“I can make no promises.”
“Your kind never can.” Her mouth made a moue in false disappointment.
He touched his hand to his brow in respect and climbed out of the ship. It rocked only slightly under his weight.
Powageh was waiting for him, the rest of the contingent already well ahead.
“Who were you talking to?” his cousin growled, annoyed. “Pech would like nothing more than to leave you behind.”
“What Pech does doesn’t concern me.”
Powageh huffed, sounding like xe wanted to say something more but declined. “And who was that?”
Balam looked back over his shoulder. Alani blew him a kiss, her laughter echoing on the wind.
“I believe, Cousin, that was a Teek.”
* * *
They climbed the steps, picking up gawkers as they went. Some were merely interested; others shouted welcomes or taunts, Balam was not sure. He, of course, spoke Hoka, just as he spoke all the known languages of the Meridian, but there were subtleties of the common language that eluded him, his studies being limited to the more formal form. There were noisemakers and drums and flutes, and the din grew louder as they rose. Hands reached out and touched his white jaguar cloak, until one of the guards made his presence known with the shaft of his spear. After that, the jeers increased, but no one tried to handle him again.
“Who are you looking for?” Powageh asked.
“Hmm?”
“Don’t play coy with me. I see you searching the crowd.”
“I do not like to walk into these situations uninformed.”
“You have a spy here,” Powageh said. “In the palace.”
“Of course I do. But he was to meet me when we boarded the barge at the mouth of the Kuukuh and did not come. And now I don’t even see him here, and it worries me.”
“A dangerous game, Cousin. What if he was discovered?”
The prospect worried Balam, but he kept his expression smooth and untroubled. “And what if he was? We are friendly, Hokaia and Cuecola, are we not?”
Powageh snorted, unimpressed.
They reached the top of the mound, and Balam took a moment to look back over his shoulder. The whole of Hokaia was visible from here, riverland and city as far as the eye could see. No mountains or forests to break the sightlines, which meant enemies could not hide their approach. What Hokaia had not foreseen was an army approaching from the air. It was the combined armies of Tova and Cuecola that had taken Hokaia, warriors on wingback and water striders moving swiftly upriver with Cuecolan foot soldiers and sorcerers. Balam was sure that if he allowed himself to sink into that place in his mind that he now associated with dreamwalking, he would see it all before him, a memory that would look and feel as real as the events that had created it.
“And who is it that rules Hokaia these days?” Powageh asked.
“A man named Daakun. His title is Sovran. I know he is relatively young but, by all accounts, a reasonable man and practical.”
“You mean malleable.”
Before the War of the Spear, Hokaia was ruled by spearmaidens, women married only to war and trained at the war college when it was still exclusively for the scions of Hokaia. They had no lovers and therefore no blood heirs, and often succession was decided by combat. It made for a warlike people, but their skirmishes had never strayed beyond the river valley, so the rest of the continent had not taken notice of their provincial practices. Until a spearmaiden named Seuq became not only a warrior but a warrior-sorcerer, the first dreamwalker, and used her knowledge and power to lead her people to conquest. After she was defeated, the spearmaidens were forbidden to rule Hokaia, and leadership had gone to a politico, one of the men who had helped broker the peace that saved what was left of Hokaia from ruination. Combat had been replaced with debate, and now the city was ruled by the person most skilled in rhetoric rather than warfare.
“Do we need to worry about him?” Powageh asked.
“Daakun? No. But rumors are there is a faction of spearmaidens who oppose his rule, led by a woman named Naasut, and she is a concern. How much of a concern…？” He lifted one shoulder in an elegant shrug. “I was hoping to find that out beforehand, but here we are.”
A shell horn blared, and Balam took it as the signal to join the others at the front of the entourage. They stood together left to right, the four merchant lords of Cuecola—Balam in his pristine white, Tuun in her green, Pech in his yellow and red, and Sinik in conservative brown—and waited for the leader of Hokaia to greet them.