The Stone Knife

by Anna Stephens

  ‘Pull him out now. Now,’ she emphasised, and then snatched up Nallet’s spear from where she’d rested it to sign. She ducked past the pair and followed the rope into the gloom, towards the distant glow of the womb. Her heart was in her throat and sweat prickled her palms and her back, cold and sour.

  Not Toxte too. Please, Malel, please, ancestors, not Toxte too. If a life is owed in here, you can have mine.

  Xessa worked to steady her breath and her hands, so that she would not be surprised by what she saw. It didn’t work. Toxte was on his knees in the water, at the limit of the tether that was knotted across his chest and beneath his arms, tied securely in the middle of his back in such a way he couldn’t reach it and free himself. The rope was taut but he was fighting its pull, one hand hooked around a little bump of rock to hold him steady.

  The Drowned was opposite him, propped upright against the wall, singing. Toxte’s other hand was on its leg, fingers feeling around the bones of the knee. His chest was heaving, but Xessa couldn’t see his face. Ekka was at the edge of the water, barking, her tail curled under her. She wasn’t obeying her training; she wasn’t dragging him clear. It made no sense.

  Toxte’s hand stilled on the Drowned’s leg and then he gave a sudden sharp wrench. The Drowned threw back its head and whatever sound it made wasn’t song; Ekka and Ossa both cringed and Toxte’s hands flew to his ears, pressing against the sides of his skull as the Drowned thrashed – but the leg moved and bent again, the bones set back in place.

  Xessa stepped past Toxte and prepared to strike even as he was jerked backwards by the rope harness, but his hands closed on the spear she held, jerking it from her hands. She spun to face him and could see his expression now, twisted with yearning and a terrible, blank need, a desperate urge to give himself into the arms of death. Xessa slapped him as hard as she could, the sting vicious in her palm, and shoved him hard in the chest to get him moving towards the exit. She ripped the spear back out of his hands as Toxte slid backwards in the water, on his knees, clinging on to the walls to slow himself. As she had at the river, Xessa gave both dogs the guard order and now Ekka responded; they sprang at him, barking and snapping until he flailed onto his feet out of their reach and was immediately pulled over onto his arse by the rope.

  Pain creased his face as his tailbone struck stone and then he was gone, hauled out of the source. Xessa turned back to the Drowned and it was just climbing to its feet – or foot, anyway. The other leg was still twisted. It must have been in agony. Xessa didn’t give it time to stand; she brought the spear around and swept its foot from under it. The Drowned crashed into the pool, the impact shivering through Xessa’s feet and a great splash hitting her and the wall. Its throat sac deflated and its song ended, and the weird, oily vibrations that had been echoing through the womb and her bones began to fade.

  Meaning Toxte would be free of its song and able to reach his feet and run.

  Xessa watched it lying in the water. Tayan has such ideas and, Malel bless him, he wrote them all down for me. But I think I’ve already learnt enough for one night.

  She didn’t have a club and doubted she’d able to re-break its knee with her spear. Maybe she could hack its foot off, but it was more likely she’d take a faceful of clawed toes and the venom would send her blind. But if it could stand, it might be able to reach high enough to untie the rope from the stalactite. And then it could get out, and then it might get into the city and even if it died there, there’d be more than the sixty-three dead this time. It could just sit in the plaza and sing. And those deaths, too, would be on her.

  Xessa stepped within range and dropped the spear. The Drowned kicked out, its mouth a rictus of needle-sharp teeth, muscles standing out in neck and chest at the pain of movement. Xessa caught its ankle and its claws scraped the underside of her arm. Before it could pull back, she ripped her knife free and jammed it into the Drowned’s calf, sawing at the thick muscles.

  Throat sac bulging, it wrenched back and its leg slipped from Xessa’s grasp, the skin smooth and cold and wet. The limb splashed down and then the Drowned slid through the shallow water on its back towards her to snatch at her ankles. If she went down it was over, she was dead. She leapt back, praying that her knife had done enough damage.

  The Drowned lay on its back, gills flapping rapidly, water greening with blood, and Xessa stared at the length of it, at the thick, toughened plates like an armadillo’s that covered its stomach and chest and lower back. How many times had she seen arrows and darts bounce off those plates? How many times had her own spear clattered free or drawn only a shallow wound in the shoulders, where no real damage could be done?

  You could break their limbs. She’d proven that, though she hadn’t known for sure when she’d tried it. But it took strength and leverage to pierce that armour and that meant being right there with it, not shooting arrows from a distance. Xessa’s gaze returned to its face and she jumped; it was watching her, and she could recognise both pain and intelligence in its regard. Though she knew it was clever, it was still unnerving to find it studying her even as she studied it. Slowly, it dragged itself away from her and brought its bleeding leg up to its belly and lay there, one gill in the water. Still.

  Wary, her knife up to ward off any sudden attack, Xessa bent and fished around until her fingers bumped Nallet’s spear, and with a shudder of relief, she dragged it out of the water. The eja backed out of the womb and then turned and ran, up into the night and the darkness, towards Ossa and Toxte. Fucking Toxte. Oh, she had some questions for Toxte. The torchlight grew as she fled back to the ejab and then Ossa was there, and then Toxte, and all Xessa’s constant, bubbling anger cooled and settled, because he was sitting on the floor with his arms and legs wrapped around Ekka, and the torchlight molten in the tears on his face.

  Nallet and Quin reacted violently to her appearance, Quin even lunging with his spear before recognising her, and then there was a babbling flurry of hands as they demanded answers. Xessa slashed hers through the air to still them. ‘It’s contained. It’s still tied – and it’s still injured.’

  Toxte was watching her. A shudder went through him at her words and he clutched Ekka tighter. The dog was sitting still in his embrace, giving comfort, her tongue working patiently at his neck. Xessa stood over them and shame filled her. She wasn’t the only person who grieved for Kime and Tika, even if she had been kin with the former. Yet she’d done nothing since the deaths but batter away at Toxte, wallowing in her own mourning and ignoring his. She’d provided him with no comfort, yet she’d demanded it in turn. And he’d gifted it to her, selflessly, day after day.

  ‘Can you check on it?’ she signed to Quin. ‘Both of you together. I stabbed its right leg, near the calf. Check it’s still down but other than that don’t touch it.’

  Nallet and Quin were reluctant, but they went.

  When she was alone with Toxte, Xessa knelt down next to him and took his face in her hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ she mouthed and he frowned, confused. She didn’t explain, just kissed him, with tenderness and the first new growth of love, until he transferred the tightness of his grip from Ekka to her and shared the bottomless depth of his fear with her. He stank of it, his skin wet with it, and she held him all the tighter, his trembling becoming hers until she took it all from him and he was still.

  Xessa helped Toxte to stand and untied the rope still crossed over his chest and back. There were ugly burns on his collarbones from where he’d struggled against it, but he submitted now without protest, and they waited for the ejab to come out of the womb and nod it was still contained, and then he let her lead him slowly back down the path in the blackness, and into the city, and home.

  Xessa lit every candle she had and then made him strip and washed the sweat from him and lent him a shirt and kilt, though he couldn’t get his shoulders into the former and sat with a blanket around him instead. She pegged the door curtain shut against the wind, fussed with food he didn’t want and beer he did, and then finall
y sat opposite him. Ossa put his head on her thigh; Ekka was squeezed onto Toxte’s lap, head and legs spilling across his knees.

  She snapped her fingers and Toxte looked up, eyes dark with a haunting that had nothing to do with the spirits. She had so many questions, but she asked the most unexpected one she could think of to take his mind off what he’d seen – and done. She tapped her ear. ‘What did it sound like? The song. Show it to me.’

  Toxte paused, swirling beer in his cup, and reluctant wonder slid across his features. He put down the cup and rubbed both hands over his face. ‘It was … You know how sometimes you can sit on the steps to the council house and watch the sun set, unobscured by the city? Just you and the sky and how any clouds there are turn gold and the rest of the sky is pink and red and orange? You know how sometimes it’s so, it’s just all so big and you’re so small and yet it feels as if it’s there just for you? And it’s all you can see, it sweeps you up in it until you become the sunset? Until you’re gold and pink and orange and as vast as the sky herself?’

  He put a gentle hand on her chest, between her breasts. ‘You know how it makes your heart hurt that it’s so beautiful?’

  Xessa nodded convulsively, bitter, wondering tears stinging her eyes.

  ‘That’s what it sounded like. It sounded like the sunset looks. It sounded like all the world is there just to make you gasp with wonder, to open your heart so wide that it can absorb all that beauty and hold it and be it and never lose it, no matter what. That’s what the songs of the Drowned sound like.’

  He had tears in his eyes too, but then the wonder in him vanished and the moisture was burnt away in dark fire. ‘And that’s why they need to die. Every last one of them. Forget studying them; just kill them.’ He seized her hands. ‘We just have to kill them, Xessa. All of them.’

  ILANDEH

  The Neck, Xentiban, Empire of Songs

  184th day of the Great Star at morning

  Ilandeh was exhausted, but everything lifted – her mood, her fatigue, the constant anxiety of discovery and failure – when she crossed the border into Xentiban and heard the song once more.

  She was back in the Empire. She was home. The commander of the Melody’s Whispers stood still, her arms out from her sides and fingers splayed, drinking in the song through her skin and ears and heart, breathing it deep into her lungs like the finest incense, like sunlight. The gaping wound inside began to close, the song’s every note a stitch that pulled her edges together until she was whole again. Scarred, but alive.

  A whole year, give or take, she had been without this majesty, without this constant reminder of her orders. Of the trust that the High Feather had placed in her and in Dakto so very long before. Ilandeh sank onto her knees, the rich earth warm and wet and heavy, teeming with life. Tears splashed onto the ground, adding their load of moisture and precious salt. She stared at a busy, organised line of leaf-cutter ants marching back and forth before her and grinned. The song filled them and enhanced their purpose. They, too, worked for an empire and a high ruler, for glory and for peace.

  Ilandeh stretched out her hand and let an ant climb over it and carry on its business. ‘Overcoming all obstacles,’ she whispered approvingly. ‘Go with the gods, little warrior.’ She sat back on her heels and a laugh of pure joy burst from her.

  She was filthy and exhausted, hungry and desperately thirsty, but she could just see the trees thinning ahead, more sun filtering down through the canopy. A clearing. A pyramid. A Listener and eagles and warriors and home.

  Grunting, Ilandeh climbed back to her feet and pushed on, weaving among untamed jungle until she reached a well-worn trail. She turned onto it with relief and checked the scarlet feather in her hair, restored after so very long to its proper place. It was ragged and dirty and bent, because it had been sewn into the seam of her tunic beneath her arm for a year and had been much abused, but it was there and it was hers. She was Flight Ilandeh, commander of the Whispers and the macaws of the Fourth Talon, and she said as much when two eagles emerged from the forest to confront her.

  And then she was in the clearing and fresh tears pricked at her eyes as she looked upon the magnificence of the pyramid, gleaming red as fresh blood, carvings of holy Setatmeh and Singers and of the world spirit itself parading around its sides. ‘Praise the Singer,’ she breathed and the eagles escorting her were respectfully silent.

  ‘How long have you been out,’ one asked eventually.

  ‘A year.’ There were low murmurs of surprise and appreciation, and their regard filled her, mingling with the song until she was full. ‘Is the Listener available?’

  One of the eagles chuckled. ‘I think for an assassin and spy of the High Feather himself, and one who’s been in the heart of the enemy for a year, he’ll make himself available.’

  They left her at the base of the pyramid and she climbed the sacred steps and passed into the cool and the shade. The Whisper left sandals and weapons at the entrance, conscious of the grime, of her smell, in this holy place. The doorway was so low she was forced to kneel, to enter with her head bowed in humility and her neck exposed in supplication, as was right. She crawled down a short, black-painted passageway, the light from the chamber ahead growing and blinding her, and then slithered down onto the sunken floor, graceless and defenceless.

  As was right.

  The chamber was airy and wide, and if the outside had been majestic, the inside was the song made manifest. Each wall was a story painted by a master artist, a lesson, a revelation. The Listener who occupied the centre of the room, by contrast, was unreadable and barely there, so deeply connected with the song that Ilandeh didn’t know if he’d noticed her come in.

  Light from four high apertures spilt down onto the elaborately dyed mats where he sat, and Ilandeh remained on her hands and knees to cross over to the appointed place opposite him. The song was stronger here, pure and clear and vibrating in her bones. She looked up and saw the base of the songstone cap itself above her head. If she stood and reached, she could touch it. The thought sent a shiver of awe down her back, and although her fingers twitched, she didn’t dare act on her desire.

  ‘Where do you wish to go?’ The Listener’s voice was melodious and contained the same rhythms as the song. Ilandeh jumped and looked closer; his eyes were open to slits, glittering with intelligence and magic. She cleared her throat; her own voice was scratchy with thirst and from disuse. She had made the journey from the Sky City in sixteen days, longer than she would have liked, but she’d been forced to creep past war parties and avoid unfinished pyramids in case slaves captured by the Tokob told of her passing. Now, she wanted nothing more than to drink a dozen gourds of water and then sleep for a week. She could not.

  ‘If it is possible, Listener, direct to High Feather Pilos. If not, then to his Listener, Citla, with my thanks.’

  The light gleamed from the Listener’s shaved head. ‘It may be done,’ he said and held out his hands. Ilandeh placed hers in them and let herself be swept into the current of the song, the Listener’s skill and the burning of the incense and those black, black eyes taking her, swift and sure.

  The Whisper’s spirit tugged from her flesh, a whipping flag trailing behind her, touching the raw magic of the song itself and she heard a whimper that she knew to be her own, but didn’t – couldn’t – look away. The Listener’s mind had claws in hers and led her forward, both with and against the current at once, across the sticks, across the jungle, into Pechacan and the Singing City and far beyond, to Pilos. To the fortress. To home.

  Ilandeh felt the shock of connection, the confusion as the Listener contacted Pilos and he responded, and then he drew her into her High Feather’s mind, into a small, shuttered place of darkness and water, cut off from the rest of his thoughts and feelings. Protected. Private.

  ‘Flight Ilandeh?’

  Ilandeh tumbled in the song and in their shared consciousness, striving to control her emotions – relief, delight, something akin to love – as his voice ec
hoed all around her. ‘High Feather!’ Her inner voice was golden with relief, sparking within the liminal darkness.

  ‘You are early.’ His words entered blue with caution, tinging to red alarm. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘Three thousand Tokob and Yaloh have marched to southern Yalotlan to free slaves and destroy the pyramids before the peace-weaving is made official, in case part of the agreement is that the Empire keeps all land newly beneath the song.’

  The space they were in blazed purple, iridescent as a hummingbird’s wing: rage. Ilandeh quailed before it. ‘Forgive me, High Feather,’ she began.

  ‘Could you have prevented it?’ he demanded, the purple fading, though not by much.

  ‘No, High Feather.’ She wanted to apologise again, but the truth was there was nothing she could have done to stop them. ‘Dakto has gone with one of the Paws. He will endeavour to contact a pod and spread word as well as he may without alerting the Tokob to his intentions. I had hoped you might have heard from or of him by now?’

  ‘We have not. I thank you for the advance warning. I will have to let the Singer know they are using the cover of the Wet.’ There was a pause. ‘It’s going to be Quitoban all over again,’ he said, almost to himself.

  Ilandeh knew she flashed yellow with anxiety at his prediction, could do nothing about it. She wasn’t as skilled at concealing her emotions when communicating through the song. At least Yalotlan didn’t have sticks and sticks of swamp and tidal marshes to navigate, the way Quitoban had.

  ‘What else?’

  The Whisper collected her thoughts. She’d been tired before the Listener had swept her out of her body; now she was nearing exhaustion and her emotions painted the darkness of the space they were in, the rich, living black of fear and the grey of grief streaking from her. ‘I … Their high elders are both dead, as is the elder of the Tokob ejab. I stayed as long as I could, but, High Feather, they were going to attempt to capture and torture a holy Setat. I could not let that happen, not when I have been witness to so much. I had to act, I could not …’ She trailed off at the remembered horror. Pilos had wanted her in the city for the duration, even up to their attack so that she might disrupt the defence if she could, but the sheer spirit-horror of listening to ejab discussing slaughtering her gods, over and over across a year, had shattered her.