‘Ossa! Ossa, here, boy. Come on, dog.’ Lilla whistled, but the sound broke off as Tayan thumped him on the chest. ‘Ow!’
‘I want to sleep.’
‘No, you don’t. You want all the latest Xessa gossip, including whether she and Toxte have fucked yet. I don’t know which of them I want to hit harder for stringing it out this long.’
‘They won’t have.’
‘Bet?’
‘You buy me snake on a skewer when you lose.’
Lilla shrugged: ‘Fair enough,’ and Tayan knew that although it would be expensive, his husband wouldn’t begrudge him such a meal on their first day back.
Lilla stood and found their kilts, threw Tayan’s at his head and slipped into his own.
Tayan huffed and dressed, but his expectant grin faded as no prancing dog and smiling eja burst into their small, neat home. He padded to the door and pulled back the curtain. ‘Firepit’s not lit,’ he said, frowning.
‘Really? Maybe she spent the night at Toxte’s.’
Tayan chewed his lip. ‘And didn’t hear that we’d both returned home on the same day? No. I don’t like this.’
Lilla’s hand was gentle on his arm, and when he turned, he passed him the half-empty jar and then his tunic. ‘Then let’s go and find her,’ Lilla said and drank the last of the water Tayan had left for him. Together, they stepped out into a morning patched with cloud, the humidity already stifling, and strapped on their sandals. ‘Water temple?’
‘Makes sense.’
They were halfway down through the city, hurrying through the plazas and markets and sidestepping shrieking children and squabbling dogs when they heard a piercing whistle behind them and stopped to look. A grin was already breaking across Tayan’s face, but it faded when he saw the woman behind them wasn’t Xessa.
Eja Elder Tika strode towards them, her dog Yalla prancing at her side. ‘What wisdom from the ancestors, shaman?’ she demanded, without even any pleasantries. Tayan wasn’t surprised; Tika was elder because she was tough and well respected and an exceptional eja, though the spirit-magic did not ride her senses today. And at least this way, he could tell an elder what needed to happen and then go and find Xessa without feeling guilty.
‘The ancestors left me with little, elder. They say that only a Pecha can defeat the Pechaqueh. As such, it is clear to me that I must go to Pechacan, to the Singing City itself. There, I must convince a high-ranking Pecha that the war must end, that Yalotlan and Tokoban remain free.’
Tika was silent, tapping a fingertip against her pursed lips as she thought. ‘It is not what I had hoped, but then again neither was the outcome with the Zellih. Perhaps it is the only way, and I admire your courage. That is a long journey and a dangerous one. And I suspect the Singing City itself will be even more lethal. When will you set out?’
Tayan swallowed against the nerves fluttering in his belly. ‘That will be for the council to decide, elder. I would hope for at least some days here, to rest and prepare. And … now that you are here, elder, can you tell me where Eja Xessa is? Her house is empty and—’
‘The little fool tried to take on a pair of Drowned at the Swift Water three days ago. Toxte and the dogs had to drag her to safety and Ossa is hurt too. They’re both in the upper healing caves, under Shaman Beztil’s care. Your friend’s good, but she’s reckless. It will get her killed young.’
Worry filled Tayan’s belly, along with anger at Tika’s casual dismissal of Xessa’s abilities. She was one of the best of the thousand or so ejab in the Sky City, despite having seen fewer than twenty-five sun-years, though he had to admit that this wasn’t the first time she’d been injured.
‘How bad?’ he demanded as Lilla’s hand came to rest on the back of his neck in wordless comfort.
‘Poisoned, lost some leg skin. She’ll have a pretty new scar to remind her.’ Tika stroked the four pale lines that extended from her cheek down the side of her neck, reminder of her own tangle with a Drowned two decades before. ‘But she’ll make a full recovery. The dog too.’
‘Thank Malel,’ Tayan breathed. ‘Please, will you take the ancestors’ answer to the council? I need to see her.’
Tika nodded and then twitched, her eyelid flickering rapidly. She rubbed at it. The elder had been consuming spirit-magic for years to deaden her to the songs of the Drowned, and the prolonged exposure was beginning to take its toll.
The pair hurried back uphill towards the upper healing cave dug into Malel’s bones, inwards to the heart of creation, where the goddess’s power was most potent and the shamans’ treatments and spells most effective.
They skipped over the deep, narrow drainage channels carved in the centre of the limestone road that would carry rain downhill to the terraced fields during the Wet. They’d been designed to prevent a Drowned getting so much as one gill beneath water to aid its survival so far from the Swift Water and its many tributaries.
‘Lilla! You’re back!’ a voice called and Tayan would have ignored it if not for his husband’s answering shout.
‘Ilandeh, hello.’ The woman waved and hurried over, Dakto at her side.
‘Blessings on you,’ Ilandeh said, as she always did. ‘And welcome back to the city.’
‘I am glad to see you unhurt, Fang Lilla,’ Dakto added. ‘And you, shaman. I pray your journey to the Zellih was a success.’
Tayan was already hurrying on, leaving Lilla to make their excuses. It didn’t matter that Tika had said she’d live; he had first-hand experience of Drowned venom and knew exactly how awful it was. He had no time to spare for Xentib refugees, no matter how likeable the pair was.
They had arrived before the last Wet, fleeing the Pechaqueh advance that had swallowed their lands and their people in the conquest four sun-years before. They joined the few hundred other Xentib who already lived here, the lucky escapees from slavery. Together, they’d taken over the duskside lower quadrant of the city, now known as Xentibec.
Ilandeh and Dakto were the last to make it so far north; they’d kept to themselves in the jungles, living hand-to-mouth, until the Empire’s push towards Yalotlan forced them to beg for refuge in the Sky City and there discover the last free remnants of their people.
But in the months since the Yaloh refugees had begun arriving, tensions had risen in the city. The two tribes had shared a border and there were generations of bad blood between them, and despite the fact they were all refugees together, and guests in Tokoban, insults and brawls had been becoming more common before Tayan had left to try to weave an alliance with the Zellih.
Tayan cared for none of it as he pushed his way around the edges of the busy market and up the wide avenue leading to the healing cave before darting in through the wide mouth gaping from the hillside. ‘Eja Xessa,’ he barked and an apprentice pointed the way.
Three days ago. Three days without me. Beztil was a talented shaman, but when it came to healing and medicine for his loved ones, Tayan wouldn’t let anyone else touch them. ‘I heard what happened. Are you all right?’ Tayan demanded as he burst through the curtain into Xessa’s room, and then signed the question after he’d touched her arm. Sometimes she would feel the change in the air when someone entered her presence. The scent of rain, or just the awareness of another person nearby would alert her, even if Ossa didn’t. This time she hadn’t noticed him pushing into the tiny underground cell.