Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)(38)

Callo morphed and became a Teek woman. Powerful. Regal. And even in her dream, Xiala felt the weight of her judgment. Stupid girl! the woman hissed. You’re not supposed to fall in love with them!

She woke, shaken. The nightmare clung to her like seaweed around her ankles, threatening to drag her underwater. But it was only a nightmare, and she eventually shook it off. Soon the only voice in her head was the soft sound of Uncle Kuy’s snores.

She sat up, bleary-eyed, and looked around. Kuy and the two women slept, but the place beside her where Iktan should have been was empty. Xe had promised to wake her for second watch, but now xe was gone.

It did occur to her that perhaps Iktan was the very thief xe had warned them about. What better way to steal from your new companions than to convince them to let you take first watch? She reminded herself she had nothing worth stealing except the cloak on her back and a small purse of cacao; she had given away her only real treasure to the guard. Which seemed to have been a mistake. It had been hours, and nothing had come of it.

The camp had grown since she had gone to sleep. What had been two hundred people when they arrived had easily doubled. For the first time, the yard was beginning to feel crowded. There were small camps of families and the faithful stretched across the entire yard from checkpoint to cliffside to Great House gates. If the crowd continued to grow, they would have to start turning people away. And then what? People denied access to their god might riot, especially considering the strange tension that already blanketed the city. When that happened, Xiala wanted to be very far away from this place. Teek did not fare well among angry hordes.

But that was a concern for the future. For now, most of the camp still slumbered peacefully in the perpetual blue-hued twilight, all but a handful of fires banked to a glowing orange. A few people sat talking quietly or playing patol.

Done with sleeping and feeling restless, she decided to seek out the guard again. If she had misread the woman, she could at least ask her to return her mermaid.

She picked her way through the camp, cowl up and head down. The path they had taken when they had first arrived was now crowded with sleeping bodies, and it took her twice as long to make her way back to the gate. Despite the fact that it was ostensibly the middle of the night, people were still arriving. She approached the nearest guard, an older man slumped sleepily on a bench, his back against the wall and his feet up.

“Pardon.” Xiala rallied her best Tovan accent. “I’m looking for a particular guard. A woman, about my height. Black hair tied back, thick eyebrows, a scar on her chin. She was working the gate earlier.”

“You mean Uuna. She went off duty about an hour ago. Why?”

“We’re old friends,” she lied.

“Sorry. I’ll tell her you came looking. What’s your name?”

“I’ll just try again later.” She backed away with a bow.

“You can look for her over near the Great House gates. You might still catch her.”

Xiala mouthed words of gratitude and slipped away. She had expected some animosity, suspicion at the least, but the man had been surprisingly helpful. Maybe once you made it past the checkpoint, you weren’t considered a threat. Maybe everyone here really was united in common cause. She hadn’t truly considered that Serapio’s coming could have a wider impact, could be something positive for these people. She’d only thought of it in terms of what she wanted and how it affected her. She had that same feeling that she’d had when she first saw Odo and knew in her heart that this was where Serapio belonged: doubt.

She was within sight of the Great House gates before she knew it. She could see the massive doors of charred wood carved with the crowsign, where a handful of guards stood, looking ominous and much more intimidating than their checkpoint fellows. But farther down the curving wall, she spied a small door the same ash-gray as the wall itself. She wouldn’t have noticed it at all if a familiar figure hadn’t been slipping out the door and immediately caught her eye.

It was Iktan, and this was the last place she’d expected to see xir. She caught a glimpse of a guard’s face before the door closed, and then Iktan was moving back through the camp, as if xe had not just been inside the Great House doing who knew what.

Iktan had given no sign that xe knew anyone in the inner circles of the Great House, and certainly not that xe could ask favors of a guard. If she had known, she could have gone directly to xir.

“Hey!” she called.

She thought she saw Iktan look in her direction, but instead of acknowledging her, xe ducked xir head, sped up, and disappeared into the crowd.

“United in common cause,” she growled, “I think not.” She laughed at herself. She had been so concerned that Iktan might think she was a spy that she did not see the true spy right under her nose. But what kind of spy conspired with someone inside the Great House and then had to be sneaked out? She had a nose for deceit, and she sensed it now. She needed to know what Iktan was hiding.

She hurried after xir, her chase leading her to the north end of camp, past Uncle Kuy and the sleeping mother and daughter and toward the latrines. Interesting. Clearly, Iktan wasn’t returning to play pilgrim at their common fire. So where was xe going?

“Ho! You, there. In the blue!” She turned to see two Carrion Crow guards coming her way in a hurry. Had Iktan told them she was a fake? Had xe reported her as a foreigner, despite earlier assurances that xe would not?