The Stone Knife

by Anna Stephens

  This is why we fight, so that this doesn’t happen to any more people – of any tribe. It’s not just survival now, it’s to free slaves and help them find themselves again, help them return to the world and reconnect with their ancestors. Help them to be themselves again.

  ‘If we let them go, the same thing happens,’ he said to Kux as they rested, several sticks from the pyramid clearing.

  Dakto was sitting halfway up a tree above them, keeping watch and idly carving patterns in the branch. ‘You know my thoughts,’ he muttered, as if to himself. ‘Sooner or later they’ll lead us to a force that outnumbers us and that’ll be it. Lead us to our deaths.’

  ‘We’re not killing them,’ Lilla said, sharp with irritation.

  ‘Then let’s send them to the Sky City under the … protection of one of the Paws,’ Kux said. ‘We can keep pressing forward with only nine. They can escort the Quitob to your city and, I don’t know, keep them well fed and secure and healthy. Not prisoners, but definitely not slaves. The longer they’re out from under the song and among free people, the faster they will … recover.’ She didn’t sound sure, though.

  ‘People like that will never recover,’ Dakto said. ‘They don’t know how.’

  The decision among the Fangs was unanimous. The Quitob would be escorted to the Sky City by a Tokob Paw. The slaves – the Quitob – and those thirty lucky Tokob would be home and be safe, if only for a while. Lilla stared south into the dappled greens of the jungle. Where he was going, nothing was safe.

  Dakto dropped out of the tree and clapped him on the back. ‘Let’s find some Pechaqueh, have ourselves a little chat,’ he said and winked. Lilla grinned, sharp as a cat, and followed his friend deeper into Yalotlan.

  XESSA

  The womb, above Sky City, Malel, Tokoban

  183rd day of the Great Star at morning

  There must have been a hundred torches and candles burning to chase away every last shadow and leave the Drowned nowhere to hide. It lay on its side at the far end of the cave, both gills and lungs having to work to keep it alive in the shallow pool. Its twisted legs were stretched out in front of it, the remains of the net still tangled around its upper body, and they’d managed to get a thick, rubber-coated collar and rope around its neck while it was still in the cage. The rope was secured around an outcrop high in the vault of the roof. It couldn’t stand, let alone climb the wall, in order to pull the tether free. It was as restrained as they could make it.

  Xessa crouched at safe distance, her spear in her hands, and watched it. It didn’t move, didn’t even seem to register she was there, but she could feel it watching her. Thinking. She had no doubt it recognised her as the author of its agony.

  Ossa stood at her side, hackles raised. The dog refused to remain outside whenever Xessa visited – the Drowned’s cold, alien smell invoked all of his protective instincts. Even after a week of its captivity, he had yet to relax, and Xessa was glad of it. On the other hand, it meant she couldn’t spend as long here as she wanted to. She couldn’t allow Ossa’s training to be confused by prolonged exposure to the Drowned’s presence and scent, and besides, the constant threat fatigued him. It wasn’t fair. But the dog wouldn’t leave her side. He knew she was angry and grieving and he did all he could to raise her mood.

  As did Toxte. Xessa bared her teeth, but still the Drowned made no move. Her lover had nearly died at the Swift Water with his stupid heroism, his insistence on interfering. She knew her anger had nothing to do with him – and, thank the ancestors, so did he – because he bore it stoically and silently. And then, when she inevitably broke down, he held her and let her cry. Never any reprimand, never any recrimination.

  Nor did he complain when she woke him screaming. Kime’s wild, agonised face, one eye obscured by his hair, fingers missing, and the Drowned rising up behind him, cursed her dreams. It recurred multiple times each night until the thought of sleep terrified her and she was hollow-cheeked with fatigue and Toxte wasn’t much better.

  But they did their duty at the Swift Water, because they were needed, and then Xessa visited Otek and told him Kime was dead – again and again – and waited until his friends arrived to sit with him – and tell him, again and again, that Kime was dead. And then, when rage and grief climbed her throat until she choked on them, she came here. Came to watch her captive struggle to live, throwing chunks of meat at it, refilling the pool as water seeped slowly through the stone, keeping it alive. Mustn’t die. Not yet. Couldn’t die yet. Xessa hadn’t learnt enough from it yet. Xessa hadn’t hurt it enough yet.

  Of course she hadn’t learnt from it. How could she, with Tika and Kime and Tayan and Vaqix all gone? They were the clever ones, the ones who would have known what to look for, what to think or do. Xessa wasn’t clever; she was a killer. She hadn’t been fast enough to save Kime. She hadn’t thought he might need her and so he’d died. She hadn’t been clever enough to see through Ilandeh’s ruse, fuck what the other Xentib were still saying about her innocence. Hadn’t suspected Dakto, and by now he’d probably killed Lilla.

  Xessa jabbed the Drowned’s foot with her spear, her movement so sudden and unexpected that Ossa leapt and barked, and she could feel the vibrations of his challenge swirling around her. She hesitated, concentrating. She could feel vibrations. And so could the Drowned. It moved. Finally. It had done little more than twitch when she poked it, but now its head rose and it blinked those round, black eyes and it cocked its head as if listening.

  Xessa snapped her fingers and the dog quietened. She studied the Drowned. It reached out a long-taloned hand and caressed the wall of the womb and the eja was suddenly sickened. Their most holy place, befouled by this creature. The Drowned opened its mouth and began to sing, its throat sac bulging and emptying. The vibrations returned, stronger than before, fluttering in Xessa’s bones, but this time they seemed to grow in intensity, as if the womb itself was reacting to the song of the Drowned.

  Ossa began to bark again and then stopped. His ears pricked and his head cocked to one side just as the Drowned’s had done. And then, tentatively, his tail wagged.

  A fresh, poisonous rush of fury swept through Xessa and she jabbed its foot again, this time hard enough to pierce. Its body jerked and perhaps it made some squeal or sound of pain, and the womb echoed that back too, and suddenly Ossa threw back his head, his legs straight and stiff as he howled.

  Xessa leapt to her feet and backed away, her fingers tight in Ossa’s scruff until he came with her. She paused one last time at the corner and the Drowned was watching her. Watching, and tapping a long talon against the wall. Amused.

  ‘We should kill it. I don’t trust it. It’s doing something.’

  Xessa’s hands were shaking so badly she could barely sign, and she was breathing hard after running from the womb. She’d told the ejab on guard up there to be extra vigilant and then come straight to the new elder’s house. Elder Rix had been elected by the surviving ejab to take over from Tika, but he was cautious. No doubt he’d relish killing their captive.

  Toxte had spotted Xessa as she ran through the city and followed her, not wasting time asking questions. He knew where she’d been, of course, and therefore that the news couldn’t be good, but he looked rattled when she explained what had happened.

  ‘Of course the womb has magic,’ Elder Rix signed now, with more calm than seemed appropriate. ‘We have known this forever. It was likely the goddess attacking it.’ He paused, thinking, and then nodded, as if that explained everything.

  Xessa gaped. ‘It didn’t look attacked. It sang and Ossa wagged his tail. He responded positively to it. He’s knows a Drowned’s song is a warning – all his training reinforces that. And then it did something else and he howled. It, it knows something.’

  Rix laughed. ‘The Drowned know nothing other than the hunt and the kill and the imperative to breed. Just because they have hands and can stand on two legs does not make them like us.’

  ‘I never said they were like us,’ Xessa s
igned, fuming. ‘I said it was clever. You wouldn’t say a jaguar or a snake is stupid; they are perfectly adapted to their environment and—’

  ‘And a Drowned’s environment is not a cave two hours’ walk from a water source,’ Rix signed, his face darkening. ‘It is captive and it is hurt. It was probably just … whimpering.’

  Xessa knew she’d get nothing else from him. The elder still hadn’t forgiven her – or Toxte – for their reckless behaviour in capturing it in the first place, without telling anyone, without preparing the city or readying the stops along the way where they could put it in water to keep it alive. All those things had been done in a hurry, in the frenzied moments after Xessa had had to set Ossa and Ekka both on Toxte to keep him back from the Drowned and then club it in the head to stop its song.

  The city was on edge enough; the fact they had captured one of their greatest predators hadn’t been greeted with any great enthusiasm by anyone. And the fact that it was in the womb now, of all times, when they needed that sacred place’s solace, just made things worse.

  Xessa had been at the ceremony in the Snake-sister’s temple when Kime and Tika’s names had been painted onto the wall, below all the others. Two walls filled now. Two whole walls of ejab dead. The air had been tight with pain and thick with rage and the need to hurt. Even the retired ejab had come, the spirit-haunted who had their own wall and their own list, for theirs was a living sacrifice and was honoured just as profoundly.

  Yes, Xessa understood that need; even now the sensation of the club bucking, of the creature’s knees coming apart under impact, echoed in her hands and sent a ripple of righteous joy through her. But for Rix to dismiss what she said …

  ‘Thank you for your time, elder,’ she signed formally. ‘If the shamans have any other experiments they would like me to conduct on the Drowned, please tell them I will be at home this evening and tomorrow morning.’ She rose and left before she could sign anything she might regret.

  Xessa and Toxte walked home hand in hand. He let her brood, and if he had any thoughts on the matter himself, he didn’t sign them. The dogs raced ahead, playing and twisting among the stalls and shoppers. Their joy was lost on her. She was sour and frustrated and exhausted, but dreading the night to come and the nightmares she knew waited for her.

  Xessa was secretly relieved when Toxte elected to stay at his own house that night. He needed uninterrupted sleep and she was poor company anyway. She sat in her doorway and watched his tall, muscular frame disappear into the distance. The whole city was sour, not just her. Xentibec was still under armed guard and the Xentib within were increasingly angry. Tokob were being forced to fetch water for them and Xessa had seen one woman spit into a jar before she’d left it for the Xentib to collect. And liquids worse than a mouthful of saliva were being added. Xessa had heard of three Yaloh hauled before their elders for conspiring to scrape frog-venom into pitchers before they delivered them. It could have killed people – children or the elderly. This was what Ilandeh and Dakto had done to them. The other three houses around the central firepit were all empty and the evening was still but for the swaying of palms and water vines, of ripening beans and corn in the allotment, and of the dozen gourds hanging from the eaves above her head. Ossa snuffled around their allotment and then flopped down by the woodpile. She longed to ask him what the Drowned had done.

  Tika had written out a list of things, experiments, that she’d planned on carrying out on the Drowned when they caught it. During the aftermath of her death, when they’d gathered to dance her to rebirth, Xessa had asked after those notes. No one had been able to find them. They’d vanished along with her body and now that they had a Drowned, they were fumbling around doing little more than poking it with sticks and making sure it didn’t escape.

  She didn’t know what to do.

  Tayan would know.

  The thought hit her like a club to the chest. Xessa missed Tayan with sudden, biting intensity and that yearning drove her onto her feet. Taking a candle from inside, she crossed to Tayan and Lilla’s house, suppressing a twinge of guilt at intruding into their home without permission. Again.

  The house’s interior was so familiar that it brought a lump to Xessa’s throat. Bunches of herbs and medicine hung from the roof beams, as well as charms and feathers and items of clothing. Lilla’s spare spear stood inside the entrance, and their spare sandals were lined up neatly as if they’d just stepped out for the evening. But it smelt empty, the herb-smell long since faded. Shelves of pots and jars and sealed gourds containing mysterious substances lined a wall. She ignored them and ran her gaze along the shelf below instead. Bark-paper books, eight of them. No. Xessa tapped her fingers against her lips, looking around the room, thinking. The storage chamber? She dragged the mats free and then lifted the wooden lid: empty but for a few beetles that shrank out of sight behind a dusty pitcher.

  Come on, Tayan. You didn’t take it all the way to the Empire of Songs, did you?

  She replaced the lid and the mats and stood again. The last shelf contained bedding, bandages and a few more folded items of clothing. She rummaged beneath the blankets and lifted the basket of rocks and pieces of wood and trinkets and … things. Tayan insisted they were all for some lofty shamanic purpose, but she and Lilla knew he just liked interesting shapes and shiny stones, and collected them for the simple reason they brought him pleasure.

  And there it was. Another bark-paper book, but much thinner and written in Tayan’s own hand. Xessa hesitated, not quite touching it. It was an invasion of his privacy, a terrible violation of his trust, but if her friend had written down his ideas for capturing a Drowned anywhere, it would be here. And not just capturing it, but what he’d do afterwards. He was the most curious person she’d ever met and they’d spent enough lazy evenings discussing what they thought Drowned were that surely he’d have made notes somewhere.

  Sorry, Tay, but you’re not here and I need you. I need to know what to do. And what it is I might have done by hurting it and putting it in the womb. What I’ve shown it.

  She didn’t go back home: to take the book out of Tayan’s house felt even more like stealing. Instead, she sat leaning close to the candle and opened the book, trying her best just to skim the words until she found mention of the Drowned.

  Xessa saw her own name more than once, and Lilla’s, too, and the urge to read about herself was almost overwhelming, but when she glanced up Ossa was watching her and his faith – his loyalty – reminded her of her own. Even so, it took an immense amount of will not to read what her friend thought of her deep in his heart.

  Drowned. There. Peering closer, Xessa began to read.

  The darkness was complete and the winds were strong, roaring up the streets and the hill, lashing the gardens and door curtains and stands of bamboo and vines. Fires were torn to rags, their light dancing and mocking the eye, hiding and revealing and making the roads treacherous. Xessa’s foot slipped into a carved drainage channel more than once, and her ankle was sending a spike of pain up to her knee with every step by the time she reached Toxte’s house.

  Xessa clapped twice and then knocked on the wall. No response. She stamped on the wooden rocker that would wake him, even though he hadn’t taken the spirit-magic today so should have heard her knock. Still nothing – and no Ekka, either.

  Xessa lifted the door curtain; the house was empty. She turned in a circle, grinding her teeth in frustration. Where would he have gone? Her emotions had been wild since Kime’s death and the murders before it, and the constant simmering anger she felt now threatened to spill over into rage. He’d said he was coming home. Where the fuck was he? She needed him.

  Xessa began moving back uphill, but not home this time. She headed for the upper exit and the path to the womb. She headed for the Drowned. Ossa padded at her side, enjoying the novelty of walking the city late at night. His head was high as the gusting wind brought him all the scents and probably many of the sounds of the jungle far below.

  She hadn’
t come out with a spear or a net, but she had her knife and the ejab on duty at the womb would have weapons. Not ideal, but now that the idea was alive in her, she had to act on it. Tonight. Now.

  They passed through the northern gate and onto the trail to the womb. ‘You too?’ the warrior on duty signed in the flickering light from a fire-pit. ‘Everyone wants a look, don’t they?’

  ‘Eja Toxte?’ she guessed and he nodded. Xessa’s stomach churned and her temples pounded with sudden tension. She thanked the warrior and left the city, breaking into a run as soon as she was out of sight. What are you doing, Toxte? And why pretend you were going home? What don’t you want me knowing?

  She fell twice in the dark, the wind so strong at her back that it seemed to want to blow her into the rock, and even the toughened skin on her feet struggled as she scrambled and scuffed unseen stones. Her knees were bleeding and the palms of her hands were bruised by the time the trail began to descend into the womb.

  The dogs belonging to the ejab on duty spun at her approach, alerting their owners, and Eja Nallet brandished her spear before Xessa came into the flickering torchlight. ‘What’s going on?’ she signed, sucking in cold air that chilled the sweat on the back of her neck.

  ‘Toxte. He’s—’

  But Xessa had seen the rope in Eja Quin’s hands and understood what her lover was doing. Toxte hadn’t taken the spirit-magic today. He could hear. ‘How long has he been in there?’

  ‘He said pull him out after a two hundred count. He insisted. Said it wasn’t right to risk anyone who wasn’t an eja, and that you thought it was up to something. That it was clever.’ Nallet shuddered.