Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(71)
“Very well,” he said. “We will talk more—”
Excitement rippled through the crowd.
“—another day.” He held up his hand to quiet them. “I am not saying I will help you. I am saying that I see you now and acknowledge that. So give me time to see what I can do.”
“But the solstice Convergence comes soon!” someone called from the crowd. “Prophecy says we must strike on the day of the solstice when the sun is weakest.”
Okoa wasn’t familiar with the prophecy the person was referencing, but he knew the solstice was too soon to form any kind of fighting force.
“Time,” he repeated. “I will meet with you again soon, Maaka. But let me go home and see my sister. Let me consult my Shield and discover what wisdom we keep in the Great House about this prophecy. Then we will talk again.”
Maaka looked at him, evaluating. Finally, he nodded. “Until that time, Lord Okoa. The Odohaa will hold you to your promise.”
“I would expect nothing less. Now…” Okoa rested his hands on the blanket around his waist. “May I have my pants back?”
CHAPTER 24
CITY OF TOVA (COYOTE’S MAW)
YEAR 325 OF THE SUN
(12 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)
Dry Earth for Dry Earthers. Sky Made go home!
—Graffiti on the wall of a Maw establishment
The Coyote’s Maw was a deep fissure in the earth that ran off the main canyon of Tova. It separated the Sky Made districts from the Dry Earth ones. The canyon was so narrow and so deep it received at most a few scant hours of indirect sunlight a day, sometimes less, depending on the time of year. And even that was limited to the top levels that catered to tourists and Sky Made who came to the Maw to play. Below that, it was perpetual darkness, the only light coming from resin lamps or pit fires.
Long before Naranpa was born, her ancestors had carved their homes into the sides of the fissure. Why there instead of sticking to the wider and more welcoming cliffsides that would become the Sky Made districts, she didn’t know, despite what she’d said to the dedicant on the bridge on the Day of Shuttering. But she felt a profound irony in descending from a people who preferred perpetual shadow only to rise as the priest of the sun and fall again to nothing.
The top level of the Maw was the market, and the level below that public gaming and pleasure houses. The third level gave way to houses that were more like caves that stretched back into the solid rock. All of it was connected by ledges that served as a network of looping foot trails that curved sinuously along the walls of the fissure like lines of ribbon hugging the hem of a dress. They were connected by roads so thin that even the widest ones couldn’t fit more than two people abreast and most of them fit only one. The roads themselves ran only the length of any given level. They were connected to each other by ladders for the human traffic and platforms, miniature versions of the gondola, for everything else. Naranpa had lived on the fifth level as a child and done most of her begging on levels one and two, but she knew the Maw stretched down all the way to the river.
She exited the gondola on the first level directly into the main market. The smell of cooking food hit her first. Rich and dense, the scent of cakes stuffed with corn and peppers and stews of squash, beans, and turkey wafting from the open doors of eating houses and the open pits and shared kitchens that characterized the district. Her mouth watered. She hadn’t eaten such rich food since before the Shuttering, the simple but nourishing meal at Ieyoue’s notwithstanding. And she had never been able to afford this kind of food when she lived in the Maw. But now she returned with a purse full of cacao, more Sky Made than Dry Earth, and she realized she could buy anything she wanted.
Looking around her, she saw the Maw had avoided a curfew. People filled the streets, some finishing their evening shopping under the glow of torchlight but most already out carousing for the evening’s entertainment. Women in bright one-shouldered dresses that bared skin, despite the cold, and men in leggings and hip skirts adorned with colorful string and embroidery. Music poured from doorways, flute and drum and trumpet, accompanied by singing and the slap of dancing feet.
She didn’t remember the Maw being this loud and alive, but perhaps her faulty memory was due to the more conservative and reserved life she had been living inside the celestial tower. Twenty-three years of dour penitence to ensure the return of the sun had soured her to such unrestrained celebration. Although she had to admit, it was joyful, primal. There was something about it that felt vital.
At first when she saw the red ribbon tied around a young woman’s upper arm, she thought nothing of it, but as she traveled farther into the Maw and saw more and more people wearing the ribbon and shopfronts offering bunches of dried marigolds and white shells to burn incense in, she recognized it for what it was: the Maw was still grieving Yatliza’s death. The Sky Made clans had put their mourning regalia aside after the funeral, but Dry Earth had not.
Naranpa had been raised on the old Dry Earth ways of mourning—turquoise for remembrance and corpse ash in your hair. But all she saw around her was marigolds and incense, just like in the Sky Made districts. It made her sad to see the Dry Earth ways forgotten, but then, who was she to speak? She had left that side of herself well behind. She would be a hypocrite to begrudge the people here their dried flowers when she wore Sun Priest robes day in and day out. Or, at least, she used to.