The Stone Knife

by Anna Stephens

  She waited another thirty heartbeats before dropping the net and pulling Ossa to her side to check for wounds – four shallow gouges along his right haunch, bleeding lightly. The Drowned venom coursed in Xessa’s veins, but Toxte would have the medicine already prepared and kept warm over a brazier in the water temple, ready to pour into their wounds and down their throats.

  Vision sparking sun-bright with venom and adrenaline, Xessa checked over the pipe – she’d felt the crack, but the rubber coating might have protected it and with Malel’s blessing, they might not lose too much precious water before it was fixed. She was shaking now, badly, but she opened it at the joint and connected the long wooden turning rods to the thicker one leading uphill. Her hands were barely under her control. She closed the pipe and waved her spear overhead. She kept her eyes on the water, trusting that whoever Toxte had left in the temple would see the signal and begin turning the massive handle that drew water uphill. The Sky City would live another day, safe from thirst and from the Drowned.

  Xessa wondered if she would. She vomited, Drowned venom snaking up her body from the wounds in her leg and into her chest, her neck, her head, itching-burning like the stings of warrior wasps, hotter than coals. She rubbed her face and mouth, smearing the symbols of protection and strength painted on her cheeks into jumbled incoherence.

  Suddenly Toxte was there and the world tilted, jerking out from under her as he wrapped her arm around his neck and hauled her onto his hip and then, gracelessly, over his shoulder. She dropped her spear and tried to tell him, but vomited down his back instead. She had a glimpse of the dogs guarding their retreat, and then the venom drew her into the dark.

  LILLA

  Southeastern slope of Malel, Tokoban

  120th day of the Great Star at morning

  When they were a few days away from the border into Tokoban, Lilla had told the refugees they would be safe, that no Empire warriors would have penetrated so far into their land.

  He’d been wrong.

  Now, ten days and what felt like a thousand regrets and recriminations later, he led the shattered remnant of his warriors uphill through lush, cultivated jungle towards the Sky City. Behind them, trudging in silence broken only by the intermittent complaints of exhausted youngsters, more than three hundred Yaloh came with them. They’d set out with twice that. They’d come with rations and blankets and ceramics, with medicines and seeds for planting. They’d come with hope as well as desperation, responding to the Tokob promise of shelter and protection. Tokob and Yaloh, the last two free tribes, standing together, living together, against the Empire of Songs. A dream that faded a little more with each morning until it left only bitterness on the tongue.

  They’d passed a dozen small Tokob villages scattered through the jungle during their flight, each struggling to accommodate the hundreds of Yaloh who had crossed into Tokoban as the war penetrated ever closer to their homes. The Sky City was the only place that still had capacity, and every Tokob Paw that ventured into Yalotlan to aid its warriors returned with more refugees. Most came with tales of ambush or loss. Voices quiet, their mouths turned down, they spoke of kidnapped kin as if they were already dead. As captives of the Empire of Songs, they would be either slave or sacrifice, traded or slaughtered in Pechacan, the Empire’s heartland and home of its song-magic.

  Lilla shivered. He had never yet heard the song and had vowed he never would. He would rather die than live as a slave, his life and will held in the hands of another and the song his constant, unavoidable companion. Lilla would fight to free Yalotlan and keep it and Tokoban independent. If it was Malel’s decree that he should die, he would go to the mother goddess without regret to await his rebirth. But he would not surrender his body and mind into the power of another. Not for anything or anyone.

  It was a vow thousands of Tokob had taken in the preceding months, some even going so far as to tattoo their promise into their flesh. Lilla’s promise was carved into his heart, and that was enough.

  His surviving warriors led the way, for they knew the game trails and the safest route up the slopes to avoid the Swift Water that twisted and tumbled across the hill. The Yaloh warriors came last, turning often to stare down the trails for the tell-tale twitch of leaf or sudden silence in the usual clamour of the jungle.

  Lilla’s thoughts circled memories of the ambush like a cat returning to its kill, worrying at the meat of events, clawing at his decisions and picking them apart. Lilla was Fang, the leader of his Paw: the fault was his, and so were the deaths, but now, at last, they were in familiar terrain. The humidity had risen steadily until the air was thick as resin and just breathing was a labour. The Wet would come soon, months of rain and storm, deluge and flood, that would wash the Empire of Songs back into its own lands and swell the crops for harvest.

  It would bring much-needed respite from the war, but not from death and watchfulness. The Wet carried dangers of its own, ones that ordinary warriors couldn’t fight. But both the Wet and the war slipped from Lilla’s mind, just for a moment, when they finally climbed out of the jungle and onto Malel’s bare skin. Malel, who was at once the mother goddess, the world, and the hill itself upon which the Tokob, her first children, had built their greatest city. Up and to their right, still a few sticks away, the Sky City itself gleamed pale and majestic against the darker rock and splashes of green of the hill. The sun was high, picking out the glyphs and paintings adorning the city’s perimeter wall. Within, a maze of houses and markets, great plazas and temples to Malel and her first creations, the Snake and the Jaguar, kin to the Tokob.

  Outside the walls grew widely spaced orchards of fig, mango, palm and nut, and small stands of rubber and pom for practical and ritual purposes, and then rows of terraced fields below, seedlings just showing green against rich, black soil. Most of the Yaloh gathered here now had never seen the Sky City. Their voices were low with awe and wonder, and not a little relief. The Sky City’s walls protected against more than predators; they were sturdy enough to protect its inhabitants from the Empire, too. Perhaps. Lilla heard their relief and felt it loosen something dark and hard in his chest. He was home. Safe. For a little while.

  To their right the great bend of the Swift Water glittered and rushed, twisting towards them and then looping back on itself, following the contours of the land and its own channel, carved out of Malel’s belly since the world began.

  ‘What’s that?’ a child asked, pointing at a series of small, squat stone buildings running across the hill below the lowest fields.

  Lilla followed her gaze. ‘Those are the water temples,’ he said. ‘See those long pipes coming out of them? Every morning, they’re put into the river so that up in the temples, we can turn the handles that draw the water up the pipes. That way, the people get the water they need and only the ejab have to face the Drowned.’

  Her little face was round and her eyes were even rounder. Her finger wobbled as it pointed again, this time at the river. ‘They … go down there?’

  Lilla nodded. ‘Every day. But you must never, ever, ever go to the river,’ he added when the girl’s mother scowled at him. ‘And you see these markers,’ he added, raising his voice for the Yaloh nearest. ‘These mark safe distance from the river. Never cross them.’

  They nodded and he waved them on, waiting for the last Yaloh warriors to make their way out of the jungle, led by Kux. ‘We came the slow and safe way,’ Lilla said as soon as the woman reached him. He gestured right, to where the jungle grew to within a hundred strides of the river and the two solitary trees that stood opposite each other, one on each bank. There was a rope bridge stretched between them. ‘If we’re running, we take the bridge and pray the Drowned don’t spot us. Through the Wet, we’ll build pits and traps and fortifications across here and cut down the bridge to slow the Empire’s advance. It’ll buy us time.’

  ‘Why waste time digging ditches?’ Kux demanded. ‘We should be in Yalotlan. We will make the enemy pay for every stick of land in blood, and tha
t price will be too much.’

  Her voice had risen as she spoke, and her Paw were responding, fire in their eyes and murmurs of agreement on their lips as they crowded close, knuckles yellow through brown skin.

  ‘Too much?’ Lilla demanded, his own anger matching hers, quick to flare these days. His warriors fought and died by the side of the Yaloh, and for what? For this slow, creeping retreat as they gave and the Empire took, stick after stick, inexorable as encroaching night. ‘There is no such thing as too much blood to them. How many eagle warriors of the Pechaqueh have you fought? Barely any, because they’re sending slave warriors and dog warriors from a dozen conquered tribes against us, making us spend our strength against fighters who are owned and have been corrupted by the Empire and its song. Only after they have broken us will the Pechaqueh themselves come, sweeping through Yalotlan like—’

  ‘Let them fucking come,’ Kux snarled. ‘I will taste their deaths on my tongue and I will pull their Empire down around their ears. I will shatter their song so its foul magic can no longer hold the other tribes in thrall.’ Her Paw whooped and shouted, silencing the jungle cacophony below them.

  ‘Then you are free to go,’ Lilla said, sharper than he meant to. He took a breath and lowered his voice, clinging to his temper by his fingernails. ‘The decision is not mine, Kux, and nor is it yours. Our councils will discuss the matter; if they find merit in sending warriors into occupied Yalotlan through the Wet, then that is what we will do. And the Tokob will go with you, I swear by my ancestors. Until that decision is made, at least rest. Eat. Dance the death rites for those we lost, and for yourself as much as them.’

  Kux stared at him, her dark eyes unreadable. ‘You seek to delay me?’

  ‘I did not drag you all the way up Malel’s flank against your will, did I? No, I’m not delaying you; I just want to know you have grieved and rested, so that if we are to fight, I can rely on you.’

  Kux snarled. ‘I am the one fighting for my land; you need not concern yourself with me.’ She paused then, and some of the fire went out of her. ‘But I will dance for my dead, Fang Lilla. I will do that. And I will see you at the council meeting at dusk.’

  She pushed past him before he could say any more, and the rest of her Paw followed her in silence. In an effort to calm his temper, Lilla stared into the depths of the jungle, lush and green and vibrant, living and dying in the eternal dance, the eternal balance. Was it Malel’s will that her children fall to the Empire’s magic and the Empire’s warriors? Was it time for the first children to pass from the world and be reborn anew?

  ‘No,’ he whispered fiercely to the sun and the trees and the bright splash of parrots that broke from the canopy above his head, red against the aching blue of the sky. The breeze kissed the sweat on his brow as if in agreement and lifted the heavy curtain of his hair, tugging playfully and stealing cool fingers across the back of his neck. His heart twisted with an almost violent love for his home and his land, this place where his feet rested upon Malel’s skin, where she breathed within him and he within her. ‘No. She cannot want an end to all this. She cannot.’

  If the Yaloh and Tokob fell, then all the peoples of Ixachipan would belong to the Pechaqueh of the Empire. And their song would infect them all.

  The room was crowded by the councils of two tribes, sitting in a double circle. There was one space free, between Kux and … Lilla came to an abrupt halt, joy swiftly subsumed by a sense of dread. It can’t be him. He shouldn’t be back this soon. Perhaps feeling the weight of his gaze, the man twisted and looked up, confirming what Lilla’s heart was already telling him from a single glance at those slender shoulders.

  ‘Tayan?’ His voice was hoarse.

  Tayan scrambled to his feet and rushed into his arms, his expression complicated by too many emotions, before High Elder Vaqix rapped the smooth, polished stone on the floor in front of him. ‘Sit, please. There is much to talk over.’

  ‘Are you well, my heart?’ Lilla asked and Tayan nodded quickly, his eyes running over him with worried intensity, looking for fresh wounds or hurts. ‘I’m fine,’ he added soothingly, ‘but you weren’t at home. Have you only just now returned?’

  ‘I had to go straight to the shamans’ conclave to report; there wasn’t time to—’

  Vaqix rapped the stone again.

  Lilla tore his gaze from Tayan’s face and looked over his head at the high elder. Vaqix was tall and stooped, his beaked nose adding to the impression he gave of an angry vulture as he hunched on his cushion, glaring. Flanking him was Apok, the warriors’ elder, and Tika, the ejab elder, both sleek and powerful beside his gnarled frame. Lilla glanced back at Tayan again, at the formal blue band painted across his brow, and the second, slender line that ran from his bottom lip down the middle of his chin. The unfamiliar kilt was blue too – he had dressed in borrowed shaman’s finery for this meeting and Lilla’s heart ached to see him. He’d been gone for too long and, despite Vaqix’s glare, which had physical weight now – they were the only two still standing – he stole a soft, chaste kiss from his husband’s mouth and heard the tiny hitch in Tayan’s breathing, a sound he knew as well as he knew his own voice. It spoke of relief, and love, and want.

  Lilla had so many questions, but instead they stepped into the circle and sat. Tayan squeezed Lilla’s hand and they held tight through the welcome of councillors, warriors, and travellers, and the formal invitation for Malel to witness the meeting.

  ‘Peace-weaver Betsu, Peace-weaver Tayan. Your return is swifter than expected. Have the Zellih agreed to our request?’ Vaqix’s tone was formal, his voice neutral, but there was tension in his shoulders.

  Tayan’s hand became damp in Lilla’s grip as the silence grew heavy. ‘The Zellih say no, High Elder,’ he croaked, the usual music stolen from his voice. ‘They will not aid us against the Empire of Songs.’

  ‘They say more than no!’ Peace-weaver Betsu shouted as mutters rose among the elders. She was a short, stocky woman who’d come to council in her armour. She knelt on Tayan’s far side like an angry toad. ‘They say they have no quarrel with the Empire of Songs and no love for the peoples of Ixachipan. They reminded us that three generations ago, when the Pechaqueh suddenly began their conquest of the world, they urged us to stand with the other tribes and grind Pechacan to dust. To stamp the Singing City back into the mud. They know we look outside of Ixachipan for aid now because all the other tribes have fallen and we have nowhere else to turn.’

  Her words had silenced the room and into that silence she laughed, bitter as venom. ‘And they’re right. We did ignore the pleas of the Chitenecah when their land was threatened, and the Zellih, even so far away as they are, did urge us to fight. While we cowered in our cities and villages and prayed for the Pechaqueh to look elsewhere, the Zellih called for war. And we said no.’

  ‘You blame us for this?’ High Elder Vaqix demanded, fury weaving through his voice. An echo of it stirred in Lilla.

  ‘Yes,’ Betsu said, ‘but no more than I blame my own people and every tribe that walks Ixachipan. Pechacan, its people and its song are a curse upon the world and they have stolen the lives and lands of too many – of almost everyone – but still, not all the obsidian and jade we could offer will make the Zellih fight the Empire now. They believe them too strong; they believe them unstoppable. They trust in their hills and the salt pans to protect them.’ She took a deep breath. ‘We are alone.’

  ‘You are not.’ Vaqix’s voice was strong as mahogany despite Betsu’s scorn and the shaken expression flickering across his gaunt features. ‘Tokoban stands with you.’

  Betsu laughed again, its edges jagged. Lilla leant away from her sharpness. ‘Then perhaps we will survive one season longer as a result. I am sure that will comfort the new parents among both our peoples. They can spend it deciding whether slavery or death is the future they want for their children and themselves.’

  The council chamber descended into hostile silence.

  ‘The Zellih also warn
ed us that refugees will not be welcomed,’ Tayan said. ‘They are stationing warriors on the edge of the salt pans at the border of Ixachipan and Barazal, and they will kill any who attempt to cross.’

  Lilla had thought the news couldn’t get any worse, but at Tayan’s pronouncement he felt the blood drain from his face and blinked, suddenly dizzy. At some point he’d let go of the shaman’s hand and now he stared down into his lap, focusing on his fingers with unblinking intensity.

  ‘What?’ Vaqix shouted, all his composure fleeing. The old man lurched to his feet, the council stone skittering across the floor as he kicked it. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a gross violation of protocol; now no one even glanced at it as it bounced to a stop. ‘If we have nowhere to retreat to, we’ll be massacred. They must help us!’

  ‘The Zellih elders advise us to either win or surrender,’ Tayan said in a monotone. ‘We will find no succour with them.’

  ‘Then we fight.’ Kux’s voice was strident with anger. ‘We fight to the very end and we make the Pechaqueh rue the day they sent their Talons against us. Once the Wet is fully upon us, if not before, they will send their warriors home and leave only enough to occupy those parts of Yalotlan they have already stolen. We’ll outnumber them, and I say we show no mercy and we leave none alive. Retake Yalotlan so that when they return after the rains they must begin their conquest all over again. And again, and again, until they give up.’

  Every eye turned to Eja Tika at the pronouncement. The woman’s face was hard, her smile bitter. ‘If we fight through the Wet, we will be facing both the Empire and the Drowned at their most active. It would be foolish in the extreme.’