Black Sun

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  For the second time in as many outings, she realized she was not safe in her own city.

  “Stand back, Crow.”

  Naranpa turned at the sound of Iktan’s voice. She was startled to see Yatliza’s son, the warrior who had looked at her with such hatred, no more than a few paces behind her. Iktan had stepped between them, blocking the man, who had been only a few steps away from reaching out and touching her.

  She flinched back before she could regain her composure, grateful once again for the mask that hid her face.

  “I only meant to pay my respects, Knife,” the man said, his words as sharp as the sleeting ice falling around them. If she thought the look he had given her was hateful, the glare he aimed at Iktan was pure loathing.

  “It’s fine,” she said, willing her voice to steady. She pressed a firm hand to Iktan’s back, a request for xir to let her pass. Xe glanced back at her, barely taking xir gaze from the Crow, before shifting a fraction to the side. Still close enough to interfere if she needed xir.

  The man briefly dipped his chin, pressing a hand to his heart. “My name is Okoa Carrion Crow. I am captain of the Shield. I am… was the son of Yatliza, matron of our clan. I wanted to meet you.”

  Naranpa mirrored his bow. “It is a welcome honor to meet you, son of Yatliza. I know your mother thought highly of you.”

  His eyes widened briefly in surprise. “Did you speak to my mother often?” His voice had more than a touch of disbelief.

  “Not often,” she admitted. “But we had occasion to see each other. She was proud of your time at the war college and the care you took with your beast. Benundah, was it?”

  Okoa blinked.

  Naranpa smiled. She had not remembered the great crow’s name until that very minute and had not remembered the son’s name at all until he had introduced himself. But it was worth it to see his expression.

  “You honored my mother well today,” he said. “I will not forget it.”

  Naranpa hesitated, and, because she might not get another chance to say it, blurted, “The Watchers are not your enemy, Okoa. I know we have failed the Crow clan in the past, but we are different now. We will make things right.”

  “Naranpa,” Iktan warned beside her.

  Okoa studied her, dark eyes probing. But she was hidden behind her mask, with little of her to see. She thought of removing it so he could see her face, recognize that she was sincere.

  “You are not the same Sun Priest I knew before I left for Hokaia,” he said. “You are… unexpected.”

  Warmth that belied the wintry day spread through her. She reached out a hand, meaning to grip his forearm in a gesture of respect.

  Okoa reached out, too.

  Someone jostled Okoa from behind. She couldn’t see how it happened and later would remember only the milling crowd and the bodies all in white save his, but the next thing she knew, Iktan was there, obsidian knife between them, and Okoa had shifted directions, arm thrown wide to strike her or to block Iktan or perhaps stop himself from falling on the slippery ground. The black knife sliced Okoa’s jaw. A spray of red splattered across Naranpa’s golden mask, and then there was screaming and someone was pulling her away and Iktan’s dedicant tsiyos were rushing past her to join the fray.

  It was the assassination attempt all over again, except this time she was sure it was a misunderstanding.

  “Let me go!” she cried, struggling to break free of whoever held her. The arms around her didn’t move, so she threw all her might behind a jabbing elbow to the belly. The person let out a gust of shock and released her. But she had been dragged too far away, and there were too many people between her and Iktan and Okoa to get back now.

  “Naranpa!”

  She turned as someone cried her name. It was Ieyoue Water Strider. “Hurry! We must get you away.”

  “But he wasn’t trying to hurt me,” she tried to explain. She wasn’t sure how much Ieyoue had seen, if what she was saying even made sense. She guessed it didn’t from the look the matron gave her.

  “The crowd is turning into a riot,” the woman said. “It’s not safe for any of us, but definitely not you.”

  “But I’ve got to explain.”

  “Nara!” Ieyoue said, exasperated. She grabbed Naranpa by the shoulders and turned her back to face the way she’d come.

  Blood. Enough to turn the snow red. Churned by men fighting with hands and knives and complicated by people desperately trying to flee across the narrow bridges that could only accommodate two abreast and less in the ice.

  “Skies,” she whispered, shocked.

  “Now!” And this time when Ieyoue pulled her away, she followed. Across the bridge to Titidi, the Water Strider clan making way for their matron and the Sun Priest.

  Naranpa lost sight of the rest of the Watchers, letting Ieyoue lead her through the streets of the district and to the Great House. Glimpses of water gardens and canals wearing a fine coating of frost were incongruously peaceful after the rush and horror of the riot.

  Once they were inside, Ieyoue had her wrapped in blankets and sitting in her offices, a hot beverage in her hand, before Naranpa could process what had happened.

  “Get the Sun Priest something to eat,” the matron commanded a nearby servant.

  “No,” Naranpa protested softly. “I’m fasting.”

  “Surely you can break your fast for now. You need food to fight the shock.”

  “I…” But she didn’t have the will to fight about it.

  Ieyoue nodded, sending the servant away to fetch a plate.

  “May I?” She reached behind Naranpa’s head to release the mask’s clasp. She pulled it from her face. “Now, drink. The tea will help.”

  Naranpa looked at her golden mask, now streaked with Carrion Crow blood. “Do you think they’re dead?”

  “Who, Nara?”

  Iktan, she thought first. And then the son, Okoa. But her lips could form neither name.

  “Someone’s definitely dead,” Ieyoue said gently. “We will wait a few hours to return you to the tower and sort out who.”

  CHAPTER 20

  THE CRESCENT SEA

  YEAR 325 OF THE SUN

  (12 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)

  The sea has no mercy, even for a Teek.

  —Teek saying

  The storm didn’t strike until well into the next week. Seven days of clear skies, favorable winds, and steady progress through the endless blue were more than Xiala had hoped for, and every morning that dawned clear, she gave thanks to her mother, the sea. But experience warned her that the weather wouldn’t hold, and she had never been wrong before.

  After an increasingly cloudy night that obscured the stars and left her with her ear pressed to the floor of the canoe, listening to the way the waves moved around them to determine direction, she knew a storm was hours away and not days. When the morning dawned a fiery red, she cursed her fickle father above. Serapio had kept watch with her, and he asked what was wrong.

  “Red skies mean rain,” she said, “and skies that red mean a whole fucking lot of it.”

  “Is it beautiful?” he asked.

  She laughed, low and skeptical. “Beautiful enough to kill you.”

  His lips ticked up, but he said nothing.

  Ever since that first night when she had used her Song to give the crew a break, Serapio had shown up once the moon was high and the crew was mostly asleep and sat vigil with her. She had indulged him at first, amused by his enthusiasm for her stories and, admittedly, flattered by his attention and unusual curiosity. But by the fourth evening, she realized that she was impatiently glancing toward his shed, wondering when he would come out. She had already thought of a handful of stories to tell him that night, knowing that he would like best the one about the seabird that flew a thousand miles to save its hatchling.

  “Look at you, Xiala,” she whispered to herself with a wry shake of her head. “You like him. The blind foreigner who doesn’t say much. Well, you always do like the strange ones.�
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  Which wasn’t true. She usually liked the pretty ones, the easy ones she could leave in port the next day and not feel bad about. But there was something about his quiet presence beside her night after night, something intentional about the way he sat next to her, his hands folded in his lap. Or if she was telling a particularly enthralling story, the way he would absently trace a finger over his palm, circling an invisible line on his skin. She took pleasure in his proximity, the kiss of his breath against her skin, the smell of distant smoke that lingered on his clothes.

  He was peculiar, though. There was no denying that. But she no longer felt uneasy in his company or saw giant crows around his head. She was willing to chalk his awkwardness up to being a foreigner, and a sheltered one at that. How could one know anything about the world, about people and the way they interacted, if one had grown up isolated in the mountains like he had?

  She’d gotten that much out of him, but she wanted to know more about those mountains and everything else about his homeland, but he was tight-lipped. “A man is like a clam,” her mother had once told her. “Let him open on his own, and he will give you a pearl.”

  Her aunt had scoffed, arguing that it was best to crack them open right away to find out if inside there was only sand and no pearl at all, and that’s why the Teek had no use for them. But that wasn’t entirely right, and Xiala had known that even at a young age. True, there were no men in their society. She had told Serapio that sailors simply did not find their floating islands very often. But the truth was that some did; they just didn’t live long enough to tell anyone else about it. And she, a Teek a long way from home, would not be explaining the murderous habits of her kinfolk anytime soon. She considered it a cultural peculiarity and no one’s business but the Teek’s.

  So she simply enjoyed their nights up talking and watching the stars and listening to the sea, knowing it would end soon enough.

  And now, with a storm coming in looking like a shipkiller, they all might have a little less time to enjoy one another’s company.

  “We’ll have to dump some of the weight,” she told Callo, once Serapio had returned to his room and she and her first mate were giving orders to the men to prepare.

  “Lord Balam won’t like it,” he said.

  “Lord Balam will truly not give a fuck if it means we survive.”

  Callo eyed her skeptically, as if to say a rich man always cared about losing his wealth, but she remembered what he’d said to her on the dock in Cuecola. Serapio was the only treasure on this ship that mattered.

  “Dump the heavier stuff,” she said, pointing to the wooden crates. “There, and there. And it will make more room for the crew under the awning when they rest.”

  “And the bladders?” He meant the flotation bladders that they would tie to the bow and stern to keep the ship from sinking.

  “Fill them now so they are ready,” she said. “And the paddle ones, too.” They had more bladders to tie to the paddles. They would secure those to the sides of the boat and stretch them out over the water to make the canoe wider and more stable. “After the bladders are in place, set four men on bailing duty, and as soon as the rain starts, they start bailing.”

  Callo nodded. “Anything else?”

  “Everyone works in threes. Men tied together, too, and hitched to something immovable on the ship.” Tying men together gave them a fighting chance of being rescued if they went overboard, but it also meant that if the ship went down, the men tied to it went down with it. Of course, on the open sea, it didn’t matter. They all understood that if the ship sank today, there was no rescue.

  “I’ll have Patu walk the seams again,” Callo offered. “There’s resin left enough to seal any leaks.”

  “Do it,” she said, eyes on the horizon. “And hurry. We don’t have much time.” She chewed at her lip, thinking. Hoping to all seven hells that she hadn’t forgotten anything and trusting Callo to remind her if she had.

  All morning, Xiala kept the men at paddles, moving forward at double time, doing their best to angle away from the beast that they could not outrun. She watched the sky grow dense and heavy with water, her eyes cast westward watching the far-off lightning that inched closer by the hour.

  Callo came to her after high sun. “The men are asking why we’re preparing for the storm when you said you’d Sing us safe to shore.” His voice held a note of accusation, and she was surprised it had taken him so long to ask.

  “And not you?”

  He lifted one shoulder. “Maybe you can Sing down a spring squall, but this one’s big as a mountain range. More.” He gestured toward the horizon. “What’s a Teek to that monster?”

  He was right, but she bristled nonetheless. She liked it better when he’d had faith in her.

  “A Teek is always something,” she said, her pride smarting. “Let me do what I can.”

  “What you can, then.” One sharp nod, and he was lumbering away, and Xiala was left wondering why she’d said that. He was right. There was nothing she could do. But she could try, couldn’t she?

  She looked over at her crew. They were bent to their tasks, most working furiously, with the occasional furtive glance her way. Tension thickened the air, bad as any pressure leading the storm, and she knew how she could help.

  She took a few deep breaths to clear her own nerves and thought of the first thunderstorm she’d lived through as a child. The whole village had gathered under one roof, better to be together in case mudslides hit or flooding took a house. And the grandmothers of the village had Sung for them all, sweet soothing Songs of better days and kinder seas. Songs of soft beds and no worries and waiting arms, and it had worked. Everyone had calmed and made it through that storm together. The next morning they’d come out to find palm trees torn apart as if by the hands of giants and roofs blown clear away, fields flooded to ruin, and strange creatures washed up on the shore. But no one had died, and that was what mattered; the rest could be rebuilt.

  She Sang that Song now, a Song of comfort and ease, and even as the men bent to their tasks, their shoulders loosened. They exchanged smiles more often and encouraged one another with generous words. Thunder cracked, still far away, and someone, Atan, shouted defiance. The rest laughed, and Loob patted him on his broad shoulders.

  She caught Callo’s eye and nodded. He nodded back.

  And it was something after all.

  The storm struck full in the late afternoon, clouds black with thunder rolling overhead punctuated by sharp crackling lightning that streaked across the sky in blinding flashes. The direction of the wind shifted with a fury forcing the ship off course like a child flicking a bug across a pond. Xiala marked the change and which way was north-northwest in hopes that they’d be able to find it again, and the rain came in great horizontal sheets that stung like spine needles against skin. And then the real fight began.

  “Bailmen!” she shouted from her place at the stern. She hunched in her cowl, trying to keep the painful downpour off her face as best she could. Every article of clothing had been immediately soaked, toes to head, and it clung wet and cold to her body, as if the summer of a few days ago was a memory so distant it was as improbable as one of Serapio’s tales.

  The ship rolled with the waves, and the bailmen took turns keeping the ship from being overwhelmed. Callo stayed tied to the bow as lookout and Xiala to the stern, and they all prayed to whatever beings they thought protected them.

  The rogue wave hit an hour later, a monster grown twice as high as its companions, which were already clawing up the sides of the canoe, doing their damnedest to get over. Xiala saw it coming and screamed a single note at it, more instinct than aid, but it did no good and the wave barreled down over the ship.

  She flung herself against the deck, wrapped her arms around the bench leg, and held on. Her stomach dropped as the ship pitched, the water shoving her head down so hard she saw stars when her temple struck the floor. Then she was being lifted, her body suddenly weightless. Her shoulders bur
ned as the water dragged at her, promising to pull her out to sea. But she didn’t go, and soon she was huddled by the bench again, with the wind lashing and the waves slapping the ship, but not actively trying to kill her.

  As soon as she and the ship had righted themselves, she screamed for another bail team. She wasn’t sure if her voice could be heard over the storm, but three men lashed together ventured out from the poor shelter of the reed awning, heads ducked and buckets in hand. The lead man crossed the width of the ship to tie himself to the far side and joined the other team already bailing the ankle-deep water.

  She checked the flotation bladder at her back, knowing Callo would be doing the same for the bow. Once sure it was still secure, she turned to the bladdered paddles that were doubling as outrigging. She spied a loose one, the sac torn free and dangling and the shaft rattling against the side of the ship, dangerously close to breaking free.

  “Paddle loose!” she cried. “Starboard, back quarter. Somebody secure it!”

  There was shuffling under the reed awning. Finally, a man crawled out on his hands and knees. She thought it was Loob, but in the sheeting rain, she couldn’t be sure. He was tied to another man, likely Baat, who followed him but kept the rope slack between them. A third man was their anchor, just outside the awning. Xiala squinted through the rain. Their anchor wasn’t tied down, and his rope had unspooled from his middle, where it was quickly slipping from his hands.

  She opened her mouth to scream at the man to tie down, but before she could speak, the ship tilted violently, a wave coming up under them. The bow veered. The bailmen tumbled hard to the deck like bits of debris in a hurricane. The distressed paddle broke free, flying out into the open water like a loosed bird.

  Loob lunged for it. Baat stumbled, Loob’s momentum pulling him forward.