Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)(15)

They came to a door marked with a hastily scrawled crowsign over the lintel. Aishe frowned. “What’s this doing here?” She reached out a hand and scratched a nail over the red paint. It flaked off under her touch.

The door opened suddenly, leaving Aishe’s hand outstretched. A man stood framed in the space before them. Uncle Kuy.

“Niece,” he greeted Aishe stiffly. His eyes took Xiala in, but he didn’t acknowledge her. “What brings you to my door?”

“What’s this, Uncle?” Aishe gestured at the crowsign. “Did you draw this?”

“Leave it. Better safe than sorry.” He turned abruptly and disappeared back inside. It was clear the man didn’t want to talk to them, but what choice did they have? Aishe wanted to be rid of Xiala, and Xiala wanted to be gone. They exchanged a look that acknowledged the truth between them, and then Aishe stepped across the threshold, Xiala following.

The room was indeed only a room, perhaps fifteen paces long and another fifteen across. She saw a bed, two clothes trunks, shelves holding cups and plates, but no kitchen and no privy. Both were likely communal and somewhere else in the complex, which meant rooms were only for sleeping and personal time. Xiala noticed that a traveling pack sat by the door, but she wasn’t sure if someone was coming or going.

A loom took pride of place in the room, and skeins of dyed cotton yarn were piled in baskets around a sitting cushion. And on the sitting cushion, hands busy on batten and shuttle, was the woman Xiala guessed to be Omataya.

“Auntie.” Aishe greeted the woman politely, but the woman only grunted, hands still busy. The sharp knock of the batten made them both jump, and Uncle Kuy sighed loudly.

“Talk sense to your uncle, Aishe,” Omataya snapped, her command as sharp as the tips of the bone comb she ran across her weaving.

“About what?” Aishe asked carefully.

Uncle Kuy planted his feet and crossed his arms as if he sailed choppy waters. “I’m going to join the Odohaa, and my mind is settled. I won’t hear otherwise.”

Omataya clicked her teeth, her disapproval thick and unspoken.

“It’s interesting you should bring that up, Uncle…” Aishe started.

Xiala stepped forward. “I’m coming with you.”

They all turned.

“Who’s this?” Omataya asked.

“It’s why we came,” Aishe explained. “Rumor says borders are closed and they’re not letting anyone but Carrion Crow in. Xiala wants—”

“You know something.” Xiala had been watching Uncle Kuy, and she had seen his eyes light up when she spoke, a flash of something that reminded her of his demeanor upon learning Serapio was the Odo Sedoh. “That’s why you’re going now.”

Kuy’s head bobbed once. “I saw the great crows return, and the young warrior on his back.”

“You saw Serapio?”

Omataya scoffed. “Serapio? What kind of name is that?” The way she said it sounded like an argument previously voiced to Uncle Kuy, most likely, but Xiala hadn’t heard it and now wanted to.

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“A foreign name.” The woman wagged a finger at Kuy. “A false god who has weak men addled, that’s all he is.”

“His mother was Carrion Crow,” Uncle Kuy supplied quickly, eyes darting to Xiala as if to warn her away from the debate, “and he bore the haahan and the blood teeth. He is Carrion Crow.”

Omataya huffed, unimpressed. “What does he know of Carrion Crow?”

The muscle in Xiala’s jaw tightened, anger at this woman, at all these people, crashing over her like a wave. “He killed your enemies for you.”

“A killer, then! You say so yourself. They say he did it for the Crows, but who knows his motives? And yet this one”— she gestured to Kuy—“is willing to follow him like a once-fed dog.”

“Do you know what he suffered for you?” Xiala asked, incredulous. The small room felt hot and stifling despite the winter that reigned outside. “He sacrificed everything to help you, but where were you when he needed you? When he was a boy alone in Obregi? When his mother blinded him? And now you wish to judge him because his blood is not pure enough and he bears a foreign name?”

Aishe’s hand was on her arm. “Steady, Xiala. No one’s saying that.”

“You have a responsibility to him,” she said, “not the other way around.” Her voice trembled with anger, and for a moment, Xiala wasn’t sure if she was talking about Serapio or herself.

Omataya picked a nut from a bowl at her elbow and dropped it into her mouth. She chewed silently, her only answer to Xiala’s outburst.

Uncle Kuy turned tired eyes to Xiala. “You wish to go to Odo?”

“Yes.”

“I go by way of the bridge across Sun Rock. We’ll have to pass Sky Made guards who hold vigil there. They may ask questions, be suspicious. There are stories of a foreign woman with plum-colored hair seen with the Odo Sedoh on the day before the solstice. It is not without danger for you.”

So there was already gossip about her. Yes, she did not doubt that soon enough they would come for her, more reason to leave this thrice-damned city.

Xiala straightened. “I’m not afraid.”

“But maybe you should be.” He hefted a bag and slung it over his shoulder. “Come now, or don’t come at all.” And then he was leaving.