—Teek saying
The early-dawn fruit sellers walked the streets of Cuecola, enticements to purchase the day’s brews ringing from their lips. Their voices flowed through the narrow streets and wide avenues alike, past the modest oval-shaped, thatch-roofed homes of the common citizens and up through the more lavish multistoried stone mansions of the merchant lords. They wove around the jaguar-headed stelae that guarded the great four-sided pyramids and across the well-worn royal ball court that sat empty in the predawn darkness. Across tombs and market squares and places of ceremony and out past the city walls, they filled the morning with their cries. Until even Xiala, blissfully unconscious until moments before, heard them.
“Somebody please shut them up,” she muttered, cheek flat against the cold dirt floor on which she had slept. “They’re giving me a headache.” She waited, and when no one acknowledged her, she asked again, a little louder.
For answer, someone kicked her in the ribs. Not hard, but enough to make her grunt and crack an eye open to see who had done it.
“You shut up,” the culprit said. It was a skinny woman twice her age with a drag to the left side of her face and an ominous scar across her neck. “You’re making more noise than them.”
“—mmm not,” Xiala mumbled, giving the stranger her best glare. Dirt stuck to her lip. She dragged a hand across her mouth to wipe it away. Only then did she get a good look around at the room she was in: dark wet walls and a wooden-slatted door where an open entrance should have been. Too many women reeking of body odor and fermented cactus beer sprawled on the floor, a lucky few huddled under threadbare cotton blankets in the cold. Someone was softly weeping in a dark corner.
“Fuck,” she said, sighing. “I’m in jail again.”
The skinny woman, the one who had kicked her, cackled. She was missing teeth. The two front and another lower one. Xiala wondered if they’d rotted out or she had sold them. She looked like someone who might have sold them.
“This ain’t a merchant lord’s house,” the woman said, grinning. “That’s for sure.”
“Thank the lesser gods for that, at least,” she said, and meant it. She was no fan of merchant lords. In fact, it was working for a merchant lord that had landed her here, in an admittedly roundabout way. If Lord Pech hadn’t tried to double-cross her, she wouldn’t have had to throw him into the ocean. She hadn’t stuck around to see if he was rescued or not, choosing instead to retreat to a cliffside cantina that looked much too seedy for someone like Lord Pech to frequent. Disgusted with the double-cross and her sour luck, she’d decided to drink. She would have decided to drink anyway, but it never hurt to have a good excuse.
Weary, she pushed herself to sitting. Too quickly, and her head spun, the price of her good excuses. Xiala gripped her skull with both hands, willing the world to steady. The skin on her knuckles pulled painfully, and she looked at her right hand to find them swollen and red. She must have hit someone, but for all the cacao in Cuecola, she couldn’t remember who. The toothless woman laughed harder.
Shaking her sore hand out and pointedly ignoring her amused cellmate, Xiala got to her feet. She ran questing fingers over her clothes, taking stock of what she was missing. Her dagger, which was no surprise. Her small purse, also not surprising. But she still had the clothes on her back and the sandals on her feet, and she told herself to be grateful for that. There had been a time or two she had come out of a drunken night with less.
She stepped over the sleeping figures around her, not bothering to mouth apologies when she accidentally trod on a hand or kicked a turned back. Most of the women didn’t notice, still sleeping or inebriated into oblivion. Xiala licked her dry, cracked lips. She wouldn’t mind a drink right now herself. No, she told herself. Didn’t we just establish drinking is what landed you here to begin with? No more drink. And no more merchant lords.
She threw that last one in for good measure, but she knew neither resolution would hold for long. She was a sailor, after all, and sailors relied on both merchant lords and alcohol to survive.
She reached the slatted door and tentatively tested it to see if it would give. It didn’t, so she pressed her face through the spaces between the bars, peering around the early-morning darkness. She faced a courtyard. The lack of light outside obscured the details, turning the building across from her into a rectangular stone block and the open space between them an empty hole. To her left and right stretched more cells, but she couldn’t tell if they were occupied or not. Either way, she seemed to be the only soul awake. Except for the woman who had laughed at her, of course.
She could still hear the fruit sellers, but they were fainter now, having moved on. Instead, her ears filled with the rustle of the wind through the palms and the familiar cries of chachalacas waking in their nests. The air was scented with the lingering aroma of freshly pulped papaya, spindly night-bloomers, and over all of it, the salty tang of the sea.
The sea.
The very thought was a comfort. When she was on the sea, she was happiest. The problems of the land, of jails and lords, didn’t exist. If she could get back on a ship, everything would be all right.
But first she had to get out of here.
“Guards!” she shouted, squinting into the darkness. She couldn’t see anyone, but there had to be guards. She banged a flat hand against the slats. They didn’t budge. She yelled again, but only the birds and the wind answered her. She needed something that would make some noise, that would draw attention. She had nothing on her but her clothes—black trousers that flared out to cleverly resemble the skirts that were more socially acceptable for Cuecolan women and a woven striped huipil, tied tight at her waist with a fringed scarf that trailed over one hip. None of it useful for making noise.
She tapped her foot against the ground, thinking. And rolled her eyes at the obvious solution. She slipped her left foot from its sandal and picked up the leather-soled shoe. She ran it across the slats, and it made a satisfying slapping sound.
“Guards!” she cried again, this time accompanied by the sound of leather striking the bars.
Annoyed voices rose behind her in disgruntled grumbling, but she kept at it, louder even.
Finally, a shadow detached itself from the wall two doors down. A woman in a guard uniform swaggered over, obviously in no hurry. Xiala ran her sandal across the slats with a heavier hand, willing the woman to speed. The guard’s face came into view in the dim light, irritation making her eyes small and her mouth smaller. Once within reach, her hand darted out serpent fast and plucked the shoe from Xiala with a growl. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I’m getting your attention,” Xiala said, raising her chin. “I’m ready to get out.”
The guard scoffed. “You’re not getting out.”
Xiala frowned. “What do you mean? I’ve sobered up. I won’t cause any trouble. You can let me go.”
An ugly smirk spread the guard’s mouth wide. “You’re in until the tupile decides what to do with you.”
“What to do with me?” Worry slipped down Xiala’s spine. Her memory of the night before was hazy at best. She assumed she’d been picked up on the street and dropped here to sleep off the drink. She wasn’t proud of it, but it wouldn’t be the first time and likely not the last. But this guard was insinuating there was more to her circumstances than public intoxication and a poorly thrown punch. Maybe Pech had squealed. She stifled a rising dismay.