Black Sun (Between Earth and Sky, #1)(92)

“How will I kill her?” Serapio asked. “The Sun Priest. I would not ask such a thing of my crows.”

“No, I do not believe your crows are meant for that.”

Another heavy sigh, and Serapio could hear Powageh’s reluctance to continue in xir belabored breath, the nervous shifting of xir feet.

“What do you fear, Powageh? Do not be afraid for me. I am not.”

“And here I am sweating,” the old priest said with a self-deprecating laugh. “Because in the end, I do not wish you to judge me harshly, but it is selfish of me to want your love.”

Serapio’s breath caught. No one had loved him since his mother, and he was unsure how he felt about the priest’s declaration.

“Eedi said you are not my friends, that I must not get attached because I will be leaving.”

“Ah, well, perhaps I should have had Eedi here to counsel me,” xe said, xir voice a thin wavering laugh that dissolved into a quaking exhale.

“Are you… do you weep, Powageh?”

“Have I not earned a few tears?”

And suddenly he understood. “I am going to die, aren’t I?” He had suspected it for a while, understood intuitively that the power he had inside him would consume him. He was a vessel. Powageh had said it from the beginning. He was the kind of vessel one must break to release what was held inside if one hoped to devour another god.

“I… skies and stars, boy. I am sorry.”

“No,” he said shortly. “My destiny has been inevitable since the day my mother closed my eyes, perhaps since she gave me birth. I am a vessel, am I not? The avatar of a god.” He cleared his throat. “Tell me what I must do.” He only hoped that the pain would not be too great. He had made friends with it, yes, but it was a wary friendship.

“You must do nothing but exist,” the priest said. “And when the time comes, you will speak your true name, your eyes will open… and you will exist no more.”

He had hoped to witness the end of the Sun Priest and the aftermath of the crow god’s justice, but he understood that it could not be. The Convergence would be his end, too, a final sacrifice to his god on behalf of a people he would never know, and who would never know him.





CHAPTER 32




THE TOVASHEH RIVER

YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

(3 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)

They say to us,

Eat ash and drink bile

And be glad that you are spared.

Better we were dead and food for crows.

—From Collected Lamentations from the Night of Knives



Xiala woke up alone. For a moment, she panicked, trying to place the low ceiling of the bed above her, the slow motion of water below her, and the strong smell of an unfamiliar soap in her hair. And then she remembered the barge and the bath in the freezing river and the dent she had put in the bottle of xtabentún before coming back to climb into bed with Serapio.

She laughed, pressing a hand to her head. The look on his face when she had joined him had almost been enough for her to try to kiss him again. She had seen raw need there, and it had sent a satisfying thrill through her body. She was sure that if she had asked him for more last night, he would not have refused. But he had wanted to tell her something, something important, so she had not. Only now she couldn’t remember what exactly he had said. Damn the xtabentún.

She sat up and swung her feet off the side of the bed. The pilgrims had returned at some point last night. She vaguely remembered voices and laughter. But they were all gone now, as was Serapio. She looked out the small window, trying to gauge the time of day, and guessed it to still be morning, but she had clearly slept in.

She slipped on her shoes, wrapped her cloak around her shoulders, and ventured out.

It was still raining, a steady drizzle that was like the sky continuously spitting on her face. The barge had moved up the Tovasheh far beyond the eponymous town. Stretched out along the riverbank were low grasslands browned by the winter and rocky yellow hills. It was a completely unfamiliar landscape, and she already missed the heat of the jungle and the salty sea air that permeated the southern side of the Crescent Sea.

She watched the world pass for a while, her mind on nothing more than the changing scenery. But then she realized that they were moving at a swifter pace than polers could account for and remembered that harness she had spotted the night before. Curious, she made her way to the front of the ship.

The harness was no longer empty.

She tried to process what she was seeing, but her brain was already having trouble focusing, the aftereffects of the drink from the night before. There was a creature. It had limbs, six of them, as big as logs, protruding from its body and then tapering to thinner but still tree-sized after the knee joint. The front limbs guided it forward, and the back limbs steadied the movement of its long body. A body half as wide as the barge itself. The middle limbs acted as paddles, moving them gently and efficiently upriver.

“Mother waters,” she whispered. “What the hell is that?”

“Water strider,” came a voice from behind her.

She turned to find the young woman from last night, the one who had invited her to join her, approaching her.

“Big suckers, aren’t they?” she said, giving Xiala an easy smile. She wore a long shirt that hit below her narrow hips and tied at the neck. It was white and woven from a fiber Xiala didn’t recognize. Black lacing edged the sleeves that came down to cover the woman’s elbows. Fitted leggings and calf-length suede boots covered her legs and feet; turquoise pierced her ears and nose.