Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(74)
It was Serapio’s seventeenth birthday, and the Obregi soothsayer had come to divine his fate. He was outside, hiding under the great pine on the edge of the cliffside. The late-winter grass was brittle under his feet, but the first frost had not yet come. The ground still yielded under his heels as he rocked back and forth, but the icy breeze that sliced across his cheeks told him it was only a matter of time before Obregi would be hunkering down for a mountain winter, everything frozen solid.
“Where is he?” he heard the soothsayer complain, their high warbling voice echoing down from the terrace above. “I’ve come all this way. Does the boy not want to know his destiny?”
“The boy already knows his destiny,” Serapio whispered to himself. “He only needs a way to fulfill it.”
His father’s voice cut across the field, as clear as if he was standing only a few paces away. “Find him!” he shouted. “And drag him back here if you must. I will not be defied!”
Serapio sighed and dropped down cross-legged under the tree. The day had turned frigid, and he pulled his wool cloak tighter around him. He settled his bone staff across his knees. It would be at least another hour until they thought to look for him outside.
He hoped Powageh found him first. The crows had told him that they had seen an old man traveling the roads alone, and while it could be anyone, he hoped it was his third and last tutor. After all, he was seventeen now. Surely it was time.
He sat for a while, listening to more shouting and scurrying, trying to feel the winter approaching.
A crunch of leaves behind him alerted him to a presence. His body tensed, but he immediately released it, keeping his shoulders and limbs loose like Eedi had taught him. He slid his staff down to his side, gripped the end, and listened. Another crunch, closer. Someone approaching and being careless at the noise they were making.
Powageh, as he had wished? Perhaps, but he could not be sure.
He considered whether to strike. Another step, and the stranger would be close enough that he could sweep them off their feet. Have them helpless on their back in seconds.
The leaves crunched again, and Serapio decided.
He moved, pivoting and rolling onto his hip and thrusting his staff wide, sweeping the perimeter until he hit something solid. He shifted his grip to two hands and swung. A voice cried out, and he heard a body strike the ground. Serapio was on his feet, moving low, dagger out, when the stranger cried, “No, please! Spare me!”
The boy stopped. He could hear the stranger breathing hard, air moving too quickly through lungs that sounded feeble. Old. Serapio straightened and sheathed his blade, but he held the staff ready. He extended it until he hit flesh. He jabbed hard, and the stranger grunted, the staff digging into his stomach.
“Are you the old man the crows saw on the road?”
“Am I the…?” They sounded bewildered, confused. “Perhaps? I-I-I do not know your crows.” The stranger sounded ancient, a white-hair for sure. “And I am not a man, or a woman, for that matter. But I am old.”
Serapio didn’t understand what that meant, neither man nor woman, but he let it pass. It was not relevant.
“Is your name Powageh?”
A moment of hesitation, and then, “Powageh is my title, not my name. But yes, I am the third tutor to the crow god. Which”—the stranger chuckled, still short of breath—“must be you. Well met, Serapio.”
The boy mused on that for a moment. It hadn’t occurred to him that Paadeh and Eedi were not names but titles. Meaning he had never known their names in truth. It sat strange with him.
He circled back around to the easier question, the one that didn’t make him feel like he had been deceived.
“If you are neither man nor woman, what are you?”
“A third gender, one I don’t believe you acknowledge here in this little backwater country. I am bayeki. But what should concern you more is that I am a Watcher.”
“A Tovan priest!” Serapio growled, and his hand slipped back to his dagger.
“I am not your enemy, Serapio,” Powageh said. “Far from it.”
“But you are from the celestial tower.”
“I was. Past tense. Very, very past.”
“And now?” he challenged.
“I am its enemy.” The stranger sighed, as if the memory was a burden. “Once I was very much a part of the celestial tower, a member of the Society of Knives, even, sworn to defend the Sun Priest.”
“My enemy.”
“Both our enemies. We are united in our hatred.”
“Why?”
Powageh hesitated. “Let us sit and talk properly, Serapio. Not with me on my back and your weapon in my belly. We haven’t much time, but I will tell you everything I know.” The stranger’s voice caught with emotion. “We have kept you hidden for so long, as long as we dared, but the time draws near for you to be revealed.”
* * *
They sat under the sheltering eaves of the great pine tree. Powageh had laid out a small lunch, foods brought from a hotter, waterier clime that Serapio did not know. Tiny salted fish, skinless and boneless, that slid quickly down his throat and left a salty wake behind. Nuts spiced with hot pepper that burned in his mouth. A strange spiky fruit that Powageh opened with a knife to reveal soft, juicy flesh. And, most astounding of all, a thick and creamy drink that started bitter on Serapio’s tongue and blossomed to a pleasing peppery heat. He could only describe it as the taste of pleasure.