“You’ll have to forgive me, but it was the only reason I could think of that would convince her you should accompany us to Hokaia. If she did not see you as a lever against her enemies, you would be useless. It is the same reason she tolerates me, after all.”
Xiala folded her arms over her chest, suddenly chilled.
Iktan exhaled, xir breath fogging in the night air. “Who am I to accuse Nuuma of lacking the compassion I struggle to find in myself? Even I have a heart, although mine is well worn and inconstant. I am sure she does, too… somewhere.”
“Terzha said something about the Sun Priest. Do you think she meant your friend? That maybe she’s still alive after all?”
Iktan did not answer at first, and when xe did, it was like the wind through the canyons. “I don’t know, Xiala, but if Nuuma is hiding something from me, I will find it. And if it has something to do with Nara, I will carve her apart until I reach her lying heart, and then I will take great pleasure in carving her heart apart, too.”
CHAPTER 29
CITY OF TOVA （COYOTE’S MAW）
YEAR 1 OF THE CROW
There is no question that the stars cannot answer save the one that goes unasked.
—The Manual of the Sun Priest
Naranpa sat cross-legged in Sedaysa’s hothouse garden, her tea gone cold before her. Someone had brought her food earlier, left it, and then come back later to take it away, untouched. They had tried to feed her again in the evening, with the same dismal results. Finally, they had given up and simply left her a pot of hot tea, but even that failed to capture Naranpa’s attention in time to be palatable.
They had not tried again.
Around her, flowers bloomed in glorious profusion. She had found them beautiful once, enchanting even. But now they seemed profane, gaudy in their unseasonal dress. They leered at her, mocking her grief with their forceful gaiety. They possessed a rich fragrance that had once made her swoon. Now they smelled like a dying thing, sweet with rot. They were false, all of them. Little liars. They were a promise of life that ended only in death. How dare they shine. What gave them the right?
“Naranpa.”
Sedaysa’s voice penetrated her haze. She had the feeling the woman had been calling her name for a while. There was the rustle of a skirt and the hushed tinkle of bells as the boss of the Agave sank to the cushion across from her.
Naranpa raised dull eyes and forced herself to focus. Sedaysa was still beautiful, but now Naranpa noticed the lines at her mouth, the brittleness of her silver hair, a dull patch of skin on her neck. The woman was dying already. Like the flowers.
Like Ochi.
Sedaysa folded her hands in her lap, concern pursing her lips. “It has been twenty-four hours since the others left, and you are the matron of Coyote’s Maw. What would you have me do?”
Naranpa blinked slowly, waiting for the world to become something other than what it was. And when it did not change, the voice she had not used in hours rasped out, “No message from Okoa has come?”
Sedaysa shook her head.
After Denaochi’s murder at the Lupine, the matrons and Okoa had removed to the Agave. Naranpa, Sedaysa, and Zataya had stayed behind to prepare her brother’s body. It had been terrible work, the washing and the wrapping of the corpse. Naranpa remembered her mother performing the ritual once when she was a child and her uncle had died. Her mother had told her that people did it because it brought them comfort to care for the dead, but Naranpa found no peace in the practice, only a river of rage. By the time they had prepared his spirit meal and arranged for him to be entombed in the catacombs, Naranpa had been a singular seething current of fury. But fury was a privilege she could not indulge. The matrons and Okoa were waiting for her, so she had pushed her anger down, deep into the dark and cavernous places inside her, and in its place bubbled up an edgeless grief. She tried to hide that, too, but it refused to be contained, and it made itself known in ways big and small. The drag in her step, the waver in her voice, the way her mind would not fix on any given point. But she did her best, knowing people needed her, knowing Denaochi would disapprove of any weakness.
She and Sedaysa had arrived at the Agave to find Ieyoue, Peyana, and Okoa on cushions seated at a round table in Sedaysa’s private quarters. Okoa nursed a wound Naranpa had not noticed before, and Peyana’s right hand was thick with bandages. Someone was missing, and it took her a moment to realize the Shields of Water Strider and Winged Serpent were absent. Naranpa asked after them, thinking she may have overlooked their deaths while lost in the throes of her own sorrow.