“Quickly,” she urged.
Another few minutes, and they were across Sun Rock and on the bridge to Kun. She glanced back. The guard who had noted her was lost to the fog. Shaken, she kept going.
The fog dissipated as they reached land. The road before them went on a way before forking east farther into Kun or west to Odo. Kun was different from Titidi. The district of Winged Serpent was terraced hills and low-slung houses painted green and blue. She glimpsed the rounded roof of a brightly colored Great House up a winding switchback. Its whitewashed walls were decorated with serpents with feathered manes. In another life, she would have been intrigued, happy to spend a lazy day exploring this place. But now, not only did such an idyll seem out of reach, but the only person she wanted to go wandering with was Serapio. How had he become so much a part of her so quickly? She wasn’t sure how to explain it or what she was supposed to do with such unruly emotions. She wasn’t even sure she approved. But there it was, and it was useless to deny what she felt.
They had shared something special in their days together. Not the sex, although she yearned for his touch, the taste of his mouth on hers. Even now, she flushed as she remembered how he sucked the honey from her fingers. But it was more than the desire he roused in her. It was the way he cared for her, asked no more from her than she wanted to give, and never judged her. And he had never feared her for her difference, for her magic, when there were times when she even feared herself.
He had simply been her friend and, for one night, her lover. His presence had felt like the home she never had, the acceptance she craved so desperately, the forgiveness she feared she could never earn. She wanted that feeling back; she wanted him.
I’ll take him away from here, she thought to herself. Now that he has fulfilled his obligations to his crow god, he is free. He can leave this cold place and run away with me. We can find a ship somewhere and sail to the far edges of the Crescent Sea. Find an island of our own, raid merchant ships like proper pirates, live a life unbound from this world and its expectations.
She wouldn’t let herself think of the impracticality of it. How childish the fantasy, how impossible. How, despite their deep connection, there was so much she did not know about him, or he about her. Instead, she stubbornly clung to her dream like the last hope for land in the throes of a shipkiller and prayed that, against all odds, they would reach the nonexistent shore together.
But as she and Uncle Kuy crossed the border into Odo, her hopes sank like an anchor, dashed before the waves even closed above her head.
“Well, fuck me,” she remarked quietly.
The district of Odo was shades of shadow, black and gray volcanic rock with red-painted doors like blood-filled gashes in the stone. Charred wood beams made lintels and fences. Even the roads were marked with gray rock. And everywhere, on banners and painted on walls, the crowsign. She didn’t let it show, but her heart felt like it was cracking.
“What’s that?” Uncle Kuy asked.
“Nothing.”
She had hoped to take Serapio from here, but now that she had seen Odo, she could not imagine a place where he belonged more. Would she really take him away from this? If she asked, would he even come?
She was of the sea, born and bred. Could she ever live in a place like this cold and forbidding city? Would Serapio even want her to stay?
Doubt thickened heavy and cold in her gut, but she braced herself.
“Only one way to find out.”
* * *
As they approached what looked to be a hastily erected gate just across a small bridge that marked the border between Kun and Odo, a guard raised a hand to stop them. She was dressed in black, clearly Carrion Crow, and held a wicked-looking mallet lined with bits of obsidian over her shoulder. She took in their blue cloaks with suspicious eyes, and her mouth drew down in a frown.
“Ho, Water Strider,” she said, stopping them. “What is your business here?”
“Not Water Strider,” Uncle Kuy said. “Carrion Crow.” He unfastened his cloak to pull his shirt aside and expose his chest. Xiala caught a glimpse of haahan. The carving looked new, still irritated on his skin. It was the familiar crowsign, the wings and skull that marked his door and all the doors and walls around them.
The guard peered suspiciously at the marking before reaching out and running a finger across the skin. “Fresh,” she accused.
“I come late to my heritage,” Uncle Kuy confessed, “but I do come. Talk to Lord Okoa, the captain of the Shield. He knows me. He will vouch for me.”
The guard pinched thin lips together. “And her?”
“My niece,” Uncle Kuy lied. “I’m the only family she has. I couldn’t leave her behind when the crow god called us. She is true.”
Xiala dipped her head, mimicking what she thought an obedient niece might do, and made sure her hair and eyes were well covered.
“And your business?” the guard asked.
“We answer the call of the Odo Sedoh.” Uncle Kuy swept an arm around, encompassing the camp just beyond the makeshift wall and the club-wielding guard. His eyes shone, and Xiala thought perhaps some was theater but suspected most was genuine. “We join with our brethren to pledge our lives to—”
“Move on,” the guard said, cutting him off. She stepped to the side to usher them through. “Find a fire, a place to rest,” she intoned, as if speaking from rote. “Food will come around, latrines are on the northern edge of the camp, no weapons, no fighting, or you’re out. No exceptions.”
“Praise to Odo Sedoh,” Uncle Kuy said, head bobbing.
Xiala was sure she saw the guard roll her eyes skyward. If she had to guess, the woman had heard the same speech and the same fervent farewell a dozen times, and it had ceased to impress. She made note that not every Crow was quite so devout as the ones she’d met before now.
The camp was busy but not so crowded that they couldn’t make their way through. She guessed at most two hundred people were gathered in a yard that likely accommodated a thousand if they stood shoulder to shoulder. Most of the people near the gate were families, mothers and fathers with infants and children underfoot. They had already set up small pit fires and looked to be settled in to wait. For what, Xiala was unsure.
As they moved farther into camp, she saw more people who looked to be Odohaa. Many displayed bare arms and backs despite the cold, skin wreathed in haahan. She had only ever seen Serapio’s, and while they told a story of who he was, a story she had come to respect and find the beauty in, many of the haahan here were works of art. Delicately carved crows, their wings rendered in loving detail, sigils that she guessed were prayers, and of course, the ubiquitous crow skull. Many were freshly limned in red dye, as were the teeth she glimpsed in prayerful mouths.
“Are they all Odohaa here?” she asked Uncle Kuy.
She had never gotten along with religious types, at least until Serapio, and this many at once made her itch. Experience told her they would not like a Teek, particularly one who might take their precious Odo Sedoh from them. She hadn’t shared her plans with Uncle Kuy and decided then and there that silence on the matter was the wiser course. Let him think she simply wanted to see a friend again, not that she wanted to rescue Serapio from this fanatics’ den.
“Most are Odohaa,” Uncle Kuy acknowledged. “But not all. There are some like me with Carrion Crow blood but no home in Odo. Others who may have homes here but have come to see the Odo Sedoh when he is revealed. And then there are those who read the skies and see the shadowed sun as a sign of what’s to come and have chosen sides.”
“There are so many.”
“And more to come.”
“Why?
“They have waited generations for this moment, Xiala. How could they not?”