She had made it halfway up the slope and past the town, the camp just over the next rise but still hidden by the tall grass, when she heard someone shout, “Teek!”
She turned to see three people approaching. A woman in the lead and behind her two men. The woman looked a bit like Ziha, brown-skinned and brown-haired but light-eyed. She wore the gold and white of Golden Eagle, and Xiala thought she looked a bit familiar, like she had seen her around camp. The men she did not know. They were paler in complexion and wore patchwork clothes, heavy furs on their shoulders, and rough hide and string for leggings. She tensed, unsure what to think. The woman gave her a friendly wave. Xiala looked back over her shoulder. She could almost see the tops of the camp tents and, below in the twilight, the town. Should she wait? The men looked none too savory, and her keen sense of danger urged her on. She turned her back to the strangers and quickened her pace, but her legs wobbled, and her breath came labored.
They sped up to catch her, and before she could reach the crest of the hill, a hand spun her around.
“Ho, Teek,” the woman repeated, and Xiala caught the scent of alcohol on her breath. She must have come from the travelers’ inn in the village.
“What do you want?”
“I come in peace!” The woman lifted her hands in innocence. “I was hoping you could help me settle a bet with my new friends.”
Xiala’s stomach clenched. “What kind of bet?”
“I told them about you, said we’ve got a Teek traveling with us. They said there’s no such thing, so I was bringing them back to see. And to collect on my bet,” she added, patting a small purse at her waist. “And there you were, the eagle’s luck!”
“The eagle’s luck, indeed,” said the first man, smiling, but she saw only avarice in his eyes, the way he licked at his lips.
Xiala took a step back. She knew this game, had been here a dozen times in port cities across the Crescent Sea. She rubbed her thumb across her pinkie, the one with the missing joint, and remembered the last time someone had caught her unaware. She could run, but her legs were weak. She could scream and hope to be heard, but that might prompt her harassers to action when all they’d done so far was leer. Be smart, she told herself. Bide your time. You’ve been in worse situations.
“Is it true, then, that you’re a Teek?” the second man asked. He snaked out a hand and took a curl of Xiala’s hair between his fingers. Xiala pulled back. He let the lock slip, laughing. “I hear Teek parts fetch a nice price in southern ports.”
“Especially the eyes,” the other man said, holding thumb and finger in a circle around his own. “So big and round, like fish eyes.”
She reached for her Song, and her headache flared. She sucked in a breath and grabbed her head between her hands. Images assailed her. The woman in blue, the green-eyed man. People screaming, bodies trampled underfoot. She tried to focus, to push past the bad memories, but her mind felt empty as untrod sand, as if the Songs of the ocean did not travel to places so far from her Mother’s purview, and Xiala had lost the right to Sing them.
The woman laughed, but it was clear to the men this was no jest, and they were noticeably more sober than the one who had led them here. Someone grabbed her arm, thick fingers digging into her flesh.
She didn’t have her Song, but she still had her fists. She threw a punch that connected hard against the man’s cheek and sent pain shooting up her arm. She received an ugly curse and a backhanded blow in return that sent her to her knees. She swayed, dazed, as hands reached for her again. She heard the sound of a blade slide free of a sheath and knew she might die, right there in the grass so far from the sea.
“Fuck off!” she screamed, but it came out mumbled and hoarse. Her head throbbed, but if she was going to die, she was going to do it fighting.
“What’s this?” the second man said. “The fish talks? Maybe we take her tongue, too.”
“The fish does more than talk,” came a soft, singsong voice, and Xiala almost wept in relief as Iktan seemed to appear from nowhere, the grass parting to make way. “She Sings. Do you know about a Teek’s Song, my friends?”
“Tsiyo!” the woman exclaimed in surprise.
“It is an ancient magic, a gift from the time of the gods woven into their very making,” Iktan continued. “It is said that they can kill with a single note. Imagine that. A simple melody”— xe hummed a note, stretched it out until it bent into something strange and unsettling—“and your brain will burst and leak from your ears. Or was it that your heart will shatter and leak from your anus? Well, either way, you’re leaking, so…”
The hands that held her let go.
“Just a bit of fun, tsiyo,” the first man said with a nervous laugh. “We wouldn’t have really hurt—”
“Careful, friend,” Iktan said, voice as cold as the frost on the riverbanks, “that your next words don’t call me a fool.”
“Our sincere apologies,” the woman offered, voice shaking. “We should have never come.” And then they were scrambling away, falling over themselves as they scattered back toward town.
“Pathetic,” Iktan murmured as xe watched them go.
Xiala heaved, trying to find air.
“Skies, Xiala!” Iktan swore. “Did they hurt you?”
“Land sickness,” she croaked. It had to be. Oh, Mother waters, it had to only be that. She rubbed at her throat, panic heavy on her chest.
“Land sickness? Shall I take you to the river?”
“No,” she mumbled. “Rivers feel different. They are not the sea. They don’t… they are not the Teek Mother.”
“No,” Iktan said. “They spring from the gods of snow and rain.”
Xe dropped down beside her and opened a waterskin. She took it and drank, swallowing as quickly as she could.
“Those things you said about a Teek’s Song,” she said, once she had drunk enough. “They are forbidden. We don’t use our Mother’s gift as a weapon.” She didn’t know why she said it when all she could think about were the times she had used her Song as exactly that, and why she thought Iktan would care. “We soothe the waters, can soothe men, too. Only sometimes…”
“Shhh,” Iktan whispered. Xe hoisted her arm around xir shoulders and pulled her to her feet. “Please don’t ruin it for me, Xiala. Right now, I live with the fantasy of you bursting Ziha’s insides until she shits her guts out. It keeps me going. Don’t take it away.”
She choked, wanting to laugh, wanting to explain her Song was not supposed to work on women, but instead, she only found tears.
* * *
Their progress back to camp was slow, and Xiala had to stop and rest even for such a short distance. Ziha was there to greet them, her face a mask of anger that morphed into alarm once she realized Xiala was sick.
“I was about to send scouts out to find you,” Ziha said. “I thought you had run.”
“Run where?” Iktan asked, exasperated. “Never mind. Just help me get her inside.”
“Take her to my tent,” Ziha said, and Iktan brought her in and settled her down on the now-familiar furs. Xe covered her with a blanket while Ziha built up the fire.
“Are you comfortable?” xe asked, and Xiala nodded. “Good. Rest. I must speak to our commander.”
Xe motioned Ziha to come with xir outside. She could see them talking just beyond the doorway, heads close. She wished she had Serapio’s hearing, but even without it, she knew their talk was about her. She tried to stay awake to follow their conversation, read gesture and tone, but her eyes grew too heavy.
She awoke once only long enough to see that both Iktan and Ziha were gone, and then she awoke much later to Ziha coming through the entrance. She was sweating, and her shoulders were high around her ears. A muscle worked along her jawline, and her eyes were hooded. Tension thrummed through the room, enough that Xiala fought through her exhaustion and forced herself to sitting.