Iktan paused to take a deep drink, eyes on Xiala. “It may not seem like it now, but it was a power to break worlds. Imagine it. They could enter anyone’s dreams and make them into nightmares. Suggest horrors to enact during the day. Plant suspicions enough to ruin alliances and invite murder. No one was safe, for we all must sleep. The only thing that slowed their ambition was that the power carried the possibility of madness with it. They remembered Asnod’s and Odae’s fates well enough. The result of their hubris might have remained a deadly secret adventure, but they shared their knowledge and the godflesh they brought back with others, and soon the dreamwalkers became a dozen, and then a dozen more.
“The winter they were gone had been hard on Hokaia, and the harvest the season before had been thin. They eyed their neighbor across the river, the city of Barach, and coveted. So they took what they wanted. And then they took the whole river valley. With the military might of the spearmaidens and the spirit magic of the dreamwalkers, they were unstoppable. Soon the river valley was not enough, so they looked to the south. It is said that back then, the Teek did not travel on their floating islands but lived in one place and traded freely with the world. Until the spearmaidens and the dreamwalkers came and ravaged their home. Your people do not speak of it?”
Xiala shook her head, enthralled by the story.
“Once Teek was subdued and stripped of wealth, they ventured farther south to Cuecola and the southern coastal cities. But the Cuecolans had sorcery of their own—shadow, stone, and blood magic—and were prepared. Their battles were fierce, and many strange things were seen. The elders speak of it only in hushed voices and call it the Frenzy. But in the end, the Jaguar Prince and his army of sorcerers fell. In desperation, the seven remaining families, themselves ravaged, reached out to their brethren to the west. My people, the Winged Serpent, had long ties to the southern cities and shared ancestors, so it was said. So when they cried out for help, we answered. We brought the winged serpents who are also our kin to war, for the great beasts were immune to the dreamwalkers’ powers. They were made of the same kind of magic, and it proved remedy enough. But we were few in number, so we called to our neighbors, the clans you know as Sky Made. Carrion Crow were the first to answer, bringing their great corvids to bear. Then Golden Eagle and Water Strider. The only clan that did not answer was Coyote. They had long ago lost the last of their great beasts and feared the dreamwalkers, so they stayed in their caves and hovels and let the clans go to war.
“The last battle was fought on the plains outside of Hokaia. The spearmaidens had been driven back to their homeland, and all the dreamwalkers were killed save a small coven that had barricaded themselves in their newly built palace. But eventually, even they fell. Only the spearmaidens who had not joined the conquest were spared. The rest were put to death. Not a single dreamwalker escaped execution. And on that very day, the Treaty of Hokaia was signed. The four great peoples of the Meridian agreed to outlaw all magic and to forbid the worship of gods. They created a body called the Watchers, a collection of priests who were to guard against gods and magic and uphold order, reason, and peace across the continent. They set the Sun Priest over them all, for the priest was to be a light in dark times, a symbol always present in the sky to remind the peoples of their agreement not to war and of the Watchers’ duties.
“And so it was, for three hundred years. But the gods cannot be silenced altogether, it seems, and Carrion Crow were the first to reject the edict against their worship. And so the Watchers did what they thought was best, what they thought they were meant to do.”
“The Night of Knives,” Xiala said.
Iktan nodded. “It is our unforgivable transgression, the stain on our mission. After that, we were lost, for even we could not justify the slaughter of so many innocents. I understand it now, even as I did not understand it a month ago. Nara understood it all along. She saw what we had become, what we had lost, but the rest of us…” Iktan shrugged, but the weight of history, of xir role in it all, bowed xir head. “I should have listened to her. Should have acted. Not sided with Golden Eagle and plotted with the corruptible in the Crow’s Great House.”
“Your man in the Shield.”
“Aye. All is not what it seems in that place.”
She shivered. She wondered if Serapio knew there was a traitor in their midst and whether he was safe. Another reason to stay here and learn his enemy’s secrets, so if war came, when it came, he would know how to fight back.
“I thought perhaps I, the Priest of Knives, owed them the most.” Iktan finished xir cup and tossed it to the furs. “But I fear that all I did was pour salt on a festering wound in hopes of covering it up. And then the event even I had not anticipated…” Xe pointed to her. “The Odo Sedoh came and tore our plans to nothing, less than drops of blood on a windswept mesa. So what am I doing here, Xiala? I’m seeing this through until the damnable end.”
Xe turned on xir side, pulled a fur around xir shoulders, and closed xir eyes. Moments later, xe was asleep.
She sighed. It was much to take in, even more to understand. She wondered why the Teek were not taught these histories, why she had not known about what went on in the world around her. Small things came back to her now. The way Serapio had thought her Song was the power of a goddess, but she had laughed, said no Teek would think that. Even how she had never been taught that the Sky Made had any connection to the Teek, although they had much in common in their reading of the stars. There were layers here, kinship and obligation and promises made and broken, that she could not fully comprehend. But one thing she did know. She was caught in the maelstrom, standing in the center of it all, the tide coming in and the waves growing higher.
She reached for her as-yet-untouched cup. “I don’t think I am the only one fucked here, Iktan,” she whispered, raising a toast to the sleeping figure. She drained the cup dry and reached for the bottle.
CHAPTER 17
CITY OF TOVA
YEAR 1 OF THE CROW
Do not talk when you can walk,
Do not walk when you can run.
—Coyote wisdom
Naranpa ran. She flew down the winding stairs, driven by a burst of energy birthed from fear, her feet barely touching the steps. She could feel the crows at her back, beaks only a hand’s width from her scalp, talons grazing her neck. She swept past her old rooms and the library, and when she hit the terrace landing, she swerved tightly.
She barreled through the kitchens, ducking as she passed low ceilings. It had occurred to her panicked mind that she would never outrun these birds. Once she left the tower, the grounds around were wide open. The little cover there was now winter-bare trees and nothing else all the way to the bridge. Inside the tower, there were at least halls to navigate and tight spaces in the dark. And doors.
She took the back kitchen stairs at a run, momentarily airborne. Her knees buckled with the force of landing, and she cried out. She turned and slammed closed the door through which she had just passed. The heavy impact of bird bodies against the other side made her hold her breath. Despite the sturdy wood, she half expected the creatures to break through. But after a moment, the awful thumping faded. She bent, hands to knees, breathing hard.
Her heart was still racing wildly, her mind reeling from what she had seen.
She had been drawn to the rooftop observatory by what she had taken for a voice, and a compulsion she could not name. Around her, the wind had howled and the blackened sun hissed and crackled. A corvid the size of her lower arm was perched on the ledge before her. Naranpa had watched as the bird cocked its head and seemed to look at her, as if it was expecting her.