“The hair is all mine. A gift from my unknown father, perhaps.”
She came to sit across from Iktan, unsure what else to do. At least, she felt decently refreshed. She wondered what food Ziha would bring them. After her experience in the Crow camp, her expectations were modest. But from the looks of this tent and Ziha’s clothes, Golden Eagle had wealth to flaunt. She hope that indulgence carried over to their cooking.
“Do you have bayeki in Teek?” Iktan asked idly, eyes still closed.
“We have only women.”
“I’m no woman,” xe said, “but I’m no man, either. It is a gender most common to my clan, but I have heard there are others.”
She shrugged. “I have not met all the people in the world. It is a very large place.”
“So it is,” Iktan said, grinning. “So it is.”
“How did you know I was Teek? I met some in Tova who had never heard of us.”
“It is the nature of my profession to know people,” xe confessed. “I would not take it personally.”
“You called yourself ‘priest’ before, on the shore,” she said, “but I’ve never met a priest who looked like you. Or moved like you. Or kept a sharp knife up their sleeve and a sharper tongue in their mouth.”
Iktan chuckled. “I do like to think myself singular, but in truth, we were half a hundred tsiyo. The Order of Knives.”
She shook her head, still not following.
“Assassins for the Sun Priest,” xe said when she was silent.
“Shit.”
Iktan laughed, genuinely amused. “I did say you were fucked.”
The flap opened, and Ziha and three others ducked inside. Iktan sat up as the Golden Eagle commander joined them on the furs. Two of the people who had accompanied her began to set a breakfast before them. Xiala spied both corn and knotweed breads. Jellied persimmons and wild plums, small blue-tinted fowl eggs, and a mix of greens and roots that looked to have been gathered from the shores of the river.
“This is generous,” Xiala remarked.
“She only wants to fatten you up before the slaughter,” Iktan said. “Golden Eagle hospitality is always double-edged.”
Ziha’s tone was as icy and jagged as the cliffs of Tova in winter. “I have chosen to ignore your insults, Priest, and assign them to your lack of couth. I would have nothing to do with you if given the choice, but Mother has made it very clear to me that you are valued, and I am to treat you as an ally and trusted adviser, so I will do so. But there is no need to insult me or my clan.”
Iktan dipped bread into the fruit mélange and popped it into xir mouth.
“You say nothing now?” Ziha challenged.
“Is this what you came to discuss?” xe asked. “My manners?”
Ziha frowned. “No.” She straightened her shoulders as if resetting herself with great effort.
It was clear Iktan had won the skirmish, but Ziha was determined to soldier on.
“We are six days out from the Convergence,” she said, “and by now word has traveled on eagleback to Cuecola and Hokaia recounting the fate that befell the Watchers. Layat says his lord in Cuecola is a sorcerer who reads the shadow mirror and would—”
“Layat is the matron’s adviser from Cuecola,” Iktan interjected for Xiala’s sake. “They financed a great deal of what you see before you, your meal included, in exchange for Golden Eagle’s loyalty.”
Ziha glared at the priest. “As I was saying. If Layat’s lord did his job, the Seven will have set sail for Hokaia by now. Word has been sent to Hokaia and to Teek—”
“Teek?” Xiala’s adrenaline surged, and her breath lodged in her throat. A memory of her mother, hand outstretched as a messenger handed her a summons, flashed before her. She could almost smell the caustic scent of her mother’s disdain, feel the heat of her impending fury at being summoned anywhere.
“Just perfunctory,” Ziha said dismissively. “It is a condition of the treaty. We don’t expect Teek to answer. Why would they when they’ve not bothered to answer a correspondence in a hundred years? In fact…” She tilted her head, hazel eyes curious. “I’d assumed the Teek were all dead until today.”
“How far from here to Hokaia?” Iktan asked, a deft refocusing away from Xiala’s heritage and Ziha’s astonishingly rude observation. Xiala wasn’t sure why xe did it, but she was grateful nonetheless.
“Twenty days or more,” Ziha said, letting the matter of Teek drop. “We’ll break camp in the morning and head for the headwaters of the Puumun River. It would have been faster had we waited until spring thaws, but we dared not with Tova under that unnatural sun. We don’t know what Carrion Crow will do in our absence, but we have to bear the risk if we want the combined might of the Meridian at our backs when we act.”
“When you act?” Xiala asked. “What is it you plan to do?”
“We plan to take Tova back from Carrion Crow.”
“The Carrion Crow do not hold Tova. We were just there. They rally only to Odo to see the Odo Sedoh.” It still felt strange to call Serapio by that name, but that was how they knew him, and instincts told her it was better not to share his true name with his enemies. “They’re not hurting anyone.”
“Not hurting anyone?” Ziha leaned in, face flushed and nostrils flaring. “My cousin Abah was only nineteen. She was a beautiful woman, a healer. She brought good into the world. The Shield found her on Sun Rock with her throat slashed and her head bashed in. And for what? What had she ever done to hurt anyone?” She ended in a shout, rage cording her neck.
“She bit a boy’s tongue off once,” Iktan offered.
Both women turned to stare.
“She was twelve, I think, a new dedicant, and the boy the same. They sent the boy to the healers but brought her to me. They thought perhaps her show of violence meant she had a propensity for becoming a tsiyo. People think it takes a certain kind of moral flexibility to be an assassin, but it’s really quite the opposite. Our values must be absolute. So I questioned the girl. Asked her why she had done it. Said that if she liked the boy, there were better ways to show her affection. She solemnly informed me that no, she did not like the boy. She had only wanted to taste his blood. She was curious, she told me, to see if it was salty or sweet.”
“Seven hells,” Xiala whispered, fighting the urge to touch a finger to her own tongue to make sure it was intact.
“They were not able to heal his tongue, so he never fully recovered his ability to speak. I don’t know what happened to him, if he left the priesthood or stayed on as a dedicant. But your cousin was a viper, Ziha. Let us not pretend otherwise.”
“A child’s misunderstanding. You would damn her for that?”
“I would damn her for many a thing, but one thing in particular.”
Ziha shifted, uncomfortable. “Naranpa should have never—”
“No,” Iktan said, voice suddenly lethal.
Xiala’s instincts made her still like a rabbit sensing the presence of a wolf. Ziha’s eyes shifted toward the door and the guards just outside. But she must have realized that Iktan was much too close, and much too fast, and if xe wished it, she would be dead before help could find her.
“Keep her name from your mouth, Golden Eagle,” xe whispered. “Your clan made promises to me and then broke them. You do not get to blame the dead with your excuses now.”
Ziha swallowed. “There are complications to what happened,” she said, voice as careful as footfalls on a frozen lake, “and I should not speak of them. Perhaps we have strayed too far from why we are here together, traveling treacherous roads with our careless thoughts. Golden Eagle is not your enemy, tsiyo. Or yours,” she said to Xiala.