‘What’s your name and how long have you fought?’ Pilos asked, offering him a gourd of water.
The man looked terrified. ‘Oteom of the Axib, High Feather. I have had the honour of fighting for four sun-years.’
‘Four, eh? And before that?’
‘My family are free weavers in Pechacan, High Feather,’ Oteom said with deep pride and Pilos nodded his respect.
‘You fought well. You fought bravely. And you saved my life. I’ll see to it you’re promoted to Coyote, Oteom, and your family and the Melody scribes informed of your change of status. Will you rejoin them when you have enough wealth?’
Oteom fought his way up to sitting, one hand clutched to the bandaging around his waist. His face was glowing. ‘No, High Feather,’ he said fervently. ‘My place is here. My life is the Melody, for Singer and Setatmeh and Empire. For High Feather Pilos.’
Pilos grinned. ‘Glad to hear it, Coyote Oteom of Axiban. Make sure you get your insignia from the scribes in the morning, yes?’ The man nodded, overawed, and Pilos snorted at his expression and then left him with an instruction to rest.
They set a wide perimeter and the rest of the Melody moved up; no point returning to their established camp. ‘Calan, pass word – we march at moonset. We’ve got ground to cover and I want to press our advantage – or at least make the enemy think we have an advantage and that that ambush didn’t hurt us. Set dogs to string out in a wide skirmish line to either side of the main force so we don’t get flanked. Whispers scouting a stick ahead and slave warriors behind them. If they trigger any more ambushes I don’t want the eagles taking the brunt of it. We’ll need them for the Sky City.’
‘As the High Feather commands.’
‘They’re starting to piss me off now,’ he added and Calan laughed.
‘They won’t live free to regret it,’ she said with a grin undimmed by the hours she’d fought. He smiled back and Calan touched belly and throat and vanished between the trees.
Pilos licked his teeth and then spat. ‘Fucking Wet,’ he muttered as the wind freed a cascade of droplets from the branches above. The advance was too slow, and every day they didn’t reach Tokoban was a day more that those heathen bastards could be killing or torturing the gods. There were four days left until the Great Star began its grand absence, when it would vanish for ninety days and return in the evening, not the morning. Surely its absence would be long enough to conclude the war. They might even be home in time for its reappearance. That would be a good omen.
Patience, Pilos. The Wet will end, the ground will firm and the conquest will proceed as the holy Setatmeh decree.
And then peace. Finally. Once I’ve strangled Enet with her own entrails.
Pilos huffed a quiet laugh and made himself a nest in the roots of a strangler vine. Moonset was only a few hours away; best sleep while he could. It was going to get far worse before it got better, and not even the prospect of strangling the Great Octave was enough to distract him from the cold worry of what was to come.
XESSA
Ceremonial plaza, upper Sky City, Malel, Tokoban
1st day of the grand absence of the Great Star
The Great Star had vanished.
All across Tokoban and Yalotlan, cities and towns should have been a riot of noise and colour as people celebrated the story of the Great Star’s disappearance below the horizon as, in his guise as the Watcher, he took their prayers to the spirits awaiting rebirth and brought succour to those trapped in the Underworld.
During the ninety days of its absence, there should be rituals and prayers and festivals. There should be feasts and spirit-journeys and great day-long dances to lend the Watcher their strength. Instead, there would be blood. Oceans of it. The Great Star would return to the sky and the world beneath him would be soaked red. Choked with corpses and salted with tears.
The Sky City had begun the day with a muted celebration. Smiles were strained and prayers were whispered with a desperate, clench-faced fervour. At the very moment they most needed the Great Star’s guiding presence, he had left them to fight a battle of his own.
‘He has not left us!’ High Elder Apok had shouted out over the ceremonial plaza at dawn. ‘He shows us the way. He shows us that strength and battle are our only hope now. He walks the trail that we too must walk, and where he battles the very lords of the Underworld to save those ancestors who are lost, we merely battle people. Let the Watcher’s victories be ours, and ours his. We strengthen each other, for in this, too, there is balance. As he fights below, so we fight above.’
Now, Xessa sat on the steps of a small plaza in the circle of Toxte’s arms, the weight of his chin on her shoulder, watching the shaman fight.
Xessa was surprised at how quickly Tayan had learnt, though she knew why, of course. Not even a captive Drowned could distract the friend of her heart from the loss of his husband, and he’d been more serious than she’d realised about learning to fight.
Lutek swung again, the head of her hatchet black against the grey sky, and Tayan leapt sideways and stumbled, his ankle rolling beneath him, but somehow he got his own axe between hers and his flesh and Xessa let out the breath she’d been holding. He was still wearing the paint from this morning’s rituals and it was smeared into his hair with sweat. He looked wild.
Tayan’s small wooden shield cracked under the next blow and Lutek punched him in the face when he hesitated to look at it. He sat down hard, blood already oozing from his nose, and she pressed her foot onto his wrist, pinning his axe, her own raised.
Better but not good. Not yet. Xessa wondered if he’d have long enough to become good, or whether the Empire would have killed them all by then. It soured the morning and she clutched Toxte’s arms tighter around her waist and leant back into him, turning her head so they could kiss.
He shifted her sideways so he could sign, and alarm flashed through her at his seriousness. ‘This isn’t the best time to be talking about this,’ he started and the wind was suddenly too cold and too harsh, stealing her breath, stealing inside her until she shivered. She wouldn’t cry, not in front of him and Lutek. She promised herself she wouldn’t cry.
‘I understand,’ she signed and shifted further away from him so she could stand. He grabbed her hand and pulled, making her look.
‘I don’t,’ he signed. ‘I don’t know what you think’s going on here, but that’s not the answer I was hoping for.’ Toxte hesitated and blew out his cheeks, then nodded once, sharp, to himself. ‘I know it’s early in our relationship, I know we haven’t … Eja Xessa, will you marry me?’
The question was so unexpected that she just sat there, her mouth hanging open. Marry?
Anxiety was building in his eyes and his hands blurred with speed. ‘I know we haven’t been together for long, but the world is changing and there’s war in the trees and we might all be dead in a month and I don’t want to die without you knowing how I feel. I love you, Xessa, I’ve loved you for more than a year and I want to marry you. If you’ll allow it … Will you allow it?’
Xessa’s hands had started to shake. Her fingers were cold and clumsy. She couldn’t even tell him how much she loved him, because her hands wouldn’t work, so she pressed her face against his and then her mouth, and then her arms around him and her chest to his and he shifted and held her and scooped her into his lap and she closed her eyes against the promise of the day and gave herself to the promise of him. It was sweeter, and warmer, and more luminous than even the sun.
When she could finally lean back, he was a little astonished and a little confused. ‘Yes?’ he asked her and she laughed. She nodded. She kissed him again. Marriage during the Great Star’s absence was considered unlucky, but he was right – they might be dead in a month. She wouldn’t waste a single instant of their lives together worrying over that. Malel would understand. So would the Watcher.
‘We should celebrate,’ he signed, jubilant, but a shadow fell over them – Tayan.
‘You’re supposed to be watc
hing my epic victory over the warrior,’ he signed, but he knew. Knew and was trying to hide his grief for their joy.
Xessa unwound herself from Toxte and stood so she could wipe the drying blood from his chin. ‘Go again,’ she signed. ‘Show me how you’re going to save Lilla. And know that I’ll be at your side to do it.’
Toxte stood. ‘We both will,’ he signed, and although Xessa hadn’t thought it possible, she loved him even more for that.
Tayan slapped Toxte’s shoulder. ‘Welcome to the council of idiots,’ he signed. ‘And just know that if you ever hurt her, I’ll hold her beer while she beats you to death with your own bollocks.’
‘I’d expect nothing less,’ Toxte signed solemnly. ‘And, if you’d be the one to marry us, I would consider it a great honour.’
Xessa winced, because it would hurt him to do it, but Tayan forestalled her protest. ‘If you had asked anyone else, I’d have held Lutek’s beer while she beat you to death with your own bollocks. Now watch me fight!’
It had been a stolen moment. A lightning flash of joy in the darkness of the city’s life as the war drew closer and gave good people the excuse to do bad things.
They’d come out of her house wrapped in secret smiles and stolen kisses, and they’d been on their way to Toxte’s house to gather his belongings when they passed through the market and heard the news: the Quitob slaves rescued by Lilla and Kux’s war party had been slaughtered. All of them: none left alive. They’d been housed in the Jaguar-god temple. Not guarded, but watched. Certainly not roped. Allowed out in the temple’s gardens but just … encouraged not to leave. Shamans and elders had been visiting them each day to remind them what freedom looked like and how they might choose, for themselves, the shape of their lives to come. How if, after some time in the Sky City, they chose to return to their owners, then the Tokob would not stand in their way, though they hoped the Quitob would choose instead to stay with their new friends.
Only when they’d visited this time, to hold a smaller ceremony honouring the Watcher, the temple was awash with blood and the Quitob were dead, piled in heaps and droves, their blood staining walls and murals and idols. Death from spear and knife, arrow and dart, many of them poisoned. There had to have been screaming, but no one admitted to hearing anything. And so Tokob blamed Yaloh, Yaloh blamed Tokob, and the tension between the two tribes increased again.
The market was rife with gossip and speculation and Toxte pointed out how Tokob were trading only with Tokob, and Yaloh with Yaloh. ‘Well, that can’t last,’ Xessa signed sourly. ‘We’re the ones providing food and water for them. When that runs out, they’ll have to trade with us or starve.’
‘They’re just scared,’ Toxte signed.
‘They’re not the only ones,’ a passing merchant had snapped. ‘Not that we’ll have time to starve if they keep on murdering everyone they decide they don’t like. We should throw them out of the city.’
Xessa and Toxte hurried away. Xessa left her soon-to-be husband – husband! – arranging his belongings in her home – our home – and went to find Tayan in the womb. It was how he spent his days now – ritual in the morning, then training with the other non-fighters in the plazas, then the hours until duskmeal in the womb. He was getting thinner, but also stronger. But he was tired and she knew he was trying to fill his days so he didn’t think of Lilla. As promised, he’d journeyed with her – in Otek’s presence, though her father was too frail to journey with them – to the Realm of the Ancestors and Kime. Knowing he was safe and that his spirit was ascending to rebirth had leached some of the guilt from her, lancing the poison so that she could begin healing. She didn’t know what she’d have done if Tayan hadn’t come back when he had.
Ossa bounced at her side or raced ahead and then back, covering three times the distance as she jogged easily uphill, his tongue flapping and his tail high.
Xessa was breathing hard but relishing the burn in her legs and lungs and the freshness of the air by the time the trail began to dip into the earth to take her to the womb. The ejab on duty had the rope stretched. ‘Tayan?’ Xessa asked and they nodded. ‘Who’s in with him?’
‘He said he’d do this one alone,’ Esna said. ‘The Drowned won’t speak with an eja there.’
The Drowned won’t speak?
Xessa shoved past them and lunged into the earth’s embrace and pelted along the tunnel towards the glow of torchlight. She burst around the corner and skidded to a halt, squinting at the brightness. Ossa was at her side and she brandished her spear, blinking desperately. Tayan was already standing and facing her, his hands moving. ‘It’s all right. No danger. There’s no danger. I’m perfectly safe.’
Ripples in the water told her the Drowned had shifted at her arrival, and now it was huddled against the rear wall again, one clawed hand clutching at the rock.
‘You don’t need to be scared,’ Tayan signed to her. ‘It won’t hurt me.’ The skin tightened on Xessa’s face. Won’t hurt you? She jerked her head at the exit. ‘No, Xessa, not yet. Let me talk to it. Look at the book over there, look at everything I’ve learnt about it so far. The things I know, they’re, they’re incredible. And it’s quite docile, I promise.’
Tayan was calm, but there was an intensity about him she didn’t like, as if he’d taken the journey-magic. He gestured again but Xessa wouldn’t look at the book. She frowned: there was something different about the Drowned. It was still curled against the back wall, huddled as far from her as it could get, but those eyes she’d once thought of as empty were anything but. They evaluated her, inspected her and her weapons, her dog. Her lack of armour. Its throat sac rippled and Tayan turned back to it. He was talking to it. As if it was human. As if it understood him.
And perhaps it did, because slowly the Drowned relaxed and sank back to put one gill beneath the water. Those big, black eyes flitted between eja and shaman and dog, back and forth, and its throat did that same ripple again. And again Tayan spoke to it. Answered it.
Xessa eased forward another step to try and read his lips, but again the Drowned thrashed away from her and Tayan whirled, his hands out. ‘Please don’t come any closer. Any time there’s an eja down here, it’s too afraid to communicate. Please, if you insist on being here, then wait over there.’ He pointed to the cave mouth. ‘Safer for everyone that way.’
Xessa licked her lips. This was wrong, but she knew the instant she put down her spear to sign, it would attack. If all she could do was stand and watch, then that’s what she’d do. But not over at the fucking exit. The eja took five steps sideways, with her toes in the water and a clear line of sight between her and the Drowned. Unless Tayan did something spectacularly stupid, he couldn’t get between her and it – and the rope harness shouldn’t stretch too much closer to it anyway.
She caught a glimpse of Tayan’s marriage cord hanging around his neck and suddenly wondered how it would feel to wear one herself. One given her by Toxte, knotted with the promises they’d make to each other. Tayan’s was sweat-stained from his travels, but he wouldn’t make a new one until he was back with Lilla. That was how it worked. That was what marriage was. Or one of the things.
Xessa blinked and gripped the spear hard, focusing. She could feel that weird vibration again, but when she looked the Drowned’s throat sac wasn’t bulging. She snapped her fingers and when Tayan looked over, she tapped her ear.
He shook his head. ‘Well, not really. It’s almost … humming. I think it’s trying to comfort itself. It stopped communicating when you came in.’ His disapproval was thick in the air and it cut at her, but she let it go. She wasn’t the one in the wrong here. He got back to his observations, scribbling with charcoal in the book and seemingly asking it questions. Xessa had no idea whether it was answering – and how could it answer, anyway? It didn’t have their language. Unless Tayan had somehow learnt its way of speaking. An eerie, unpleasant image of the shaman singing like a Drowned flickered before her eyes and she shivered and pushed it away.
Xe
ssa’s temples began to throb, thirst clawing at her. Ossa was sitting out of the water, his head drooping. Only Tayan seemed energised. She thought of drinking the water, but the Drowned lived in it, ate in it, pissed and shitted in it too. No wonder it was stuffy and hot and smelly in here. Ancestors, but she was thirsty. She snapped her fingers again. ‘Water?’
Tayan pointed vaguely and Xessa sidled in that direction, unwilling to turn her back, but there was no gourd of water in sight. She risked a glance, looked back: no change. Another glance, to her left this time, and back; the Drowned hadn’t moved.
And then she saw it, sitting on a ledge just outside the cave mouth. She backed into the tunnel, fumbling for it. Her fingers bumped stone, and then bumped something else that wobbled, wobbled. Xessa made a grab for it on instinct and missed. The gourd fell, spilling its contents on the floor of the cave. Ossa slunk over and lapped it up and she groaned and rubbed her brow. Maybe she was getting ill. She pressed her face to the cool stone, feeling her heartbeat in her temples.
The eja took several deep breaths and then straightened up and looked back into the cave. Tayan was standing face to face with the Drowned, which stood perhaps half a head taller than he did. The shaman was reaching out to it, and the Drowned was reaching back as if they were lovers about to embrace and now she saw its throat sac fully extended and it was singing, singing.
Xessa gasped and scrabbled for the spear she’d leant against the wall and when she charged back in, almost tripping over Ossa in her haste, the Drowned was hunched against the rear wall and Tayan was standing with book and charcoal in hand. She blinked desperately, her heart thudding so hard her vision was pounding with it, but everything was normal. The Drowned was still roped and still huddled in the water. Tayan’s harness was secure.
She’d imagined it. She must have imagined it.
She stayed close to the shaman after that, hurrying him along, and she insisted he leave the womb before her. Xessa paused before turning the corner and looked back one last time. The Drowned’s fingers twitched in something that might have been a wave, and then it rolled over in the water and put its armoured back to her.
The Stone Knife Page 38
