Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(75)

“It is kakau in the Cuecola language. They call it the drink of the gods,” Powageh said, after Serapio’s exclamation. “Fitting for you, crow son.”

Serapio thought at first his new tutor was teasing him, but xir voice sounded completely sincere. The crows had come to join them, no doubt curious about the stranger, and Serapio fed them bits of the new food, but they only liked the drink. Typical.

“The Night of Knives,” Powageh said as xe slurped from xir cup. “Did Saaya tell you of the Night of Knives?”

“When I was five,” Serapio acknowledged. It was one of the first stories his mother had told him, and the one she told him most often after. “She told me that the Watchers led an army to slaughter all who followed the crow god. She said assassins murdered my grandmother and my cousins and aunts and uncles.”

“Anything else? Nothing of a tsiyo turned to protector?”

Serapio frowned. “She did mention a young priest whom she found crying over the body of a child. The priest was covered in their own sick, begging for forgiveness.”

“Yes, well…” Powageh sighed. “I suppose that’s not inaccurate.”

“She said the priest helped her escape the city and took her to sanctuary.” He lifted his head toward Powageh. “Was that you?”

“It was. Many years ago.” Xe cleared xir throat. “After we escaped, well, neither of us could go back, so we went to Cuecola, my birthplace. I had family there still, good family, and very wealthy. And a cousin who offered to employ me in his import-and-export business. For two years I worked for him on the docks, a boss at one of his warehouses. Your mother and I talked of marrying, but she was still very young. No older than you. But I was smitten with her, you understand, and indulged her tremendously.”

“What does that mean?”

“Saaya was single-minded. Grief is one thing, obsession another. All she thought about was revenge against the celestial tower, death to the Sun Priest. It was all she wanted. More than a comfortable life, certainly more than me. And she recruited others to her cause. There was a Dry Earth Tovan, a master woodworker, who had emigrated to Cuecola and had a grudge against the priesthood; a disgraced spearmaiden driven from the war college at Hokaia for crimes of insubordination; my cousin, Balam, a proper and polished lord who found her just as enchanting as I did. He was the one who provided her the means to do it.”

Balam. The name meant nothing to him. The wind rustled the pine, sending needles raining down around them. “Do what?”

“Balam had an affinity for divination and blood magic, which is not uncommon in Cuecola. But what made him special is that he had plenty of wealth to spend pursuing his interests. Soon he and Saaya were spending all their time together. I was jealous at first, oh, was I jealous. My cousin is quite charming.”

“But you were wrong? They weren’t lovers?”

“Oh, they were lovers,” Powageh confessed ruefully. “But I did not find that out until much later. It’s unimportant now. I’m old and the fires of jealousy have long banked within my heart.”

“Then what?”

“Saaya told me that she and Balam were looking for a way to raise the crow god into human form using blood sacrifice.”

Serapio shivered.

“Yes, I was horrified at first, too. And then intrigued. Blood magic is forbidden by the celestial tower, and all peoples of the Meridian have banned human sacrifice. It is considered uncivilized, barbaric.”

“Dangerous,” Serapio said, instinctively.

“Powerful,” Powageh added, voice soft. “Too powerful for humans. Best we stick to sacrificing people the old ways, with wars and famine and despot rulers.” Xir voice was thick with bitterness.

“What did you do?”

“I joined them,” xe said simply.

“And the others joined, too?” Serapio asked, the story coming together in his mind. “Paadeh and Eedi? For common cause?”

Silence at first, and then a small laugh. “Yes, I suppose that’s obvious now. Paadeh and Eedi were the other two schemers in our plan, but it was me she needed the most—the one with the gift of reading the stars, the trained priest who understood the movement of the heavens. I am ashamed to say it gave me joy, to usurp my cousin and his wealth in her hierarchy, but there it is.”

“So what happened?” He had become enthralled by Powageh’s story, the tale of his own making, his origin story.

“We still needed a vessel to contain the god, one that met some very specific and arcane specifications that Balam had found in an ancient glyph book, but Saaya had an answer for that, too.”

“Which was…?”

“You,” he said. “I divined the next time and place where the crow god would be at the height of his power, Balam provided the funds to get your mother here, and Paadeh and Eedi promised to aid her in whatever way they could. She made us all swear blood oaths under a moonless sky. There are no bindings more powerful to your god.”

“And my father? What role did he play in all this? Did he know?” He couldn’t imagine it. He knew his father had once loved him, but after what his mother had done, his father had never recovered. Never accepted Serapio again. To hear Powageh describe his mother, he wondered if Marcal’s problem was not Serapio’s blindness but that he reminded his father too strongly of his lost wife.