“You look like Mother,” he said, gaze focused across the masses below them.
“How many do you think they are?” she asked softly, coming to stand beside him.
“Five hundred. Maybe more.”
“Not all Carrion Crow.”
“No. Other clans, too. The Shield have reported Winged Serpent and Water Strider among them. And some of the clanless from the smaller towns downriver and even some foreigners who were here for the solstice. Most have fled the unnatural sun, but enough remain.”
Esa shivered, the wind catching her hair and tangling it around her face. “What do they want?”
“To see a god?” he ventured. “To witness a miracle?”
She nodded and pulled her robe tighter. “Where’s your feathered cloak?”
“I let him keep it. He offered to return it, but…”
He could not read the look on his sister’s face, but he guessed it to be dismay. Irritation tightened his mouth. Who was she to judge him after what she had done?
“What were you thinking?” he finally asked, voice harsh with frustration. “A cell, Esa?”
“He is going to destroy us,” she said softly.
“You don’t know that.” But he felt it, too. Perhaps he had felt it from the moment they had fought in the monastery. And after what had happened with Maaka, the inevitability of it felt like snow high on the mountain, waiting to become the avalanche.
“Where is he now?” she asked.
“He wanted to stay in that damned cell with the sky door. I left a Shield at his door should he need anything. It was hard enough to convince Maaka not to whisk him away to Odohaa headquarters after your stunt, so I let him stay. Why he chose to I have no idea.”
“To make a point.”
“Of our poor hospitality?”
“Worse than that. He’s planning something.”
“Can you blame him? We didn’t exactly welcome him with open arms.”
“We can’t lose him to the Odohaa. That would be a disaster.”
“Perhaps you should have thought of that before locking him in a cell.”
“Do you think Maaka will go to the aunties? You saw how they reacted today. He could bend their ear. And if word gets out to the common population and spreads through the district, it could be fatal to our cause.”
“And what is our cause, Sister? I thought it was saving Carrion Crow, but I feel I’ve lost the thread of our purpose somewhere along the way, perhaps when you threw the Odo Sedoh in jail.”
She at least had the sense to look chagrined. “I thought perhaps if he understood that he is not wanted here, then he would leave. It was…” She exhaled. “It was a game, Okoa. He could have escaped that cell whenever he wanted. He knew it. I knew it.”
“The Odohaa did not see it that way.”
“I had not meant for them to see it at all.”
“Why did you think you could play games with him?”
“The Sky Made scions would understand—”
“He is not a scion!”
She crossed her arms and turned her back to him. “Do not scold me like a child. I am still your matron.”
Duty, he reminded himself. You are on the same side. “My apologies,” he said, and meant it.
Her shoulders softened. “He understands better than you think.” Her voice was subdued. “Tell me, whose idea was it to bring the Odohaa to his cell?”
“It was a coincidence. We were standing together when his crows came to fetch us.”
“A coincidence?” she scoffed. “You really believe that?”
“It doesn’t matter.” He didn’t see the point of arguing about what had already passed. “We will find our way through.”
There was a stone railing that ran the length of the terrace, and she sat against it, hands tucked in the sleeves of her robe. “I wish Mother were here. Don’t you miss her?”
Her words pricked at his heart. He realized he wished for her, too. Things would have gone differently if she were still alive. She would have known how to greet the Odo Sedoh, how to manage Maaka. But she was gone, taken from them, and now they were left to muddle through on their own.
“Did she ever write you letters?”
Her brow furrowed. “Letters?”
“Yes, something personal. Perhaps something before she died.”
“Why would she write me a letter when she saw me every day? If she wanted to say something to me, she could simply say it.”
“But what if it was a secret?”