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 on 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—’
‘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.