The Stone Knife

by Anna Stephens

  Calan swelled with pride at being in charge of such an operation. ‘As the High Feather commands.’

  Pilos found a smile for her and punched her shoulder. ‘You fought well and commanded well, Feather. I am pleased.’

  Some of Calan’s fatigue vanished in the heat of her delight. ‘You honour me,’ she croaked.

  ‘You honour yourself, Feather. Be about your business now. Under the song.’

  Pilos squatted opposite the still, coiled presence of the eja. She didn’t move, didn’t meet his eyes, didn’t so much as twitch. He was impressed.

  ‘Can you hear me?’ he asked. Nothing. He tapped the top of her head. More nothing. Was she the one Ilandeh had told him of? Pilos had never met a deaf person – the inability to hear was not tolerated in the Empire, where the song was everything. Such children were offered to the holy Setatmeh with respect. It was a kindness; no one should be without the glory of the song.

  Pilos forced her face up to his; she looked down. If she didn’t look at him, she wouldn’t know he was speaking. He let go, frustrated, and then reached out and poked the dog’s flank. The woman’s bound hands came up and clubbed him in the chest. She threw herself off her knees and at him, so that he fell back onto his arse. The dog was snarling through its muzzle and the eja was growling and grunting. Pilos winded her with a punch to take her strength and then kicked at her wounded leg so she shrieked and fell away.

  The dog was frantic and Pilos leant over her. ‘Calm the dog or we kill it.’

  She spat at him, but didn’t have much saliva to make a proper job at it. Then she licked her lips and put her fingertips between the dog’s eyes and it quietened.

  ‘You understand me, then,’ he said. ‘You are one they call eja? A hunter and killer of the holy Setatmeh – the Drowned?’ A flicker of nameless emotion in her eyes but she didn’t even shrug. ‘You can write?’ he asked. ‘Or shall I bring someone over here to translate your hand-speech?’

  Her eyes cut to his weapons and then the kneeling, captive warriors, back to him. All of them were bound, but that didn’t seem to matter to her. This one wanted blood. ‘Not a good idea,’ he told her softly. ‘The Singer wants to meet you and so we have to ensure your compliance. I will do that by killing your people, one by one, in slow and inventive ways, if you do anything to jeopardise my life or your own. But I will start with your dog.’

  She definitely understood that, her breathing ragged. She shook her head.

  ‘You’ll be good?’ A nod this time. ‘Don’t test me on this, Eja.’

  Pilos stood up and strode to the nearest group of captives. ‘I need a Toko who can translate for the eja.’

  There was a long silence and then a man began to rise, but another, far older, stilled him and used his shoulder to push himself upright. ‘I am Eja Elder Rix. Eja Xessa is young and inexperienced. I will answer all your questions if you let her sit with the rest of our people. She is of little use compared with me. My knowledge is greater.’

  Pilos beckoned and when the old man approached, he stared him out. ‘You are in no position to bargain with me,’ he murmured and snapped his fingers. One of the dog warriors guarding the group stabbed the nearest Toko in the heart. Rix bellowed and struggled as the captives erupted, screams of fear mingling with threats. Pilos held him back, despite his wiry strength.

  ‘But thank you – I need as many ejab as I can find; you have done me the favour of identifying yourself. Now come and translate for … Xessa, did you say? Come and translate for her, Elder. And know this now,’ he added as Rix ceased his struggles and began instead to pray for the woman dying at their feet. ‘Hush, and listen,’ Pilos commanded, slapping his face. ‘You will not lie or conspire with her; you will translate only what she says and you will not communicate with her yourself in any way. The moment you do, more will die, children included. You will watch her hands and tell me what she says. Nothing more.’

  ‘Why are you doing this?’ Rix demanded.

  ‘You will understand when you are brought under the song and into glory,’ Pilos said, the treacherous voice in his head wondering if he lied. He shook it away and checked Rix’s bonds, then dragged him over to where Xessa sat, not listening to any more babbling protests.

  The plaza was secure, but Pilos was still glad for the eagle honour guard that ringed him and the ejab, half facing in, half facing out. He’d fought too many wars and had too much respect for even defeated enemies to believe for one moment that he was safe. He snorted; there wasn’t anywhere within or without the Empire that High Feather Pilos was safe. Still, no point in taking needless risks. He cut the woman’s bonds and one of the eagles stood behind her with knife and hatchet. Another crouched over the dog.

  ‘Why kill the holy Setatmeh?’ he asked without preamble.

  ‘The Drowned—’ Rix began.

  ‘I am not asking you,’ Pilos said. ‘I am asking her.’

  ‘I am elder,’ Rix tried.

  ‘Second Flight Beyt,’ Pilos said. ‘Kill another. Rix here needs to understand I am a man of my word.’ He glared at Rix, pinning him in place when the other man would have protested some more. ‘I hope you understand now,’ he murmured when another Toko was dying. There were still screams and shouts, but it settled much faster this time, the captives huddling low and avoiding eye contact, only quiet sobbing and muttered prayers and the stink of fear drifting from them. ‘One word that is not related to the questions I ask this woman and one of your people dies.’

  It was wasteful, but the Melody needed to establish dominance – it was the only way to safely transport large numbers of prisoners with minimal guards. Once the captives understood the cost of defiance, they’d fall into line. They always did, no matter how much they blustered beforehand about how they wouldn’t surrender.

  ‘Why do you kill the holy Setatmeh?’ he asked Xessa again. He watched the incomprehensible gestures and expressions.

  ‘Because they are predators who kill us,’ Rix said in a monotone. ‘They take young and old, shamans and farmers, warriors and artisans. They are monsters who must be destroyed.’

  ‘They are gods,’ Pilos said. Neither responded. ‘Do you understand that?’

  ‘I understand you believe that,’ Rix translated. ‘You revere them because you are afraid of them. That does not make them gods. They destroy the balance, taking more than they need, just as you do.’ Rix paused and looked hard at Xessa. ‘They kill for fun as you do. You are all cursed.’

  Unease stroked cold fingers down Pilos’s back. ‘What do you know of curses?’

  Xessa smiled and it had nothing of warmth in it. ‘I know our lives are bound together,’ Rix said as she signed. ‘I know my life has been preserved so that I might end yours. I know I will laugh when I do so.’

  Pilos didn’t let himself react. He held his hands still, away from his charms and amulets, and he donned a mask of polite amusement. ‘I look forward to the attempt,’ he said lightly and saw only cool acknowledgement in the ejab face. ‘She toys with your life as well as her own, Elder,’ he said.

  ‘She is young and she is angry,’ Rix said. ‘She thinks she still has some power here. Some sort of control.’

  Pilos gnawed at his lip and then nodded. ‘I see you, at least, understand better. You are to meet with the great Singer himself at the heart of our Empire,’ he added abruptly, looking back at the woman. ‘He will decide your fate. It is his will.’

  ‘No. My death is at my will, not yours,’ Rix said for her. ‘You cannot prevent that, no matter what you do. I do not submit myself to your authority.’

  ‘You already have,’ Pilos said. By the song, she overflowed with misplaced confidence. If she displayed such in front of the Singer, the holy lord would likely tear her apart with his bare hands. It’s his favourite pastime these days, after all …

  But the High Feather found himself grinning nonetheless. ‘You would make a fine warrior in the Melody were it not for your limitations.’

  ‘I have no li
mitations,’ Rix said and there was a hint of pride in his tone that matched Xessa’s expression. Pilos waved away the comment. ‘It is easy to die, High Feather Pilos, and when I do, Malel will accept my spirit for rebirth. But I will not die before I have tasted your life on my tongue.’

  ‘And if I cut off your hands so you can neither fight nor die nor speak?’ Pilos asked; her certainty pricked at him. ‘How will you kill me then?’

  ‘Why do you want me alive?’ she asked instead.

  Pilos had no wish to debate with her, but what was the harm? ‘I don’t, particularly, though every slave is valuable. The Singer wants to meet the frog-lickers. He wants to understand where such ignorance could come from. Everything I do is in his name, for the glory of the Empire. You will understand one day, though I grieve to think that you will never hear the majesty of the song. You will never truly understand what it is your people have been given.’

  In the end it was Rix who broke. Perhaps Xessa took the threat against her dog’s life too seriously; perhaps the elder didn’t take the threat against his people seriously enough. Either way, Pilos had known it would happen eventually. The elder lunged for him, hands slamming into his chest and sending him over onto his back, then hooking into claws to take out his eyes. The eagle guarding Xessa wrapped his arm around her throat and hauled backwards, readying a knife to plunge into her stomach. The eagle guarding the woman’s dog threw himself at the elder and knocked him off Pilos, then dropped his knee between the old man’s shoulder blades and jammed him into the stone.

  ‘Stop!’ Pilos ordered with a wheeze. He got up and retrieved his club, studied Xessa for a long moment, and then slammed it into the knee that was swollen against her leggings. She screamed and curled into herself, hands clutching the limb. She wouldn’t understand why he’d done it, but Rix did. Oh yes.

  Pilos bent close to him. ‘And now more of your people die,’ he said with genuine regret. ‘And you go to the Singer anyway.’

  ILANDEH

  Outskirts of Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs

  62nd day of the grand absence of the Great Star

  Ilandeh had removed the scarlet feather and sewn it back into the seam of her tunic beneath her arm, where it had lived for a year while she played the part of a merchant in Tokoban.

  She couldn’t part with it. While it marked her as a half-blood, proclaiming to all Pechaqueh that she was lower than they, it was also a source of fierce pride. The macaws, and the secretive Whispers within their ranks, gave her an identity and a purpose, a steady platform in the chaos of an Empire dedicated to the glory of one half of her blood and the denigration of the other. And yet Pilos had ordered her to thread an eagle feather into her hair – not just any eagle feather, but one from his own fan – and pretend instead to be something she could never be. Something she should never even think about being.

  They would know she was a fraud the second she set foot on the processional way. It would be obvious. Ilandeh was no eagle. But none of her inner turmoil showed on her smooth, sweat-beaded face as she ran the last few sticks to the city. She was a Whisper and deception was her greatest strength. Macaw in her heart, she would be an eagle in her skin.

  Weeks back beneath the song as she raced to the capital at Pilos’s bidding, and she still couldn’t get used to it. As Listener Citla had said, it was … wrong. Poisoned. Broken. A clanging dissonance that rubbed against her nerve endings and put a sharpness into her mood. Like that before her blood came, but all the time.

  She saw evidence of it everywhere. When she’d stopped to demand food and water she had witnessed slaves punished more harshly than they deserved. She saw the defiance in the eyes of many Pechaqueh whose duty was to provide food for warriors – defiance even though she wore an eagle feather. They resented the rations that were her due, as though she were demanding enough to feed a Talon. There were bodies on the path most days, merchants and farmers, slaves and half-bloods, even full Pechaqueh sometimes. The waterlogged fields and mud-slick trails were sullen, the sky angry, and the song sharp as obsidian.

  Elaq had nearly gutted Ilandeh on sight when she arrived wearing an eagle feather, and only respect for Pilos had allowed her entry to the estate to explain herself.

  ‘I swear by the song the idea was his, eagle,’ Ilandeh said for the second time. ‘A sun-year in the Sky City was easier than the last month with this in my hair, but the High Feather gave me my orders and my life is his to command.’

  Elaq stalked back and forth and Ilandeh stood with her hands behind her back, trying not to yawn. She had run and walked every single day from Tokoban to here and she was exhausted. Now she couldn’t sit until Elaq did, and the old eagle seemed determined to remind her that no matter what colour feather she wore, she’d never be his equal.

  As if I need reminding of that.

  ‘What do you know of the song?’ he demanded in the end, sitting and gesturing. They were in a small room far less ornate than any she would expect the High Feather to occupy; she thought it might be Elaq’s own.

  ‘Listener Citla travelled from her post in Yalotlan to the Sky City to bring us news of its shattering, but she didn’t know what had caused it. I have heard some gossip on my travels, but it is wild. I do not know the truth.’

  ‘I doubt any of us do,’ Elaq said. ‘All I can say for sure is that the council has vanished, and so have the courtesans and the Chorus. Every one of them, as far as I can tell. I’m pretty sure the councillors are all dead, though not Enet of course. That would be too much to hope for.’

  ‘But why? She is Great Octave. She is Chosen. What could she gain by killing the entire council?’

  Elaq’s mouth twisted. ‘She’s not the one that killed them, though, is she? Or it’s not likely. As for what she gains? Autonomy. Control, now, before the Singer’s ascension. You can hear as well as me – what state do you expect the holy lord is in?’

  It was so close to heresy that Ilandeh just shook her head, her mouth open. Elaq’s bitterness was unexpected, but shouldn’t have been. Of course Pilos would employ only the most loyal, most dedicated of eagles to run his home and estate and businesses.

  ‘Did Councillor Yana manage to discover anything that may be useful to my investigations? The High Feather wants to know what happened. He needs to know his enemies, and—’

  ‘Enet is his enemy.’

  ‘Honoured eagle, I am a Whisper. I go where full bloods cannot and I do what they will not. For Empire, song and the holy Setatmeh. For High Feather Pilos. If there is anything I need to know to protect him or the holy lord, I ask that you tell me.’

  He examined her and then sighed. ‘I have a guest here. We have been awaiting the High Feather’s return, but … well, he’s one of yours.’

  Ilandeh raised an eyebrow. ‘One of mine, high one?’

  Elaq grimaced. ‘Eagle will do … eagle,’ he said, though he nearly choked on it. ‘I had word some weeks ago there was a macaw wandering the Singing City. A macaw who was seen – you don’t need to know by who – visiting the Great Octave’s estate on several occasions. He couldn’t very well refuse when I extended my hospitality and the High Feather’s to him.’

  Ilandeh’s chest was tight, as if the wound she’d sustained in Tokoban had suddenly reopened. ‘I suspect I know who you mean. And you think …’

  ‘I think he had no need to be visiting the Great Octave once, let alone four times in a month.’

  ‘You think he’s a spy for Enet.’ It wasn’t a question, but Elaq nodded anyway. ‘He was with me in Tokoban for a year. What would she gain from that?’

  ‘You told the High Feather there is songstone in Tokoban. You will have relayed to him how best to bring the tribes under the song – that includes an estimate of how many days and how many deaths, yes?’ Ilandeh nodded, feeling slightly sick. ‘I imagine your fellow Whisper will have told Enet the same. Plus whatever information he gathered from the dogs leading the captives here – all the latest Melody gossip for a brave Whisper w
ho’d been out of the Empire for a year.’

  Ilandeh grimaced and felt anger begin to build in her gut. ‘Meaning Enet knows approximately how long she has to act before the High Feather and the Melody return victorious, and how battered and reduced in number they might be when they do arrive.’

  Elaq was pensive, but he nodded again. ‘You are quick,’ he said approvingly. ‘I should have expected it if Pilos trusts you. What I don’t know is what she intends to do with that knowledge – if whether the breaking of the song’ – she saw him wince in remembrance – ‘had anything to do with it. Her survival indicates it did, but then she wasn’t seen in public for two weeks after it happened. At first, I thought she’d died too. You can’t imagine how fucking upset I was when I heard she was reaching out to nobles to join the new council.’

  Ilandeh stood and smoothed her kilt and then removed the eagle feather from her hair. ‘Would you be so kind as to hold this for me?’ she asked. He took it and nodded. She breathed deep. ‘Show him in.’

  A boy went to fetch him, and moments later Dakto entered; his gaze was clear and his features composed, like any good Whisper who’d been trained to give away nothing. It was so good to see him – and so bad.

  ‘Second Flight Dakto, it has been some time. You look well – and have been missed.’

  ‘Flight Ilandeh, you have seen some action since last we met, I’d say,’ he replied with an easy casualness that was new and unpleasant. ‘You have the look of battle still in your eye.’ He stretched onto his toes. ‘No feather, though. Working?’

  Ilandeh shrugged. ‘You, on the other hand, have neither seen battle nor appear to be working. I am curious as to why you decided to ignore your standing orders and escort captives here instead of waiting for me at the Neck.’