The Stone Knife

by Anna Stephens

  ‘You should know!’ one of them shouted back, ‘seeing as you were such good friends with her.’ The noise began to build again and the anger was firmly directed at him now. The Tokob, a mix of warriors, ejab and others, tightened their lines and some began shouting back.

  Tayan looked back to Lutek and Tiamoko, one hand pressed to the wound in his face that was beginning to take all his attention. ‘What are they on about?’ he demanded.

  ‘There’s been some trouble,’ Tiamoko began, but then Elder Apok was pushing through the crowd with an armed escort.

  ‘Peace-weaver Tayan? And … you’re from Fang Lilla’s Paw, aren’t you? Come with me.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Lutek demanded. She grabbed Apok by the shoulder and spun him around. ‘What’s going on?’ she repeated, louder now.

  A warrior passed his spear between the pair of them. ‘Please release the high elder,’ he said respectfully. Lutek stepped back as if bitten and the shock of his words leapt from one to the other.

  ‘High elder?’ Tayan stuttered, the words tripping over each other. ‘What has happened to Vaqix?’

  ‘I am glad to see you returned, Peace-weaver, though in unfortunate circumstances,’ Apok began when they were all seated in the council chamber. There were faces missing, not just Vaqix’s.

  ‘What are these circumstances?’ Lutek grated. ‘We’re down there in Yalotlan freeing slaves and sending them here to regain their strength so they might fight with us and you’re letting them be killed alongside Xentib who’ve lived here for years? What about the Quitob we sent? Where are they?’

  ‘I’m sorry, but I must hear your news first. Peace-weaver?’ The council chamber fell silent and Tayan filled it with the same story he’d given Lilla and the others in Yalotlan, Lutek and Tiamoko’s presence adding to the horrible dreamlike sense that he was reliving those moments – but this time without his husband.

  The councils of the two tribes descended into the same bickering that had swept the Paws, and Tayan sat in their midst, not listening. Exhausted. Heartsick. His face swollen and caked in dried blood.

  Tiamoko stretched across Lutek and patted his knee awkwardly. ‘Fang Lilla won’t give in that easily,’ he murmured. ‘He’ll stay alive, and when we defeat the Empire of Songs you can go and find him.’

  The shaman managed to force one corner of his mouth up into some ghastly approximation of a smile he didn’t feel.

  ‘May we know why the city was on fire and Yaloh were slaughtering guests of the Tokob?’ Lutek demanded when the councils had gone over Tayan’s story for the third time without making any different decisions. Yaloh elders immediately began to protest.

  ‘Are you saying we are not guests of your tribe?’ one asked and Lutek tensed to stand. Tiamoko and Tayan both clamped a hand on her arms and stilled her.

  ‘We seek to understand,’ Tayan said quickly.

  ‘There was an … incident,’ Apok said diplomatically. ‘High Elders Vaqix and Zasso, as well as Eja Elder Tika, were murdered, the day before Tika, Kime, and Xessa were to attempt to capture a Drowned. The Xenti woman Ilandeh vanished the same night and, over time, suspicion fell on her as the killer. Tensions between Yaloh and Xentib have been building ever since. What you saw was the latest in a series of riots that—’

  ‘Vaqix is dead?’ Lutek demanded.

  ‘Riots? More like murder!’ Tiamoko shouted.

  ‘Ilandeh?’ Tayan said, dumb. ‘Impossible.’ High Elder Apok spread his hands and the council began to argue yet again. From the look on his face, it was an increasingly common occurrence. ‘She wouldn’t,’ Tayan said. ‘She was a refugee; she was a merchant, not a killer.’

  ‘Dakto,’ Lutek said and Tayan frowned at her tone. ‘Dakto found you and said he was going to check your backtrail. He sent you on ahead, knowing you’d distract Lilla and the rest of us with your news. Buying him time to find Empire warriors and set up the ambush. And he knows everything, all of our plans, where the other war parties are …’

  Tiamoko was cursing, a long litany of expletives as his fingers tightened and loosened on his knees.

  ‘That was our thinking, too,’ Apok said over the babble. ‘We’d sent people to warn you of our concerns, but clearly we were too late. I will need to know the details of your defeat,’ he added and Lutek flushed, but he went on before she could retort. ‘The biggest problem here, though, is convincing the Yaloh that the rest of the refugees are not similarly spies and assassins.’

  ‘Prove it!’ shouted the same elder as before. ‘Prove they’re not.’

  Spies and assassins. Tayan would have laughed – Ilandeh would have laughed – if their faces weren’t all so serious. Hysterical laughter, granted, but laughter nonetheless. The shaman was very, very tired. He stood.

  ‘High Elder, if the council has no other questions, I would like to go home. I have been away for too long and my husband is dead or missing.’

  Apok’s face softened. ‘Of course, Peace-weaver, of course.’

  He touched his belly and then his throat. ‘Under—’ he began, and then stopped. His smile was mirthless, but he ignored Lutek’s questioning gaze and hurried out of the council house. He needed to get away.

  Tayan stamped on the wooden rocker that would alert Xessa to his presence and waited for her clap. Inside it was the pretty much the same as it had always been, tidy floor space and messy shelves, only now there was an extra dog and an extra eja. Toxte. Tayan halted inside the doorway and drank in the sight of her. But then she was on her feet and in his arms, the familiar scent of her, the hard strength of her arms around his neck, her huffing laugh.

  He hugged her back as hard as he could, a lump threatening to seal his throat and unstop his eyes, when she let go and leant back far enough to turn his head and examine the wound in his cheek. He batted her hand away and hugged her again. One part of his heart returned to him.

  One part still missing.

  He felt the hitch of her chest and knew she’d started crying and he squeezed and tried to lift her off her feet, ostensibly to make her laugh – she was far heavier than him – but in reality so he could shift to see Toxte’s face and raise an eyebrow.

  ‘Tika died,’ the eja said. Tayan nodded. ‘And Kime died, not long after. It … broke something in her. She went to the Swift Water on her own and caught a Greater Drowned.’

  Tayan’s arms locked even tighter around Xessa and his mind filled with a sharp buzzing. Kime. Oh, ancestors. She was sobbing on his shoulder now, full-body crying, and Ossa was whining and pawing at his legs and Toxte looked a bit teary himself. And so he put away his own fatigue and hurt, and he became the shaman they needed even as his mind reeled under the revelation that Xessa caught a holy Setat.

  Gently, he pushed her away and wiped her tears with his thumbs before signing: ‘I’m so sorry. Tomorrow, I’ll journey you to the Realm of the Ancestors and you can say goodbye. And I’ll make sure his spirit is on the spiral path to Malel, all right?’

  She sobbed some more, but nodded, and Toxte was definitely crying now as well and Tayan had to carefully lock away his own grief. Kime. Father of the friend of his heart.

  ‘Word is you’ve lost your mind while I’ve been gone. Going to tell me about it?’ he asked as her tears slowed.

  Xessa ducked her head and wiped her nose on the back of her hand, but he knew the set of her chin well. ‘Tell me what happened to you,’ she signed instead, and if she wasn’t ready to talk about it all, he couldn’t really blame her. Still … she did it. We’ve got a Drowned. We’ve fucking caught one.

  He glanced at Toxte, who’d scooted forward and pressed his leg along Xessa’s thigh as she sat within touching distance of Tayan. The eja nodded, and so Tayan summarised the previous three months and the ambush and the absence of Lilla, either as corpse or as living man.

  ‘So. How do we get him back?’ Xessa signed and the question was so her – and so him – that something in his chest cracked and he had to look away, fighting for contro
l.

  ‘Your news,’ he signed when he could be sure he wouldn’t cry. She protested, he insisted, and eventually she related everything that had happened since he’d been gone. It made as little sense this time around as when Apok had told him, but he could see the evidence stacking up against Ilandeh and Dakto both and in the end he had to concede that what everyone else thought was likely the truth. In light of everything that had happened, and even on top of the monstrous weight of fear and pain at Lilla having been ripped from him, he found their betrayal cut deep and wondered, for a single selfish, wallowing instant, whether he had the strength to carry this extra load.

  And then he told himself to stop being a mewling little pup and help his friend.

  ‘Haven’t told me everything though,’ he signed at the end and pointed to Toxte. ‘What’s the pretty little ornament doing here?’

  The corner of Toxte’s mouth turned up, and then again when Xessa blushed. ‘Like you said, he’s pretty. He amuses me,’ she signed with studied nonchalance, but Tayan well knew the mischief dancing across her face and it lifted his heart to see.

  ‘Amuse?’ Toxte demanded in mock outrage. ‘I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you and you know it. You save my life, I save yours, we have great sex. Regularly,’ he added and waggled his eyebrows.

  Xessa huffed a laugh but then she kissed him, a lingering kiss that had Tayan clearing his throat and fussing with the dogs until they were done. ‘You are the best thing,’ she signed simply and they smiled at each other until Tayan made dramatic vomiting motions and she threw a cushion at him.

  The rest of the night passed with too much beer and too many tears until Tayan couldn’t stay awake any longer. He desperately wanted to sleep on Xessa’s floor, or even curled with her in bed as they’d done countless times before. The thought of returning to his and Lilla’s empty house terrified him, but Xessa and Toxte were making eyes at each other and he couldn’t intrude any longer. With luck, he’d have drunk enough to sleep.

  Lilla had, of course, left their home clean and tidy, and Xessa had given him water and candles, though he didn’t – couldn’t – light them. Instead, Tayan kicked off his sandals before stepping onto the mats, and then stripped out of his travel-worn clothes, scrubbed his face and neck and armpits with water and fell into their bed. It smelt like Lilla, and Tayan cried.

  ‘So, you want to see it?’ Xessa asked casually as they sat around the firepit eating breakfast the next morning. There was still hurt in her – far too much hurt, and a deep-rooted guilt that he hoped the journeying would help rip out – but there was a hint of her usual mischief, too, and something else that seemed a result of her relationship with Toxte. Obviously, the eja could give her something he couldn’t. And frequently does, from the sounds last night.

  ‘I suppose,’ he replied with equal indifference. ‘If you think it’s worth my time.’

  Toxte raised his hands to the sky in supplication, before signing, ‘I can see I’ve made a terrible mistake. Malel, save me from friends who think they’re funny.’

  Tayan pulled a slice of meat out of his dawnmeal and waited until he had both dogs’ attention, then threw it at Toxte’s chest and laughed as they flattened him, tongues and drool coating his face and neck.

  Toxte fought himself free of the dogs and noticed Xessa and Tayan collapsed in each other’s arms, laughing. ‘Is this how it’s going to be, really? This is my life now?’ he demanded, and they looked at each other and dissolved into fresh giggles. Something loosened in Tayan’s chest – not the weight of fear and hurt about Lilla’s fate; nothing would get rid of that until his husband was back in his arms – but the need he’d had since he and Xessa were children to know that she was happy.

  ‘Come on then, you monsters,’ Toxte said as they finished eating. He glanced at Xessa. ‘I’m going to tell him what happened, so he knows what to expect,’ he signed. ‘Get the weapons.’ She waved him on and vanished into the house, and when she came back she was loaded down with nets, spears, clubs, and knives, so many that Tayan felt a lurch of unease. She handed one of each to Toxte and, as they made their way uphill through the early morning city towards the womb, the eja told him the story of what happened when he’d gone in on the end of a rope and listened to it sing.

  ‘Ancestors,’ Tayan breathed when he was done. ‘I knew it. I knew I’d seen something significant in the Singing City. I knew they weren’t just animals.’ Xessa tapped his arm and he repeated himself in sign. ‘I was … We had to observe an offering, the monthly ritual,’ he continued. ‘It was exactly as awful as you’d imagine, but before the actual … the death, one of them … spoke. Not in any language I could understand, though I did understand it – in here.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Enet – the woman we saw, a high official in their society – was in the water with the offering and the holy Setat beckoned and made a noise. A little, inquisitive sound. Give. It was telling her to give it the offering. I heard it. I knew it.’

  ‘Holy Setat?’ Toxte asked in a low voice and Tayan paused on the trail between Sky City and womb. Had he actually signed that?

  ‘Too long under the song,’ he signed briskly and then pushed on past, disquieted. Lutek had seen it, too, the unconscious use of an honorific for a ravening monster. And he’d almost used the song blessing when he left the council. Shit.

  Toxte stopped well below the womb, out of earshot – he hadn’t taken the spirit-magic and wouldn’t risk getting too close. Tayan knew the ejab on duty by sight, but they weren’t friends; he nodded politely. Now he was here, he was consumed with the need to see it. To hear it.

  Since Toxte had told him what he’d seen and felt, he’d known the only way he could interact with it would be without a magical barrier between them. Still, he’d taken their warnings to heart and Xessa would go in with him. She knew him better than anyone save Lilla, and if he started acting strangely, she’d drag him out.

  And how it reacts to her presence will be the first experiment: its ability to recognise threat. Can it differentiate between me and her?

  ‘You’ve been here every day since you captured it, yes? Studying it?’ he signed as an eja looped the rope around his chest and shoulders and pulled it tight, tying the knot between his shoulder blades where he couldn’t reach it. He slid the knife out of the shaman’s belt, too, and Tayan felt a little lurch of panic.

  Xessa nodded.

  ‘And how does it react to you? You captured it, you’re keeping it here, you prevented Toxte from freeing it. What does it do when you go in?’

  ‘Sings,’ she signed. ‘Always. It makes me feel … dirty. Vulnerable somehow. As if my body and my spirit know its singing, even if I don’t. If that makes sense? But it never does anything else. Not even when I feed it. Just watches me and sings until I can’t stand it any more. I can’t learn anything from it,’ she added with intense frustration.

  ‘Maybe I can,’ he signed. ‘Have you got me?’

  ‘Always.’ She took a spear in one hand and a club in the other, and when he raised an eyebrow, she tapped her knee with it. Tayan winced at her casual brutality, but couldn’t really blame her for it. Not after everything that had happened.

  He wiped his hands on his kilt and then stepped down into the tunnel leading to the womb. He tugged at the rope around his chest fretfully, checking the knot, and when his feet slowed, Xessa gave him a gentle nudge. The torchlight grew and he could hear a splashing, abruptly stilled. It had heard him, too.

  He paused before the turn into the womb. ‘Wait here, out of sight,’ he signed. ‘I want to see what it does when I’m alone.’ Xessa shook her head vehemently. ‘Send Ossa in with me. He’ll alert you if anything goes wrong.’

  She licked her teeth and chewed at her lip, then gave him the club and waved him on. The dog, too. Tayan took a deep breath and turned the corner, pausing just inside the womb to blink in the light of the torches and candles. The cave was hot and smoky and the water at the far end was shallow and the Drowned … the
Drowned was on its side in the water, gills flapping and lungs labouring. Suffering.

  Ossa was growling, a constant low rumble of threat that didn’t seem to stop even for breath. Tayan leant the club against the wall and checked the rope again, then scratched the dog’s head to try and calm him. The rumble continued.

  ‘Hello,’ Tayan said, his voice cracking. He cleared his throat and tried again. ‘I know you have language. I know you can speak, in a way. Do you understand me? I’m not going to hurt you.’

  The Drowned watched him, and when he took a step forward it thrashed backwards, huddling up against the wall. The movement triggered a snarl from Ossa, but Tayan spread his hands. ‘I’m not armed. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to understand.’ Gingerly, he squatted down to be less of a threat, ready to throw himself backwards at any second. The rope was almost taut behind him; he couldn’t get much closer.

  ‘Holy Setat,’ he whispered and the Drowned’s head came up. It stared at him with unblinking intensity. ‘God of rivers and lakes, of rain and crops, you who give and take to maintain harmony.’ Its throat sac bulged and he braced himself. It chirruped, tentative, as afraid as he was: he was sure of that now. ‘Yes,’ he said past the constriction in his throat, ‘I’m a friend.’

  Release me.

  Tayan rocked under the command, issued in a low, birdlike warble. ‘I can’t do that,’ he said. ‘At least not yet. Soon perhaps. But we need to understand each other first. Do you understand? Understand my words?’

  Release me. Hurt.

  ‘I can’t,’ he repeated, filled with sorrow, and the holy Setat looked away from him and lowered its head back into the water. There was an ugly slash in one leg, and the other was dislocated or broken. ‘Can I ease your hurt? Is there anything, any medicine you need?’

  It looked up again and this time it sang. It was a song of yearning and loss and pain, a song of fear that broke Tayan’s spine and heart and begged for aid, begged to be saved. And yet there was no imperative in it, no command to come to it that drew its victims and its offerings. It was alone and hurt and there was not enough water and so it must struggle, a constant pain throughout all its body as it slowly suffocated. Over hours. Over days.