Sun Rock was a two-hundred-foot-high freestanding mesa in the center of the city. Below and around its walls rushed the Tovasheh river, the life-giving artery of Tova. No clans ruled here on the Rock, and it was only ever populated on ceremonial days and when the Speakers Council met.
The bridge crossing was the longest of their journey but otherwise uneventful. Naranpa wondered how the dedicant from the southern lowlands was faring but didn’t inquire. The day was starting to wear on her, and she was ready to rest. Perhaps she could slip her boots off and rub her feet, if Abah wasn’t looking and judging her impropriety.
Sun Rock felt empty and abandoned after the pageantry of Odo and Kun. Twenty paces from the bridge landing, the ground dropped away to reveal a great open-air circle dug out of the ground. It was shaped like the roundhouses of the clans’ Great Houses but open to the stars, much like the rooftop observatory of the celestial tower. Benches lined its steep stairs all around, and as they passed the eastern entrance, Naranpa called a halt.
She heard the sighs of relief from the dedicants behind her. She took the first steps down into the amphitheater, and everyone followed, spreading out along the benches and calling for water from the servants.
A handful of servants who had trailed the entourage brought forward baskets full of corn cakes, venison, and flasks of water and began to distribute lunch. Naranpa watched the woman who had led the procession with her drum massage her hands before accepting water from a girl in a brown servant’s robe.
Another servant wearing brown approached Naranpa, and she absently reached inside the basket he proffered. She missed entirely the knife he pulled from his sleeve until the flash of the obsidian blade caught her eye as it moved toward her chest. She cried out, but she was too late.
Suddenly she was being pulled backward, tumbling off the stone bench. Her head struck the bench behind her, and shock radiated through her body. Her vision blurred, and she flailed instinctively, trying to fight off whatever or whoever she was certain was going to stab her. But her hands hit only air, and by the time she had calmed enough to see what had happened, she realized Iktan had been the one to pull her back.
And xe had taken her place.
And xe had xir own knife buried deep in the servant-in-brown’s neck.
Naranpa could do nothing but gape.
Until someone screamed, one of the dedicants. And then Naranpa was scrambling to her feet. Hands reached to help her up. She got to standing just as Iktan lowered the would-be assassin to the ground.
“Search them,” the tsiyo called tersely, and it took a moment for Naranpa to realize xe was talking to two society dedicants. The other servants had dropped their baskets and raised their hands wide from their bodies, proclaiming their innocence, as the tsiyo-to-be moved among them, efficiently searching baskets and seeking more weapons.
“Skies and stars,” Abah whispered, grasping Naranpa’s arm. “Are you all right?”
Naranpa clawed at her mask, ripping it off. Removing one’s mask was a thing not done in public, but she couldn’t breathe, and there was no one to see but her own people. No, not only her own people. Someone had infiltrated their group and tried to kill her.
“Who was he?” she cried, striding over to Iktan and the dead man.
“You shouldn’t have killed him so quickly,” Haisan murmured as he approached, too. “Now we cannot ask him who he was.”
“Or why he did this!” Abah said breathlessly just behind Naranpa’s shoulder.
Naranpa glanced back at the girl. She had taken off her mask, too, and her face was flushed with excitement. Naranpa had a sudden urge to slap her but quelled it quickly. Abah was young, she reminded herself. And foolish, despite her rise to power.
“There’s no need to ask,” Iktan said in a quiet, measured voice. Xe had just killed a man, had just saved her life, but already xe was as calm as if they were out on a leisurely stroll. The tsiyo leaned down to tear away the man’s robe, exposing his lower neck and chest.
Naranpa gasped.
There, carved into his body and dyed red, was the mark they had seen all morning, on banners and above doors: the skull of Carrion Crow.
CHAPTER 5
CITY OF TOVA
YEAR 325 OF THE SUN
(20 DAYS BEFORE CONVERGENCE)
Seek the pattern in all things.
—The Manual of the Sun Priest
The rest of the procession around the city passed in a blur. Titidi was a district of citizens in blue garb and measured celebration, and Tsay was much the same, only gold and concerned with eagles instead of insects. Naranpa didn’t care about any of it. This was supposed to be a day of honoring the priesthood, an acknowledgment of their importance and power. Her power, and the beginnings of the Sun Priest’s return to prominence within the tower. But now Naranpa could not calm her pulse, and every noise made her jump, her eyes searching the crowd for someone who wanted her dead.
Iktan had stayed behind on Sun Rock with a tsiyo dedicant to investigate her would-be assassination. Another tsiyo had donned Iktan’s red mask and continued in xir stead.
“Is that wise?” Haisan had asked, when Iktan first proposed it. “Tradition would have us—”
“Not be murdered in our own city?” xe asked, amused.
That had silenced the scholar, but Naranpa had pulled her friend aside where they could talk privately.
“What do you think?” she asked xir.
“I think you should be careful and refrain from judgment.”
She frowned. “What does that mean?”
“Nothing more than what I said. Let me and mine do our work, and I will come to you in your rooms before full moonrise to tell you what I have learned.”
“Iktan…” She hesitated. She felt dizzy, off-balance. She knew her reforms were unpopular with the traditionalists, and Carrion Crow certainly had no love for the celestial tower, but an assassination? In all her plans for the future, she had not foreseen it.
She forced herself to breathe deeply. She would not be afraid, but she would be careful. “Do you think it safe for me to continue?”
Iktan tilted xir head, studying her. Dark eyes bored into her, the scrutiny so personal that she flushed. “Yes.”
She squared her shoulders. “All right. I’ll finish.”
And so she had. But when the last bridge came into view, this one glowing in the sunset instead of the sunrise, and leading home to Otsa, she wanted to cry. She was grateful for the mask that she again wore, happy it covered her face and what must be her frightened-rabbit expression.
Tradition dictated that the doors of the celestial tower be symbolically locked at sunset to begin the Shuttering, as acknowledgment that the priests would stay sequestered until the solstice. Naranpa had never felt so glad to hear the boom of those mighty wooden doors closing. For twenty days, the outside world would remain out and her would-be assassins would remain outside with it.
“A vigorous day!” Haisan exclaimed behind her, and she startled so hard she almost fell. Skies, she had to calm down. “Shall we meet for Conclave when the moon is at its zenith to discuss the protocol for Shuttering?” he asked.
She looked around at the milling crowd. Nervous energy thrummed through the air, the excitement of her almost murder too much for the tower inhabitants to bear. “Of course. I suggest we all rest before then so we will be at our best for Conclave.”