“Go tell your master,” she called to the corvid. “Tell him I go to Sun Rock, and we will have this settled between us.”
She half expected the bird to speak back to her, to acknowledge the receipt of her message or to taunt her for marching to her certain death. But it only turned its eye to her and cried out before taking wing. There, she thought. It is done. We will come to an end today one way or another.
Perhaps Sedaysa was right, and grief made her reckless with her own life. Or perhaps it was the opposite, and the loss of her brother unearthed a bravery in her she had never known before.
She closed her eyes, turned her palm up, and let the barest trickle of rage breach her inner barriers. Flames rose to her hand, as bright and hungry as wildfire. It danced through her fingers, caressing her unblemished skin.
But I do not plan to die so easily, little bird, she thought. Tell your master that, too.
CHAPTER 30
CITY OF HOKAIA
YEAR 1 OF THE CROW
It is no mystery to this traveler why Hokaia has grown into the Jewel of the Plains. It is well laid out, centrally located, and blessed with multiple riverways that stretch the length of the continent. It truly is the heart of the Meridian. Yet I cannot help feeling that it is thoroughly haunted.
—A Commissioned Report of My Travels to the Seven Merchant Lords of Cuecola, by Jutik, a traveler from Barach
Xiala flew on eagleback over the Meridian plains. There were fourteen of them among a dozen great birds of prey. Nuuma rode alone at the front of the formation, on the back of a majestic creature named Suhtsee. She was flanked by three Shield riders on each side. Behind Nuuma rode Terzha and Iktan, and behind them rode Xiala, her arms wrapped around the waist of a Shield woman who had introduced herself briefly and then not spoken to Xiala again except to command her to hold on and, when she had asked once about how far they would ride that day, told her to save her words until they landed. And how long will that be? Xiala had wanted to ask, but she had not, choosing to simply endure.
Xiala had thought travel over land on foot had to be the most miserable form of travel, but she quickly amended her opinion once she was on the back of the great bird and the people below her reduced to the size of ants. She did not know how these Tovans withstood it, never mind preferred it. Insanity, all of it.
She could feel the muscles of the eagle moving beneath her, both powerful and incredibly fragile. Her rider had tied a rope belt around her waist and hooked the other end to her own belt.
“That way, if one of us falls, we both fall,” she’d said with a grin that did not reassure.
Only when she had attached both belts to the saddle they shared did Xiala feel secure. But falling was only one of the worries of air travel. There was the chafe of sitting in a saddle for hours at a time, there were the high-altitude winds that made her nostalgic for Tova’s comparatively balmy winter gales, and there were the bugs.
She had not anticipated the bugs.
Her rider also had a solution for that: a triangle of cloth to wear over her nose and mouth and a warning to keep her head down. Once again, insanity.
“If I ever make it back to the sea, I swear to never leave it,” she muttered to herself at least a dozen times that first day.
But to her surprise, after the trials of adjustment, she began to understand the appeal of flight. They covered many miles, the landscape rapidly changing below them. Snowcapped mountains ceded to endless grasslands, the only variation the snaking flow of the Puumun River and its tributaries running ever eastward. They avoided fluctuations in the weather, noting growing clouds that portended storms and adjusting to avoid them. And once they flew over a herd of massive furred beasts that stretched across the plain and would have stopped Ziha and her march dead in their path.
They made camp on the banks of a river that night as the sun set. Nuuma and Iktan retired to a tent to talk privately, and Xiala found herself huddled around a fire surrounded by strangers, and soldiers at that. But someone had a flask, and they passed it around, and after she’d swallowed her share of the unfamiliar fiery liquor, the absurdity of her situation settled around her. She lay back, staring at the mass of stars overhead.
“A flying Teek,” she whispered to herself. “Who would believe it?”
A figure dropped down beside her, and she glanced over to find Terzha stretched out, hands behind her neck, eyes on the night sky. Xiala knew she should be wary of this warrior woman, the matron’s daughter, but the alcohol buzzed pleasantly in her head, and after a day of silence, she ached for company.
“What do you see when you look up there?” There was a slight slur in Terzha’s voice.
“The way home.” Xiala thought of the navigational houses of the Teek. “If we were on the sea, we could follow the stars and find our way.”
“Show me.”
She shifted, uncomfortable. “It is a Teek thing. It won’t mean anything to you.” She had a flash of memory, Serapio’s hand in hers as she traced the star houses in his palm. You study the stars, but I am made of the shadow between stars. He had said that to her once, and the thought of it now made her ache. How many miles was he from her, how distant was she in his mind? His heart? She vowed again she would return to him as soon as she could find a way.
Terzha squinted. “I’ll tell you what we say. See that constellation? We say it is the home of the ancestors of the clan Water Strider, and those trailing stars are beetle shit.”
Xiala coughed.
“We don’t say it to Water Strider’s face, of course,” Terzha amended. “So the way to Teek is there? Below the beetle shit?”
Xiala closed her eyes, ignoring the Golden Eagle woman’s drunken jibes. Instead, images of her homeland overwhelmed her. The crystal waters, the warm breezes, the swaying palms. “There is a secret cove I visited as a child,” she murmured. “That had the most beautiful shells.”
“Shells?”
“Seashells. We harvest them. Wear them on our clothes, in our hair. Trade them for other nations’ wealth.”
“The detritus of dead animals.”
She cracked an eye open. “You have a dark mind, Terzha of Golden Eagle.”
“I attended the war college in Hokaia and trained with the spearmaidens there. They are a dark-minded people.”
“I know someone who trained with a spearmaiden.”
“Do you? The firstborn daughters of matrons rarely attend the war college. It is the secondborn’s calling. Witness Ziha and her military ambitions. But Mother saw the wisdom in sending me. She knew war would come, and Golden Eagle would need me to lead not just as a matron but as a general.”
“You mean she planned to start a war and trained her daughters accordingly.” The words slipped out unthinking, but Xiala did not regret them.
“That’s one way of looking at it.” She rolled to her side to face Xiala. “The other is she prepared for the inevitable. Peace cannot last forever. Times change, and it is better to be on top than to be crushed at the bottom. Shells are pretty, yes, but they are already dead things when you find them. And they break so easily. And then they are dust.” She rolled to her feet, looming over Xiala. “Careful not to break, Xiala, and leave behind only pretty dust.”
And then she was gone, back into the night.
A foreboding rolled over Xiala, as real as a wave in deepening water. She pulled her blanket up around her shoulders, her back to the waning fire, and tried to sleep. But all she could think about were beaches scattered with the broken bodies of Teek, and Terzha standing triumphant over them, her heel grinding them into sand.
* * *
They were up before dawn, another day of riding before them. She managed to avoid Terzha, but Iktan tracked her down over a cold breakfast of corn cakes and dried strips of a meat Xiala didn’t recognize.