Fifteen minutes? Serapio would have sworn he had spent hours in those narrow confines.
The next time Paadeh put him in the box, he lasted twice as long. And by the season’s change, he found himself seeking out the box. Lying there, bereft of the noise and riot of the world around him, he felt at peace. Confinement became second nature.
But now his senses were overloaded. A controlled space he could manage. Paadeh had never thought to acclimate him to a mob.
Here in the yard, he was exposed, vulnerable. He clenched his empty fist and prayed for his god to fortify him, but his god did not answer. He reminded himself that he had the shadow magic he could call from his blood if he needed it, but it came at a cost. And the shadow consumed what it touched; he did not want to hurt these people, but he would if he had to.
He only wanted to find Xiala.
To hear Okoa speak her name, to know she was looking for him and had not abandoned him—he could not explain the emotion it roused in him. The desire to take to the sky and fly to her was so strong he had to force his breath to steady. It was as if he were made only of need, a thousand shards of desire in the shape of a man, and he would give whatever he must to reach her.
The ground was uneven, the dirt made mud by the recent snows and then churned by hundreds of feet and refrozen into dangerous peaks and valleys that snatched at his feet. His staff helped, but he could not move as quickly as he wished, and frustration blackened his already anxious mood. He heard the people around him, unfamiliar voices speaking mostly in whispers that he could not quite decipher, but what he could hear was their rising awe as he swept past them, the hum of their excitement, their gasps of disbelief. Their only words now “Odo Sedoh.”
They knew him. Of course they did. He cursed himself that in his haste, he had not considered the implications of Okoa’s warning fully. Surely there were those with ill intent within the camp, and he must be on alert for any attack. He listened for Okoa’s distinctive footsteps, but either he had lost the Shield captain somewhere in the milieu or his gait was impossible to distinguish from any other on the treacherously uneven earth.
“Xiala!” he called, knowing even as he did it was unlikely she could hear him. “Xiala!” he called again, stopping to turn where he stood.
Murmurs around him, voices soft but growing bolder. “Odo Sedoh?”
He could feel them coming closer, encircling him. Someone touched his skirt, the brush of fingers against his leg making his skin crawl with violation. A stranger’s hand pressed briefly against his back, an unfamiliar heat. He pulled away, shifting to hold his staff two-handed. He spun in a slow circle, his weapon extended, a warning to the crowd to give him space. He heard people scramble away, muttering words of surprise as those too close had to duck to avoid being struck.
“Xiala!” he shouted, again, and this time he heard a faint voice answer.
“Serapio?” His pulse quickened, and for a moment he thought he could smell her, that scent of ocean magic in her hair, the warmth of southern sands on her skin.
“Serapio!” someone cried again, and he realized he recognized the voice. It was the uncle, the bargeman who had brought them to Tova. But it was not Xiala. Despair buckled his knees, and the sense of shattering he had been fighting threatened to overwhelm him again.
Hands reached for him to hold him up, but all he felt was the panic of being touched by people he could not see. Someone pulled at his staff. He tightened his own grip and knocked them away with a shout.
“I don’t want to hurt you!”
They were not the Watchers, their legacy staining their souls. They were the opposite, the very people the Watchers had sought to destroy. They were his people, Carrion Crow, and he would do his best not to bring them to harm. But he needed them to leave him alone.
“Bless me, Odo Sedoh,” someone cried, and the call was picked up. “Bless me! Bless me!”
He stumbled away from the pleas, confused. He was no priest to bestow a blessing, and he did not have the mandate of his god to grant such a petition, even if he was not the emptied hand. I am a weapon, he thought. The only blessing I can grant comes at the edge of a knife, the only boon your death.
“Leave me be.” He swept his staff wide again.
“Heal me, Odo Sedoh!” another voice cried.
A woman shouted, “My neighbor struck me. Can you help me seek my vengeance?”
“My child is ill! It is a wasting disease!”
“I know you can work miracles!”
People crowded at his back, their closeness making his breath come too fast. The hair on his neck rose in warning. This time, when he swung his staff, he meant to wound. He connected, a heavy blow against flesh, and heard a body fall. He thought it would be enough to deter the crowd, but it seemed only to encourage their boldness.
“Look at me, Odo Sedoh!”
“No, look at me, Crow God!”
I’m blind! he wanted to shout. Can’t you see that I’m blind? And where were his crows? He tried to throw his mind out, but there was too much noise around him, too many people. He thought he heard the uncle again and the shouts of Okoa to clear the way.
Desperate, he slid the knife from his belt, the one he had stolen from Esa. He tucked it in his palm, ready to use it. Not on the crowd but to draw his own blood. He would call the shadow to clear his way if he needed to. If he saw no other way out.
But first, he tried again to reach his crows. A mournful cry at the edges of his hearing was the only reply, and he knew something barred their passage, and they could not come. He was surrounded and alone.
“Fifteen minutes,” he whispered, thinking of the box. If only he could withstand the crowd for fifteen minutes, surely he would find Xiala by then.
Hands touched him again, some soft and pleading, some more aggressive. All stifling in their need. He pushed back with his staff, kicked away another who clung to his skirt. Someone, caught in religious fervor, wailed a high, keening petition to the crow god. More and more seemed to press on him, although he could not be sure of their number, only that he could not breathe.
And then it happened. His heel caught on a runnel of frozen mud, and he lost his balance. He flung himself forward to overcompensate and found himself falling hard on one knee. The blade flew from his hand, his ability to call the shadow gone with it. He groped the ground around him, but it was impossible. It was gone.
Somewhere above him, the crows screamed, a mirror of his distress. His body vibrated in response.
More hands on him. On his arms, his back, trying to drag him to his feet. He shouted for them to go away, to give him space, but they didn’t understand.
He was being overwhelmed, suffocating in the crush.
He collapsed to his knees, hands over his head, body shaking like a tuning fork to the calls of the circling crows. His limbs trembled, and the crows screamed, and the hands and the voices and the box, and all at once… he shattered.
He felt himself break apart, burst into a half-hundred crows.
He could see through a hundred eyes. He struggled skyward on a hundred wings.
People shouted and scattered as his talons ripped at hands and faces, as beaks plucked at exposed flesh.