Pilos nodded. ‘Please.’
Half a smile crooked the corner of her mouth and she shifted. ‘Our noble adversaries like targeting work parties, killing overseers and warriors and freeing those slaves who would rather betray the song than die alongside their betters. Those freed slaves were being sent back towards Malel, but many of them will have stopped in these towns, especially if they’re fatigued or wounded. It’s likely that they all now have Axib, Quitob, even Tlaloxqueh refugees living with them. Many people. Many new, unfamiliar faces.’
Pilos grunted. ‘I like where this is going. How many do you think would make a difference?’
‘Ideally, a full half of the Whispers. I only visited one of these towns and I’d say it held a few thousand people. The rest, as far as I know, are of a like size. Fifty good Whispers in each to sabotage from the inside when you attack from without could be enough to tip the balance in our favour so they fall quickly. And we can cut off anyone trying to head uphill to warn the Sky City.’
‘But how do we get you in there?’ Calan asked.
‘Seed them through the jungle in small groups and have them running scared for the war parties to find and take them home like the saviours they believe themselves to be,’ Pilos said. ‘They won’t all make it, but enough will.’
‘It’s what we train for,’ Ilandeh agreed with impressive equanimity. ‘Blending in; avoiding suspicion. As you say, enough will get through to make a difference when the attack comes.’
Pilos knew she’d go if he asked it of her, despite being relatively well known in the Sky City and perhaps elsewhere.
‘The Whispers’ main priority will be to stop Tokob running uphill with word of our arrival. Second task will be opening gates and disrupting defence.’ Pilos tapped his finger on the triangle of the Sky City. ‘All right, I like it and I want the Whispers selected and sent off today. Once they’ve gone, they’ll be on their own until we arrive at the Sky City. So how do we take the Sky City itself?’
Ilandeh began to sketch a second map. Pilos had already studied the one she had drawn while she waited for the Melody to arrive, but they could all do with a reminder now they were actually among the hills and jungle. Terrain always looked different when you were in it.
‘Once we’ve taken the towns, we can split to use all four game trails for a swifter ascent. To the west, here, the land is bounded by the Great Roar; from what I learnt, no one lives there because the river is so wide and dangerous. There’s a possibility they might flee that way to try and evade us, and I’d recommend sending a good number of pods there once we’ve taken the main territory just to clear it, but it’s wild land, uncultivated, and they struck me as people who preferred the illusion of safety provided by stone walls.’
‘Beyond Malel?’ Pilos asked, gesturing at the crude map.
Ilandeh was shaking her head. ‘Hardly anyone lives beyond the hill, or even on its northern slope. Their territory ends abruptly and the salt pans bordering it extend almost to its base and much of the lower land is poisoned from the salt blowing onto it.’ She drew two lines, one heading up the triangle representing the hill, the other circling around to its rear before ascending. ‘If we can co-ordinate it, I recommend a pincer, but the force skirting the hill to take its northern face should set out today – it gives them time to cover the additional distance while we take the necklace of towns.’
Feather Calan leant forward. ‘Keep two Talons down here to fool them into thinking it’s our full force while the third climbs its northern slope? Can we get up high without being seen?’
‘They don’t frequent the northern slope?’ Pilos added, cautious excitement flaring in his chest.
Ilandeh grinned at them both. ‘Yes, we can, and no, they don’t. In all the moons Dakto and I were there, only shamans went onto the upper northern slope to collect medicine. They don’t farm it; they haven’t settled it. Plus, they say it’s spirit-haunted by people who died trying to cross the salt pans. The most we should encounter are shamans and maybe a few scouts. Easily dealt with.’
Pilos glanced north, as if he could see the Tokob hill through the thick canopy. ‘I like it,’ he said.
It was audacious, and they stood to lose far too many spies and assassins if they were discovered, but the urgency in his blood, and the continued wrongness of the song, reported to him each day by Citla, drove him on. He didn’t want to waste Whispers, but better them than his eagles.
‘If I may, High Feather, what about what happened to Dakto? Is there a risk that the Whispers’ loyalty might be tainted?’ Calan asked. She blushed when Ilandeh narrowed her eyes at her, but it was a valid question. Pilos gestured for the Flight to answer.
Ilandeh grimaced and shifted. ‘We don’t know that anything’s happened to my Second Flight,’ she said, her tone neutral. ‘Besides, we were in much deeper back then. We were among the Tokob for a year, tasked with making friends and earning trust by any means necessary. And during that time we were confronted with the slaughter of the holy Setatmeh and the abomination of the ejab. It would unsettle anyone. These Whispers will be in Tokob towns a matter of days, and those towns will be under assault. It’s a completely different situation.’
He nodded. ‘Do it. Flight, pick the smallest and lightest we’ve got, all genders. Get collars on them and get them out there – they’re not to take food or water with them; I want them thirsty, filthy, and vulnerable. They’re to stay a few days ahead of our front line – and any who get caught by our advance scouts get a beating. It needs to look real, and they need to be desperate to get out of harm’s way.’
‘As the High Feather commands.’
‘And the slave brands?’ Feather Calan asked. They stilled at that. Pilos watched Ilandeh; her nostrils flared but her face was smooth and blank.
‘No. Put them in sleeves or bandages. They’re to say, only if questioned, that they’re hiding their brands the better to escape the Melody. But not to mention it at all unless they have no other choice.’
Ilandeh coughed again and then exhaled raggedly. She met Pilos’s eyes. ‘Thank you, High Feather.’
He looked at them both. ‘It’s going to be bloody and I want us ready to support our Whispers. I want us taking – and holding – territory, not just the towns; we want the people and we want the harvest. Easiest way to control a population?’ he asked and looked to Calan.
The Feather grinned. It was one of the first lessons young eagles learnt when they joined the Melody. ‘Control the children; control the council. No one fights when their offspring’s at risk.’
Pilos smiled. ‘All right, we have a plan and we have a set number of days to accomplish it. We move in an hour. Under the song.’
LILLA
Melody fortress, the dead plains, Tlalotlan, Empire of Songs
12th day of the grand absence of the Great Star
The Melody fortress was immense, and it sat among huge fields ripe with corn and peas. South, in the shadow of tall hills that reminded Lilla of home, a salt pan stretched, white and flat. The dead plains.
The fortress’s walls were tall and patrolled by warriors armed with bows. There was a wide training ground outside where the eagles practised; the slave and dog warriors’ own training areas were behind the walls, cut off from the horizon and any slender possibility of escape.
When the heavy mahogany gates had been pushed open and Lilla followed the line of warriors in, he’d tried to summon the effort needed to look, to notice the placement of guards and memorise the route from the gate to the slave barracks. But when the shadow of those walls had fallen across him and the gates had rumbled shut, a piece of his spirit had died.
They hadn’t been taken to the slave barracks. They’d been led into a small plaza and to a pit dug into the ground. The ropes had been loosened – removed for the first time since their capture – and they’d been shoved down the steps and a bamboo gate dropped to lock them in. Hundreds in each pit, crammed together in humid, fetid gloom. And here they’d
stayed.
For four weeks.
Tayan was going to come for him. Lilla knew it as surely as he knew how dawn looked on the first dry day after the Wet, when it bled across the grand plaza’s steps, gold and gleaming. Tayan was going to come, despite the danger, despite not treading the jaguar path, because he was a fool and he loved Lilla and one of the promises on their marriage cords was that they would always find the other and bring them home. A foolish promise when Lilla was a warrior, perhaps, but the promises cut both ways, so when Lilla had pledged always to find Tayan – because how could he not? – the shaman had pledged it straight back, full of love and without hesitation. How Lilla regretted that promise now.
He stood in the filth and the perpetual gloom of the pit, crushed shoulder to shoulder with nearly a hundred Yaloh and Tokob, and he knew despair. The song had a resonance down here somehow, a weight and potency, though Lilla hadn’t seen any pyramids built within the fortress as they’d shambled towards it.
On the other side of the pit a fight broke out, words becoming shoves becoming a scuffle and then fists were flying. Lilla and Kux and a few others broke it up, wrestling the fighters away from each other and through the press of captives, though in that moment he, too, craved the release of violence.
‘Don’t give them what they want,’ Lilla yelled instead of giving in. ‘They’re trying to break us down and break us apart. Don’t let them. We are Tokob and Yaloh. We are allies and we stand together against our enemies. Calm yourselves; don’t let their madness affect you. Remember your ancestors. Remember Malel.’
The man he’d been holding broke his grip and Lilla readied himself to fight, a small vicious part of him glorying in it, but the warrior just scrubbed his hand over his mouth and then spat, turned away and shoved deeper into the crowd until he was lost.
Lilla took a deep breath and rubbed at the stinging pain of the scar in his chest. The scar Dakto had cut into him and then rubbed with charcoal. A messy, unpretty triangle – a pyramid, a crude rendering of the slave mark he would soon be forced to wear on each shoulder. An extra reminder of his servitude. His shame – if he chose to see it as such. He knew that had been Dakto’s intention and so Lilla did his best to wear the mark proudly.
I made him so angry he had to do this. That in itself is a victory.
And yet now he’s gone. I could have used that anger. He was starting to listen, starting to see the truth, I know he was. Why else would he have told me what he did?
Despite Lilla’s determination, the thought of beginning again, of trying to convince another macaw or dog warrior, filled him with weariness. Dakto’s time in the Sky City had primed him, given him a taste of something he’d never had before and surely couldn’t help but miss now he was back in the Empire. Lilla didn’t like to think how long it would take to build up that trust with another so he could begin to turn their thoughts to freedom. Rebellion. He stiffened his spine; it didn’t matter how long it took. What mattered was that he’d do it.
Kux found him and Lilla adjusted his tunic to cover the scar. ‘Another fight about swearing to the Empire.’
Lilla grunted. ‘They always are. After everything Dakto told me about how they control their slave warriors, about how we can control at least this one choice, and still they think swearing is the answer. Think claiming their families will ever benefit any of them …’
Kux’s face twisted. ‘You speak of choice and your faith in that Xentib bastard in the same breath,’ she said in a harsh whisper. ‘Why do you trust him, especially after that?’ Her hand slapped the healing symbol on his chest and Lilla couldn’t help the hiss of pain.
‘His time with us changed him, Kux. A whole sun-year out from under the song, away from the Empire. Free. He didn’t need to tell me what he did.’
Kux shook her head and the scent of old sweat rose from her tangled hair. They were all of them filthy, stinking, starving. ‘Who cares? He’s not here, Lilla. We’ve got nothing left but the promise that we’ll see our families again once we’re freed, yet you want us to swear to the Empire but not name our families, our children? You’d rather we abandon them to the Pechaqueh for the rest of their lives, never to be freed except by their own efforts, which may never be enough? At least if we work for freedom together, we can achieve it.’
‘That’s just what they want you to think,’ Lilla said, low and urgent. If he could convince Kux, another Fang, they might have a chance.
Tayan is going to come for you, and you won’t even claim him as your husband. You’re going to abandon him.
Lilla forced away the thought. The guilt was enough to bring him to his knees, if he let it. He wouldn’t. ‘If we claim them, then when we rebel, they’ll be executed. It ensures our compliance because once we’ve claimed them, they become another collar around our necks and another brand in our flesh.’
Kux sucked in a breath, and so did the warriors pressed so close they couldn’t help but overhear. ‘What did you say? You’re telling me my own fucking children are another form of slavery?’
‘Yes. No. No! I’m saying that’s how they use our loved ones against us.’ The pit was a rising ripple of sound as his words were passed on to others. It had been this way every day he’d spoken to them since Dakto had given him this knowledge. Lilla didn’t fully understand why the man had done it, but he wasn’t going to waste it. The pain in his head and the ever-present whine in his ears began to increase, as it did whenever he was frustrated or angry.
‘If we don’t claim them, they won’t be punished for our actions, don’t you see? They can’t be punished, because no one knows who they are. We have nothing to lose but our own lives when we rise up. And once we’ve won, then we can look for our families and pray they still live. We do this for them, to help them.’
‘We do it and they believe we’ve abandoned them.’ Kux’s voice was cold. ‘I’ll not have my girls thinking I don’t love them any more. They’ve already lost one parent because of this fucking war – they won’t lose me too.’
‘They’ll understand …’ Lilla tried, but Kux’s lips were pressed together against emotion strong enough to rend and the words dried up. ‘It’s everyone’s individual choice,’ he tried, but the words were slow and turgid with hopelessness. ‘If we don’t claim them, they aren’t tainted by our so-called treason. When we win, when we see them again, we can explain.’
Kux shook her head in disbelief. ‘Listen to you,’ she choked. ‘You talk as if we can win. We’re in a fucking hole in the ground, Lilla. We’re prisoners fighting over food and standing in our own shit with only the rain to clean us. And the rains are ending! There is no rebellion. There is no winning. There’s only this.’ Her flailing arms encompassed them all and attracted more attention as her voice rose. ‘We’re slaves now. We’re nothing, less than nothing. The only hope we have is doing what we’re told and earning our freedom and then having some semblance of a life again. Maybe we’ll even get to go home, to whatever’s left of home. But we only do that if we obey!’
Lilla resisted the urge to hit her. ‘No! We only do that when we win. When we tear this fucking Empire down around their ears and take back our freedom. And we can only do that if we’re able to act, if we know our loved ones are safe because they’re not tainted by association. If you claim your girls, they will die when we rebel. They will die, Kux. If you give them up, you ensure their survival.’
‘If we do as we’re told, we ensure their survival!’ a voice shouted from a corner.
‘Do as we’re told?’ Lilla repeated, injecting as much mockery into his tone as he could. Tayan won’t come if you do this. ‘We are fucking Tokob! We are fucking Yaloh! The orders won’t be coming from a council of elders, from our ancestors or Malel. They’ll be coming from people – arrogant, cruel people, but still just people. That is their great lie – they want us to believe that they’re better than us. They are not, no matter what this fucking song tells us. Would you lie down in your own shit so they can put their feet o
n your neck or you would stand toe to toe and spit in their faces?’
‘We lie down in our shit every night!’ the same voice shouted.
‘You’re right. But do you want to do it for the rest of your life?’
The pit was quiet but for Lilla’s ragged breathing and the shuffling of warriors packed tightly together, skin rubbing on skin, forced intimacy.
‘I’d lie down in fire for my family. I’d lie down in front of a fucking Drowned,’ someone said and Lilla sucked in a breath to scream at them.
‘Do you actually think we can win?’ came a voice from his left, stealing a portion of his exasperated fury and replacing it with a single ember of hope. Fewer than half of the warriors in this pit had come around to his way of thinking; would this be one more? He turned to face them.
‘Yes! And I don’t think it, I believe it; I know it. If we rebel the day we get out of this pit, we can be back in Yalotlan a month later, helping the warriors still there to defend our homes. Come at them from behind; beat them.’
‘If we were able to beat the Empire, we wouldn’t be here now,’ Kux yelled, as angry as Lilla. ‘We are fucking losing back home, and you’re whipping us up to lose here too?’
‘How do you know we’re losing?’ Lilla demanded. ‘Because those shits up there like to tell us so when they condescend to throw us some bread? Of course they’re going to say that. Of course they are! But we don’t know. None of us know. And that’s why we have to fight, because it’s the only way to be sure.’
He was sweating with passion and with hope, fists clenching and unclenching at his sides. He shifted his feet and the stench of shit and piss wafted up, almost enough to make him gag. ‘Look where we are,’ he began again. ‘Smell where we are. We need to—’
The Stone Knife Page 40