‘It is a good thing I did, considering you shattered the illusion of our life in Tokoban. Did you think of that before going on a killing spree? Did you think what might happen to me?’
‘And how would you know what I did in Tokoban?’ she asked quietly and he flinched. ‘But yes. We did, after all, stand and watch the sacrifice of the Coyote Aez to the false goddess Malel. Of course I wondered what would happen to you. And yet we are Whispers. It is what we do.’
‘A year, Flight. A year we were there, living with them, eating and hunting with them. Laughing and watching the ejab kill your gods—’
‘Your gods?’ Elaq said sharply.
Ilandeh grabbed Dakto’s wrist and twisted, shoving him down, tightening the lock on his arm. His free hand hit the mat and a yell burst from behind clenched teeth as she increased the pressure on the back of his elbow.
‘The holy Setatmeh are gods to us all, Second Flight Dakto,’ she grated. ‘Would you forsake the Empire and all you have accomplished? All the glories of the song that grant you peace and wealth? Would you shame yourself and your Pechaqueh blood in front of an eagle?’ She twisted a little more and spit strung down from Dakto’s teeth as his mouth opened in pain. ‘Would you lose this arm in defiance of all you have been given?’
Dakto groaned, a long drawn-out sound. ‘No,’ he gasped. ‘No, Flight. Forgive me. Eagle Elaq, I beg you, forgive me. My words were ill conceived. Song and Empire and glory.’ She let him go and he stood, clutching his shoulder, mouth a thin line of anger.
‘You stand here in the High Feather’s own house and you utter blasphemy? You dishonour yourself, Dakto. You dishonour the Melody and you dishonour your Pechaqueh heritage.’ You dishonour me, she wanted to add, but didn’t.
The Whisper laughed, a ragged, ugly sound. ‘And what of my Xentib blood? Why am I not to honour that? Why is the father who raped my mother when she was a servant more important than she was? Why should I honour that animal or the animals who bred him? The song has lived inside them for generations, warping who they are, what they think. If they think. They’re as docile and arrogant as a glutted Setat and are good for nothing other than beating slaves and clawing for status. I spit on all of them.’
‘Including Enet? How long have your been her spy in the Melody?’
Dakto’s answer was to rip a tiny, wicked glass blade from inside his tunic and swipe for her throat. Ilandeh ducked, but not fast enough: the obsidian opened her face beneath the eye and across the bridge of her nose.
She pulled a knife of her own and Dakto leapt, empty hand chopping down onto the wrist of her knife hand, swiping again with the little weapon. Ilandeh parried it and twisted sideways, inside his guard, to elbow him in the chest. Not hard – too close for that – but enough to elicit a grunt. She drove through her legs and stabbed, a gutting strike.
Dakto’s hand slapped down on her wrist again, but not enough, too focused on his own overhead attack, which she deflected with her left forearm, pushing hand and blade up above her head and sinking down to free her knife hand. The point entered his thigh and she ripped it down towards the main artery.
Dakto was bigger than her, stronger by far, and a talented fighter. It was a shame he hadn’t thought through the consequences of his insubordination or ever imagined fighting Ilandeh. How she’d move; how fast she was. How her fierce loyalty to the Melody would outweigh anything she’d ever felt for him. She couldn’t get a lock on the arm above her head but the sudden spurting wetness over her right hand told her she didn’t need it. She ripped the knife out of his leg, danced back and kicked him in the chest.
Dakto scored a final cut on the top of her shoulder as he staggered backwards and only then, it seemed, did he realise that he was dead. He looked down as his leg collapsed into the pool of scarlet soaking into the mats beneath his feet. He met her eyes, surprised, horrified, and weakly amused.
‘Flight,’ he said.
‘Under the song,’ Ilandeh panted and his features creased with disgust.
‘No,’ he grunted. ‘May my ancestors guide me.’ He toppled sideways and bled to death. No one moved until it was done.
‘Well,’ Elaq said, advancing with a medicine chest he’d procured from somewhere. ‘Now I definitely understand why High Feather Pilos likes you. Though you’ll be the one explaining to him the cost of purchasing the new mats. Let me see your face.’
Ilandeh stood still, breathing through the pain and the adrenaline, rubbing together fingers sticky with the blood of a man she’d once considered a friend. Occasionally more than a friend, and one of shared heritage. ‘Forgive me for bringing disharmony to this house,’ she said. ‘If I had suspected, I never would have chosen him to live in the Sky City.’
‘Sometimes the rotten blood proves the stronger,’ Elaq said mildly.
Ilandeh winced as he poked at the cut. ‘I accept full responsibility. And I will see to the purchase of the matting and anything else the household needs to re-establish order. Again, I apologise.’
Elaq laughed. He took a needle and thread from the chest and gestured her to sit on mats not saturated with blood. He knelt at her side. ‘This is the house of the Empire’s greatest warrior. We are not unused to combat here, although it usually takes place in the training yard and doesn’t often end quite so terminally. Still, Dakto needed to die. His dangerous ideas had the possibility of infecting others.’ He paused and eyed her for an uncomfortably long time; Ilandeh’s Xentib blood yammered in her veins and leaked down her face.
‘I do the Singer’s will and the High Feather’s,’ she said in a low voice. ‘If you would put me to the test, I will walk into the Blessed River with this blood running into the water and let the holy Setatmeh decide my worth. As the eagle commands.’
The first stitch went into her face and she hissed hurt before Elaq spoke again. ‘Of all Pilos’s macaws, yours is the loyalty I would not doubt.’
‘Thank you, eagle. That means a lot,’ she said, and submitted to the needle.
‘Flight Ilandeh, if you’re well, there’s someone I’d like you to meet.’
The swelling across Ilandeh’s face was monstrous and she could barely see out of her left eye. Sleep had been elusive, images of Dakto spinning across the insides of her eyelids in stuttering counterpoint to the song, which itself juddered and veered in unexpected, irregular bursts.
The visitor was huge with muscle in the shoulders and arms, narrow in the waist and powerful in the thigh. A made warrior. Anxiety tickled the back of Ilandeh’s throat and she squinted at Elaq, who gave her a reassuring nod.
‘This is Chorus Leader Nara. He arrived at dawn; he’s been hiding since the … Well, I’ll let him tell you.’
‘Chorus Leader? Hiding?’ Ilandeh asked, her voice nasal from the blood and swelling clogging her nostrils.
‘What Eagle Elaq suspected is true, Eagle. The Singer massacred them all – every one of the Chorus, all the courtesans and children, the stewards, the councillors, the slaves. One giant … orgy of violence that broke something in his mind and broke the song. He killed everyone except Enet and me, held them helpless within the power of the song and slaughtered them.’
Ilandeh stared at him in silence, sickened. ‘Why not you?’ she managed in the end.
Nara lifted his tunic and pulled at bandages – the cut seamed him from below his left nipple all the way to the top of his right thigh. ‘I was very nearly dead. Enet wasn’t even there. Her slaves and guards tossed me out with the other corpses, too unnerved to check for life in any of us. Probably there were others who died in the gardens, taken by the holy Setatmeh. I managed to crawl away and find shelter, got myself stitched up. I’ve been hiding and recovering ever since. The High Feather has always put Empire above all else, so this seemed like the only place to come.’
‘Setatmeh preserve us,’ Ilandeh murmured. ‘Is there anything we can do to save the Singer – from her, from himself? Where has this bloodlust come from?’
‘From the Great Octave.
That I can promise you is true. She has done this. She said we were wrong about the consequences of blooding the song.’ He laughed, a harsh bark of noise. ‘She might even have been right, if only she could have persuaded the holy lord to retain control of the desire. Instead, here we are.’
‘But why?’ Ilandeh asked, frustrated. ‘Is she trying to kill us all? Does she want the Empire to crumble and Ixachipan to be bereft of the world spirit’s song? Why is she doing this?’
‘That I cannot tell you, Eagle,’ Nara said softly. ‘I expect no one but the Great Octave herself can answer that.’
Elaq was watching her, waiting. Judging. Ilandeh licked her lips. ‘Chorus Leader, you mistake me,’ she began and Nara narrowed his eyes in alarm. She held up her empty hands. ‘I am loyal, unto death. But I am no eagle. I am a Whisper of the macaws. The High Feather himself decorated me as subterfuge, knowing it would make it easier for me to infiltrate the Singing City and learn Enet’s plans. But you should not do me the honour of naming me eagle; it is not my place, nor my blood.’
The shock and dawning horror on Nara’s face made Ilandeh’s wound throb as blood rushed into her cheeks. Shame followed it. She looked away, swallowing thickly. These men were both full bloods; they outranked her militarily, socially, and in status. And here she sat among them wearing their pride in her hair.
‘You knew about this?’ Nara spluttered. Elaq shifted, uncomfortable, but nodded. ‘I thought I could trust the High Feather. I thought I had found allies to help me save the Singer from the Great Octave. To allow such, such sacrilege towards our blood … I cannot believe it.’
‘And yet it is done,’ Elaq said. ‘Just yesterday, Flight Ilandeh killed one of her Whisper subordinates who showed signs of treachery. She did it without hesitation. I believe her loyalty is without question.’
‘Her loyalty, perhaps, but her blood is tainted. That weakness will show through eventually.’
Ilandeh breathed.
‘And yet hers is the only face Enet doesn’t know. I cannot go; none of the High Feather’s household can. But Ilandeh can.’
‘Could you put me into the source as a steward, even a slave?’ she asked, steering the conversation to firmer ground.
Nara sucked his teeth and glanced at Elaq. ‘You’d willingly become a slave for this cause?’ he asked.
‘I am a Whisper, Chorus Leader,’ Ilandeh said calmly. ‘I will be and can be whatever my High Feather and the Empire needs me to be.’
‘And the slave marks?’ Elaq pressed.
The flesh on Ilandeh’s back crawled at the thought of that brand being pressed to her shoulders to mark her for eternity as property. She licked dry lips. ‘When it is over, the brands will be amended to show I am a free woman. As I already am,’ she added with a hint of fire. ‘I am a Whisper. We know our duty.’
‘Even an eagle would balk at such a task,’ Nara admitted after an uncomfortable pause. ‘And yet a half-blood will do what we fear to.’
Ilandeh kept a neutral expression with only a little effort.
‘The High Feather has already marked her as an eagle. Another choice would be to make her one of the Chorus – their numbers are still too few and Enet is supplementing them with her own guards.’
‘Impossible,’ Nara snapped, outraged, and Ilandeh was tempted to agree with him. ‘The Chorus are the highest of eagles, those with greatest honour, outstanding warriors and leaders. She is a macaw. Tainted!’
‘My loyalty is without question, Chorus Leader,’ Ilandeh grated and heard the danger in her voice at the repetition of her inferior blood. Elaq heard it too and shot her a warning glance. ‘True Pechaqueh will not stoop to assassination or infiltration, and that is why the Whispers were developed, so please, with respect, allow me to fulfil my orders. I assure you that whatever feather I wear in my hair will not change who I am – only who I seem to be. Believe me, no one is more aware of my taint than I am.’
She rose to her feet before either of them could reply. ‘Get me into the Singer’s inner sanctum, high ones, and I beg you do it fast. I will not allow the holy lord to languish in pain or danger when my heart and my High Feather both command otherwise. Now, if you would excuse me, my wound pains me and I would rest.’
Ilandeh touched belly and throat and strode from the room before either could call her back or do more than stare in open-mouthed astonishment. She was shaking, but it had nothing to do with the hurt.
PILOS
Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs
72nd day of the grand absence of the Great Star
The Street of Fighters and the Way of Prayer were not lined with cheering Pechaqueh, free, and slaves, as they had been the last time the Melody returned from war. Atu and his three Talons were still in the north, sweeping through the last sticks of jungle, but Pilos had not waited for them. Not with everything he knew. In the end, he was only ten days behind Ilandeh, but he didn’t regret his decision to send her on ahead.
A few noble youngsters with their slave guards stood wide-eyed along the avenue. A few adults looked with interest; a few more looked away with what appeared to be fear as Pilos marched at the head of his warriors and the long, long lines of slaves. The song now sounded throughout most of Yalotlan and the architects and engineers were already mapping out sites in Tokoban for pyramids. Within a few moons, the song would be supreme.
The song.
It grated at Pilos’s nerves, provoking rather than soothing, clawing instead of cradling. It scratched around inside his head and made him short-tempered, aggressive. And not just him. Bickering and insubordination was rife among the Melody – his exhausted, once-proud Melody, who had fought a brutal, merciless war to fulfil the Singer’s will and had then had to march back here not in triumph but in haste to … what? Save the Singer? How exactly did Pilos plan on doing that? Would he besiege the source, perhaps, and demand Enet’s head on a stick? Would he lock the Singer away to break him of this terrible addiction, now whispered about quite openly on the streets of the Singing City? Whispered about, but accepted, it seemed. Because although it was broken and although it was almost painful, the new song was in its way strong. It screeched of Pechaqueh supremacy; it wailed of the Empire’s might; it whispered of vengeance and violence and greed. And, as ever, the Empire’s citizens could do no more than respond.
Pilos didn’t know what he could do other than be here, as his Singer’s loyal follower and worshipful disciple. For the Empire that he loved above all else, he would do whatever was necessary. He just didn’t know what that was. Yet.
Everyone who had been in the source that day was dead, Councillor Yana included. Enet had avoided the catastrophe, of course, and Pilos knew from the list of new councillors that at least a third of them were her creatures. He suspected the rest would be too – or soon enough. That the Singer had allowed this, allowed Enet to order and appoint his council for him, spoke volumes about how far he was lost in the grip of whatever blood-madness had him.
The mood of the Melody soured as they made their way to the great plaza before the palace, anticipating the joy and adulation of the city and receiving indifference instead. Indifference despite the conquest of two tribes and hundreds of sticks of land through the worst Wet of the last Star cycle, despite the thousands of slaves, despite the confirmation of a rich vein of songstone within the Tokob hills that would see old pyramids restored and new ones built, the song heard in new jungle and new ears …
The sickened song.
Hello, Pilos.
Pilos halted mid-step, Feathers Detta and Calan stopping as well. Detta signalled for the Melody to pass them by and assemble in the plaza for the Singer or council to review them. ‘High Feather?’
You’re back. And you’re thinking … so many things.
‘Enet?’ Pilos’s voice was hoarse to his own ears. ‘How?’
How can I reach you through the song? Think a little and I’m sure you’ll work it out.
‘Because you are Chosen,’ he acknowle
dged. ‘I had not expected you to master the Listening so soon, though. My congratulations.’ Very carefully, he pictured himself as a boy at worship in front of the Singer’s great pyramid, the sun-hot stone stinging his bare knees and the sun itself beating the back of his head. He reconstructed the awe and wonder he’d felt, the press of adult bodies around him smelling of spices and chillies and sweat, the murmur of thousands of voices raised in praise.
Amusement. Very good, Pilos. And yet not good enough. Too little too late, some would say. I might say. Your thoughts have been very troubled of late, have they not? You worry for our great Singer, and that does you credit. But there is no need … Her voice drifted on the jangling currents and was gone, then back … need to see me.
‘The Melody is presenting itself before the palace as we speak. When I have discharged my duty to them I will request an audience with the great Singer as is required. Afterwards, if there is time before nightfall, I will visit your estate. I have a gift for you.’
He heard the beginnings of a question from Calan, quickly cut off, and frowned, slashing his hand through the air and straining to maintain the image in his mind that would be a wall between Enet and his deeper thoughts.
You grow bold.
‘I follow protocol, Great Octave, nothing more.’ Around him, his Feathers began a marching chant that praised the Singer and glorified the Empire and had the additional benefit of a strong beat that was easy to follow. Pilos held the picture of himself in his head and let the words and rhythm wash into his ears until soon, and yet not soon enough, the tickle in the back of his head that was Enet was gone.
He opened his eyes, gasping at the effort and the drain on his will and mind, and Detta gestured the Feathers to keep chanting as they hurried to the head of the Melody and there prostrated themselves before the palace of the Singer. The thousands of warriors who’d won the ballot to be present in the plaza picked up the chant, and soon enough it swelled, louder and louder, until it echoed back from the walls of the buildings edging the open space and even the songstone capping the great pyramid seemed to resonate with it, taking their words and their rhythm and adding harmonics and layers until the entire city seemed to shake with their victory.
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