But the ugly truth was that the brutality had had the desired effect. It had humbled Carrion Crow, setting the clan back generations and driving the worship of their old god underground. Until recently, at least, when rumors of the cult’s resurgence had been heard.
“Ah, here now! We approach the Great House,” Haisan said as they reached a wide avenue that branched to the south. “Let us see if the clan matron greets us or not.”
The first test, Naranpa thought. If Carrion Crow doesn’t come to acknowledge our procession, it will be a humiliation and a sure sign that we are in fact enemies. But to Naranpa’s great relief, the matron of Carrion Crow waited before them.
Yatliza was tall and painfully thin. She wore a long black sheath dress of panther skin. A lustrous cape of crow feathers fell elegantly from her shoulders to the ground, and around her neck, a collar of rare red macaw feathers framed a regal face. Her hair was loose down her back and adorned with bits of mica that caught the morning light. For a moment Naranpa felt that old intimidation of the Sky Made stir in her once again. How could you look upon a woman like this and not think her better than you, something that came from another world, perhaps the stars themselves?
But you were chosen, Naranpa reminded herself. The Sky Made clans may be composed of queens, but Kiutue believed you were the future of the Watchers. Without you, there is no peace and their queendoms crumble. Do not forget!
But it was hard to remember, painful even. She could almost feel the other priests judging her. Haisan’s concern that she was disturbing the order of things, Abah’s thinly veiled disdain, Iktan… well, Iktan was her friend and would not judge her, but she sometimes wondered if xe thought she was in over her head but would not say it.
A few rote words of welcome and honor were exchanged, Naranpa managed it well enough, she thought, and then the procession was on its way again, headed to the next district.
Eagerly, they crossed the short bridge into Kun and left the black buildings and black looks of Odo behind.
By then the sun had risen in earnest and the morning frost had all but disappeared, making for a crisp but not miserable morning. As if sensing their western neighbors had not given the priestly procession an enthusiastic welcome, the district of Kun and clan Winged Serpent came out in earnest. The moment their feet left the bridge, a great cheer rose from the gathered crowd. Haisan made an approving sound, and Abah laughed, delighted. Naranpa felt a surge of gratitude and returned the appreciative nods of her fellow priests. Perhaps now they would think her idea not so foolish after all.
She turned to Iktan, but xe was silent behind xir mask. All around them, citizens shouted their support of the priesthood, waving green ribbons or dancing in rhythm to their processional drum, tiny bells jingling at their knees. It was a festival after Odo’s funeral march.
“This is excessive,” Iktan whispered at her side. She startled. Xe rarely spoke in public.
“What?” she asked over the din of singing and cheers.
“The Shuttering is a solemn day, not a day of celebration. Carrion Crow was a bit dour, yes, but they were more proper than this. What are they doing?”
She shrugged, annoyed at xir words. “Perhaps they’re just happy to see us, grateful for our service.”
“What service is that, Nara?”
“Was not Kiutue born Winged Serpent before he joined the celestial tower?” She meant it as proof of a shared history, but she could tell immediately Iktan took it poorly.
“We’re meant to set aside such relationships once we join the tower,” xe said, voice dark. “We are not to show favor to our birth clans, and they are not to remember us. Else we invite corruption. Our duty is to the heavens, is it not? They, unlike humans, are constant. Inviolable.” The last word dripped with sarcasm.
“Not now, Iktan. Please.” She was used to xir cynicism, but today was turning into a triumphant day. Couldn’t she relish it for just a little while?
She turned her attention away from xir and back to the crowd intent on enjoying herself, but some of the pleasure at the clan’s greeting had faded, and her old worries returned.
The matron of Winged Serpent had come down from their Great House to greet them in the road. Her name was Peyana. She was elegant, just as Yatliza had been, but Peyana had a vibrancy to her, a liveliness the Carrion Crow matron lacked. She wore a dress of iridescent winged serpent scales for the occasion that undulated like a living skin as she walked. Around her shoulders was a robe of bright green and blue feathers with bits of red and yellow threaded in. Her hair was coiled into two horns atop her head, and jade dripped like green flames from her ears.
After Naranpa and Peyana exchanged the ceremonial greeting, the procession did not stay long in Kun. Soon they had the bridge to Sun Rock at their feet.
“Do we not walk the whole district?” Abah asked.
“Kun is the largest district of Tova and stretches far down the cliffside,” Haisan answered before Naranpa could reply. “No need to walk the whole thing. It would take most of the day! And if we crossed the river there, we would enter the northern half of the city in the Eastern districts, which is all farmland. There is certainly no need to walk there. And the only way back toward the Sky Made districts is through the Maw.” He shuddered theatrically.
“We’ll cross the Tovasheh to Titidi by way of Sun Rock,” Naranpa added. “Then we can walk Titidi and Tsay and back across to Otsa by sunset.” She ignored Haisan’s insult of the Maw.
Sun Rock was a two-hundred-foot-high freestanding mesa in the center of the city. Below and around its walls rushed the Tovasheh river, the life-giving artery of Tova. No clans ruled here on the Rock, and it was only ever populated on ceremonial days and when the Speakers Council met.
The bridge crossing was the longest of their journey but otherwise uneventful. Naranpa wondered how the dedicant from the southern lowlands was faring but didn’t inquire. The day was starting to wear on her, and she was ready to rest. Perhaps she could slip her boots off and rub her feet, if Abah wasn’t looking and judging her impropriety.
Sun Rock felt empty and abandoned after the pageantry of Odo and Kun. Twenty paces from the bridge landing, the ground dropped away to reveal a great open-air circle dug out of the ground. It was shaped like the roundhouses of the clans’ Great Houses but open to the stars, much like the rooftop observatory of the celestial tower. Benches lined its steep stairs all around, and as they passed the eastern entrance, Naranpa called a halt.
She heard the sighs of relief from the dedicants behind her. She took the first steps down into the amphitheater, and everyone followed, spreading out along the benches and calling for water from the servants.
A handful of servants who had trailed the entourage brought forward baskets full of corn cakes, venison, and flasks of water and began to distribute lunch. Naranpa watched the woman who had led the procession with her drum massage her hands before accepting water from a girl in a brown servant’s robe.
Another servant wearing brown approached Naranpa, and she absently reached inside the basket he proffered. She missed entirely the knife he pulled from his sleeve until the flash of the obsidian blade caught her eye as it moved toward her chest. She cried out, but she was too late.
Suddenly she was being pulled backward, tumbling off the stone bench. Her head struck the bench behind her, and shock radiated through her body. Her vision blurred, and she flailed instinctively, trying to fight off whatever or whoever she was certain was going to stab her. But her hands hit only air, and by the time she had calmed enough to see what had happened, she realized Iktan had been the one to pull her back.
And xe had taken her place.
And xe had xir own knife buried deep in the servant-in-brown’s neck.
Naranpa could do nothing but gape.
Until someone screamed, one of the dedicants. And then Naranpa was scrambling to her feet. Hands reached to help her up. She got to standing just as Iktan lowered the would-be assassin to the ground.
“Skies and stars,” Abah whispered, grasping Naranpa’s arm. “Are you all right?”
Naranpa clawed at her mask, ripping it off. Removing one’s mask was a thing not done in public, but she couldn’t breathe, and there was no one to see but her own people. No, not only her own people. Someone had infiltrated their group and tried to kill her.
“Who was he?” she cried, striding over to Iktan and the dead man.
“You shouldn’t have killed him so quickly,” Haisan murmured as he approached, too. “Now we cannot ask him who he was.”
“Or why he did this!” Abah said breathlessly just behind Naranpa’s shoulder.
Naranpa glanced back at the girl. She had taken off her mask, too, and her face was flushed with excitement. Naranpa had a sudden urge to slap her but quelled it quickly. Abah was young, she reminded herself. And foolish, despite her rise to power.
“There’s no need to ask,” Iktan said in a quiet, measured voice. Xe had just killed a man, had just saved her life, but already xe was as calm as if they were out on a leisurely stroll. The tsiyo leaned down to tear away the man’s robe, exposing his lower neck and chest.
Naranpa gasped.
There, carved into his body and dyed red, was the mark they had seen all morning, on banners and above doors: the skull of Carrion Crow.
CHAPTER 5
CITY OF TOVA
YEAR 325 OF THE SUN
(20 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)
Seek the pattern in all things.
—The Manual of the Sun Priest
The rest of the procession around the city passed in a blur. Titidi was a district of citizens in blue garb and measured celebration, and Tsay was much the same, only gold and concerned with eagles instead of insects. Naranpa didn’t care about any of it. This was supposed to be a day of honoring the priesthood, an acknowledgment of their importance and power. Her power, and the beginnings of the Sun Priest’s return to prominence within the tower. But now Naranpa could not calm her pulse, and every noise made her jump, her eyes searching the crowd for someone who wanted her dead.
Iktan had stayed behind on Sun Rock with a tsiyo dedicant to investigate her would-be assassination. Another tsiyo had donned Iktan’s red mask and continued in xir stead.
“Is that wise?” Haisan had asked, when Iktan first proposed it. “Tradition would have us—”
“Not be murdered in our own city?” xe asked, amused.
That had silenced the scholar, but Naranpa had pulled her friend aside where they could talk privately.
“What do you think?” she asked xir.
“I think you should be careful and refrain from judgment.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing more than what I said. Let me and mine do our work, and I will come to you in your rooms before full moonrise to tell you what I have learned.”
“Iktan…” She hesitated. She felt dizzy, off-balance. She knew her reforms were unpopular with the traditionalists, and Carrion Crow certainly had no love for the celestial tower, but an assassination? In all her plans for the future, she had not foreseen it.
She forced herself to breathe deeply. She would not be afraid, but she would be careful. “Do you think it safe for me to continue?”
Iktan tilted xir head, studying her. Dark eyes bored into her, the scrutiny so personal that she flushed. “Yes.”
She squared her shoulders. “All right. I’ll finish.”
And so she had. But when the last bridge came into view, this one glowing in the sunset instead of the sunrise, and leading home to Otsa, she wanted to cry. She was grateful for the mask that she again wore, happy it covered her face and what must be her frightened-rabbit expression.
Tradition dictated that the doors of the celestial tower be symbolically locked at sunset to begin the Shuttering, as acknowledgment that the priests would stay sequestered until the solstice. Naranpa had never felt so glad to hear the boom of those mighty wooden doors closing. For twenty days, the outside world would remain out and her would-be assassins would remain outside with it.
“A vigorous day!” Haisan exclaimed behind her, and she startled so hard she almost fell. Skies, she had to calm down. “Shall we meet for Conclave when the moon is at its zenith to discuss the protocol for Shuttering?” he asked.
She looked around at the milling crowd. Nervous energy thrummed through the air, the excitement of her almost murder too much for the tower inhabitants to bear. “Of course. I suggest we all rest before then so we will be at our best for Conclave.”
Haisan nodded, muttering a yes, yes, and the rest of the crowd slowly started to disperse, wandering off to their rooms or leaving in search of their last meal on the terrace before the rationing started for Shuttering. Naranpa had sworn them all to secrecy at Sun Rock, but she had no doubt the gossip would spread.
She flagged down a passing servant and asked them to have some of the strong dark tea she liked brought to her room. She knew she should eat while she still could, but she didn’t have the appetite.
Once the servant was gone, she climbed the steps to the fourth floor of the tower and her rooms. She hadn’t thought to have them searched for intruders before she was standing in front of her door, and suddenly she didn’t want to enter. Rational thought told her no one would dare transgress the celestial tower. She was safe here.
And yet…
No! She would not cower. She threw the door open, marching boldly into the room, and almost fainted.
Iktan sat languid as a cat on a bench by her bed.
“Dramatic,” xe murmured.
“Skies!” She pressed a hand to her chest. “Skies!” she cursed again. “You could have frightened me to death, Iktan. Do not do that.”
Xe shrugged, clearly unrepentant. “You are young and healthy. Surely your heart can take it.”
“You do not know what my heart can take,” she quipped, irritated by xir dismissive attitude. And immediately regretted it.
Iktan raised an eyebrow.
“That is not what I meant,” she said, sighing, “but that much is true, too.” They had been lovers as dedicants, not unusual among the priests since most joined the tower when they were deep in the throes of puberty. But their affair had been mostly two fumbling teens exploring each other’s bodies and still unsure what to do with them. When Iktan had been elevated to Priest of Knives, Naranpa had ended the affair for her own reasons. Iktan had taken her rebuff in stride, simply acquiescing to her wishes and never expressing how xe felt about it either way. And surprisingly, they had remained friends. She had a fondness for xir, and she always would, but she had to admit xe was also very much a killer with a killer’s emotional aptitude, and that she found disquieting.
“Tell me what you found,” she said.
Iktan was about to speak when a knock came at the door. Xe was up off the bench, a knife drawn from somewhere quicker than her eye could follow.
“No, stop!” She held up her hand. “It’s fine. I asked for tea. It’s just a servant.”
“Did not a servant try to kill you earlier?”
She paused, eyes wide. “But that wasn’t a real servant,” she protested. She had assumed the infiltration had happened during their walk through Odo. It had not occurred to her that perhaps the assassin had been hiding in the tower this whole time. “Was he truly one of ours?”
Another polite knock, and Iktan opened the door, knife tucked discreetly up a sleeve. The servant, a girl Naranpa recognized, entered with a tray, and the scent of yaupon filled the room. She crossed to a table and set the tray down.
“Thank you, Deeya,” Naranpa said. Deeya bowed once before leaving, never awar
e that Iktan was poised to bury a knife in her throat. Naranpa rubbed at her forehead, feeling the weight of the day. And then Iktan was there pouring her a cup of tea and offering it to her, hand outstretched, just as quickly as xe had bared a knife.
It was so like xir, such a surprising act of care moments after a willingness to violence, that she could only accept it and be grateful for xir presence.
Iktan returned to the bench. “The servant on the Rock was not one of ours,” xe said as if they had never been interrupted. “And he certainly seemed to be Carrion Crow.”
“And yet I hear hesitation in your voice.” She sipped from her tea. “Who else wishes the Sun Priest dead as much as the Crows? Perhaps another clan? Or maybe the progressives who prefer the Sun Priest weakened, or the traditionalists who think me a populist do-gooder, or someone else entirely that I’m not considering. A foreign city that chafes at the Watchers’ authority? Tell me who my enemies are, Iktan, so at least I know who will put the knife in my back.” She said it lightly, but her hands were shaking when she set her cup down.
“Perhaps you have many enemies, Nara. Perhaps you have just one. I don’t know yet.”
Xe was right. She was getting ahead of herself. “So what do you know?”
“The haahan at the base of the man’s throat was new. Carrion Crow carve up their children at the onset of puberty or shortly thereafter. And tend to be excessive about it. Backs, arms.”
“Yes, I know.” She thought of the elaborate designs she had spied on Yatliza’s skin earlier that day. “An outward sign of their mourning for those lost on the Night of Knives, so they never forget.” It goaded her, goaded the Watchers and the tsiyo in particular, but what could they do about it? After such atrocities as the priesthood had committed, the least they could do was tolerate the Crows’ grieving.
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