The Stone Knife

by Anna Stephens

‘No,’ Betsu said immediately, trying to give it back.

  Enet narrowed her eyes, just a little. ‘Do the Yaloh have no rules of guest friendship?’ she asked, in such a way that told Tayan she knew perfectly well that there were, and that to refuse a host’s generosity was to offer insult.

  ‘We have no gifts in return,’ Betsu said, but Tayan cut her off.

  ‘You do us much honour, Great Octave,’ the shaman said, breathing a swift prayer of thanks to Malel for his foresight and a second to his spirit guides for their forgiveness. He slipped his fingers into the neck of his tunic and found the right string hanging around his neck and pulled a small deerskin pouch free. He licked his lips but passed it over without hesitation. ‘Please accept this as a small token of our humble thanks.’

  Enet opened the pouch and tipped three small statues into her palm – Young Jaguar, Old Woman Frog, and Swift Hawk – carved from jet, greenstone and pom wood respectively. ‘How lovely,’ the Pecha murmured, though Tayan thought more because she had to than anything else. He could tell her how sacred they were, but she wouldn’t care. Their value was clear, however, and he hoped it would be enough.

  She looked up and gave him a smile and another squeeze of his knee. ‘I shall treasure them,’ she said, and he had no idea whether or not she was lying.

  Soon enough the buildings fell away, and even the limestone of the road itself, and there was a wide, empty expanse of packed dirt. In the middle, twisting lazily beneath the building clouds, a wide, slow loop of moving water.

  ‘This is the same river as the one you will have crossed yesterday,’ Enet said conversationally as the slaves carried them towards the bridge. ‘Back in the north – in fact, Peace-weaver Tayan, I believe it even borders your land? – it is called the Great Roar, but here its might is lessened, and it is known simply as the Blessed Water. Much of the city is built around it. And there, can you see, over in the distance? That is the great pyramid. In there is the source, and in the source is the Singer, our holy lord.’

  Tayan and Betsu both leant out of the litter and the slaves grunted and staggered as the balance shifted. The shaman hurriedly withdrew, gripping the padded seat. ‘Sorry,’ he gasped when he saw Enet clinging to the woven handle hanging above her head. ‘I would not be able to see it anyway; my vision is not strong when things are far away.’

  ‘It is … impressive,’ Betsu said with clear reluctance, but he noticed the tinge of awe in her voice and a slight shine of sweat on her upper lip. Not just impressive, then, but intimidating.

  ‘The peace-weaving,’ Tayan began, but Enet cut him off with a wave of her hand.

  ‘Do you like to gamble, honoured guests?’ she asked. ‘There is a fighting pit just ahead and I do so enjoy an entertainment. Come, let us visit. You can use my jade, bet on whoever you like. It’s only to first blood today, but it can still be exciting.’

  ‘First blood?’ Tayan asked. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She means that they force slaves to fight to the death for their entertainment. Don’t you?’ Betsu said. She was running her fingers over and over the fine beadwork on the gifted shawl and didn’t look up as she spoke. ‘Blood,’ she whispered, as if to herself, ‘this entire society is built on it, one way or the other.’

  Enet laughed and raised an eyebrow at Tayan, inviting him to share her mirth. ‘Oh, my friends,’ she said expansively. ‘Every society is, and anyone that tells you different is lying. Come on, let’s place some bets. I promise it will be fun.’

  XESSA

  Sky City, Malel, Tokoban

  156th day of the Great Star at morning

  Xessa sat on the step of her house, looking over the city and down across Malel, hazy with mist and the coming dawn, just a splash of blue and the tiniest hint of red at the lip of the world. The rest of the land lay shrouded in darkness, only pinpricks of firelight below indicating the earliest risers.

  The air smelt of growth and green, the heavy stink of rich soil from the garden and the sharpness of wet stone. Xessa sucked it in and let it soothe her. Rain beaded on her hair and face; it sat proud like stars on the blanket wrapped around her shoulders.

  She bit into a guava and let the juice flood her mouth as she watched the dawn blossom. Smoke tickled her nostrils as someone lit their morning fire just below and she felt the city begin to wake, a tingle through her nerves, a taste on her skin. She grinned at a memory of Tayan telling her she was more shaman than he would ever be. It was magic, he’d said, and there was an end to it.

  Her smile faded and her appetite with it. He’d be in Pechacan by now, meeting with their elders and doing all he could to persuade them to end their aggression. Persuade them that what they already had was enough. Too much. Xessa made herself eat the rest of the guava and then a thick piece of pepper-stuffed cornbread. She was due at the water temple in an hour, to work the handle and keep the peace among the citizens coming to collect their ration while Toxte braved the Swift Water.

  Xessa tugged on her earlobe, pierced and cuffed with a dozen rings, beads, feathers and dyed bird bones. The sun cleared the horizon and flooded across the world and she threw off her blanket and let the rain patter against the skin of her arms and legs, into the open neck of her tunic.

  Unbidden came the memory of Ossa leaping into the river to save her life, of the water swirling up to her thighs as she went in after him, that impatient, cold, and dangerous tug of current right before the Drowned rose and came for her again …

  She shook her head hard, hair and ear cuffs slapping her cheeks, and then wrapped the blanket tight around herself once more. This wasn’t the morning to be remembering such things. Better to think of Toxte, not risking his life at the river, but the feel and taste of his skin and the deep steady throb of his heart when she pressed her face to his chest. A smile pulled at her mouth.

  Movement, as Lilla pulled back the door curtain of the house he shared with Tayan. He waved and then pointed at the communal fire-pit. Xessa scowled, but he was right: it was her turn. Ossa shoved his head under her elbow and she paused on the step a while longer, scratching the dog’s neck and ears, pressing kisses to his muzzle. Ossa’s ears pricked and Xessa looked up; Lilla had his hands on his hips and a look of melodramatic outrage on his face.

  The eja sighed and dropped her damp blanket before crossing to the pit to lay the kindling. The rain stopped as the sun rose higher. Steam would be rising from the stone soon, filtering the morning through its haze until it was as if the spirit world had overlaid the flesh world and magic was in everything.

  She found the bow-drill and set to coaxing a flame into life, the exertion warming her arms and shoulder and back. She blew on the embers and then built the fire, enjoying the increasing heat against her face. Lilla squatted opposite to rest three small leaf-wrapped parcels around the edges. Xessa perked up, watching him until he felt her gaze and looked up.

  ‘Not a chance,’ he signed. She batted her eyes at him and put her head on one side, the way Ossa did whenever she had turkey or lizard. Lilla poked at a piece of wood with a stick. Xessa kept watching him and moved slowly, stealthily, around the fire and then shoved her head under his elbow, as the dog had done to her. Lilla burst out laughing even as he fell onto his arse and then Ossa added to the confusion, leaping into the tangle and seemingly managing to lick both of them at once.

  Lilla scrambled away, Ossa prancing around him, and made a show of wiping dog drool and dust from his face and clothes. Xessa lay on the floor, laughing and feeling closer and yet farther from Tayan than ever. They’d been friends all their lives, though she liked to think the first few years he’d existed before she was born had been terrible for him. Her friendship with Lilla now was deep and genuine compared with the brittle, jealous thing it had been when he’d first come into Tayan’s life and stolen him from her.

  She checked the cooking parcels of bean, nut, and ground turkey and flipped them over with two sticks. Lilla bent down to wave in her eyeline and then pointed, and Xessa felt
a ridiculous and unstoppable blush creep up her neck when she recognised Toxte ambling up the plaza towards them. She looked over to Lilla instead and bared her teeth at his malicious glee. ‘Justice for stealing my breakfast,’ he signed solemnly.

  ‘I haven’t stolen it yet,’ Xessa pointed out, but they both knew that one of the parcels was hers – and that that was why he’d made three in the first place.

  The spirit-magic was beginning to work in Toxte and his pupils were dilated as he squatted next to the fire, his dog, Ekka, tussling with Ossa. ‘Elder Tika told me two more Yaloh were taken at dusk,’ he signed without preamble. Xessa stilled and Lilla came to her side. ‘They were in the fields. The irrigation ditch was just deep enough.’

  Grief and rage and frustration, at herself and the world. At Malel, even. And at the Drowned. Always at the Drowned. ‘We should kill them all,’ she signed. ‘Take the fight to them, every eja at once. No more trying to steal water, no more hiding from them. Just kill them.’

  ‘Tayan would say they’re part of the balance, as much as we dislike it,’ Lilla signed.

  ‘Well, Tayan isn’t fucking here,’ Xessa signed angrily and jumped up. ‘Even the Lesser Drowned sing for us and they can’t even eat an adult. They can barely finish a child! Yet they take us and gorge themselves and leave our bloody remains to the scavengers.’

  She was shaking, racked with guilt that was as insidious as it was irrational. She hadn’t been on field duty last night; the fault wasn’t hers. Except it was, somehow. Every loss, every death or sudden disappearance that was presumed to be a Drowned attack was her fault. Ossa came to her side and pressed against her leg. His tail was low and his big eyes worried. She dropped back to her knees and wrapped her arms around him, burying her face in his short black fur.

  Hands on her back and shoulders and a warm flank pressed against hers. Toxte cupped her face in his hands and made her look at him. He shook his head, denying the emotions he knew she was gripped by and then he kissed her, gently, almost chaste. Almost. It sent a spear of sudden want through her, and it stopped dead the treacherous whirl of her thoughts. Toxte twitched as the spirit-magic pulled him further under, and she put her hand over his on her cheek and kissed him back, fixing his spirit in his flesh by running her other hand down his chest.

  Toxte sighed against her mouth and leant back and she grinned at his obvious delight. Movement opposite them and she saw Lilla sitting cross-legged and eating his breakfast. He winked and she blushed again – seemingly the only thing her face could do this morning. Which was ridiculous after the last two weeks, during which she’d spent more time kissing Toxte than she had signing with him.

  ‘Let me guess,’ Lilla signed with his mouth full of food, ‘you’re going to bring up yours and Tayan’s stupid plan again.’

  Xessa stuck out her tongue at him. ‘It’s a good plan.’

  ‘It’s the stupidest thing either of you have ever come up with. And that’s saying something.’

  ‘This sounds promising,’ Toxte interrupted. ‘Let’s do it.’

  ‘You don’t even know what it is,’ Lilla protested.

  Toxte waved his hand in airy dismissal. ‘Mere details,’ he signed and grinned at Xessa and there were hummingbirds charging around in her stomach. She smiled back, but then Lilla threw a stick at them and forced them to pay attention.

  ‘The idiot in front of you and the idiot wandering around Pechacan want to catch a Drowned for study,’ he signed. ‘They’ve got it all planned out, with just one problem: the council won’t allow it because of what happened last time it was attempted. Which shows they’re not idiots,’ he added pointedly.

  ‘That was ten Star cycles ago,’ Xessa protested.

  ‘Sixty-three people died,’ Lilla signed.

  Xessa shifted, uncomfortable and suddenly aware that Toxte’s opinion of her could be about to plummet. She watched him from the corner of her eye: his mouth had dropped open and a profusion of twitches rippled through his cheek. Then he sucked his lower lip into his mouth and stared into the distance. He was thinking about it. That was his thinking face; she knew it well.

  Xessa raised her eyebrows at Lilla and now it was his mouth hanging open in shock.

  ‘It’s past time we tried again,’ Toxte signed. ‘Every eja I’ve spoken to wants to try it. What happened in our ancestors’ time wouldn’t happen again. We’ve learnt from those mistakes.’

  Lilla threw up his hands at the pair of them. ‘You’re supposed to talk sense into her,’ he signed. Toxte shrugged an apology and the warrior muttered something Xessa didn’t catch and stomped off into his house in disgust.

  ‘I mean, he’s right. It’s moon-madness. But tell me anyway. Because there are around twice as many Drowned now as there were fifty sun-years ago.’

  ‘When the Empire of Songs started expanding.’

  They stared at each other. That correlation, whether coincidence or not, never failed to send a shiver through Xessa’s spine. The last capture attempt had been a generation before that, but now every Wet seemed to bring more Drowned to the Swift Water, more death to their people. They couldn’t afford to wait any longer, surely.

  ‘The numbers we see at the Swift Water each day now … they frighten me,’ Xessa signed in the end.

  ‘And nothing frightens you,’ he signed and she couldn’t tell whether he was teasing or mocking. It must have shown, because Toxte reached out and cupped the side of her face for a moment. ‘I’m not being cruel. I mean it: I’ve never seen you frightened.’

  ‘Then your eyes are as bad as Tayan’s,’ she signed, ‘because I’m close to pissing my leggings every day I have the duty.’ And when you look at me like that, she wanted to add, but didn’t.

  Xessa shifted to sit opposite him on the damp stone so they could sign freely, but her belly warmed when Toxte casually extended one leg and pressed it along the length of hers – maintaining contact as naturally as if they were married. The line of her thoughts broke for a moment and she couldn’t suppress a smile, nudging at his leg with hers.

  ‘You’d need at least three ejab,’ he continued as if he, too, had whiled away hours wondering how to capture a Drowned. Perhaps he had. Xessa fell a tiny bit in love with him just at the idea. ‘But the question the council will ask is why now, in the middle of the Wet? In the middle of a war?’

  Xessa swallowed the anxiety of her next words. ‘Because if we’re fighting Drowned and fighting Pechaqueh, we will lose. We’re already losing. We will die or be enslaved, every last one of us. The council won’t say it, but we all know that if it gets bad enough, they’ll have ejab lining up to fight the Empire. Do you want to be killing men and women one day and fighting Drowned the next? Do you think we could? Say we lost a fifth of our ejab in the fighting but prevailed over the Melody. Could the city survive those losses, especially with all the refugees we have here?’

  Toxte pursed his lips and then shook his head and Xessa noticed Lilla watching her side of the conversation from his doorway. She pretended she couldn’t see him, but her words were for him as much as Toxte now. ‘I don’t want to start killing Empire soldiers, but I will if I have to. What I do want to do is understand the enemy I’ve trained my whole life to fight. I know I don’t have years of experience like some. But being younger doesn’t mean I’m being reckless with this. I’m not trying to get anyone killed and if it goes wrong, even if we’re a heartbeat away from getting one, we back away and run. It’s a risk, but I won’t add unnecessary risks on top of that. Contrary to popular belief’ – and she waved towards Lilla – ‘I’m not stupid. I just want to know my enemy so I can kill it.’

  ‘Yes,’ Toxte interrupted, excited. ‘Its armour, for instance. What exactly is it? What can penetrate it? They breed – we think – but we’ve never found an infant. Capturing one probably wouldn’t answer that question, but are there, I don’t know, particularly deep stretches of river crawling with dozens of baby Drowned?’

  His hands stopped at that and Xessa fe
lt nausea rise into her throat. Toxte looked just as horrified at the image he’d conjured. He shivered.

  ‘So, lots to learn,’ Xessa signed briskly. ‘We have a responsibility to protect the city, not just now, but the next generations, and if catching a Drowned allows us to do that … besides, I don’t want to be eja the rest of my life. I have other things I want to do.’ She blushed again.

  ‘Like what?’ Toxte asked, willing to be distracted.

  ‘She’s an artist,’ Lilla signed as he wandered back over. ‘And a fine one.’

  Xessa winced and held up a hand before Toxte could ask anything else. ‘The point is, there are a thousand of us who took on the duty without regret, but also because someone has to. What if we didn’t have to? What if they were gone? I don’t want ejab like you to risk your lives with the spirit-magic day after day. I don’t want any more to end up broken like my father Otek. And besides, if Tayan weaves a peace, we won’t be at war. Then they can’t argue, can they?’

  Toxte reached forward and took her hand, grazed a kiss across her knuckles and another to her palm that made her shiver. ‘All right, we’re due at the water temple soon. Let’s talk it over after that, yes?’ Toxte signed and Xessa nodded. ‘And then we’ll talk to Tika.’ Xessa’s eyes bulged. ‘I don’t know what she’ll say, but you’ve got a plan. Most of us have a plan. I say we put them all to the elder and see if one stands out as workable. I say we know our enemy.’

  In the end, it had been an easy duty at the water, which seemed unfairly at odds with their earlier discussion and conviction that the Drowned’s numbers had increased to critical levels. The queue for water had begun to gather before Toxte had even reached the river, but he hadn’t let anyone’s impatience distract him and she’d watched him move, swift and smooth and strong, a lethal dancer. When she was certain he was out of danger and on his way back uphill, she’d begun turning the water screw’s handle.

  Lutek was lurking by the stone trough. She was relating some outrageous tale about a Yalotl she’d slept with the previous week and Xessa was laughing as she drew water into the trough while Lutek ensured everyone took only their daily ration. The warrior’s head jerked around and her hands stopped moving. Xessa looked in the same direction and saw a scuffle in the queue. People pulled them apart and she saw one was Ilandeh and the other three were Yaloh.