“I…” He faltered. He had expected her to say something different. Evade his question or feign ignorance, but tears had gathered in her eyes, and she looked at him expectantly. Had he misjudged her? Shame stuck like a pebble in his throat. “It was not a suicide note,” he admitted.
She inhaled sharply, fluttering her hand before her face as if to rid herself of some emotion. “I miss her.” Tears wetted her cheeks. “But it would have been worse if she was here.”
Okoa frowned. “What do you mean?”
“She was too gentle with the Odohaa.” She gestured to the hundreds below. “The proof is there. And Maaka at our door demanding, demanding, to see the Odo Sedoh.” Some of her grief shifted to outrage.
“You just said you wished she was here.”
“I do, in a selfish way. As her daughter. But she had a soft spot for Maaka and his cultists, and now they have become overbold.”
“I think you do not give her enough credit.”
“You weren’t here. You don’t know.” That cut him to the core, but she continued, as if unaware. “She was too sympathetic to their cause, and it put us at odds with the Sky Made and the Watchers. And now that the Odo Sedoh is here and has fulfilled our worst nightmare, her leniency has left him with an army of believers to command, more faithful to him than to the matron, or the Shield, or any other power in Tova. Don’t deny it.”
How could he, after what Maaka had said? But he did not tell her that.
“We could join them,” he said quietly.
She drew back as if he had hit her.
“An alliance,” he said quickly. “You are too smart not to see the benefit in it, Esa.”
She shivered, and he stood to offer her his cloak, but she waved it away. It was not the cold that made her tremble.
He said, “If we bind him to us, Carrion Crow never need bow to the other clans again. We’ve been a long time under their boot and at their mercy. We’ve had little to be proud of, little to celebrate, the Night of Knives always heavy on our backs. We’ve allowed the weight of it to bend us. I know that better than anyone.”
Her look was piercing. “You are no more of a believer than I am.”
Was he not? He was no longer so sure. He did know he was desperately trying to find a way to bring his sister, his people, and his god together, but he felt like he was searching for handholds on the side of a cliff, knowing one wrong move would send him plummeting to the earth below.
“What did you think when he approached you in the great room today?” he asked.
Her laugh was short and sharp. “That I must survive him.”
“He is not so terrible. There is a side to him…”
“He cut down the Watchers like stalks in the field. Do you think he would hesitate to do the same to you, to us, if he thought he must? It is the curse of the fanatics who only answer to their god. We are simply a means to an end to him.”
“That’s not true. At the rookery, he—”
“Did you know that I spent this evening in the library looking for every text I could find on the old gods who had manifested as humans or had human vessels?”
Tread carefully, he thought. “I thought you didn’t believe.”
“A precaution.”
“And what did you find?”
“There was a story of a woman in Cuecola who claimed to possess the appetites of the jaguar god and had eaten her husband before she was killed by the neighbors in a house fire. And another account of a dreamwalker during the War of the Spear who claimed to have killed a god in her dreams, but the encounter had left her brain scrambled, and she was locked away, screaming about visions and shadows.”
“Horror stories.”
“Yes,” she acknowledged, “but it does suggest that a god in human form can be killed and that they do possess weaknesses.”
He thought of Serapio’s confusion when he had awoken in the cave at the rookery. He had been vulnerable then. “And there is his wound that won’t heal.” He felt traitorous for mentioning it, but it was nothing she likely had not already learned on her own.
“That is a start.” She gave him an encouraging look. “I also have people looking into his past. He had to come from somewhere, and I want to know who his people are. If he has attachments.”
“I believe he was raised in Obregi.” He told himself these were simple facts, not confidences betrayed.
“Then I will send agents to Obregi. Discreetly,” she added, to stave off his look of disapproval.
“I don’t know what that accomplishes.”
“Yes, you do, Captain. Surely the war college taught you to learn everything about your enemy before you go to battle.”
“I didn’t realize he was our enemy.”
She snorted. “Don’t be naive, Brother.”
Everyone is my enemy. Serapio’s words at the monastery came back to him. Okoa had objected fiercely at the time, but here he was, proving him right.
“All I am saying is let us try to tame him first through alliance, and if that fails, we can consider pursuing your more… aggressive tactics. But betrayal and murder cannot be our first route, Esa.”
“You seek to cage the uncageable. To subdue the storm.”
“Where you seek to take up your knife against the lightning.”
“What choice do we have? It is that or be consumed.” Her laugh was short. “He told me that shadow consumes, and what is he but living shadow? God or not, I can tell it is his nature to consume, and Carrion Crow will not survive him. I say you kill him now while we have the chance, or one day, you will look up, Okoa, and find it is too late.”
Voices rose up to them from the camp below. A song, low and mournful. Okoa recognized it as one of the lamentations from the Night of Knives. A prayer of loss, a cry to their god for justice. Okoa tried to convince himself that the Odo Sedoh had indeed brought Carrion Crow their longed-for justice, but surely justice did not look like what he had seen on Sun Rock. He remembered Maaka’s words from earlier: We are a people with hope once again, and the Odo Sedoh has brought us that. Not you. Not your matron.
And Okoa doubted.
Everything.
“Lord Okoa?”
They both looked up as one of the Shield, a man named Ituya, stood in the doorway. Ituya was one of Chaiya’s recruits, only a few years older than Okoa and eager to serve. He had been one of the guards in the room when he had returned with the Odo Sedoh who had not fallen to his knees.
“What is it?”
“There is a woman in the camp asking to see the Odo Sedoh.”
Okoa laughed dryly. “Gods, man. There are five hundred people out there who want to see the Odo Sedoh.”
“Her name is Xiala, and she called him by the name Serapio. She said she was the captain of the boat that brought him here. She said he would know her. That she knows him, and he would know it was her.” He opened his hand, holding his palm out. On it sat a delicate wood carving of a mermaid. “She said to show him this.”
The siblings exchanged a look, words said between them without speaking.
Okoa took the carving and slipped it into his pocket. “Find this Xiala. Immediately. Use whatever Shield you need. I’m right behind you. Go!”
“I’m coming, too,” Esa said.
“You can’t.” He crossed the terrace in a dozen long strides. “You’re the matron, and I need to know you are safe.”
“Okoa!” She followed him into the hall, warning in her voice. “Do not grow soft,” she hissed. “She is a gift fallen into our laps. You know why we need her. Let me help.”
“I have the Shield,” he tossed over his shoulder, halfway to the stairs.
“And you have me.” A figure materialized from the shadowy staircase just above him.
Okoa’s heart thumped. Where had he come from? Skies, how long had he been there, and more important, what had he heard?
Serapio was dressed in black. Someone had replaced his tattered pants with a long black skirt that billowed around him as he walked, and he wore the padded armor of the Shield over a long-sleeved shirt. The crow-feather cloak graced his shoulders, and he clutched his bone staff in his hand. Okoa suspected one of the aunts had chosen his regalia, and she had chosen it for impact, as it made a formidable impression.
“If Xiala is here, I must find her.”