The Stone Knife

by Anna Stephens

  ‘Under the song, my friend. How are you?’ He clasped Elaq’s wrist and clapped the big man on the arm. Retired a decade and still with shoulders wider than the bole of a mahogany tree.

  ‘I am well, Spear, thank you, and your estate and the fighting pit too. Your wealth increases.’

  ‘And much of it is down to you and the others,’ Pilos said as they began to walk. ‘I know it and I will not forget it.’ The look on Elaq’s face reminded him why he preferred paid Pechaqueh to slaves, no matter the cost. All his guards had partners and children who lived on the estate with them and who Pilos educated and cared for at his own expense. It wasn’t entirely altruistic, of course – most of the children entered the Melody when they were old enough and all were fiercely loyal to him. Still, he could afford it and it meant that his estate was secure and his employees virtually incorruptible.

  They strode into the temple complex that spiralled out from the great pyramid, and had made it less than half a stick when Elaq paused to kick a babbling, yelling wreck of a woman out of their path. She shrieked and clawed for him, and he clubbed her in the face and dragged her to the side of the street. Pilos trod through blood as he tried to work out whether he’d once known her, back before she was disgraced. There was something familiar about her. Or maybe she was no one, just a slave who’d displeased her owners and wasn’t good enough to offer to the holy Setatmeh. He’d forgotten how commonplace such sights were here in the heart of the Empire, but the woman’s situation sparked a question.

  ‘I take it there’s been another purge since last I was home?’ he asked.

  Elaq grunted his disgust as he wiped the head of his club on the hem of his kilt. ‘There has, Spear, a large one. The properties and wealth of the traitors and dissidents flow ever to where it is most needed, but the … human waste that is left behind causes issues of its own. We have had to throw them off your estate several times; the offal were trying to rob you.’

  ‘I’ve a proposal to clear this mess from our streets and help the Melody at the same time. It wasn’t something to mention to the Singer on my first day back, but now I see this’ – he gestured at the shacks of pole uprights and leaking thatch roofs tilted drunkenly against the sides of temples – ‘I can see something must be done.’

  Elaq gave him an approving nod. ‘I pray your words find the Singer’s ear.’

  ‘As do I,’ Pilos said. ‘I see Enet has been elevated again.’

  ‘I only found out myself this morning, Spear, or I would have warned you,’ Elaq said in apology. ‘And the last I’d heard, the Singer had punished her in the very source itself, though why, I couldn’t find out. But as ever, the snake wriggles its way free and flashes its pretty scales to best advantage.’

  Pilos punched his arm lightly but there was unspoken warning in his eyes that Elaq noted. Such words were dangerous and Enet was wealthy enough to have her own personal Listener. Pilos, on the other hand, was wary enough to assume that he was always being listened to.

  ‘She thinks to put me on edge,’ he said and shrugged. ‘But she is not the one who has brought back slaves and taken land.’ He almost hoped her Listener might pick up on that; how it would bite at her, like ants on her skin.

  ‘No,’ he added with a feral grin, ‘I remain secure in the Singer’s favour, at least for now. But anything you can find out, of course, please do so. Enet’s games are nothing if not long and complex and I would prefer to concentrate on honing the Melody through the Wet rather than avoiding the knives aimed at my throat.’

  Elaq scowled. ‘That’s what you have me for,’ he said. ‘I’ve knives of my own and the will to use them.’

  ‘All in good time, my friend,’ Pilos said. ‘All in good time.’

  LILLA

  Southern Tokoban, near Yalotlan border

  150th day of the Great Star at morning

  Lilla sat with his back against the bole of a fig tree and rubbed a handful of water over his face and chest, licking it from his lips and chin and fingertips and palm. It was warm, kissed with salt where it had mixed with the sweat on his skin. There wasn’t much left in the gourd, but the nearby tangle of water vine was full, so he enjoyed the small extravagance, closing his eyes as the liquid momentarily cooled his face.

  The rest of his Paw sprawled around him, with the game they’d hunted smoking over wide, low fires. The scent carried on the still air, not just to predators but potentially to enemy warriors; they were only three days’ walk from Yalotlan’s border, and although scouting Paws had confirmed the bulk of the enemy had left when the rains started in earnest, the threat of skirmish or ambush was ever-present – even within Tokoban itself these days. Still, they were too far from home to transport the meat before it spoilt and with so many refugees to feed, the jungle closest to the Sky City was increasingly bare of game. Descending Malel and passing the villages scattered at its base for wilder land was their only option to keep the city fed.

  Around them, a Yaloh Paw under Kux’s command was concealed in the trees in a wide perimeter, half a stick out, on the alert.

  ‘I heard people in the lower market before we headed out,’ Tiamoko was saying. He was young, barely an adult, but big and strong and keen. Perhaps too keen; Lilla needed to watch him. ‘They were saying that if we send the Yaloh back into their own land, Malel would accept that sacrifice and she would ensure the Pechaqueh left us in peace.’

  ‘And would you live in peace, big man?’ asked Lutek, one of Lilla’s best warriors. She was sitting cross-legged, knapping a new blade for her knife, and although her tone was mild, Tiamoko flushed like the boy he mostly still was. ‘Knowing you’d left your neighbours – our friends – to become the slaves of those bastards? That’d sit easy with you, would it?’

  ‘Wasn’t me saying it, Lutek. I just heard it.’

  ‘I heard what Malel wants is a proper sacrifice,’ someone else said and they all went quiet at that. Many faces turned towards Lilla and he sighed. Being married to a shaman had its downsides.

  ‘Before Tayan left, the subject had been raised in conclave, but the shamans want to see what happens with the peace-weaving first. If Malel demands blood, she will get it. Until then, the councils will continue to debate our next steps and await the outcome of the peace-weaving.’

  He was stern enough that the conversation died away and Tiamoko checked the meat on the smoke racks, eager to be of use. Not that Lilla blamed him for his words; he’d heard the same rumours. They all had. That’s what happened when fear gripped a city by its throat and began to squeeze. Next would come the voices urging surrender, that living under the song wouldn’t be so bad. When those arguments began, the Sky City would fall into chaos.

  And although he should focus on that, Tayan’s name had fallen from his lips easily, conjuring images and memories of his husband, of their life together that seemed so distant sometimes, almost unreal. Would they have that again, those days spent hunting for game and foraging for medicine, content in each other’s silences and laughter, present and close and warm as sunlight? Or would the shadow of war forever stretch dark and cold around them?

  Tayan had already been gone almost a moon and Lilla missed him, the pain a thorn pressed high up behind his lungs when he thought of him walking through conquered land and giving himself into the power of their enemies.

  He tried to put it from his mind and concentrate instead on the latest information from Yalotlan. Pyramids were being built in the south, and once those tall, unmissable sentinels of the Empire of Songs marched across the land, they would claim it more fully than Pechaqueh words or spears – or even Yaloh lives and ancestors – could. When the magic in the pyramids came to life, the song would choke the land like a strangler fig, entering the bones and bellies of those who heard it, never to be forgotten.

  The song would permeate the soil, the trees and plants and animals. The song would enter all who heard it and bring them under its sway. And the Empire of Songs would grow, its borders marked not by the gold
stone and bright paint of the pyramids themselves but by the limits of the song that breathed inside the air and lived inside the living. The eternal presence. The Singer’s will.

  Parasite. Master. God.

  A single howler monkey screeched an alarm and Lilla’s Paw leapt to their feet and fanned out, ducking behind the smoke racks or into the shadow of trees. The sound of fighting erupted a short distance away as part of Kux’s Paw engaged an enemy and Lutek looked to Lilla. He nodded and signed ‘five’ and she led four warriors at a run towards the noise.

  The rest waited, alert, straining every sense. Another of Kux’s Paw called the alarm, from the east this time. ‘Snake’s tongue attack,’ Lilla bellowed. He sent a piercing whistle into the jungle, calling back all those who could extricate themselves so they could stand together in the clearing.

  A heavy javelin whined through the trees, and then a dozen more, flying hard and fast, before any of their allies made it back. Another skimmed past Lilla so close it stirred the hair by the side of his face. He jerked sideways, tripping on a root and sprawling to one knee. The javelin buried itself in the tree behind him.

  ‘Empire!’ Lilla shouted as he recognised the distinctive pattern on the bannerstone halfway along its length. Though of course it was the Empire; they were still in Tokoban and their own people wouldn’t be attacking them. There was a screech as a woman was caught on the thigh, a javelin’s point ripping into and then out of her doeskin leggings, leaving a bright slash of blood and torn flesh behind.

  A third volley and the enemy hard after it, sprinting along the game trails from two, then three directions. Impossible to tell their numbers as they lunged out of the jungle or loosed arrows and darts from its shelter. The clearing erupted into motion – the stabbing whirl of spear fights, lightning fast, the hard clack of haft on haft, grunts of impact, screams of pain.

  Lilla wrenched the Empire spear out of the tree and flung it at a man racing towards Tiamoko. It clipped a branch overhead and dipped early, landing between his feet so that he tripped, sprawling headlong into the leaf-litter but unhurt. Not for long. Lutek burst from the trees and rammed her own spear into his back, punching him down onto the earth just as he rose to his hands and knees.

  Lilla was halfway to her side when a warrior a head taller than him barred his path. The man bared his teeth, the front two filed into points – one of the Tlaloxqueh people from the far southwest. He jabbed and Lilla blocked with his hatchet, thrusting back with his spear. The Tlalox was fast, but so was Lilla, the weapons spinning around them in a blur as they parried and blocked. Lilla split the man’s knuckle with a hard swipe and pain flashed in his eyes, though his hands never faltered.

  Screams and roars all around them, cries for help, shrieks for mercy ungiven, and then the Tlalox fell for a feint and Lilla skipped sideways, shearing the hatchet into his throat. It came back out with a puff of blood and a strangled attempt at a scream. The man dropped his spear and slapped both hands against the wound, his eyes so wide Lilla could see himself reflected in them. He didn’t care to look too closely, just stepped around the dying man and back-swung the hatchet into the nape of his neck.

  Kux and her Yaloh poured out of the trees and now the Empire’s warriors were trapped between the two forces. Even so, they fought for longer than Lilla expected, neither surrendering nor fleeing. And they took a bloody toll on his forces. Another Toko fell, her salt-cotton armour no match for the stone-headed club that crushed her sternum. She dropped without a sound, her lungs and ribs smashed to ruin and bright blood vomiting from her mouth. Roaring, Lilla leapt at her killer, a man wearing a cap of coyote skin, the animal’s eyeteeth strung in his hair.

  Lutek had Lilla’s flank and together they cut him onto his knees, bleeding from a dozen wounds but none of them fatal. Yet. Around them the clearing was falling still, bodies scattered like dead branches after a storm. The Paws had the victory, and those few enemy who fled into the jungle weren’t pursued; the chances of another ambush were too great.

  ‘Who are you?’ Lilla spat at the man, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. There was a long, freely bleeding slice in his right forearm he couldn’t remember getting, but the hurt of it mingled with adrenaline and anger and shock and twisted his voice into something savage, though the kneeling man didn’t react to it.

  ‘Aez, Coyote leader of a hundred dog warriors of the Second Talon,’ he said, as calm as though he were chatting among friends. His breath came easily despite the exertion, despite the blood. ‘And you are trespassing in the Empire of Songs.’

  Lilla’s lips peeled back from his teeth.

  ‘You mistake,’ Kux said as she strode over, surprise and anger vying for supremacy in her voice. She held a strip of material to her head and blood leaked from beneath it.

  ‘The Singer has decided Yalotlan will be brought under the song,’ Aez said, in that same calm and condescending tone. ‘And so this land now belongs to him.’

  ‘Monkey shit,’ Lilla snarled. ‘And you’re in Tokoban, anyway.’

  Aez looked around. ‘Am I?’ he asked mildly. ‘All looks the same to me.’

  Lilla itched to hurt him. ‘You understand nothing and your words mean less than nothing. Our land will always be our land.’

  ‘Of course it always will be,’ Aez said and Lilla paused. ‘I am from Axiban and I will always be a member of the Axib, even as I am also of the Empire.’ He laughed at their confusion. ‘It is you who understands nothing. When you are part of the Empire, you will learn. You will know glory then. And life.’

  ‘We will never be part of the Empire. We will never be slaves like you,’ Kux snarled.

  Aez’s eyes narrowed. ‘I am no slave. I am a Coyote leader of dog warriors. I serve willingly.’

  ‘Dogs that bark at their master’s command but are too cowed to tear his throat out,’ Kux sneered and Lilla snorted. ‘But you press far north without reinforcements, little barking coyote. Why is that?’ Aez was silent. ‘Are there reinforcements coming?’ Still nothing. The Yalotl spat in his face.

  Aez inhaled through flared nostrils as he wiped her saliva from his cheek. But then he settled back on his heels, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond them all. He was looking pale now, though with blood loss and pain rather than fear. ‘Holy Setatmeh and great Singer, judge me by my deeds and not my words, my devotion and not my fears. Sacred spirits, may my death secure your glory, and my name live in your mouths forever. I commend my family into your care, that they too may honour you.’

  ‘You’re not even a Pecha!’ Kux yelled. Aez paid no attention.

  Rage built in Lilla’s chest and he chuckled, low and nasty, a sound that until the war he hadn’t known it was possible to make. A sound that threatened like the low rumbling growl of a jaguar. ‘No need for prayers, slave,’ he said. ‘We’re not killing you. At least, not yet.’ He tore the coyote-skin cap from Aez’s head and stamped on it.

  Shock and fury twisted the man’s face. ‘I am no slave! I am a free Axi, a Coyote commander and—’

  Lilla punched him in the jaw and he fell, boneless. ‘Bring him and any meat that’s ready that we can haul alongside the wounded,’ Lilla said.

  ‘What about the dead?’ someone muttered. ‘We drag his carcass with us but not our kin?’

  ‘We’re at war,’ Kux said, though her jaw was trembling with suppressed emotion. ‘Strip them of talismans, honour them, and then leave them. There’s no time for more.’

  ‘Besides,’ Lilla added, searching out Tiamoko in the press and relieved to find him alive. ‘There’s been talk Malel might demand a sacrifice.’ He jabbed the unconscious Axi in the ribs with his sandal. ‘Looks like we’ve found one.’

  There was a pause, and then they set to work, taking jewellery and hanks of hair from Tokob and Yaloh dead and placing jade beads on their tongues, payment to see them safely through the Gate of the Ancestors. The dead feeding the jungle that fed the living.

  ‘Be at peace in the harmony of living and dying.
We sustain what sustains us, in the endless circle.’ The same whisper, over and over as each corpse was honoured. ‘We will drum for you. We will dance your spirits through the spiral to rebirth. Rest now.’

  ‘Let’s go,’ Lilla said softly when it was done and the wounded were on their feet or being supported. The Axi dangled like a dead deer from a long carrying pole slung between two warriors.

  Lilla took the tail and Kux the head of the group and they set off with many bitter glances back at the clearing and their dead. The mood was blacker than the clouds and guilt filled Lilla’s chest until he thought he would choke.

  They encountered no further ambushes during the march back to the Sky City. A march in which two of the wounded died from the brutal pace they set.

  Lilla sent the Paws to rest and then he and Kux dragged Aez up through the city to the council chamber, intermittent sun lightening the limestone streets beneath their feet. He tried to coax the embers of his anger back into flame, but he was too tired.

  Both councils were there, seated in a double ring on thin mats, spaces left free for the Fangs. Other warriors took possession of Aez and forced him to kneel at the rear of the chamber, spears poised. Even so, Lilla didn’t much like turning his back on him.

  High Elder Vaqix called the meeting to order before they were even properly seated. ‘Kux, Lilla, you return from scouting and from hunting – and from battle. How many warriors have stepped onto the spiral path under your command?’

  Lilla winced. ‘Seventeen bodies have returned to the earth, High Elder.’

  ‘What were you doing so far south?’ Vaqix demanded.

  ‘We weren’t,’ Kux said before Lilla could. ‘We were inside Tokoban. They should not have been within a hundred sticks of us.’

  ‘This is not the first time,’ Elder Apok said. ‘Other lowland villages have reported sightings and missing hunting parties, bodies discovered on game trails. They haven’t yet reached the towns below Malel’s slopes, but it seems there are Melody warriors at large in Tokoban now, too. It is no longer just in Yalotlan that we are fighting. Although their main strength has retreated, there seems to be a pattern emerging of skirmishes where we least expect them.’