“It will all be better once you return to Teek. You’ll see.”
And then she was gone. Xiala folded her arms on the table and dropped her head. He could hear her sobbing softly.
He waited until he was sure Mahina was gone before he slipped out to return to his rooms.
CHAPTER 32
CITY OF TOVA （SUN ROCK）
YEAR 1 OF THE CROW
Know now that Naranpa shall be my worthy successor. She will serve as a light against dark times, a symbol of reason for the world to see. Unto her very death.
—From the Oration of the Sun Priest Kiutue on the Investiture of Naranpa in Year 325 of the Sun
He was waiting at Sun Rock for her.
Naranpa had crossed the Maw and the district of Titidi and the bridge that spanned the width of the Tovasheh. This time, there were no guards to question her, and she wondered if that was Ieyoue’s doing or if the city knew what was to come and huddled behind its wooden doors and mud-brick walls hoping to survive the deluge. Or maybe it was he that cleared her path, and she would find ruined bodies lying in the depths of the canyons below, drowned in shadow.
He was younger than she’d expected. The glimpse she had caught of him on the roof had been brief, and he had been contorted with pain and his form half corvid. But now he looked very normal. A man in his early twenties, shoulder-length hair tied back from an almost delicate face. Tall and thin, dressed in what looked like quilted black Shield armor from the waist up and an ankle-length skirt over bare feet from the waist down, a white staff in hand.
He did not look up at her approach but continued to walk in a strange pattern, curling and looping back on itself, as if he were tracing something in the dirt that only he could see. He was talking, quiet murmurs she could not discern, and occasionally he would stretch out his hand as if measuring the distance between his steps. Only when she had descended the stairs of the amphitheater and come to a halt in the center, no more than twenty paces away, did he stop.
As if on cue, the sun flared above them, just as it had on the celestial tower. Light broke across Sun Rock, the first dawn in many days.
He raised his face to the sun and smiled. “Ah…” His voice was easy, conversational. Nothing like the monster she had heard speak atop the tower. “It is as I suspected.”
She shivered; she could not help it. The contrast was too startling, the contradiction disconcerting. She had come to face a nightmare and found this man instead.
“And what did you suspect?” She pitched her voice to carry.
He raised a hand, as if asking her to wait, and then, again as if expected, he winced in pain. His hand went to his side, and he gritted his teeth. She watched him swallow and come back panting. Then he straightened, and shadow flared around him. When he finally looked at her, his eyes were solid black.
She involuntarily took a step back before she felt her being respond, and she gasped as her eyes brightened and her body ignited. This was not the fire of her rage but something else. Something as warm and nurturing as the sun, akin to the healing power that had come over her in the Agave.
His laughter was a dark joy. “It seems our gods very much want us to fight.” He shifted his hold on the staff and spread his feet.
“I know what caused your wound.” She spoke quickly, her words tumbling from her tongue.
He tilted his head. “So do I.”
“But I can heal it.” It was a daring thing to say, to promise when she was not sure it could be done, but it was what spilled forth.
“And why would you do that?”
“Because this is not you. This is not us.” The truth of it came together all at once. The stories she had read in the tower books. Her visions. “As you said, it is our gods who compel us. Who puppet us through these motions. How many times have we fought before, Crow God? How many times will we fight again? It is an endless cycle, light and dark, fire and shadow. We, you and me, Serapio and Naranpa… we need not die for it!”
He was quiet for a very long time. “How do you know my name?”
She realized her mistake, but it was too late to take it back. “Okoa told me.”
“Okoa…” Some emotion flashed across his face. “Funny. He has never called me by my name, even though it was something I wanted very much once.” He smiled. “Is that what you came to tell me? That Okoa has aligned with the Sun Priest?”
“I came to sue for peace.” It was not, in fact, the reason she had come. Sorrow had driven her. Exhaustion. She had come to win, or to die. But hope flared now, as new and promising as the sun above. “I have tried to do what is right for Tova, but I have only failed. The city was dying before you came, the Watchers corrupted, the clans too insular. We lay bloated and rotting under the sun as our people suffered.”