The district shrank below them as they ascended, but for a moment, Okoa could see the entirety of Odo stretched out below him.
The camp at the Great House’s gates had swelled even more since the Odo Sedoh’s disappearance. Okoa remembered what it had been like in the crowd that day. They had rushed in, trying to find the Teek woman who had come to their gate. The crowd had quickly closed in around them, and he’d lost sight of the Odo Sedoh. He’d spied him again at the center of a mob, his white staff swinging, and dread had tightened his chest. Images of the slaughter at Sun Rock had reeled through his memory, and Okoa feared he would see violence unleashed again. And then the sky had filled with crows, sharp beaks and talons, and Okoa had instinctively ducked, and when he had looked up again, the flock was gone. Only later would he learn from witnesses that the Odo Sedoh and the flock were one, that he had transformed into a half-hundred crows and fled. He did not believe it at first, but it was the only explanation that made sense.
He laughed at himself. Sense. It made no sense that a man became a flock of crows, and with that, he was starkly reminded that the Odo Sedoh was no normal man, which troubled him even more.
In the wake of his disappearance, Okoa had gone to the aviary hoping to find Serapio there among the crows, but he had found no sign of the man. The only other place he could think of was the rookery, and he had taken to Benundah’s back and urged her into the sky. They had circled around, crossing the district, even passing the celestial tower, but when he had tried to lead her westward, she had balked. The great corvid would not leave Tova.
“He’s gone somewhere and asked you not to follow, is that what you’re telling me?” Okoa had murmured to his crow.
He could not understand in words her answering cry, but he had discerned her meaning well enough.
“Can you at least tell me if he plans to return?”
Silence from Benundah. The only answer was the wind that tore at his hair and the darkened sun above.
So he had brought her home. Since then, the Shield had searched, sending out patrols around the district and aerial watches across the city. But with the other clans actively keeping the crows out, there was not much he could do.
Esa grew worried that the Odo Sedoh had come only long enough to plant a fanatical force at their door, undermine her authority, and then abandon them.
Okoa had been incredulous. “I thought you wanted him gone.”
“Did you not counsel me to consider embracing him and joining common cause with the Odohaa?”
“I am only surprised you listened.”
“They still come, you know. A hundred more today and half that yesterday. It is a disaster looming at our gate.”
Maaka was not making things easier. He had kept his word and not told of Esa’s foolish stunt, but the leader of the Odohaa had not been idle. He gave daily sermons recounting his trip to Sun Rock to see the “glorious Reckoning” and details of his meeting with the Odohaa. Worse yet, an armed militia had begun to form under his leadership, an expansion of the Odohaa’s war council called the tuyon. Okoa knew he had to put a stop to it before they became big enough to overwhelm the Shield, but he was afraid he had already missed his opportunity for a peaceful dissolution. His present hope lay in the Odo Sedoh returning and putting a stop to it himself. He did not think the man he had befriended those first days in the monastery would condone Maaka’s tuyon, but he was not sure.
Now Chaiya led them south across the open mesa. The city gave way to open vistas: wide, flat, high desert spotted with lingering snow. Clumps of cedar ceded to bare-limbed aspens and thickening pine forests, and the softened humps of long-dead volcanoes reclined in the distance. He was not surprised when the lake where they trained riders came into sight. Usually, it sparkled a deep, cold blue under the winter sky, but under the eclipsed sun, it was half frozen, sheets of ice creating a fragile crust that stretched from shore to shore.
Kutssah dipped landward, and Benundah followed. They landed on the stretch of cleared waterfront. Okoa spied a small camp. He remembered there had always been a training ground here for aspiring young scions, a place where they not only learned to ride but could practice some of the war arts that required open space, like archery and hook-spear throwing.
“Are we meeting others?” he asked once they had landed.
Someone had been here earlier and laid out various war-game paraphernalia. Cane hook spears, obsidian-tipped arrows and the rounded bows used to fire them, even a display of hand knives on a table.
“No, only us. I wanted privacy.”