They were lithe and lethal. Their faces were unlined, pure, painted silver as the Fa’s was painted gold. They wore their hair unbound, beaded with glass and bone.
Kantu realized they were all blood to her. Brothers, uncles, great-uncles. Hers.
They stared back with avid interest. Some of them hated her, she could see. They blamed her for the slow death of the Red Crescent, the desiccation of Anisaaht and Kannerak, the stupefying toll of people and livestock brought down by twenty years of drought and starvation. Others watched her like the Bird People watched the Rokka Mama. As if she were all their hope. A gift from the Flying Thundergod to succor and aid them in their darkest hour.
Kantu took a deep breath, but she could not smell the Bellisaar Wasteland, the sweet, smoky green of creosquite, or the good, dry, desert sands that carried the musk of night hunters upon their particles. She could smell only her father’s magic and his longing, the blackness of his despair coloring the air all shades of night, calling her to his side.
“I’m here.” Her voice, already rough from wear, broke.
The ranks of Childless Men parted, and the Fa her father stepped forth.
Fa Izif ban Azur was not even as tall as she remembered him. Kantu matched him height for height, and even among the Bird People she was small. His nose was like hers, a great curved hook, but with his piercing eyes and the gilded planes and hollows of his face, the prominence gave him an aspect at once regal and forbidding, like a golden eagle. He was dressed in similar garments to his sons and brothers and uncles, only without armor. A long scar ran across his throat.
And Kantu remembered what had made that scar. And she remembered that though she had thought to check Mikiel for a knife, she had forgotten the Rokka Mama.
“Momi—no!”
She was too late. Tesserree had broken free of Manuway’s grip and was rushing on the Fa, silent but savage, her teeth bared. A deadly crescent of sharpened bronze glinted in her fist. Kantu knew the instrument, knew every image etched upon its bitter edge, and the ancient lettering laying out the strictures of sacrifice.
The Fa stood very still, watching his wife run to him.
Three Childless Men caught and held the Rokka Mama yards before she came within striking distance. Though each soldier was as sinewy as a mountain lion, not one of them handled the Rokka Mama with brutal or callous indifference. It was as if they believed they held a fanged butterfly, or a hummingbird that spat poison. Whether this was because they thought Tesserree herself dangerous, or because the Fa still loved her, Kantu could not say.
“Tess.” Fa Izif ban Azur stepped close to the Rokka Mama, close enough to pull the kerchief from her hair. Dark masses fell around her face and shoulders in tired clouds, webbed in gray.
“Every night,” he said, “I dream of you.”
At his gentleness, the Rokka Mama collapsed. Only the grips of the Childless Men kept her more or less upright.
“I killed you,” she said. “I killed you, Iz—you cannot be here!”
One of the soldiers handed the Fa the bronze dagger she had wielded. He stroked the edge with his thumb, his golden face absorbed.
“With this blade, you cut my throat on the eve of Kantu’s fifth birthday.” His voice was dark and slow, like gore welling from a wound. “And the blood ran out of me, and into the soil of Sanis Al. For a while it was enough. Even without the rain, my blood sustained the land. But without a son who bears the god’s handprint, I cannot die. And as my blood returned to me, and as my wounds healed, my land grew brown and withered. Years have passed, and I have allowed them to pass, but I cannot allow it any longer. Tess. Without you, my heart is a wasteland. Without Kantu, so is Sanis Al.”
“I will lay waste the world,” said the Rokka Mama, “for Kantu.”
“Our thoughts have always been twins,” said the Fa, “running in joyous parallel. But in this, we run cross-purpose, ramming together like two boulders. It is my lifelong sorrow. But I spoke you true through my handmaiden.” He gestured to Crizion, still haloed in blue. “Rok Moris falls tonight if Kantu fails to fly.”
Kantu stepped between her parents, vaguely aware of Mikiel and Manuway tugging at her, of voices calling her name in protest. Her friends. These were her friends, who loved her, who had grown with her, fought beside her, laughed at her jokes, tended her scrapes, who had flown with her. Her friends, who, with Viceroy Eriphet now driven to the sands and the Fa eager to return to Sanis Al, might at last be free.
Tiredness seeped from her marrow. Kantu’s sight whitened for a moment, and her body flashed on the visceral memory of falling.
She had always loved riding the carpets, ever since Manuway’s older brother, now dead, taught her the way of it. The tumble, the soar, the zip, the whirl, the joy and jubilation. Especially when she was flying for flight’s sake, not to escape the Gate Police or hound the Audiencia.
But not until that night, when she had thrown herself from the sky, toppling the guard with his net to save the lives of her friends, had Kantu felt completely happy. And whole. And, somehow, right. As if falling were her purpose. Always had been.
How awful it had been to wake up battered but alive, unfulfilled and alone.
In that moment of remembrance, Kantu understood the Fa her father. Not even Tesserree as once she had been, young and in love with her god-king husband, could fathom his secret heart and mind, but suddenly Kantu could. She bore the red handprint on her breast. And she knew beyond any last lingering doubt what she must do.
“Do I have to—” She stopped, swallowed. “Do I have to return with you? Must the ceremony take place at Sanis Al, on the Shiprock? Or can we do it here?”
“It must be from a height,” said Fa Izif ban Azur, understanding her instantly. “And you must be in the desert. Here, daughter, we stand at the edge of a cliff, and this is still Bellisaar.”
“All right,” Kantu whispered. “All right.”
Fa Izif ban Azur made a short, almost helpless gesture with his slender hands, beckoning toward the Fallgate. He wore no rings. The only gold about him was his face. Kantu slipped past him and trudged down one of the many dirt paths of Paupers’ Grave, keeping her head bent until she came to the cliff’s edge. She felt the Fa follow behind her, and the march of a thousand sandals on packed earth, and the bare feet of the Bird People padding along, too. When she was five feet from the edge, she stopped and asked her father, without turning around, “Will Crizion be herself again?”
“I swear it.”
“And Rok Moris given back to the Bird People?”
“I swear it.”
“If Vorst Vadilar’s armies invade again…”
“You have my word,” said the Fa, “that Sanis Al will fight with Rok Moris against all invaders. She has but to call.”
“And the Rokka Mama?”
“Tesserree,” Fa Izif ban Azur said gently, “will return to the Shiprock. For she is my wife and my chosen one. The next Fa must come of her.”
How many times these last twenty years had Kantu woken to the sound of her mother’s hoarse weeping? How many times had the Rokka Mama cried out her husband’s name in her sleep, haunted by a love that would not die though she had done her best to murder it? For it is terrible to love a god, but more terrible to be loved by one in return—and loved best above all women.