Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(69)

“Home,” Okoa commanded grimly.

“Oh, skies. Okoa! Your face!”

After the initial stinging pain, he’d forgotten about his injury.

“It’s nothing,” he said. “First we get you safe.”

She nodded, smart enough to grasp the situation, and he and the two Shields with him surrounded her and pressed through the crowd on the icy bridge. After the second time Esa almost slipped on the treacherous crossing she paused to rip the hem of her overlong dress away. She had it half gone before Okoa drew his knife and quickly cut the rest. They continued, and after what felt like an hour, they crossed onto Odo soil.

“Take her to the Great House,” he ordered the two men with him.

“What about you?” she asked, voice high with concern.

“I’m going back.”

“Okoa! No! You’re covered in blood.”

He looked down. She was right. The blood from the wound had dripped from his jaw to cover his neck and chest. Suddenly, he felt dizzy. The bridge swayed, and he wasn’t sure if it was from the rush of people still crossing over or because his vision was failing.

“Esa,” he murmured, unsteady.

“I’ve got him.”

Okoa looked up to find a man standing beside him. A Crow in white, around Chaiya’s age, his black hair cut in a straight bang and shaved to skin on the sides and shoulder-length in the back. Fresh red dye outlined the haahan on his bare chest. A cultist.

Okoa started to protest, but the man ducked under his arm and braced his body against his, slinging Okoa’s arm over his shoulder.

“Take the matron to the Great House,” he directed the Shield as if he was one of them. “I’ve got your captain. We’ll follow behind.”

The men nodded and hustled Esa away, who had no time to protest one way or the other.

Okoa swayed.

“I have you, crow son,” the man said.

“Who are you?” Okoa asked, voice slurring. He really was dizzy. A thought occurred to him. Had the blade been poisoned? Oh, skies, that treacherous Knife.

“My name is Maaka. I am the one who sent Ashk.” He grinned, his teeth so stained it filled the cracks in his lips and the lines at the edges of his mouth. “I’ve been wanting to meet you, Okoa.”

Okoa tried to speak, but the words would not come. His vision faded to shadows and shapes. The last he remembered was Maaka dragging him down the street in the opposite direction of the Great House.



* * *



“Drink this.”

Okoa pried sticky eyes open. He was on a bed. Fresh reeds on a raised shelf, blankets that smelled recently laundered. But the room was unfamiliar. There was a man holding out a cup to him.

Okoa grasped for some memory of the man. Maaka. From the bridge. Who had taken him from Esa.

His hand shot to his belt, only to find he was naked, a blanket modestly draped over his lower body. He struck, hand shooting forward to knock the cup from Maaka’s hand, and then he was up on his feet, throwing a punch into Maaka’s chest that had the man stumbling back, gasping for breath.

He didn’t wait for him to recover. He bolted for the door. Ripped it open and pulled up short. Before him was only air, and a drop straight down into the Tovasheh.

“A sky room,” he whispered to himself.

Maaka coughed behind him. Okoa looked back. He was dragging himself to his feet, hand to his chest. Okoa took two quick steps back and grasped the man by the nape of the woven shirt he wore. He hauled him over to the door, thrusting his upper body out into the open air.

“Talk, or I throw you out.”

“Calm yourself, crow son!” Maaka cried. “Please. We mean you no harm. We saved your life!”

Okoa frowned. His memory was coming back in pieces. The fight at his mother’s funeral. The Knife who opened up his jaw with what he was sure had been a poisoned blade. With the memories came the dizziness, too. He dragged Maaka back from the precipice and released him. He dropped heavily to the floor.

Okoa stumbled back to sit on the bed. “Where am I? And who is ‘we’?”

Maaka rose on shaky feet and walked to the sky door. He shut the door tightly, throwing the lock, before turning to pick up the pieces of the clay cup that had shattered when Okoa knocked it from his hand. The water had spilled, and Okoa eyed it with regret. He was, in fact, very thirsty.

“You are in my house,” the man said, voice shaking slightly. “Once I realized that you had been poisoned, I brought you here. My wife is a great healer, and I knew you had no time to spare.” Maaka set the broken pottery in a small alcove next to a resin lantern.

“My apologies, then. I seem to have… overreacted.”

Maaka waved Okoa’s words away.

“It is I who should apologize. I should have realized you would wake up distraught.” He gestured toward a door in the floor that Okoa had failed to notice. “Let us go downstairs. There are people I want you to meet.”

“And water?” he asked, embarrassed.

“Of course.”

The younger man stood and secured the blanket around his waist like a wrap skirt, tucking in the loose edge. “Thank you.”

“It is my honor, Lord Okoa,” Maaka said quietly. He pulled the door open and gestured for Okoa to go first. Okoa did, climbing down the ladder to find a room filled to bursting. Body heat hit him in a wave, and Okoa briefly thought of going back up to the sleeping room. There were at least two dozen people gathered below him. At his appearance, their conversation had halted and all faces had turned up to stare. He saw before him all ages. Elders whose skin had grown loose around their necks and arms, women with newborns on their hips, those whose hair was only beginning to gray.