“Highly.” She decided to get the basics out of the way. “Just so you know, I’m not selling my bones.”
Balam startled. “Your bones?”
She tried to gauge whether he was faking his surprise. He had said he knew what she was, which meant he knew she was Teek. Some men collected Teek bones as good-luck charms. A finger bone might bring you auspicious weather or a strong wind. Catch a Teek and carve her throat bone out, and it would guarantee a good catch in deep waters, they said. She thumbed the missing top joint of the little finger on her left hand. It was her own fault she’d lost the pinkie. She’d had too much to drink and trusted the wrong man, a pretty one with eyes like wet earth after a spring rain and hands that had slipped between her legs and made her… well, never mind that. Now she kept a dagger on her belt that seemed enough to ward off treasure seekers. The dagger she’d lost at some point last night, either left behind by accident or confiscated by the jail. Well, perhaps that was for the better. She wasn’t much for daggers. Hers was mostly for show, since if it ever came down to losing a body part again, she’d Sing her way out of trouble. Assuming she was sober enough to conjure her voice. People got discouraged by a dagger, but they got downright murderous if they thought you were trying to magic them with your Song.
“Eyes, then?” she asked, challenge in her voice. “I saw you staring.”
Some Teek had eyes the crystal blue of the brightest waters, some the storm gray of gales, but the rarest of Teek had eyes like hers: a kaleidoscope of jewel colors, shifting like sunlight in shallow water. A man in a port she couldn’t remember now once told her the nobles of Tova collected Teek eyes like hers to wear around their fingers like jewels. She had Sung that bastard down to sleep without hesitation. No harm done beyond not waking up in time to make muster on the dock the next day. Which no doubt led to missed work, missed wages. A small harm, then. But deserved.
“No bones, no eyes,” Balam said with a theatrical shudder. “I have a job for you, Captain. I hear you might be in need of one.”
“Lord Pech. That’s how you found me?”
He nodded.
Of course all the lords talked. Which meant her job prospects were shrinking by the second. Not only would she be a dangerous Teek, she’d be a Teek with a temper.
“What kind of cargo?”
“The human kind.”
“Slaves?” She shook her head. She was desperate but not that desperate. “I don’t move people.”
“Not slaves.” He made a face like the idea was distasteful, but she wasn’t convinced. The lords of Cuecola were not above the slave trade.
“Then who?”
He wagged a finger. “The question should be to where.”
He was avoiding an answer, but she let it pass for the moment. “To where, then?” she asked.
“Tova.”
She had never been there, but she knew of it. Everyone did. It was called the Jewel of the Continent and the Holy City and the City of the Sky Made. It was a cliff city high in the clouds, the legendary birthplace of the Sky Made clans and the home of the Sun Priest and the Watchers whose duty it was to keep the calendar and wrestle order from chaos. Tova was the religious heart of the Meridian continent, just as Cuecola was its commercial capital and Hokaia its military center.
She visualized the map of the Meridian in her head. It was a land mass whose populations centered around a crescent-shaped swoop of coastline with Cuecola at the bottom tail of the C, the mouth of the river Tovasheh, the gateway to Tova, at the top left corner of that C, and Hokaia at the far top edge of the C in a parallel line north-south from Cuecola. There were other cities and settlements on the continent, but none as large or as powerful as the three great cities that bordered the Crescent.
“It’s a long way,” she said, “and a dangerous route for this late in the year. The Crescent Sea is known for its late-autumn storms. Shipkillers, they call them. Waves three times as tall as a tall man. Winds to howl down the heavens. And rain. Flood rains.”
Tova could be reached by land, but the fastest way was around the Crescent by ship and then upriver by barge or foot. Most ships had already put into dock for the off-season or were running short voyages that kept them glued to the coast. Her disastrous outing with Lord Pech was supposed to be her last for the year.
“You must be there in twenty days.”
“Twenty days? No. That’s impossible this time of year. More likely thirty to account for bad luck and bad weather, assuming you could even find a captain stupid enough to take you up on it.”
“But it can be done?”
“I just said it was impossible.”
“But if the seas were calm and weather favored you, and my stupid captain was brave enough to take to the open water rather than hugging the coast?”
Bones and pretty eyes were one thing, but this was where her power lay, and now she understood why he’d come for her. “My Song doesn’t work like that. I can’t do anything about the weather.”
“But you can calm the seas, and it is said that your kind do not fear the open water.”
“My kind?” She laced that with the disdain it deserved, but Balam was unbothered.
“Teek, of course.”
She rolled her eyes to the stars. Why try to educate those who cared not to learn?
“It must be twenty days,” he insisted. “Or else there is no deal.”
They had passed the city wall and entered Cuecola proper. This part of town was more familiar. They walked a long wide avenue that Xiala recognized as running between the homes of the House of Seven before dead-ending into the docks and, finally, the sea.
“And what exactly is the deal you’re offering?”
“A ship, with a full commission of cargo and crew,” he said, “provided you continue to work for me. I will give you ten percent of whatever profits are made from the ship trade, in addition to a basic living salary and a room in one of my houses when you are at port in Cuecola. However, if you leave my employment before the term is complete, the ship stays with me and you forfeit anything you have earned as payment.”
“How long is the term?”
“Twelve years.”
Twelve years. Twelve years was a long time under the thumb of any lord. Still, she could amass a tidy bundle in twelve years if his ship and cargo were as fine as she thought they might be. She could retire at thirty-nine, a well-off woman. The idea of not having to scramble for jobs, of not having to grovel to another lord or convince a doubting crew she was worth more than eyeballs and pinkie fingers.
“How do I know you aren’t a bastard like Pech?”
He smiled. “Oh, I am a bastard, but I am a fair one. You will not regret your employment.”
“So I work for you, and after twelve years you give me a fortune.”
“Your earned payment,” he acknowledged.
“And if I leave before the term is up?”
“You get nothing.”
She chewed at her chapped bottom lip. “Can I be fired?”
“Only for a breach of morals.”
She barked a laugh. A faint smile, a genuine smile, tugged at the corner of his mouth.
“Twenty percent,” she challenged.
He came to a stop, forcing her to stand still with him. The street was busy enough the foot traffic had to veer around them like water around an isle, but no one dared question a lord of the House of Seven. If he wished to stand in the middle of the street and have a conversation with a woman in pants who reeked faintly of alcohol and piss, that was his prerogative.
“I would think, Captain,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact, “that you would be glad for any employment right now that might remove you from Cuecola for a while. Time away may help a certain tupile forget about your capital crimes. Do not think it will be easy to hire on to another ship, after what you did to Pech. He was livid, you know. That alone would have you thrown in jail, never mind all the rest.”
“Fifteen.”
“Twelve
, but if you continue to challenge me, it will be eight.”
He waited for her reply, and when none came, he said, “Then we have a deal.”
“One more thing.”
His mouth tightened, and she said quickly, “A bath. I smell.”
He relaxed. “There’s a bathhouse near the docks. It can be arranged, but you must be quick.”
Quick was fine, as long as it happened. “And fresh clothing.”
“Captain, do I look like a laundress?”
She eyed the stalls around them. Most clothing was sewn to order and took weeks to deliver. “I’ll launder my own clothes at the bathhouse, then,” she conceded. They wouldn’t have time to dry, but spending time on ships had accustomed her to being at the very least damp most of the time.
“Now, tell me who I’m taking to Tova,” she said.
“A single Obregi man,” he said lightly. “Blinded. Scarred. Some kind of religious affliction, as I understand it. Harmless.” The last he said too quickly, as if he was hiding something.
“Usually,” Xiala said carefully, “when someone describes a man as harmless, he ends up being a villain.”
Balam turned his focus to her, the sudden intensity in his dark eyes making her breath catch in her throat. She instinctively reached for her Song the way another woman would reach for a weapon. She no longer had a dagger at her waist, but even if she had, her Song would have come first.
Balam narrowed his eyes, considering. As if he knew she had armed herself. As if he approved. After a moment he turned from her and continued down to the docks.
“Let us hope you are wrong, Captain,” he said over his shoulder, “for both our sakes.”
CHAPTER 3
CITY OF TOVA (COYOTE’S MAW)
YEAR 325 OF THE SUN
(THE DAY OF CONVERGENCE)
It is declared that each of the great peoples who had entered into agreement here shall once a year send four children of the age of twelve from within their territory to serve under the Sun Priest in the city of Tova and reside in the celestial tower for a period of no less than sixteen years upon which they may return home should they choose; the exception being that the child be designated the head of their society whereby they shall serve another sixteen years; the exception being the child be designated the Sun Priest, whereby they shall serve unto death.
—“On the Replenishment of the Watchers,” from the signing of the Treaty of Hokaia and the investiture of the Sun Priest, Year 1 of the Sun
Naranpa was not dead, even though the witch Zataya thought her so. She could not move her limbs or open her eyes, and her breath came out in an almost imperceptible wheeze, but she could hear and more so feel everything that was happening to her.
She felt the apprentices’ hands, two girls who strained and heaved as they dragged her from the river. She heard Zataya order them to build up the fire, and then she breathed in the smoke the witch fanned from the flames. She screamed without sound at the hot, thick drip of blood against her naked chest, and then at Zataya’s command to her apprentices to spread the blood evenly over Naranpa’s supine form. And as the witch covered her with a blanket, pausing only to pry her mouth open and place a salt rock under her tongue, Naranpa wept unnoticed tears.
Naranpa had been a child once. Long before she joined the priesthood, before she learned to read the course of the sun and command Sky Made queens, she had been a beggar in the poor district of Tova called Coyote’s Maw. Often when the streets were quiet before the evening crowd of gamblers, tourists, and pleasure seekers arrived in the Maw, Naranpa had sat on the westernmost ledge of the top level of the district and peered out over the dizzying distance that separated her home from the wealthier neighborhoods. Looking out over the city, she had dreamed. Of crossing the woven suspension bridges that swayed like spidersilk in the gentle canyon breezes and allowed free travel among all the districts but hers. Of exploring the wide roads and stately adobe brick homes, some four and five stories high, not as a servant like her mother but as someone who belonged there. And brashest of all, of being a scholar in the celestial tower in the district of Otsa.
She was only ten, then, her destiny far from decided. She had not yet learned she was poor and people like her only went to the celestial tower as servants, or that once you were poor, people hated you for it even when you weren’t poor anymore.
She remembered a summer night she sat with her family around the cooking coals they shared with their neighbors, talking about how she wished to study the stars. In the Sky Made districts, the scions ate on great communal terraces where kitchens produced food for hundreds, but in the Maw, people kindled small dugout fires in the street where they roasted ground cornmeal or buried whole ears of corn in hot ash to bake overnight.
At her words, her mother had exchanged a mysterious glance with her father, and he had nodded.
“It is good fortune that you would talk of studying the stars tonight, Nara,” her mother said, her voice high with excitement. “I spoke to the matron I serve, and she remembered you and how smart you are and how well you learn, and she has agreed to sponsor you at the celestial tower.”
Naranpa felt dizzy. “I’m going to be a scholar-priest?” She knew there were other disciplines one could learn at the tower—healing, writing and history, even the art of death—but all she had ever wanted was to study the sun and moon and the movement of the stars.
Her father laughed. “Oh, no, little one. They would never let you study there. You are to work. You will serve the priests. Help cook their meals, wash their vestments, clean their floors.”
Her stomach dropped in disappointment.
“But…” Her mother gave her father a long look. “Perhaps you will learn something if you listen closely. A servant can learn a lot through observation if she is quiet.”
“Then I will be quiet,” she vowed solemnly. “And I will learn everything!”
“That’s not fair,” her younger brother, Denaochi, protested. “Why does she get to go and not me?”
“Who wants to be a priest when you could be one of the Sky Made scions?” her other brother, Akel, asked.
Naranpa bit her lip. Being Sky Made was exciting. Water Strider was her favorite clan, and its matron was the one her mother served. It ruled the district of Titidi, which was closest to the Maw. She could see the curving edges of its cliffs when she gazed across the narrow canyon that divided them, its great sky-blue banners cascading down the sides of adobe buildings between dripping green vines and colorful tendrils of starburst flowers. She could even see trees there. Trees! The Maw had no trees. Titidi was a garden of impossible green and growth, with a waterfall that ran right through it like a living street before tumbling to the river that bisected Tova below. When her mother talked of it, she imagined Titidi was something out of a story, a place she could only hear about but never touch. But now…
“What clan would you be, Akel?” she asked.
“Why would anyone want to be anything but Golden Eagle?” Denaochi interrupted. “Everyone knows they are the most powerful of the four clans.”
“Not if we go to war!” Akel countered.
“You want to ride on the back of a water insect when we go to war?” He lifted his sharp chin. “I’ll be on the back of an eagle, shitting down on you!”
“Not a Water Strider, a Winged Serpent!”
“Same difference.”
Akel lunged at his little brother, but Denaochi easily dodged his half-hearted blow.
“What’s this talk of war?” their father said, rough anger coloring his voice. “Tova does not war. We have been at peace for three hundred years, since the priesthood united us.”
“Akel’s the one who wants to fight. I want to rule!” Denaochi’s face was so smug Naranpa could only laugh.
“Boys don’t rule in Tova,” Akel countered. “Besides, all you could ever rule is the sewer pile. You and your shitting birds. I’m going to the war college in Hokaia with the scions where I’ll learn to fight.
”
“Enough!” their father muttered. “You don’t know what you’re talking about, either of you. Do I have fools for sons? Dreaming of being lords and warriors? You’ll be lucky to find work in the mines or in the fields in the east.” He snorted. “The war college is not for the likes of you, Akel. If war comes, you would be nothing but fodder, or worse, a sacrifice on a foreign altar where the Sun Priest has not brought enlightenment. And you, Ochi…” He turned his gaze to the younger boy. “Akel’s right. The only place you’ll ever rule is right here in the Maw, and there’s nothing here worth reigning over but trash.”
“Jeyma,” her mother chided her husband. “They’re only children.”
“They are too old for nonsense.” He glared at his brood, one by one. “Remember well. You’re no Sky Made scions, and you never will be. Get those thoughts out of your head or court misery the rest of your life.”
Silence fell across the small family in the wake of her father’s reprimand. Her mother said nothing, but Naranpa could see her disapproval clear enough in the set of her jaw, the look in her eyes.
“When I go to the celestial tower in Otsa, I will bring you all to visit me,” Naranpa offered, trying to soothe the mood, “and you can ride an eagle, Ochi. And you a winged serpent, Akel. But not to war. Just for fun!”
“I said enough fool talk,” her father grumbled, sounding more tired than angry. “You too, Nara. No more.”
Her promise to her brothers had not come to fruition, of course. Not only because the riders of the great Sky Made clans’ beasts were lords even among the scions and specially chosen from their clans to train for years before they were allowed mounts, but also because by the time Naranpa did leave her home and move to Otsa to become not just a servant, although she had been that, and not just a dedicant, although she was that, too, but the Sun Priest, its highest honor… by that time, her older brother was dead and her younger brother dead in spirit. She was not sure of her parents’ final fates, but she assumed them dead, too. She had never gone back to find out.
Because her father had been right. The truth was that as much as she loved the city, the city did not love her back. It had little use for a Maw beggar girl; some use for a clever servant who caught the attention of the aging and eccentric Sun Priest; more use for an unlikely dedicant who had an uncanny ability to read the stars and outshine her society classmates; and a final and blistering use for an idealistic young Sun Priest who thought she could make a change to her beloved city but instead only made enemies.
Black Sun Page 3