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 gently, 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.
Xessa wound through an ancient rockfall, picking her way among slabs taller than she was and over others smaller than an infant. Her knees buckled and she caught herself just in time, forced them straight and kept walking, bouncing gently between the rocks on her cut feet, one hand holding Ossa in place until she regained her balance.
She came around the shoulder of the hill, but her sob of relief caught in her throat. The city wasn’t there. Xessa blinked, confused, and then quartered the landscape and saw it, far below. Of course, she was too high, had come out onto the scree field near the Swift Water’s main tributary. Deep enough for a Drowned.
Should she go back the way she’d come, and potentially run into any warriors tracking her, or risk the water and head through the scree, which would slip and roll beneath her torn feet and alert any Drowned to her presence?
Ossa butted her head with his and Xessa clung to a boulder and lowered herself onto her knees, biting her lip at the shuddering in her thighs. The dog slithered off her shoulders and looked up at her, then he sniffed the wind and gave her the predator signal from behind and downhill.
Shit. Shit shit shit.
Xessa was out of options. She took a deep breath, clicked three times, and whistled once. Home.
Ossa cocked his head but she cast him and he went, and Xessa sat back on her heels and watched her brave, clever dog race downhill through the scree towards the city, limping but running, running for her. One of them at least would make it back and if whoever found him had any sense, they’d realise something was amiss.
Xessa hauled herself back to her torn feet and picked her way after the dog through the scree, arms out for balance and praying the stream ahead of her was free of Drowned. Not much to eat up here. Not much to sing for. Please be empty. Please be empty. Malel, ancestors, let it be empty.
The ground slid from under her and then came up to meet her knees, the palms of her hands and then her forehead. Lightning exploded behind her eyes and the pain in her feet was so great the thought of standing made her want to weep. But Ossa was running, running on three legs. If he could do it, so could she. Xessa pushed herself back up and shambled downhill towards the city shining palely through wind and rain and oncoming gloom. And then someone was coming towards her, a dark blur through the downpour.
‘Enemy,’ she signed, the gestures big so they could be seen. ‘Northern slope. Enemy.’
It had been Toxte, of course – her husband had come looking when the day had worn on and she hadn’t returned. He’d slung her arm over his shoulders and raced her downhill and in through the city gate. He’d shouted for Ossa and then shouted what Xessa had told him and caused a panic. But a necessary one.
Now Xessa was in the upper healing cave, despite her protests, while Beztil swabbed at the myriad cuts and bruises decorating feet, shins, and knees, her elbows and hands and forehead. Beztil, not Tayan.
‘Tayan?’ She signed his name. Then: ‘Pechaqueh. I saw Pechaqueh on the northern slope. Eagle feathers. And red ones.’ Panic flared within her. ‘Shaman, where’s Tayan?’
Beztil wouldn’t answer and Xessa looked at Toxte, who was bandaging Ossa’s hind leg. She wanted to ask, but the dog needed healing too – even more than she did. She only had cuts and bruises. She shoved Beztil’s hands away and snapped her fingers rudely in her face. ‘Where is Tayan?’ she repeated.
Beztil’s cheeks puffed out and her shoulders slumped, but she met Xessa’s gaze. ‘The last anyone saw him,’ she signed with obvious reluctance, ‘he’d gone up to the womb to speak to that fucking monster you caught. He’s become obsessed.’ Beztil pressed her lips together and then softened. ‘More warriors followed those you first saw, hundreds, thousands more. It wasn’t a scout or a patrol – they’ve cut us off from the womb. We can’t get to him,’ she added as Xessa lunged upright.
Beztil grabbed her arm. ‘No one can. He’s trapped.’
The enemy had come, and not just above them on Malel’s sacred skin. They’d marched out of the jungle below, too, taking up position on the city’s western flank, where the slope was clear of river, orchards and fields – a wide, open space that was going to run with rain and blood and be scattered with corpses. Where all their fates would be decided.
The high elders of Tokob and Yaloh spoke from the ritual platform in the largest festival plaza not long before dusk, asking for calm and for every non-fighter proficient with bow and blowpipe to defend the walls the next morning.
Xessa, Toxte, and most of the ejab had a place near the front of the crowd as normal, and Xessa watched High Elder Apok’s face for … she didn’t know what for. A way out. Some way to rescue Tayan and the ejab guarding the Drowned in the womb. A plan that wouldn’t see them all dead or captives at the end of it.
She was shaking and leaning on Toxte’s hip, the sole of her left foot cut and swollen, hating the feel of the bandages and the soft doeskin boot she had to wear to protect the wound from dirt. It cut her off from the ground, left her feeling out of sorts and irritable, and it was such a little thing amid the horror of the Melody being here, but perhaps that was why she couldn’t stop focusing on it. It was small, and so it was easy. Understandable. Nothing about the Pechaqueh greed and hate and arrogance was understandable.
Toxte’s arm tightened around her chest as she fidgeted again, and his mouth brushed the top of her ear in a kiss. She turned her head into it.
Apok kept on speaking, Elder Rix signing his words. Xessa looked around the faces closest. Fear was the overriding emotion everywhere, closely followed by despair. They were cut off from the fields and the harvest that would be ready any day now. They were cut off from the Swift Water and now had to rely solely on rainfall – and the Wet was ending. All of the Paws who’d been fighting in Tokoban, pushed relentlessly and inevitably backwards, were now considered lost. They couldn’t expect reinforcements. They were surrounded, and they were outnumbered. They had non-combatants to protect.
‘Our only option is to defeat them in open combat,’ Apok was saying and Xessa felt the ripple of disbelief go through the crowd. Toxte’s arm tightened on her ribs until he shortened her breath and she squirmed to loosen his hold. ‘If we wait behind our walls, we are only ever going to be on the defensive. If we attack, we have the chance to break their spirits and overwhelm their numbers. Our warriors will march out at dawn.’
There was another ripple and Apok and Rix both paused as the crowd shifted. The high elder glanced sideways at Rix, and the eja elder’s shoulders slumped before he nodded. Xessa stood straighter, one hand fisted in Toxte’s tunic.
‘Now that the Swift Water and the fields and orchards are cut off, the council asks the ejab to volunteer for the reserve. You would only fight if there was no other choice, but we cannot deny that it may come down to you being the last line of defence between our civilians and the Empire. We ask you to think carefully and come to the council house at dawn with your answer.’
Shit and fuck.
Being asked to fight was far, far worse than being ordered to. Xessa and Toxte stared at each other and the panic Xessa had felt the night before they’d been supposed to capture the Drowned roared back until she was dizzy with it. She held on even tighter, and Toxte tilted his head in silent query: Will you fight? She made herself scan the crowd, take in the non-fighters, the parents holding children tight against them, too tight, crushing.
The Sky City needed her and Xessa had always given it what it needed. She firmed her jaw against the promise of tears, of raw denial, and looked back to Toxte. She nodded, jerky and graceless, and his eyes slipped closed as anguish flickered like lightning across his face, his need to protect her weighed against their joint need to protect the city. Their duty.
‘I’ll be at your side for all of it,’ he signed, fierce as a hawk, his eyes blazing. ‘I won’t leave you. I’m never leaving you.’ Then he pulled her in against him and wrapped hard, warm arms around her. She let him, never wanting to move from the safe darkness against his chest. Couldn’t, because the circle of his arms and the press of his body was safe, whereas the world had been revealed to be anything but.
She held him, because war had come, and not just to Tokoban and the Sky City. War had come to Xessa – and she wasn’t ready.