“I didn’t know, I swear to you.”
“What do your promises mean to me, crow son, when they are nothing but lies?”
He could see Serapio was breathing hard, his eyes too wide, his wounds at his jaw and forearm and the old one on his side leaking blood and ichor. He’s hurt and believes himself betrayed.
He thought of how he would calm an injured crow, what words he would whisper, what soothing he could offer.
“Chaiya conspired to assassinate my mother, his matron.” He said it with a steady voice, but his hands shook, and the image of Chaiya on his knees, eyes fluttering closed, played across his vision. He forced himself to breathe. “And Ituya attacked you first. These are explainable deaths. But you cannot hurt the Shield. It will break our trust.”
“Our trust?” Serapio laughed, showing red teeth. “You asked me to be your weapon, and when I am a weapon, you complain that my edge is killing sharp?”
“It was a mistake.” I thought I could control the storm, but Esa was right. We must only survive it.
“Tell me where to find the Sun Priest.”
Okoa glanced at the two bodies between them. “No.”
Serapio looked to him, incredulous. Okoa understood his danger a moment too late, when the obsidian blade was at his own neck, Serapio’s face inches from his own, his breath ragged and hot against his face.
He heard the Shield move. “Hold!” He forced the word through gritted teeth. “He will not hurt me.”
Serapio’s bloodied cheek pressed, viscous, against his own, intimate with the promise of murder. “And why would you believe that?”
“Because the Sky Made, the Odohaa, even Benundah, would turn against you. You would truly be alone, everyone your enemy, your predictions fulfilled.”
The blade pricked his skin, a thin, burning line of pain that made him shudder. Okoa closed his eyes and whispered, “And what use is a god if there is no one alive to worship him?”
Serapio roared and tossed him away. Okoa tumbled to the ground. The Shield rushed forward, the great crows screamed, and Okoa watched as Serapio broke into a flock of crows and scattered.
Hands were on him, helping him to his feet. Fussing over the small wound on his neck. He brushed them off with assurances that he was not seriously injured and went to where his cousin lay.
A lake of red stained the reeds, but Okoa pressed fingers to Chaiya’s wrist anyway, hoping for a miracle. But there were no miracles today. He bowed his head. He had thought he wanted revenge for his mother’s murder, but now that he had gotten it, he found the cut of it too bitter for his tastes.
“Look to the bodies, and inform the matron of what has happened,” he commanded his Shield. “There is something I must do.”
The letter sat heavy in his pocket, and his heart was weighted by grief. But he knew it was as he had been taught as a child. When injured, crows may become feral, a danger to their own flock. When that happens, you must choose the collective over the individual. If you cannot save a broken crow, it is a mercy to put him down.
CHAPTER 24
CITY OF TOVA （COYOTE’S MAW）
YEAR 1 OF THE CROW
A moment to love the living, an eternity to mourn the dead.
—The Obregi Book of Flowers
“Are you sure about this?” Denaochi asked, eyes on Naranpa’s skirt.
“Yes.” She smoothed her hands over the yellow stripes. “It’s a fine dress.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
He was lounging on her bed back at the Lupine, hale as he had been before the ritual at the Agave. Sedaysa’s ministrations had done him well, as had Naranpa’s healing powers. She was glad of it. She had acted on instinct, knowing only that she had to save Denaochi before he bled to death on the pleasure house’s floor, but she was very aware that healing was yet another area in which she had no training.
“Do you mean the bloodstains?”
“I mean my blood.”
She looked down. She had cleaned most of the blood from the garment but left the hem, now stiff and discolored. “I am not the same Sun Priest I was when they knew me. I have survived betrayal by those I cared for, crawled from my own tomb, and waded through my own kin’s blood.” She turned a palm up and let the light come. She had been practicing calling the glow on command. “And I have accepted the presence of a god I served but did not believe in.” She released the glow. “Let them see how it has marked me.”
“It is impressive, I do admit. But there’s a touch of madness in it, too.”