‘Setatmeh be praised he didn’t want to see Pilos when they passed the city,’ she muttered, and then handed the report back to be filed with the others. ‘Finest clothes and jewellery, and prepare those spiced monkey skewers the holy lord prefers. And a bath. And oils for my hair and skin. My formal headdress, and make sure the feathers aren’t bent this time.’
The slaves bowed and scurried to do her bidding and Enet stood and began peeling off her clothes and jewellery.
Eyes watching eyes, she mused as she stretched and bent and reminded herself of the dances the Singer most enjoyed watching her perform. I wonder which one of us will blink first.
The song hungered. As Enet’s litter moved through the streets towards the source, she saw the effect of that hunger. Her guards made the litter-bearers backtrack and take an alternative route when they came upon a mass brawl in one of the avenues. Choosers and city overseers were trying to break it up, but the level of violence they employed to do so only added to the chaos. Crowds were watching, jeering and placing bets on the outcome. The air smelt of blood.
Xac’s song blared stronger than any Enet had heard in the forty sun-years of her life, louder and more imperious than his sister’s or the two Singers before her that Enet remembered back to when she was a child.
‘… ruined the entire meal. Of course, I had him killed,’ a noblewoman in the cloth market said later as the litter floated past. ‘The other kitchen slaves won’t make his mistake.’ Slaves killed for errors that would normally warrant only a whipping. And killed, not saved as offerings for the holy Setatmeh at the next new moon.
It was everywhere. The song’s sharp edge cutting at the people within it, making them sharp in turn. Quick to anger; quick to hurt. And Enet needed to ease the Singer through almost two more months before he could be allowed to blood the song again. Her heart almost quailed at the thought, and so she unstoppered the gourd and drank more of her tonic, for luck. For courage. For magic.
They reached the great pyramid and Enet hurried up the long, steep stairs and swept in, removing her sandals and letting a slave wash her feet before continuing on into the source and the holy lord’s presence.
The Singer lounged among the mats and pillows, appearing at ease, but she could see the glitter of his eyes, the eagerness. The hunger. And here in the source, the song was sharp enough to make her bleed.
‘What have you brought me?’ he demanded before she’d even made her prostration. ‘Where is it? Tell me.’
Enet sat back. ‘Spiced monkey, holy lord. Your favourite.’ She gestured and her slave put the platter down next to her and then hurried to her usual place at the wall.
The Singer’s face was blank. ‘Spiced monkey?’ he asked in dangerously soft tones.
‘Yes, great Singer.’ She picked up a piece in her fingers and shuffled across the mats towards him, lips parted as she offered it, everything about her appearance, attire, even her scent, calculated to arouse. Once she had taken the edge off, they could discuss the songstone in Tokoban. She proffered the meat and he knocked her hand away, not hard, but not casually either.
Enet’s mouth was dry. ‘No monkey?’ she asked playfully. ‘Very well, then how may I please the holy lord?’ She knelt up so she was taller than him and began fiddling with the ties of her kilt, one eyebrow raised.
The Singer looked away from her. ‘By bringing me another,’ he growled. The song responded, too, not lustful at her antics but a rumbling threat. ‘Now.’
‘I … It is not the appointed time. It must be only on the third—’
‘Get me something.’
Enet paused again, her kilt loose now. ‘Let me please you, my love,’ she whispered. ‘I wish to feel your might inside me. We can talk afterwards.’
The Singer shoved her backwards into the pillows and she landed with a grunt. Finally. He straddled her and leant down into her face.
‘Get me something or take its place,’ he breathed and the smile died on her lips. ‘Am I entirely understood?’
Enet reached up to hold his shoulders in clammy hands. ‘Holy lord, your will is divine,’ she managed. ‘But it is too soon. It must be carefully managed, great Singer, so carefully, or there will be unintended consequences, for you and for the Empire.’
He reared back and pulled the stone knife from the waistband of his kilt.
‘Wh-where did you get that?’ she asked, shocked, for the ritual knife was stored in the source’s treasure vault deep in the earth. Xac hadn’t been down there in years.
‘So be it,’ the Singer said, ignoring her question, and there was no emotion in his voice or face, not even the bloodlust she expected. His skin began to glimmer gold and the song changed, darkening, demanding.
Enet put up both her hands. ‘Wait, wait! As the Singer commands, holy lord. As the Singer commands. Give me one hour and I will bring you a prize.’
The knife was poised above her chest and Xac lowered it until the tip pressed between her breasts. Enet held her breath. He pressed, digging it in until it hurt, and then relented.
‘Less than one hour,’ he grunted and got off her. ‘Run, little Enet,’ he added and rubbed his hand hard over her cheeks and lips. ‘Run. And fix your face before you come back.’
Enet scrambled to her feet and backed rapidly from the source, her slave hobbling after her. When she was around the corner she paused, leaning against the wall, dizzy. Councillor Yana watched her, Chorus Leader Nara by his side.
‘Look what you’ve created,’ Yana said, his voice low and throbbing with anger. ‘You’ve broken the song and doomed us all, Great Octave. All that comes next, you have caused. All of it.’
Enet couldn’t meet his eyes. She brushed past him and fled. An hour wasn’t long enough to reach a decent flesh market. She hurried down the corridors towards the courtesans’ rooms. One of them would lend her fresh cosmetics while she bathed.
A second would honour the Singer with their screams. Enet would work out how to explain their death later, but she knew, now, that Yana was right. She’d lost control. She wasn’t even certain she’d ever had it. Those fucking books; all those fucking books had promised her an outcome she could manage.
And they had lied.
THE SINGER
The source, Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs
I am the song and the song is war.
The song is death for glory and glory for the Empire and the Empire for death. The song is me, my will, my divinity that I choose to share with those mortals who crawl on their bellies and die and fuck and kill at my command.
I am the song and my will is inviolable. The song demands war. The song demands conquest and vengeance and the blood of my enemies to paint the walls of this sanctuary. The song demands war because I demand it. Because I am war.
There will be no rest, no surrender and no retreat. The Yaloh will fall under the song and embrace it. The Tokob will fall under the song and die for their atrocities, for ripping my divine kin from the world.
My warriors will bring me the god-killers and I will craft their screams into the song and they will echo for eternity through its power, dead and never dying. Their blood will make my song invincible. The world spirit will know my glory.
My song is war.
My song is blood.
And I am the song.
ILANDEH
The Neck, Xentiban, Empire of Songs
226th day of the Great Star at morning
The Melody was here. Pilos was here and Ilandeh’s heart leapt.
The ten, hundred-strong local pods Pilos had sent in to Yalotlan in response to her communication through the song had already pushed forward, retaking land and destroying the war parties who had thought to take the Empire by surprise. They couldn’t go too far in without reinforcements, but they’d managed to protect a string of pyramids from destruction.
Ilandeh stroked the single scarlet tail feather of a macaw that hung in her hair and then rubbed her thumb over the small tattoo of a chul
ul gracing the inside of her wrist. The symbol of a Whisper, elite among the macaws, and subtle enough not to be remarked upon. She’d missed the scarlet almost as much as the song. Neither could ease her nerves, however, as Pilos strode through the rain to the open-sided shelter she’d had built to receive him.
Ilandeh touched belly and throat and then knelt to bow. ‘Under the song, High Feather. Praise the holy Setatmeh you are well.’
‘Under the song, Flight, and you are welcome in it after such a long absence. Sit comfortably, please. We will rest here for two hours and then push on – the Singer is even keener than I to have this matter closed. The Third, Sixth and Seventh Talons will push into eastern Yalotlan under Atu’s command. First, Second and Fourth are going straight through to Tokoban. If we can take their mountain, we cut off retreat for the Yaloh and close in from both sides.’
The Singer is even keener than I … He must mean the strange dissonances in the song she had heard, the ones that made the Listener in the nearby pyramid scream and weep. The ones that made every warrior there, whatever their rank or status, cringe. An anomaly. An abomination to the glory.
‘We attack hard and without mercy,’ Pilos continued and Ilandeh blinked and focused. ‘The Singer wants ejab captives particularly and an inventory of the Tokob songstone – he cares little for the rest of them.’ Pilos sat cross-legged on the mats. ‘Your report on the city’s defences can wait until the Feathers are gathered. For now, tell me of the ejab and their spirit-magic.’
‘A concoction of fungus and herbs, plus a tiny amount of frog-venom. They eat it and then for that day they … the spirits either steal their hearing or plug their ears with spirit music. They hear nothing but that and it protects them, though the magic takes a terrible toll as the years pass. The oldest ejab are little more than shuffling madmen and -women, yet they are cared for, almost revered, for their sacrifice. The list of ingredients is here.’ She handed him a report.
‘And the songstone?’
‘There is a cave high up on the hill above the city. It is their most sacred place – they call it the womb and believe all life issued from within it, all creation. There are rich lines of songstone in that cave. It’s possible the entire hill may be veined with it. The echoes and hums and vibrations were consistent with those I have observed in other quarries.’
‘And they don’t use it?’ Pilos asked, curiosity furrowing his brow.
Ilandeh spread her hands. ‘The Tokob appear entirely ignorant of its true purpose and, indeed, ignorant of the world spirit itself. Unless this Malel is their understanding of it. Perhaps when we have shamans and historians as slaves …’ She trailed off; she was babbling, more nervous than she liked to admit, and Pilos knew it.
Ilandeh took a deep breath and began again with her report. She talked and Pilos listened, to stories of ejab and civilians befriended and gently interrogated, of luring people to the river for the holy Setatmeh to take, of the killings of the high elders. Of how Dakto had ingratiated himself into a Paw and then, so she’d heard, arranged the ambush and destruction of a war party.
‘And where is your Second Flight?’ Pilos asked.
Ilandeh frowned. Where indeed? ‘He chose to escort those captives to the flesh markets, High Feather,’ she said evenly. ‘I did not expect it, but in truth … it may be the thought of leaving the Empire again, of being outside of the song for more weeks and months, is affecting him. He will be disciplined on his return, of course.’
He watched her, silent.
‘Forgive me, High Feather. I should have paid more attention to Dakto’s words when we lived in the Sky City. I should have seen if there was restlessness growing in him. He was given much … responsibility by the Tokob. It may have planted unfortunate thoughts.’
The High Feather drummed his fingers on his knee as he studied her. ‘Then let us hope his time in the Singing City reminds him of his duty. Are there unfortunate thoughts growing in you, Whisper?’ he added. ‘Perhaps the Sky City’s freedoms have turned your head, too.’
Ilandeh pressed her forehead to the mat as the breeze blew rain in at them in a fine mist and tugged at her scarlet feather. ‘My loyalty is absolute, High Feather. Tell me how to prove it and I will do so.’
‘If I told you to kill Dakto?’
She twitched, wanting to look up and scan Pilos’s face for deception; didn’t dare. ‘Then I would kill Dakto. For the Singer, the holy Setatmeh, and the Empire. For you.’
Pilos was silent for so long that sweat broke out across her back. Then: ‘Sit up. We will see what is to be done with him when he returns. In the meantime, Sarn is your new Second Flight. He commanded the Talon in your absence.’
‘As the High Feather commands, though my previous Second Flight was Beyt. She did not have command in my absence?’
Pilos stood and stretched. ‘Beyt was given other tasks. Come, there are many sticks to march before nightfall. Take a hundred out ahead and find us someone to fight.’
Sarn crouched behind her in the pre-dawn gloom beneath the trees. He’d made his displeasure at his reduction in status known, and had repeated some of the rumours she knew were flying through the Fourth Talon at Dakto’s unauthorised absence. Had she been tainted too? Was her status as Flight in jeopardy? Her life?
Pathetic, she told herself. They question their own devotion by questioning mine. If they doubt me, it is because their own faith is weak. My allegiance is total, my loyalty without reproach. I will prove it to Pilos. His belief is all that matters.
It wasn’t all that mattered, and everyone knew it. She dismissed the thought and slid on through the brush, concentrating on her task and ignoring the wet leaves rubbing against her face and hair and soaking her clothes. Her hands, knees, and feet were black with mud and clinging leaf mould. Bow and quiver were strapped to her back for ease of movement and her spear was in her right hand. The force they were tracking was both large and alert, and though most of it now lounged around a series of small, spitting fires scattered among the trees, others stood watch at regular intervals. Stood watch but did not see, for Ilandeh was a Whisper, and so were those who moved around her, quieter than snakes.
Ilandeh reached her left hand behind her back and gestured, fingers splayed open and then pointing left; she heard only the faintest scuff and knew Sarn and the others would be spreading out to encircle the camp, awaiting her signal to attack. But not just yet. They could get a little closer still.
A quick patter of raindrops from above told her Beyt was in position, hidden by the canopy. The woman could put six arrows in six targets in six heartbeats. She’d take out most of the guards before Ilandeh’s team even reached the perimeter, clear their path to make a quick ending to the Tokob and Yaloh shits who thought to seize Empire land.
She scanned the camp again and the trees around her; the enemy she could see, but not her Whispers. Ilandeh wiped the mud off her hands and the spear shaft so it didn’t slip in her grip. The obsidian tip gleamed green-black in the early light. She touched belly and throat and then gave a single long whistle. Beyt’s arrows, and those of other Whispers in the canopy, flew before the note ended and Ilandeh followed them in as shouts and screams erupted in the camp, warriors leaping to their feet and snatching up weapons, staring blindly into the gloom and clearly outlined by their fires.
A dozen were down with arrows by the time she cleared the tree and lunged into the clearing to take a man in the belly just below his armour. The spear tip rammed in, scraping off his pelvic bone before sinking deep and he whooped in a breath, choked, his own weapons falling as he clutched, one hand on her spear, the other on her upper arm, as if unsure whether to pull it out or push himself further onto the blade. Ilandeh solved his dilemma, ripping the spear free and jabbing it in again, lower this time, down into the groin.
The Tokob legs gave out and the Whisper stepped back, spinning the spear and clubbing him in the head, sending him into the dirt. She skipped over his body to the next, a woman, blood already sheet
ing down her arm from an arrow wound and a shaft falling from her hand as she tore it out. Black paint from the bridge of her nose up to her hairline made her eyes disappear, only the gleam of firelight revealing where she was looking. Yaloh. Ilandeh saw the woman’s feint too late; a club slammed into her sternum and sent her over backwards, lungs paralysed, mouth gasping, but no air left in the world for her to breathe.
Pain exploding through her chest, knives of agony shooting front to back and her spear lost by her side somewhere and the Yalotl approaching, mouth yelling something Ilandeh couldn’t hear through the roaring hurt. The club went up, slivers of obsidian set into its length gleaming golden in the firelight – the last sight she would ever see.
Under the song. May Setatmeh and Singer bless me and keep me. May the ancestors …
Three arrows sprouted from the Yaloh chest and she faltered, the club wobbling as her arms lost their strength. She took another step, small, uncertain, and then one more before a final arrow took her through the throat and she toppled backwards like a felled tree.
‘Flight? Flight, can you move?’ Sarn asked, arrow clamped to the bow stock with his forefinger and his free hand dragging at her arm. ‘Up you get, Xenti. More killing to do.’
Air rushed into Ilandeh’s lungs and the pain roared its fury and then subsided, just a little, just a touch. A second, hotter fury at mention of her half-blood propelled her up to sitting – as though Sarn was any fucking better. Tlaloxqueh bastard. A pause to breathe again and she rolled to her knees and stood. Each movement of her chest caused a rippling coruscation of pain and the world lurched around her before her feet steadied.
Sarn handed her her spear. ‘At least half of them fled; archers are mopping up the rest. Runners went this way.’ He pointed and set off and Ilandeh had no choice but to follow. She was the Flight, but Sarn was leading them now, following protocol when she was disabled.
The Stone Knife Page 36
