In the Ruins (Crown of Stars #6)

In the Ruins (Crown of Stars #6) Page 205

First, the circuit of the platform, paced west to north to east to south. She wept to see the city laid whole around her, so long desired and now fulfilled. On the western face of the pyramid the lower stairs had crumbled away into a dangerous slope of loose shards and the weathered, broken remains of what once were stairs. It was possible to actually see the ragged joining where new met old, but it was disorienting. She felt she might fall and fall, tumbling down the slope into the forgotten past now yanked unexpectedly into line with the present.

Farther down, at the northwestern corner along the base, lay a field of impressive rubble jamming what had once been the sacred entrance to the Heart-of-the-Universe, the cavern beneath the temple.

She licked away a tear from the corner of her mouth as she returned from her circuit and walked to the center. She halted beside the blood stone and removed from the hem of the feather cloak a pair of sap cactus spines. One she handed to Kansi-a-lari.

“Will you cease work on the rockfall?” she asked the other woman. “If we could unearth the entrance to the Heart-of-the-Universe …”

The Impatient One wiped sweat from the back of her neck. “Then what? Will the gods blast our enemies? Will the earth open up and swallow them? Will we gain the ability to see what they are doing without them knowing, or to move faster than they can move themselves between their weaving crowns?”

“Respect the gods,” said Feather Cloak, shocked at such talk even from The Impatient One. “We have survived, and suffered. Let us seek peace, not confrontation.”

“As you did, with the blood knives?” mocked the Impatient One.

“Do you think they are your allies? Do you think you can control them?”

The Impatient One smiled cruelly. “Blood will sate them.”

She stuck out her tongue and held its tip with thumb and two fingers. Raising the spine, she touched its pointed end to the pink flesh.

Feather Cloak sighed. “With this blood,” she said, “I let authority pass from my hand into the hand of the one who is chosen.”

She settled down cross-legged on the blood stone, leaning over the shallow basin that marked its center. She held her own tongue and pierced it smoothly. The pain flashed like fire, and it throbbed, but sharp red blood dropped into the basin made by the blood stone.

Kansi-a-lari did the same. Where blood melded and mixed, it smoked, bubbling for the space of one breath before it dissipated into the air with a scent so acrid that both sneezed.

“With this blood, I accept authority into my hands from the one who came before.”

Kansi held out her hands, palms up, and waited. At least she did not gloat, but she was, obviously, restraining her impatience with the leisurely pace of the ritual. She wanted to get on with it, get moving, make decisions, push forward.

The time for careful steps is done. The world she knew and understood was passing out of her hands. Fled, like a kiss stolen from a man who doesn’t really want you.

The headdress. The rustling cloak. The spines. All these were transferred. These sigils of the authority released her, and she was only what she had been before, called Secha by her family and named The-One-Who-Looks-Hard-at-the-Heart as a child for her habit of staring at her playmates with a level gaze when she found their antics distasteful or mean-spirited.

She-Who-Sits-in-the-Eagle-Seat rose, hands raised heavenward to show her palms to the sight of the gods, who through the hands can see into the heart. She might stand at the height of the temple dedicated to She-Who-Creates for a day or a year, waiting for the gods to speak to her, although Secha doubted that The Impatient One could stand still for more than twenty breaths.

And indeed, not twenty breaths later, Feather Cloak grunted, wiped away the sweat beading her forehead, and set off to descend the steps.

In that moment of solitude granted her, Secha touched chin and forehead to acknowledge the gods. The sky had lightened. The clouds shone like the underside of a pearl, and she glimpsed the shimmering disk of the sun high above and tasted its heat on her bloody tongue and in the sticky hot dust kicked up by the feet of the multitude below.

At length she stood and followed Feather Cloak down the steep stairs.

Feather Cloak was met on the lower terrace by a swarm of people who wore emblems of rank not seen in Secha’s lifetime: the marks of high lineage, of privilege, of priestly sanction and a warrior’s prestige. Sashes; a blood knife banner; a beaded neckpiece; bright feather headdresses; long, clay-red mantles; gauntlets of precious shells strung together on a net.

Secha passed around them like a shadow, forgotten and unseen. She was free, although the wound in her tongue burned and the taste of blood reminded her of the sharpness of defeat. No weight bowed her shoulders. She was only herself now, a woman with certain skills who must find her way in the new world whose landscape was still unexplored. The exiles and the ones who had walked in the shadows must build together.