Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)(6)

“I believe…” Okoa drifted off, seeming to battle with himself. Finally, he spoke again. “I don’t believe the sun has truly set or risen since the Convergence. I don’t know what that means.”

There was a hint of accusation in his voice that pleased Serapio. He knew what it meant.

“The crow god challenges the sun.” Serapio said it with conviction, and now the absence of his god made sense. It still unsettled him. He could not contemplate it without tendrils of panic tightening his chest, but at least there was a reason for it, one he could comprehend beyond his own inadequacy.

Okoa approached him, the warmed and medicated cloth in hand. He gestured to Serapio, asking permission to touch him, and Serapio allowed him his ministrations.

“Do you remember what happened on Sun Rock?” Okoa smoothed the cloth tight to his side.

“Yes.” But that was not entirely true. Serapio had been sifting through his memories, trying to distinguish dream from reality, but there were still parts of Sun Rock that felt like he had witnessed them from afar.

“I have never seen such horrors,” Okoa admitted.

“You are a warrior. Have you not killed before?”

“I have studied war.”

“Studied war.”

“I am Carrion Crow. We are stained by slaughter.” He gripped the collar of his quilted shirt, briefly baring the haahan at his neck. “You cannot shame me for being a man who now lives in peaceful times. They are well earned on the bodies of my ancestors. And I have seen killing before, but…” He shook his head. “Nothing like that.”

There was something in Okoa’s voice, something that made Serapio ask, “Do you fear me?”

“Fear?” He sat back on his heels, studying Serapio’s face. “No. But I am wary of a man who walks so comfortably with death.”

“But I am not only a man.” That hollow feeling, the cupped hand now empty, mocked him, called him a liar, but he did his best to ignore it.

“Some of the bodies were ash and others of the priests laid out in patterns. Why? Was it sorcery? God magic?”

“The shadow of the crow god consumes,” was all he said, because in truth, he did not know. He could not remember laying out the bodies. He flexed his hands, the feeling that he had been so fully possessed both exhilarating and terrifying.

Okoa returned to his side of the fire, but it was clear he wanted Serapio to say more.

Serapio sighed. “I know you wish for answers, Okoa Carrion Crow, but the ways of gods are unknowable.” Even to me.

“And you wonder why I worry.”

They sat by the fire, silent in their own concerns, until Serapio asked, “Do you know how I received this?” He touched the wound on his side.

“I think you were stabbed. But more than that I cannot guess. I don’t think it was a Knife. I’ve been on the sharp edge of their wrath before, and my wound festered and would have killed me within the hour. Yours did not. You had deep lacerations around your eyes, too, and those seem to have healed.”

Serapio had forgotten he had cut his sewn eyes open. He raised a tentative hand to his face and felt lashes flutter against his fingertips. Strange that it already seemed so natural after so many years of lack. The crow at his shoulder cawed, and he understood. The healing of his eyes and his other wounds were part of the small crows’ gift. But if they could not mend the wound in his side, then it must be something of magic, too great for crows alone.

He rubbed his hands through his hair, suddenly tired of this place, this conversation. He did not like any of it, especially his ignorance and patchwork memory. He had always been a man of purpose and destiny, disinterested in what others thought of him, bound to a higher calling. But now he found himself bothered by the way Okoa cast half glances at him and held his words soft on his tongue to avoid offense. Even worse, he was frustrated by his own hesitancy, his own lack of confidence, the missing part of him where his god should be.

He stood. “I need to go back to Tova. I have unfinished business there with the Sun Priest.”

He was sure that if he returned, his purpose would return, too, and his god as well. And perhaps, perhaps, if he still lived when it was all over, he could find Xiala and continue what they had begun. The last was too much to hope, but he found himself hoping it anyway.

“How soon can we return? We have lost too much time here while I slept.”

Okoa’s look was pensive, and Serapio could feel the man’s unvoiced thoughts like an itch between his shoulders.

When Okoa finally did speak, his words came slowly, heavy with portent. “While there are those in Odo who have long awaited your coming and will rejoice that the Odo Sedoh has returned, they are not everyone. You were raised far away. Cuecola? Obregi, you said before?”

“I am Carrion Crow.” A thin line of anger threaded his voice. For Okoa to label him an outsider even after all he had done cut through him more painfully than any Knife. Now it was Serapio’s turn to show his haahan and bare his red teeth. “Do you not see?”

Okoa’s eyes stayed on him. “Even so, there are things about Tova you do not understand. Please.” He smiled, a small tilt of his lips. “Cousin.”

The familiar address warmed Serapio in a way he had not expected. Is this what it feels like to have kin? he wondered.

Okoa’s words were careful, measured. “The Watchers were well loved among the Sky Made. Many were scions of the clans. There are even those in Odo who did not hate them as the Odohaa did.”