THE STONE KNIFE
Anna Stephens
Copyright
HarperVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020
Copyright © Anna Smith 2020
Map copyright © Nicolette Caven
Cover photographs © Stephen Mulcahey/Trevillion Images (emblem in flames), Shutterstock.com (all other images)
Cover design by Stephen Mulcahey © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020
Anna Stephens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Source ISBN: 9780008404000
Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008404024
Version: 2020-09-30
Dedication
For Lisa,
who asked the question when we were fourteen
– and who always believed the answer
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Map
The Singer
Xessa
Lilla
Tayan
Enet
The Singer
Xessa
Tayan
Pilos
Lilla
Tayan
Enet
The Singer
Tayan
Xessa
Pilos
Tayan
Pilos
Lilla
Xessa
Ilandeh
Enet
The Singer
Tayan
Xessa
Lilla
Xessa
Ilandeh
Pilos
Tayan
Enet
The Singer
Lilla
Pilos
Tayan
Lilla
Enet
The Singer
Ilandeh
Pilos
Xessa
Enet
The Singer
Pilos
Lilla
Xessa
Ilandeh
Tayan
Enet
The Singer
Xessa
Pilos
Xessa
Pilos
Ilandeh
Pilos
Tayan
Xessa
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
By Anna Stephens
About the Publisher
Map
THE SINGER
The source, Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs
The song is life and wealth and bounty from the earth. The song is courage in childbirth, strength in war, cleverness in creation.
The song lifts us and binds us, as beautiful and inevitable as my brother, the Great Star, in his endless cycle of appearances at dawn and dusk, and his regular absences to do battle with the lords of the Underworld.
As the Great Star always returns on the appointed place in the calendar, victorious as he rises from the depths to watch over us once more, so the song cannot, does not, falter. For the song is mine and I am its Singer. I take strength from my brother, and I give strength to him. Between us, we bring the earth into harmony.
And today, on the Great Star’s 118th appearance at dawn, I enter the eleventh year of my reign. All you Singers who have gone before, you holy Setatmeh who send the rains that bring the crops to fruition, see me wax into my power and know that you are honoured. My song is but an extension of yours, my glory but a shadow of the glories you achieved.
Soon, all Ixachipan will be ours.
Soon, it will be time to awaken the world spirit.
For I am the Singer, and this is my will.
XESSA
The Swift Water, below Sky City, Malel, Tokoban
118th day of the Great Star at morning
They said that the Drowned were the souls of the dead, angry that the living still walked beneath the sun, still breathed the air and ate the good food of the land. They said that this anger made them vicious and desperate, and that they sang to lure the living into death with them.
They said the Drowned were the ancient spirits of the land displaced by the Tokob people, who were the first children brought into being by Malel, and that the Drowned were slowly reclaiming the world for themselves, one life at a time.
They said the Drowned were those who had died of grief or betrayal, that their hurt was so great they clung to life in another form, their bodies as twisted and ruined as their hearts had been. That they would stop taking people if only they were loved. That their songs were laments.
And they said the Drowned were another branch of life, like the great jaguar and the tiny chulul – the same but different. That they were trying to communicate, and meant no harm, but their songs were irresistible. That they ate what they caught because it was in their nature to do so.
So many tales. Xessa had grown up with the myths and legends of the Drowned, the theories of Tokob historians and shamans and storytellers. She thought the stories were the biggest pile of steaming monkey shit she’d ever read.
Whatever they were or might be, one thing was certain: the Drowned were somehow linked to the vast, sprawling Empire of Songs that these days covered almost all of Ixachipan. To the Pechaqueh of the Empire, the Drowned were sacred, and that said all Xessa needed to know about that people and the lies they told of peace under one Empire, one ruler.
She cleared her mind of thoughts of the war against the Empire to focus on the battle to come. She’d left Toxte, another eja and her duty partner, in the water temple further uphill, ready to begin turning the water screw once she had the pipe in the river and connected the turning rods. The pipe’s hard rubber coating bore fresh claw marks; a Drowned had tried to destroy it during the night. When they succeeded, they smashed the wooden scoops of the screw that lifted water uphill, forcing ejab like Xessa to risk proximity to the water to fix them.
Xessa squatted on her heels, bare toes dug into rich loam, her spear in the crook of an elbow, and studied the river’s edge. A warm breeze tickled beneath her salt-cotton armour and the bamboo scales stitched over it; she ignored it, ignored too the flash of a bright bird whirring from the trees on the slope below, ignored everything but the water before her and the earth beneath her.
Her dog, Ossa, hadn’t signalled; there was no other danger she needed to be aware of. Just the Drowned, then. Xessa’s smile was grim. That was still more than enough for one eja and her spear.
Xessa ran her tongue around her gums and eased forward, dropping her knee into the soil and releasing a spike of scent – rich rotting things, moist earth, life. She ignored it the way she’d ignored the bird. The spear slipped from her elbow down her forearm to slap comfortably into her palm, warm and ready and lethal. Her movement didn’t cause movement in response; there was no explosion of water, of snapping teeth and clawing fingers and long, black talons. The edge of the river was six strides away and seemed serene, innocent. Xessa knew better. She’d known better all her life; all the life she’d lived for this moment, all the training, the hardships.
Water was life and breath and plenty, and water was death and pain and fear, held in a balance like day and night, sun and moon. Xessa was a thief, stealing from the balance without offering anything in return except her sweat, her fear, her blood. One day, perhaps, her life. It was a fair trade for the lives of her people and the refugees from Yalotlan, fleeing the Empire’s endless ravening.
Eja, the ancient Tokob word for snake: patient, cunning, and resourceful. Her brothers and sisters; her kin. Ejab walked the snake path, winding and oblique, stillness into movement without hesitation. The strike and recoil, faster than blinking. The life-and-death dance of sacred harmony, the balance made flesh.
With a snake’s patience, Xessa eased herself onto her feet to approach the river when a double thump like a heartbeat shivered up through the soles of her bare feet and something black flashed in the corner of her eye.
Ossa. She took four rapid steps away from the river before looking. The dog jumped again, landing back feet, front feet, the impact on the hard earth easily missed were it not for her acute focus. She raised her arm, palm forward, requesting information. If she hadn’t seen him, his next action would have been to race towards her and grab her by one padded sleeve, but now he merely pointed his nose and Xessa followed his gaze to the burnt-back ground on the other side of the river.
A spotted cat, its ears back, padding slowly down to the river’s edge, wariness in every smooth, lethal line of its beautiful body. It paid her no attention, its gaze fixed unwaveringly on the water, as alert to its danger as she was. Xessa clicked her tongue twice and Ossa raced to her side. She scratched behind his big ears, tapped his nose once so he looked up at her, and then gestured in a wide circle. The dog bounded away, on the alert again for more danger.
The cat knew she was there, so it was unlikely it would attempt to skirt the edge of the river to get into the fields and orchards and lie in wait. They’d lost four farmers this planting already and there were more cats than ever coming to drink, coming to stare at the fields and livestock and people, their eyes hungry and patient and so very dangerous as they tracked the crowds of hollow-cheeked Yaloh who’d fled the warriors of the Empire of Songs.
Nerves pinched Xessa’s belly as she moved slowly back to the water’s edge, scanning its surface, the spear ready and the net hanging from the back of her belt. The Drowned had two targets now, both armed, both dangerous. Even as she thought it, one’s head broke the surface. Mottled brown and green like the riverbed, thin ribbons of hair on its head like weed, it stretched a clawed hand towards Xessa and opened its mouth.
Xessa knew it was singing; all the Drowned sang and all their songs were lethal, an irresistible lure to any human who heard it. Like nectar to a hummingbird, the Drowned’s song was the sound of life itself, or so those with hearing said. When they sang, people walked straight into their embrace, going to death like a lover to their partner’s bed, and with less regret.
The cat leapt backwards and bared its teeth, but the Drowned had eyes only for Xessa, its arms yearning towards her, its webbed fingers and long black talons beckoning.
But Xessa was eja – water-thief, snake-cunning. Deaf to its song as all ejab were, whether through Malel’s blessing or the shamans’ magic. Its eyes darkened and it slapped at the water in frustration; then it moved closer to the bank. She might not be able to hear it, but the creatures were fast; it could still drag her into the river if she wasn’t careful.
The cat had approached the opposite bank again to drink and Xessa saw the path of still water in the current, how it drifted in that direction. Still water in a swift current: a sure sign of Drowned. A second infesting this stretch of river.
The jaguar didn’t know that still water meant Drowned. The one in front of Xessa sank below the surface, perhaps deciding the cat was the easier target. Meat was meat, to a Drowned.
Using the distraction, Xessa bent and grabbed the handle on the wide-mouthed ceramic pipe. She straightened, the spear in her left hand and up by her jaw, pointing at the water, and walked in an arc, pivoted by the joint in the pipe until it straightened and locked in position at the water’s edge. The most dangerous moment. The pipe was between Xessa and the water, her body twisted side-on and the spear ready to lunge down over it in case of attack.
She began to crouch, lowering the pipe towards the river ready to open the lid, when the water exploded in front of the jaguar and a Drowned leapt for it, hands slashing the air where its head had been. The cat sprang away, up and back, ears flat as a single talon scored a line through the fur of its muzzle. It vanished, leaving the Drowned empty-handed and hungry.
Xessa jumped at the sudden attack and her arm came back in reflex as she straightened up, ready to throw or lunge with her spear. The surface of the river in front of her boiled apart and green-brown hands tipped with wicked claws reached for her as the second Drowned attacked.
Xessa had a glimpse of the round black eyes, the mouth open and filled with teeth like a piranha’s, and then a hand grasped her shin. She screamed and dropped the pipe, the thick rubber-coated ceramic slamming into the Drowned’s arm and breaking its grip, its claws tearing out of her doeskin leggings and flesh, and then her spear was plunging deep into its shoulder and its mouth twisted, opening wider, green blood gouting from its body. It twisted on the end of her spear and Xessa wrenched it free, whipped the shaft through the air and clubbed the creature with the butt end, freeing it from beneath the pipe and sending it splashing back. She dropped to one knee and thumbed open the lid to allow water into the pipe even as it righted itself.
A mistake.
The eja stumbled back to her feet, bloodied, her leg beginning to burn and throb and her arms and armour soaked with spray. She managed a single limping step before the Drowned launched itself off the riverbed again and grabbed the shaft of her spear in both hands, just behind the obsidian head. Xessa yanked backwards. The Drowned didn’t let go and fear flared high in her chest as she pulled the creature half out of the water towards her. It was bigger than she was and, although its stringy limbs didn’t look it, far stronger. One of the rare and even more dangerous Greater Drowned.
It pulled on the spear, jerking it perilously close to its own chest, and Xessa could’ve angled up and punched it through its throat and killed it, but she was off balance, her leg trembling beneath her, her toes bashing into the pipe and most of all shocked, confused that it had recognised the weapon as separate from her body, had understood what it faced. She teetered for a second, mouth open and screaming, at the very edge of the water, and then she threw herself backwards, pulling with all her strength.
The Drowned came out of the river amid a spray of crystal droplets. It flopped onto the soil like a landed fish and flipped onto its hands and feet, skittering towards her. A Drowned could survive on land for almost an hour, the lungs that fed its song sustaining it as it moved between water sources. And an hour was more than enough time for it to eat her alive.
It was on her leg now, its talons punching through leggings and skin, gouging into her again. Same shin, widening the wounds. Even the combination of snake-scale bamboo and salt-cotton padding wouldn’t be enough to save her if she couldn’t fight back; its claws would shred her armour and its teeth would open her belly in seconds.
They’re clumsy on land, her teachers had told her, but this one didn’t seem clumsy. Not clumsy at all. Xessa thrashed and squirmed, but it was anchored to her legs by claws and sinewy muscle. Its skin was slippery and she didn’t dare push at it anyway: its bite would take her fingers off with a single snap. Instead, she stabbed clumsily with the spear, missed, stabbed again and caught it another raking slice down its shoulder, opening up pale flesh and green veins.
The Drowned reared up in agony and Xessa stabbed a third time, not deeply; the point stuck in the hardened plates that protected its chest, barely penetrating. Its hands closed on the haft again and it stared at her with its fish eyes, and Xessa would have sworn there was intelligence there, intelligence and calculation. A plan, even. As though it had allowed itself to be wounded to learn something about her. And then Ossa barrelled into the creature and sent them both into the water, a talon left standing proud in Xessa’s shinbone.
No!
Xessa moved faster than she ever had, faster than she’d known was possible, flipping onto her feet and jumping knee-deep into the river, seizing Ossa by the scruff of his neck and flinging the big dog bodily onto the bank. He landed on his side, leapt to his feet and pranced at the water’s edge, his throat rippling as he barked and barked.
The two Drowned rose on either side of Xessa like spirits come for vengeance. Their hands tangled about her legs, but one was weakening; Ossa’s teeth had opened its throat. Still. She drove her spear tip at the uninjured Drowned and forced it back; a flap of her leg skin tore free in its teeth and she screamed some more, stabbing for it again. Red blood and green mingled in the current and fled downriver.
Even as it righted itself she jumped backwards, up and out. Her right foot came down on the pipe and she felt it crack beneath her weight, lost her balance and fell again. The Drowned came for her and her heels were still in the water, but Ossa seized the padding on her right forearm and dragged her, five strides, ten strides, out of danger while she jabbed with the spear and the monster held its place by the water’s edge. She could feel Ossa’s growls in his throat, in his teeth, as he pulled, straining every sinew to save her as she dug in her heels and shoved back from the river with ugly, desperate haste.
Another dog, Ekka, skidded to a halt on her left side and barked at the water, her legs stiff and her hackles raised. Toxte would have sent her, and he’d be sprinting after her, coming to Xessa’s aid.
The dogs stood over her, silhouetted against the bright sky, barking their warning and their challenge. Xessa forced herself to stand again, to brandish her spear at the water and unhook the net from her belt. One Drowned watched her, eyes just above the surface, and she whirled the net ready to cast. It sank, vanished, gone.
She waited another thirty heartbeats before dropping the net and pulling Ossa to her side to check for wounds – four shallow gouges along his right haunch, bleeding lightly. The Drowned venom coursed in Xessa’s veins, but Toxte would have the medicine already prepared and kept warm over a brazier in the water temple, ready to pour into their wounds and down their throats.
Vision sparking sun-bright with venom and adrenaline, Xessa checked over the pipe – she’d felt the crack, but the rubber coating might have protected it and with Malel’s blessing, they might not lose too much precious water before it was fixed. She was shaking now, badly, but she opened it at the joint and connected the long wooden turning rods to the thicker one leading uphill. Her hands were barely under her control. She closed the pipe and waved her spear overhead. She kept her eyes on the water, trusting that whoever Toxte had left in the temple would see the signal and begin turning the massive handle that drew water uphill. The Sky City would live another day, safe from thirst and from the Drowned.
Xessa wondered if she would. She vomited, Drowned venom snaking up her body from the wounds in her leg and into her chest, her neck, her head, itching-burning like the stings of warrior wasps, hotter than coals. She rubbed her face and mouth, smearing the symbols of protection and strength painted on her cheeks into jumbled incoherence.
Suddenly Toxte was there and the world tilted, jerking out from under her as he wrapped her arm around his neck and hauled her onto his hip and then, gracelessly, over his shoulder. She dropped her spear and tried to tell him, but vomited down his back instead. She had a glimpse of the dogs guarding their retreat, and then the venom drew her into the dark.
LILLA
Southeastern slope of Malel, Tokoban
120th day of the Great Star at morning
When they were a few days away from the border into Tokoban, Lilla had told the refugees they would be safe, that no Empire warriors would have penetrated so far into their land.
He’d been wrong.
Now, ten days and what felt like a thousand regrets and recriminations later, he led the shattered remnant of his warriors uphill through lush, cultivated jungle towards the Sky City. Behind them, trudging in silence broken only by the intermittent complaints of exhausted youngsters, more than three hundred Yaloh came with them. They’d set out with twice that. They’d come with rations and blankets and ceramics, with medicines and seeds for planting. They’d come with hope as well as desperation, responding to the Tokob promise of shelter and protection. Tokob and Yaloh, the last two free tribes, standing together, living together, against the Empire of Songs. A dream that faded a little more with each morning until it left only bitterness on the tongue.
They’d passed a dozen small Tokob villages scattered through the jungle during their flight, each struggling to accommodate the hundreds of Yaloh who had crossed into Tokoban as the war penetrated ever closer to their homes. The Sky City was the only place that still had capacity, and every Tokob Paw that ventured into Yalotlan to aid its warriors returned with more refugees. Most came with tales of ambush or loss. Voices quiet, their mouths turned down, they spoke of kidnapped kin as if they were already dead. As captives of the Empire of Songs, they would be either slave or sacrifice, traded or slaughtered in Pechacan, the Empire’s heartland and home of its song-magic.
Lilla shivered. He had never yet heard the song and had vowed he never would. He would rather die than live as a slave, his life and will held in the hands of another and the song his constant, unavoidable companion. Lilla would fight to free Yalotlan and keep it and Tokoban independent. If it was Malel’s decree that he should die, he would go to the mother goddess without regret to await his rebirth. But he would not surrender his body and mind into the power of another. Not for anything or anyone.
It was a vow thousands of Tokob had taken in the preceding months, some even going so far as to tattoo their promise into their flesh. Lilla’s promise was carved into his heart, and that was enough.
