were marked, she knew north was to her right and south to her left.

As the sun climbed in the sky, its path of light would widen, too diffused to be the sole source of determining direction. So Xiala studied the waves, too. Their shape and swell pattern and the path they followed toward the shore. And she noted the wind, and from where it came, and marked that direction. She looked for seabirds leaving the shore to fish in the deep atolls, and later she would mark their paths home and she would know which way land was.

All of this she did, holding the details in her memory, knowing that keeping track of these markers throughout the day would keep them alive, and losing track of them would mean death. When she was satisfied that she had plotted their course north-northwest toward the Tovasheh and there were enough ways to know where northwest was once land had slipped from view, she called for the first shift to drop paddle.

Callo echoed her command from the bow, and the men shouted it back to them both. And they were away, pulsing through the waters, headed for open sea.

The men were in surprisingly good spirits. Xiala’s gamble on the feast and good sleep on the cay having paid off. They came back that morning with smiles and happy greetings, hauling Patu’s cooking supplies and newly filled pots of fresh water. The mood was bright with anticipation of a new day that felt full of the promise of adventure, so infectious that Xiala couldn’t help but feel some of their optimism, too.

She had expected someone to mention Serapio’s strange appearance last night, but no one did. Perhaps they were willing to ignore it, or pretend like it never happened, to keep the peace.

When she had first turned to face Serapio, she would have sworn a great black bird hovered above him, its head blocking the moon and its wings flaring out as wide as the ship behind it. It had chilled her to the bone, sent a primal fear screaming through her brain that had made her forget to call her Song. If that bird had wanted to reach down and rip her limb from limb with its massive black beak, she would have stood there with her mouth hanging open and let it.

And if the bird wasn’t enough to terrorize, there was the man himself. The black robe like a shroud, the bandage over his eyes, the red-stained teeth. He was a nightmare vision, something out of a children’s cautionary tale.

But then the Obregi had spoken, and all her fear evaporated on the tide of his stilted Cuecolan and his awkward hello. It was as if a veil had been lifted, and suddenly she could see he was young and strangely eager and, above all, human. She was about to invite him to join the crew when Callo threw the ward against evil, and Xiala realized the veil may not have lifted for everyone. She’d hustled the Obregi to the ship as fast as she could after that, sat with him through a brief but surprisingly pleasant meal, and finally ushered him off to bed with an understanding between them. The suggestion for him to dress as the others and join the crew on deck the next day had been an impulsive one. A hope that perhaps without the nightmare trappings to distract them, the crew would see what she saw, which was a strange man, most assuredly, but only a man.