‘We can’t win.’ Kux’s voice cut over his, slicing through the rising babble again. ‘We can’t, Lilla, and while I love your fire and your belief and your hope, I won’t sacrifice the hope of my children on that belief. I’ll swear to serve the Empire, and I’ll claim them as my own. And I’ll do whatever it takes to free them and see them again. To live with them, even if it is under this cursed song. You don’t have children, so maybe this choice is easier for you. Maybe your Tayan will forgive you—’
Tayan will come for me and learn I’ve abandoned him. Tayan will never forgive me.
‘—but I won’t risk the lives and hearts of my girls on the promise of a rebellion that we cannot organise and cannot win. One hundred of us? One thousand could not escape this fortress without being slaughtered. No, Lilla. You make your choice and I’ll make mine. And so will everyone else in here.’
Lilla looked around in the half-light, desperate. He didn’t have the words, it seemed. He wasn’t a talker like Tayan or the elders. He couldn’t persuade.
Slowly, hating himself, he untied the faded yellow cord. Twelve knots, it had. Twelve promises he and Tayan had made each other about their lives together, their future, when they’d adopt children, how many. The whole of his life written in knotted string. Four of the knots had charms attached – things they’d achieved, promises kept. Eight more remained empty and might now remain that way forever.
Lilla kissed each of those promises and then he knelt and wrapped it twice around his left ankle, where widows wore their cords, and tied it off. He swallowed tears and pain and willed his eyes to dryness and his heart to stone.
Perhaps they’d been overheard by their keepers, because the next morning everyone in Lilla’s pit was ordered out, along with those who’d been held in adjacent prisons. They were marched into an enormous plaza, with warriors training at the far end, some hundreds of them. They were slow and clumsy and Lilla watched them as Tokob and Yaloh were forced into long lines. Half a dozen warriors approached, arrogant and confident. Eagle feathers in their hair. One, a man even taller than Lilla and with a slightly crooked nose adding interest to an otherwise ordinary face, wore three more eagle feathers in a slender fan. An officer. He wandered up and down their lines with easy grace and unconcern.
‘I am Feather Ekon and you are here because you fought well!’ he shouted. ‘You fought like the warriors you are and there is no shame in your defeat against a superior force!’
Lilla’s hands tightened into fists.
‘You fought and lost, but this is not the end of your warrior journey. You are in the heart of the Empire, you are under the grace and power of the song, and you can continue as warriors. Here, in the Melody. We will craft you into the finest, strongest fighting force in all Ixachipan – in all the world!’
Lilla spat on the packed earth beneath his feet. Ekon walked towards him and Lilla noted the breadth of his shoulders and his powerful, rolling gait. The Feather stopped and looked down at him. It was an unusual enough occurrence that discomfort stirred in Lilla’s belly. ‘The song and its glory can be yours forever,’ he barked, loud enough to carry through the throng. ‘The Melody will be your home now, and your loved ones will live to serve others, live together as families, live in safety, while you fight for the Empire of Songs.’
He waited to see if Lilla would do anything else; he didn’t. Satisfied, or perhaps just indifferent, the man stalked away.
‘Commit to the Melody, here and now,’ Ekon continued, ‘and accept our authority over you. You will serve for five sun-years as slave warriors – or perhaps less if you perform well. When your time as a slave warrior is complete, you will be promoted to the dog warriors. Dogs are not slaves! Dogs are paid jade and that jade can be increased in three ways: by acts of bravery; by capturing slaves; by saving lives.’
He paused and the murmur of conversation rose around the plaza, the buzz of new hope.
‘Three years as a dog warrior, three at the most, and you will earn your freedom – and the freedom of your families! A Star cycle, that and no more. Perhaps even less.’ He paused again, willing to let the prisoners convince each other that it was worth it. Lilla was silent, not meeting the gazes of those either side of him, not answering their excited whispers. This was not hope. This was not the gift the warrior was making it out to be.
‘Upon your freedom, you will settle and build your home and your farm and you will tend your crops and fuck your lovers, make or adopt children, and live free beneath the glory of the song!’
Lilla closed his eyes and offered a prayer to the ancestors that Tayan would understand what he was about to do. ‘And what of those of us who have no families?’ he shouted and the plaza fell silent. Ekon came back to him, anger tightening his mouth. He saw the Feather decide he was a troublemaker. Oh, Feather Ekon, you have no idea.
‘What of those of us who have nothing to lose?’ he asked, a little quieter.
Ekon spread his hands. ‘Then you have everything to gain, do you not? Many a marriage has been made in the Melody. And if you have no family whose debts need paying to earn their freedom, why, then you will be free that much sooner. It has been done in five sun-years – slave to free. Five years. Think on that.’
Ekon stepped back and raised his arms. ‘You are warriors – prove to us your prowess, here and now, and commit to serve. Give our scribes the names and descriptions of your families and know that they will be safe under the song until your service is complete.’
Lilla was tempted to prove his prowess by crushing the man’s windpipe, but again he held himself still. Again he waited.
‘Groups of ten, split into pairs!’ Ekon shouted. ‘Show me your strength and skill; show me your footwork and your aggression. Those who fight well can join.’ He didn’t say what would happen to those who didn’t. He let the captives’ own imaginations supply answers, more varied and more horrible than whatever the truth might be, no doubt.
Lilla stepped forward with the first group and found himself facing Kux. The ancestors had a sense of humour, it seemed. The Fang’s face was closed and grim and when she attacked she came in hard and fast. Lilla let her, answering strike for strike, parrying her force and holding back his own. Kux was scared and she was desperate – Lilla would not shame her or risk her chance to join the Melody if that was her destined path.
When Ekon called the halt, all of the group was cleared to join the Melody. They formed a line in front of the scribes, breathing hard and wiping away sweat.
‘Name?’
‘Fang Lilla of the Sky City on Malel. Toko.’
‘You’re a slave now, without any fancy titles. Family?’
Tayan’s face flashed before his eyes, and Xessa’s. His sisters and mother. ‘No family.’ The scribe looked up, lips pursed. ‘I have no one.’
He walked away from the scribe and stood, fists clenching and unclenching as he swallowed tears. Slowly, as the day passed, he heard others give the same answer. Not many – not nearly enough – but some. It was another sort of hurt, hearing them disavow children and parents, lovers and marriages, but a clean one. A pure hurt, a good hurt, and at its heart burnt the hot, endless flame of vengeance.
It made it easier to pretend he’d made the right choice.
XESSA
Northern slope of Malel, Tokoban
18th day of the grand absence of the Great Star
The marriage ritual had been both more and less than she’d expected. No Lilla, of course, and no Kime, which had cut her open all over again. But Toxte’s family had come, making the trip up from their town at Malel’s base, and they’d stood with Otek, Tiamoko, Lutek, and the rest of their friends to bear witness in the flesh world of the promises they made that bound their lives and spirits together for as long as they wished.
Seeing Tayan in his finery, his paint carefully applied in their honour, had reduced her to tears even before she made her promises before the gods and ancestors and spirits. The friend of her heart had teased her g
ently, and Toxte had pressed kisses to her hair and temples until he’d smudged the ochre painted on her brow onto his lips and she’d been sufficiently distracted by her need to kiss it from his mouth that her tears had dried.
And then Tayan had blessed their marriage cords – bare of knots for now, because those were promises made in private – and called on Malel and Snake-sister to witness and bless their love, and Xessa and Toxte had licked their thumbs and pressed them to each other’s temples – family – and then to the hollow of each other’s throats – married.
Tayan and the guests drummed and played bone flutes and rattles and the couple danced the marriage completion and shared a cup of honeypot. And then it was done. No grand affair, no gathering of the whole neighbourhood to drink and dance until deep into the night. Toxte promised she’d have all that and more when the war was over, but she didn’t mind. They were married, and that was all that mattered.
Now Xessa’s hands went to the cord around her neck. Four knots so far. Four promises she and Toxte had made. They’d agreed, reluctantly, that it would be reckless to make more when they had no idea what would happen in the coming months and years. Xessa had wanted to anyway, had wanted to promise him children – born or adopted – and to look after him for the rest of his life, to hold his hand through every hardship and end every day with ‘I love you’, but she couldn’t. They couldn’t. She told herself to be content with what they had, and that all else would come in time.
The cord was light, barely there against her collarbones and the nape of her neck so that she kept touching it to make sure it hadn’t somehow fallen off, and yet it carried a weight and a meaning she’d never really understood before. She was different now, a different woman. Not just eja, or friend, or occasional artist. Not just daughter or lover, but wife. Toxte’s wife.
Ossa bounded at Xessa’s side, tongue lolling, grinning, as they ran easily along the upper trail that led around the hill. It was good just to be out, breathing in the morning and the freshness of the scattered trees and plants, away from the overcrowded tension of the city.
She actually had the day to herself, and had decided to spend it foraging for medicine for the shamans to replenish their stocks. She felt guilty and yet utterly relieved at being outside the walls and away from the crushing press of humanity. The city was so overcrowded that people were sleeping in the plazas.
Not the slaves, though, she thought and that stole much of the pleasure from the day. The mood in the city was hostile and suspicious, so much so that all escaped slaves had been turned away, the gates shut against them. Most were camped around the walls, crying to be let in, pleading and begging, and Xessa would never have ventured out of the city if the Yaloh council hadn’t sent a couple of Paws to drive them away. Suspicion of outsiders had grown like fungus after Ilandeh and Dakto’s betrayal, even more so after the riots in Xentibec and the slaughter of the Quitob in the temple, and was now a ravening beast all of its own, and anyone with the wrong clothes or tattoos or piercings was forbidden entrance to the Sky City.
Xessa was profoundly ashamed, not just of the Yaloh, but of her own people, too. They had allowed this to happen. They had looked away and let those poor slaves be denied safety. They were going to die in the fields and orchards, be slaughtered in front of the Tokob walls, and no Toko would raise so much as voice, let alone hand, to stop it.
Including me.
Xessa slowed to a walk, chest heaving, and scruffed Ossa’s ears as he pranced by her side. She had no answer for herself. The early morning was cool and windy, bright with bird life and the wild racing leaps of monkeys above their heads. The trees were thick this high up on the shady side of Malel, out of the reach of the wind-driven salt, and it was rich and green to her eyes and nose.
A shock of movement on the trail ahead stilled her: a deer, and then three more, slipping ahead of her with graceful bounding leaps, out of the jungle, along the trail, back into the jungle. The pale fur of their tails and hindquarters like flashes of wispy cloud come down to earth. The sharp black of their hooves kicking up dirt. The warm animal musk of them just gracing her nose before it was gone.
Ossa was in point, on the off chance she hadn’t seen them, and she stroked his head in appreciation, stilling again when a doe paused and looked back, her long neck in a graceful curve, her eyes liquid black. And then gone. Xessa smiled and stayed still on the path a little longer, in case there were more. The balance. Malel’s bounty. A welcome distraction.
She thought of Tayan – to him those deer would have been little more than blurred, bouncing shapes, species unknown. How disconcerting that would be, not to know what might be coming towards you, predator or enemy. One part of her nightly prayer was that her eyes would stay sharp until the day she died, not failing as those of some Tokob did. To never know the individual colours of a sunset or the flash of a parrot through the canopy, the delicate movement of a lover’s hands as they signed their love for you. Her mouth curved.
But how big the world must be for people like Lutek and Tiamoko and Toxte, who could both see and hear clearly. How intrusive and yet how wonderful, so bright and … there, right there, inside your head, against your skin. Impossible to ignore even when you wanted to, maybe even especially when you wanted to.
She shook away the musing and began to walk again, Ossa ranging ahead along the path, his nose in every spoor and flower, his tail waving. Despite his ease, Xessa’s gaze roved the undergrowth around her, flicking back to her feet every few paces and then on to Ossa’s bliss-seeking nose and tracking ears as he trotted ahead, joy in his every line.
A sense of something, maybe the tiniest hint of a vibration through the soles of her feet or the feel of the jungle stilling. Perhaps it was just a … a knowledge, the warrior’s awareness, but Xessa halted, toes splayed wide on the trail. Fifty paces on, a flicker of movement – Ossa jumping, landing back feet, front feet. She raised her arm so he knew she’d seen him and then held her palm out, requesting information. He pointed his nose downhill, giving the signal for predator.
Shit. Just what I need.
She had a dog and a knife and a sling, a bag for carrying any medicine she found, but no more.
Xessa took another few steps, looking where he’d indicated, but she could see nothing in the shade beneath the trees. The wind picked up and shook the undergrowth and she startled, seeing things that weren’t there and, potentially, not seeing things that were. If it was a jaguar, chances were she wouldn’t notice it until it moved, charged her with teeth bared and tail lashing, and opened her from screaming mouth to steaming guts.
Xessa crouched and put her right hand into the mud, peering low across the trail for eyeshine or slink of predator in the low scrub. She clicked her tongue and Ossa looked up. She held out a palm and he pointed again, gave the predator signal again. She tasted the air for the musk of cat, got nothing. Looked back at the dog. His ears flattened and then pricked again, and once more he signalled predator, without her asking this time.
Shit.
She was upwind of whatever it was, so if she could hide, it might pass her by. Xessa scrambled up off the trail into a dense stand of palm growing around one of the outcrops of sharp, black rock that sprouted from Malel’s skin. She crouched and patted her knees – Ossa got his front legs onto her lap and put his head on his paws. She put her fingers between his eyes and he stilled, panting lightly. Beneath her other hand, Xessa felt his hackles rise and prayed he didn’t whine because there they were, on the trail, close enough to spit at: a dozen warriors with red feathers in their hair, with sharp stone and obsidian in their hands. Empire warriors. Their hair was braided Pechaqueh style, but the patterns dyed in their kilts and the flashes of tattoo she saw spoke of different tribes. Her stomach cramped with tension and bile scalded her throat.
Another dozen emerged from the trees, and then a dozen more, these ones wearing grey-banded eagle feathers.
War had reached the Sky City.
Warn the city.
Warn the city. Warn the city. The words pounded in counterpoint to her heart and her feet, the left one leaving a trail of blood from a cut that would, she prayed, be washed away by the rain that had started moments after the warriors below her had vanished back into the trees and she’d been able to slip away.
Xessa was under no illusions about her ability to move silently, so she thanked Malel for sending rain to cover the noise she made. The warriors had seemed cautious but not surprised to find the game trail. As if this was planned. She didn’t waste time speculating; her only task now was to reach the city and tell them the enemy was here.
She climbed straight up through uncleared jungle until the trees and undergrowth thinned enough to run, and then began to traverse the slope towards the city. The sky was the roiling black of an angry ancestor come for vengeance and the rain was heavy for so late in the Wet, making the ground treacherous under her bare feet.
Xessa fell, the bright pain of a split knee overlaying the black pain of a bruise deep into the bone. Ossa’s hot breath warmed the side of her neck as the cold wind buffeted her and she regained her feet. They ran on, Xessa’s long, loping stride shortening, tightening, as her feet bruised and her breath came ragged and the way back grew longer and increasingly unfamiliar this high up the slope. Ossa limped, his hind leg held up to his belly. He’d slipped when a pile of loose stones gave way beneath him and had damaged his paw or knee.
His suffering broke her, and how he kept going regardless. There wasn’t enough time for her to rest, but Ossa could, at least. Heavily, Xessa crouched down and the dog came back to her. She patted her shoulders and he gathered himself and jumped up, paws scrabbling for purchase and nails scoring the back of her neck. She grunted at his weight and then his hot body was draped around her neck, fore and hind legs dangling down over her chest.
Xessa grabbed his forelegs in one hand and a root in the other and hauled herself back to her feet, her breathing sharp and painful in her chest. The ground was shrub and sharp rock and she was probably outlined against the sky if anyone cared to look. Clinging to whatever she could find, she made her way on, slower than before. The wind strengthened further, blowing into her face and bringing a cold, stinging rain that battered at her eyes and made it hard to breathe. The clouds whipped overhead and the world was thrashing greens and hard, wet greys and spatters of sunlight there and then gone.
The Stone Knife Page 41