Iktan’s eyes were hooded, glazed with a deceptive calmness. Xiala remembered xir earlier quip about them all being prisoners. She had thought the comment mocking, but now she wondered if Iktan had in mind a particular bitch when xe had spoken of fate.
Ziha stood. Xiala could see the sweat on the back of her neck, the slight tremor in her hands. “I’ll let you finish your meal. I have things to see to in camp. We will talk again tonight and plan to be moving toward the Puumun River before dawn. Xiala of the Teek, I would very much like to hear what you know of the Odo Sedoh when I return this evening. And perhaps then Iktan can share what xe learned from xir man in Carrion Crow Shield. But for now…”
She bowed slightly at the neck and was out, the tent flap blowing behind her. Words were exchanged with the guards, and they stayed where they were instead of following their commander.
“Looks like we’re under guard now,” Xiala said.
“It’s theater,” Iktan said confidently. “If I wanted them dead, they’d be dead in seconds. Assassin, remember?” Xe had risen and was searching through the trunks and pots in the back of the tent. Xiala heard the clatter of things being pushed aside.
“What are you looking for?”
“I’ll know it when I find… ah.” Xe came back bearing a bottle of xtabentún. “I knew she had to be keeping a bottle somewhere.”
Xiala had not touched drink since the Convergence and was not sure now that she should. But she did not protest when Iktan uncorked the bottle, took the two clay cups left from their meal, and filled them with alcohol. And she said nothing when xe set one in front of her and took the other.
Iktan drank, long and deep, before topping the cup off and settling back in the furs, back propped against a pile of cushions.
“Tell me about the Odo Sedoh.”
She folded her hands in her lap, trying to ignore the cup that seemed to beckon. “Tell me of the Watchers first,” she countered.
“What do you want to know?”
“You’re a priest?”
“Was a priest,” xe corrected, tapping xir cup. “Drink is forbidden in the priesthood. I was a priest until Ziha’s mother and her murderous cousin killed a friend I cared very much about. And then your friend killed all but a few children and graybeards left in the tower, which means there’s not much of the Watchers left.” Xe drank more. “Clearly, people having murderers for friends is the problem here.”
“If there are some Watchers left, couldn’t you rebuild?”
She couldn’t believe she was even asking. Serapio had explained how corrupt they were, the transgressions they had committed. But this person before her seemed lost, and she knew what being lost felt like, so her instinct was to offer some comfort.
“There is nothing to rebuild,” Iktan said with a note of finality. “The Watchers served for more than three hundred years. They did what they could to keep the Meridian at peace, and now war comes, and they are done.” Xe glanced at her. “I think you mistake ‘priest’ for ‘martyr.’?”
“So if you are no longer a priest, what are you?”
“Now I am a person with an enviable skill set and an exciting amount of indifference.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said quietly.
“No? You will.”
She watched Iktan’s face, looking for signs of that cool rage that she was beginning to understand was when xe was most dangerous, and seeing none of it, she ventured, “Can I ask you something?”
“Please do.”
“How is it that you were not on Sun Rock with the rest of the Watchers?”
“Ah, Xiala of the Teek,” xe said, pressing a hand over xir heart. “Again, we must look to fickle fate. I was in a rage when Nara went missing. I blamed myself. Eche tried to claim that Nara had killed the tsiyo at her door and run, and while I am a fool, I am not an idiot. I tore the tower apart, sent dedicants out to search for her, and nothing. I couldn’t prove it, but I knew what they had done. When the time came for the Convergence ceremony, I sent one of my tsiyos in my stead. It was a thing I did often when I didn’t have the patience for their pomp and bloviating, and I was in no mood to stand shoulder to shoulder with those who had killed my friend.”
“If you believe they killed your friend and you hate them for it, what are you doing here?”
“I considered staying in Tova,” xe admitted. “But once I realized Golden Eagle was already shifting the game to Hokaia, I knew I needed to see the larger battlefield. Nara is gone, and I cannot bring her back. The Watchers, likewise, are no more. Whatever happens in Tova will happen. Carrion Crow may well take leadership of the Sky Made and hold dominion over the city. Or perhaps they will remain a peculiar little religious sect content with worshipping their dark god, as you seem to think. But either way, the Meridian is in revolt. With the fall of the Watchers, the Treaty of Hokaia has been broken. The signatories are free to do what they wish, and what they wish is war.”
“But why? What does Tova have that makes them so powerful? Why did the four cities bow to them to begin with?”
“Do you not know the history of the War of the Spear?”
“The Teek do not teach it to their children. We do not talk much of the outside world except to warn against it.”
“Hmmm. I can tell you, if you like. It is taught to us when we are dedicants. It is the reason for our existence.” Xe took a moment to refill xir cup and settle back before beginning.
“It began with a spearmaiden named Seuq. She was said to be the greatest of her people. The smartest, the bravest, the strongest. Always looking for adventure, afraid of nothing. She was the leader of her class at the war college. So when a group of young maidens decided to venture to the Graveyard of the Gods, no doubt on some drunken dare, she was the first to volunteer. It was forbidden, of course. The Graveyard of the Gods lies far to the north. It is said to be the place where many gods from the God Wars fell, and great magics run wild there. It is said that those who enter do not return. But it is also said that if anyone is brave enough to breech the Graveyard and eat from the fruit at its heart, the one they call godflesh, then they will have power unimaginable. The power of not just one god but all the gods.
“Seuq could not resist this challenge. What daring spearmaiden could? She led four companions north that summer. Herself, Gwee, Odae, and Asnod. It took months to reach the Graveyard. They battled giant bears and frost giants, flesh eaters and revenants. But at last they made it to the Graveyard. It is said to be a place of both horror and beauty, a living forest of calcified white stone hoodoos, the bones of gods, cut through with swaths of earth the color of blood. They followed the path, careful not to stray, for they knew the enemies beyond the path were the spirits themselves. They passed the lake where the sun god shed her scales in battle, and the deep crater where the coyote god fell and bent the earth, leaving his salty sweat upon the shore. And finally, they reached the center, where the rare godflesh grows. And one by one, they ate.
“Asnod died immediately, tearing her own flesh from her face, screaming of creatures burrowed under her skin. Odae died on the journey back after she attacked the other two in a rage of madness. But Seuq and Gwee returned and found they had a prodigious new power. They had the power to walk in a person’s dreams.”