Xessa moved out of their way. ‘You all right here?’ she asked Toxte. He nodded. ‘I’m going to find Tayan and then the Xenti,’ she went on. ‘I want to be sure she’s absolutely clear on what I’m going to tell her. In detail.’
Toxte winced and grinned again, but he waved her off. The water sputtered in fits and splashes from the end of the pipe and into the trough as he worked the mechanism. The city lived, though the Xenti would soon wish she didn’t.
Lilla had insisted on coming along as well, and belatedly Xessa realised that she had interrupted them when they only had today together before Tayan left for Pechacan. Her narrow escape at the river had upset her more than she’d realised, especially being her first duty since her injury, and she was ruining the day for everyone else as a result.
Xessa told them she’d handle it herself, but by then Tayan was angry on her behalf. He and Lilla were closer friends with the Xenti than she was, who had to rely on others to translate for her, but that meant nothing to him in the light of Ilandeh’s incomprehensible actions at the river. Now the three of them stood ranged against Ilandeh, with Dakto just behind looking wary and defensive. Ilandeh was stroking her left thumb over the inside of her right wrist and the small tattoo of a chulul it bore. It was a nervous habit and the eja was disproportionately pleased to see it. Dakto had the same tattoo, on the inside of his bicep, though his didn’t seem to have the same power to soothe.
‘Eja Xessa would like to be very clear that you understand what you have been told.’
Xessa switched her gaze from Tayan’s face to Ilandeh’s. The woman pressed a fingertip to the swollen, bloody mess of her broken nose. A shaman had reset it, but it was swelling up nicely and blackening both her eyes, too. Xessa felt a twinge of savage pleasure. Ilandeh’s nod was a jerk and a stuttering inhalation. She cupped her nose again and said something Xessa missed.
‘She said she is very sorry and it won’t happen again,’ Tayan translated for her. ‘She didn’t mean to put you or herself in danger.’
‘And tell her to stop covering her mouth when she talks,’ Xessa signed. ‘Has she learnt nothing since coming here? Is she deliberately insulting me?’
Xessa clenched her fists as the shaman translated. She was too inexperienced to have been loaned out to the Yaloh during a drought but the thought of that now, of living with people who couldn’t understand her, made her guts watery and her chest tight. She realised suddenly that she might never be sent into Yalotlan – supposing the war ever ended – for that very reason and the tightness grew thorns and pricked at her heart. This was her home and the duty was her life, yet she felt … outcast, even unwelcome.
All Tokob signed, because without it, those ejab who used the spirit-magic would be unable to communicate while it rode their senses and so their sacrifice would also be a punishment, an exclusion from the very life and society they fought to protect.
But the Xentib didn’t know how to speak with signs and neither did the Yaloh, despite the tribes’ close relationship, and they looked at Xessa as if she was different, making her uncomfortable in her own skin as she’d never been before.
‘You nearly killed me,’ Xessa signed so angrily that Lilla took a step sideways and then came back to pat her back. ‘Never, never go near the river again. If you do, I will let them eat you.’
Tayan hesitated, but then he repeated her words aloud and Xessa watched with deep satisfaction as both Xentib nodded frantically. They signed ‘sorry’ to her, but somehow their attempt caused even more anger to burn beneath her skin, and so she squeezed Tayan’s arm in thanks and strode out of the house, straining for calm.
It was nearly time to remove the pipe from the water so the Drowned couldn’t damage it. Any distraction on her part and the encounter from earlier could be repeated – and this time with lethal consequence. It was enough – just – for Xessa to swallow the rest of her anger. Watching Ossa prance ahead of her and concentrating on the grain of her spear shaft against her palm, she stormed out of Xentibec and began the long walk back to the Swift Water.
Xessa’s house was a single room, like most houses in the Sky City, with storage in the rafters and in cool pits dug into a corner beneath the floor and mats. She and Toxte sat cross-legged inside, Xessa’s foot resting on the wooden rocker that moved when trodden on, alerting her to guests.
Ossa and Ekka lounged next to each other, big triangular ears twitching in lazy contentment. The jug of beer was cool and frothy and Xessa was laughing helplessly at one of Toxte’s jokes when Ossa raised his head and looked at the doorway a moment before the rocker jolted under her heel.
Xessa clapped twice and Tayan poked his head through the door curtain. ‘Are we interrupting?’ he signed with a sly smile and Xessa’s gesture needed no translation. Tayan and Lilla came in, and, after a pause, Dakto and then Ilandeh. Xessa’s good humour vanished as fast as the temperature in the room dropped.
‘What is she doing here?’ the eja demanded even as Toxte put his hand on her knee and gave her a crooked, encouraging smile.
Ilandeh knelt opposite her, carefully in the torchlight but not backlit so Xessa and Toxte could see her face and hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ she signed and Xessa huffed out a breath. This again. ‘It was wrong to distract you,’ she continued, ‘and it was wrong to visit the Swift Water. It won’t happen again.’
Her hands were slow and she bore a look of concentration rather than contrition, but Xessa understood. She flashed a glance at Tayan – ever the peace-weaver, it seemed, for of course it was he who’d taught her.
‘I would …’ Ilandeh tried and then paused. She swallowed hard and Xessa narrowed her eyes in suspicion. ‘I would like to learn. If you would teach.’
‘Learn what? To be eja?’ she signed, though she thought she knew the answer.
Ilandeh looked horrified at the suggestion when Tayan translated and Xessa’s chest warmed at it. ‘To sign.’
Everyone was watching her. ‘I’ll be gone soon and for who knows how long?’ Tayan signed when her gaze reached him. ‘You need another friend. You do,’ he interrupted before she could respond.
Ilandeh tapped the wood under Xessa’s foot. ‘Gift for you,’ she signed, clumsier now. Dakto handed her a basket woven from palm and she pulled from it a long cord threaded with tiny, red-dyed bones. A charm. ‘Bat,’ she signed. ‘For …’ She looked to Tayan. ‘Sight,’ she finished.
It was as if they were all holding their breaths waiting for her to respond. Ossa rose to his feet, ears up and ready for her command. Toxte put his hand on her leg again and this time left it there, warm and rough.
Sight. So I can see fucking idiots creeping up on me and trying to get me killed?
‘Thank you,’ she signed instead, and only because Tayan wanted her to. ‘It’s lovely.’ She held out her hand but Ilandeh smiled with delighted relief and scrambled across the mats.
‘… braid it for you,’ Xessa just saw before the Xentib fingers were at her temple. She sat stiff and stony until the charm hung in the mass of her hair with the others. Ilandeh surprised her again, pulling her into a quick hug and kissing the side of her face, before she hurried back across the room to Dakto’s side. Together, they unpacked a stoppered jar and some leaf-wrapped meat and cornbread. Tayan appropriated her spare cups and they filled them with beer and portioned out the food.
‘Please enjoy,’ Dakto signed, and despite Tayan’s protests – Xessa said nothing – the Xentib left them to it.
Xessa realised Toxte’s hand was still on the bare skin of her leg. She put her own over it and squeezed and the look he gave her was hot and questioning. It spoke directly to the part of her mind that watched the way he moved, graceful as a dancer, as a killer, that watched the crinkle around his eyes when he laughed and how comfortable he was in his own skin. She swallowed and then managed an embarrassed smile, wondering if the heat in her cheeks was visible to everyone else.
Tayan flicked the foam off his beer at her. ‘It’s me you’re supposed to be paying attention to tonight,’ he complained. ‘Seeing as Betsu and I leave tomorrow.’
‘That’s why we’re celebrating,’ Lilla told him with mock solemnity and Tayan flicked beer at him, too, but they smiled at each other with such mutual adoration that it made Xessa warm. She had long since outgrown her jealousy at sharing space in Tayan’s heart.
But tomorrow. Her childhood friend was leaving tomorrow, on a journey infinitely more dangerous than his meeting with the Zellih had been. She raised her cup to him in salute and together they downed the contents.
‘… you’ll be gone?’ Toxte was asking.
‘Three moons, perhaps,’ Tayan said, signing at the same time. ‘Depending on how fast we can move through their Empire. Thirty days in the Singing City to find someone senior enough we can negotiate with and get them to understand why it’s in everyone’s best interests they remain content with what they have. The Yaloh have reluctantly agreed to cede the portion of land that the Empire has already stolen in return for peace. And we can offer tithes of meat and gems, skins and obsidian.’
His body language was confident, even excited, though Lilla’s jaw was tense as he watched his husband. The warrior shifted closer until his thigh pressed against Tayan’s and the shaman broke off long enough to look up at him and rest his head on the taller man’s chest for a second. Lilla reached out and ran his finger along the pale yellow marriage cord resting on Tayan’s collarbones, its twin tied around his own throat. The cords were knotted with promises and some were hung with tiny charms that meant those promises were fulfilled. A life mapped out; a life shared.
The gesture was so strangely intimate that Xessa blushed and looked away, and was caught by the lovely planes of Toxte’s face as he watched her in turn, the broad sweep of his cheekbones and the heat of his expression. Toxte stroked her hair back from her cheek and refilled her cup, leaning close as he did. He smelt of sunlight and fresh sweat and smoke, the faint sweetness of honeyed beer.
A sudden twitch as the spirit-magic left his system and the beer slopped over the side of her cup. Xessa steadied his hand, her fingers lingering on his. When she looked up, Tayan was laughing at her again. She repeated the gesture from earlier and drank to hide a foolish grin. A knot loosened in her chest even as another tied in her gut. She was losing Tayan, for a while, but she knew with sudden certainty as her gaze returned, without volition, to Toxte, that she’d gained something – someone – else.
Warrior and shaman left earlier than usual for their own home and bed and privacy before they were separated again. The way their eyes had lingered on each other again and again sparked longing in her belly, and when Toxte, tipsy and laughing, said goodbye later that night, she surprised him with a kiss, the first against his cheek, the second grazing the corner of his mouth.
He blinked at her, hope and caution blurring in his eyes, and Xessa’s belly filled with butterflies. ‘Get some sleep, drunk eja,’ she signed, her cheeks warm, ‘and we’ll see if you remember that in the morning.’
Toxte’s lips parted and she couldn’t prevent her gaze flickering down to watch. They curved in another smile. ‘Believe me, I’ll remember,’ he signed. ‘Though I’m not sure I’ll get much sleep thinking about it.’ And he touched her cheek with his knuckles, light as feathers, and then he was gone.
TAYAN
The Neck, Xentiban, Empire of Songs
140th day of the Great Star at morning
‘We wear the peace feathers; we mean no ill intent or violence, but seek passage to the Singing City to begin a peace-weaving that will end the war on Yalotlan. We would speak with your Singer himself if that is possible; if not, then one of his representatives.’
The warriors surrounding them wore the tattoos, paints and hairstyles of three different tribes. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ one scoffed from the rear of the group that barred the trail. ‘Peace-weaving? May as well turn around now, little shaman, and scurry back home. We’ll be along to take it soon enough.’
‘Enough,’ snapped another. This speaker, a woman, wore a long scarlet feather in her shoulder-length, tightly braided black hair. A frog tattoo was visible at the base of her throat, just above her salt-cotton. She turned back to Tayan and Betsu. ‘Though the Coyote leader speaks true. The Pechaqueh have no need for nor interest in peace-weavings, and you would never be granted so much as to look upon the source, let alone meet the Singer.’ There was a bark of mockery in her tone. ‘No one meets the holy lord, and certainly not a no-blood, frog-licking, god-killing Tokob.’
‘I am Yaloh,’ Betsu said heatedly and was ignored.
Tayan blinked at the raw hostility in the faces of the warriors. ‘One of his council then. You … you do have a council?’
The warrior sneered at him. ‘Even they are too far above you,’ she said.
‘And yet that is our destination,’ Betsu said, her tone even and far calmer than Tayan had expected after her last comment. Her mood had been increasingly unpredictable in the two days they’d been under the song, not that he could blame her. The song didn’t stop, not ever. Worse, they couldn’t even drown it out through music or song of their own, or through plugging their ears or shouting at the tops of their lungs. It was there, a constant, nagging presence, a slow insidious poison. And it was beautiful. Oh, ancestors, it was beautiful. It was what frightened Tayan most about it. The disdain in the Coyote’s voice, and that of the woman, resonated within him. Who was he, after all, to think to negotiate with so mighty an Empire?
Betsu, it seemed, had no such insecurities. ‘Stand aside. You are not even Pechaqueh. Our business is with your owners.’
As one, the group of warriors, at least fifty in number from what Tayan could see under the low branches and heavy rain, brandished weapons. The woman with the scarlet feather lunged forward; Betsu’s spear came up in defence and Tayan bellowed and knocked it down. The Empire warrior’s spear raked across his ribs, and unlike the rest, he wore no salt-cotton. He was a shaman. Fire erupted in his chest and he gasped, his knees suddenly weak, but he planted himself between Betsu and the enemy.
‘Peace,’ he screeched, ‘fucking peace!’ Hot blood ran freely down his side. Tayan tried to ignore it and the churning nausea and the sickening pain. He was fairly sure the woman had sliced off his nipple.
Either his words or the blood had had an effect, for the warriors drew back, their weapons pointing at the ground. Tayan shoved one hand behind him blindly, hoping Betsu wouldn’t be so fucking stupid as to do, well, anything.
‘We wear the peace feathers, and you have broken that sanctity.’ The woman paled a little at his words. ‘You may not believe in our peace-weaving, but you understand peace feathers, I see that in your faces.’ He paused to catch his breath. ‘Yet there was … hastiness on both sides. Please, we must continue our journey to the Singing City. If you will not aid us, then at least do not hinder us.’
‘Already our journey will be slower while the shaman heals,’ Betsu added, and this time the woman with the scarlet feather blushed.
‘I will escort you,’ she said, ‘with seven of my warriors. As for the rest, continue as ordered. Report my whereabouts when you reach your destination.’
Deliberately vague, Tayan thought, but he didn’t question her. Tokob and Yaloh warriors would do the same.
‘I am Beyt of the macaws, of the Fourth Talon of the Melody. I – your wound, it—’
‘I am Tayan, shaman and peace-weaver of the Tokob. This is Betsu, warrior and peace-weaver of the Yaloh. The wound is, I hope, no more than a scratch.’
‘Then tend to it.’ She went into a huddle with a couple of other warriors and Tayan finally allowed himself to sag against a tree. He winced and pulled his shirt away from the wound, and then Betsu was there, yanking up the material. He hissed a curse.
‘You’re right. Little more than a scratch. Won’t need stitching. Straighten up and I’ll bandage it.’ The shaman complied, gritting his teeth at her less-than-gentle touch. ‘Well done on getting them to split up; it’ll be much easier to get rid of this lot now, then we can circle back and pick up the trail of that coyote-fucker with the yapping mouth.’
Tayan gripped Betsu’s wrists, stilling her. ‘We are peace-weavers,’ he hissed. ‘And we now have an escort to guarantee us safe passage to the Singing City. That means they – and we – get to stay alive and that is my only concern at this time. No, listen,’ he continued when she tried to pull away. ‘You are a peace-weaver. Whatever else you are, while we are in the Empire, you are a peace-weaver. And I could do without any more scars when I get home to my husband. When I get home. Understand?’
Betsu’s expression was mutinous and hard as flint, but then she nodded once, a single reluctant jerk of the head. ‘You are right,’ she said at last, and finished bandaging his chest in silence.
‘Are you ready, peace-weavers?’ Beyt called and the pair exchanged a last look before nodding. ‘Then stay close. We’ll reach a proper road in a couple of days and our progress will be swift then. I hope you can keep up.’
That last seemed like a challenge, warrior to warrior, and Betsu took it as such. Tayan sighed and then winced. The bandaging had done absolutely nothing to stem the burning agony in his chest, even if it did stop the bleeding. Beyt and three of her warriors took the lead, and the other four followed the peace-weavers. He had been two days under the song, and had had his flesh torn and was in the hands of enemies. He prayed neither were an omen.
The Neck was so named because it was the narrowest part of Xentiban, a thin corridor of jungle and farmland separating Yalotlan from Pechacan. All too soon they were across it; all too soon they were into Pechacan itself, the song’s heartland.
Tayan hadn’t been sure what to expect – would the song change again, become more powerful, or purer, or have more meaning for him? Would it sweep him up so that he was lost in its promise? They crossed the border marked not with a pyramid but a tall, carved finger of rock, an ancient marker that had once formed a symbolic barrier between two lands and two tribes. The warriors escorting them passed it without a flicker of hesitation, but just as when they had finally come under the song, Tayan and Betsu paused and slowed their steps. The shaman held his breath as he walked through the shadow of the stone.
Nothing.
Sighing and slightly embarrassed, he hurried after the others. The jungle disappeared a little more each day they walked, becoming tamer, shrinking into strips and wedges of trees and shrubs and tumbling vines only a few sticks across between wide tracts of brown and green farmland. Huts were gathered at each end and entire families toiled between the small shoots of beans and maize. Only the bamboo and water vine and wide-leaved plants were allowed to grow wild and lush to provide Pechaqueh and their slaves a safe water supply.
Children ran, arms flapping to scare away the birds pecking at the crops. It took Tayan a couple of days to realise why it made him uncomfortable. Tokob children did the same thing, but they laughed and squealed and chased each other as they did so. Here it was silent, without joy. They were too young to learn such lessons, but the wide leather collars on the children’s necks were eloquent teachers.
Over everything loomed the pyramids, more and more of them, some old and crumbling, liana-covered, others newer and shining in the sun, their paint vibrant, the murals almost alive.
The sky was too open for Tayan’s liking, despite the fact he lived on the sparsely treed slopes of Malel. He was used to the confines of the Sky City, the comforting press of building and plaza and steep, walled streets. This was different, an artificial emptiness, and every horizon was bounded with smoke from burning jungle, acrid, the taste of ash and defeat ever on his lips.
The trail they followed was wide enough for ten people to walk abreast and made of finely carved blocks of limestone and sandstone. ‘This is how they move their warriors so fast,’ Betsu hissed, gesturing at the trail. ‘This is how they conquer so easily, by moving thousands at once to the edge of the territory and then invading in huge numbers, unstoppable. This is what they’re doing to us. The resources to quarry so much stone …’ She paused, both wondering and worried. ‘Are their numbers as vast as the stars at night?’
The steep slopes and narrow trails of hilly Tokoban would slow them when they came, but as the horizon widened day by day and he saw the multitude of slaves toiling in fields too wide for him to see across, and they passed cities greater than the Sky City and stepped off the road to let free people, not only Pechaqueh, pass them, he knew the hills wouldn’t stop them. He began to suspect nothing would. Were they still on a peace mission, or just a negotiation to delay the inevitable? Could trade and tithes stave off their endless numbers? Or would they be forced to accept the song before they were allowed to live in peace? Would even that concession be enough to sate Pechaqueh lust? Would anything?
PILOS
Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs
148th day of the Great Star at morning
It was good to be home. Better than good, it was cleansing to the soul to be back in the Empire, to be back under the song that had been absent his blood for so many months. It coursed both around him and inside him, through his veins, beneath his skin and within his bones, the comforting endless music of divinity, of glory. Of home.
High Feather Pilos, commander of the Melody and all its Talons, wore a fresh tunic and kilt in alternating bands of red and black, new sandals laced up at his ankles, and a cloak of feathers denoting his rank, brushed of dirt and freshly oiled against the rain. More feathers were braided into his hair, war feathers and honour feathers, and the single stiff tail feather of a turkey sticking up over his ear to announce his peaceful intent.
At his side marched Atu; the young warrior was his second in command, not that it was apparent from his gleeful, grinning appearance. He’d been away from his home and wife here in the Singing City for a year, and she’d been one of the first waiting beneath the ceremonial arch to welcome the Melody home in victory. Pilos smirked at the heat of her welcome for him – he knew what Atu would be doing within an hour of being dismissed.
Behind them in a long snake marched the Melody, slave warriors at the rear, dog warriors in the middle and the elite, full-blood Pechaqueh eagle warriors immediately behind the High Feather. The macaws, wearing their scarlet feathers, patrolled to either side of the long lines of captives – they were half-blood Pechaqueh, a step below elite, a step above the no-blood slaves and dogs. Scattered among them were the secretive, anonymous Whispers, more rumour than fact, more legend than living.
Every warrior wore a peace feather above one ear, and that covenant was sacred.
In the Melody’s midst, long lines of Yaloh and even some of their Tokob allies walked, hands bound to their waists, roped at the neck. Men and women brought under the song to learn its glory, to serve its majesty, to understand its power, all taken before the Wet forced Pilos to abandon the offensive for the season. The fighters would be inducted into the Melody as slave warriors, the rest sent to the flesh markets and from there to every corner of the Empire that needed their labours so they might learn of the song and the Singer’s mercy. Not as many as he’d have liked to have brought under the song by now, but enough to give advantage to the Melody and, with the Singer’s blessing, a swift end to the annexation after the rains. Another year and it would be done and then, perhaps, a time of peace.
