“But here’s the thing, Xiala.” Xe sank down on the thick furs covering the floor of the tent. “Her cousin killed my friend first, and I won’t forgive that.” Xe stretched, a yawn catching the corner of xir mouth. “You should get comfortable. Ziha will be back soon, and then it’s all business. It’s going to be a long day, and tomorrow? Even longer.”
She stared. “Why are you telling me all this?”
“I like you. And I’m lonely. Do I make you uncomfortable?”
“No…”
The truth was she liked Iktan. There was something about xir that made her want to trust. Her instincts were usually good about people, and she thought xe might be a friend, despite their strange circumstances. After all, xe had spared her life when xe could have simply gutted her and dumped her into the Tovasheh.
Moisture trickled down her face, and she realized she was sweating. After being outside for so long, the heat in the tent was stifling. Thick furs covered the ground inside, and a pit fire burned in the middle, smoke drifting up through the center hole.
She unfastened her cloak and let her hair spill down her back in plum-colored coils. Following Iktan’s example, she washed in the basin and picked clean clothes from the trunk.
“I have never seen a woman who looks like you before. Do all Teek look like you?”
Xiala turned to find Iktan lying down, hands propped behind xir neck and eyes closed.
“No,” she said. “We are as varied as the people of the Meridian, except…” She hesitated. To talk about being Teek felt like she was sharing secrets, but she wasn’t sure why. She had never been good at hiding who she was, what she was, so it really shouldn’t have been a surprise that pretending to be Water Strider was such a disaster. The fact that Iktan had so quickly and easily unmasked her convinced her that she should stop trying. Live as a Teek, die as a Teek, the saying went, and it had never felt more appropriate to her than now.
“Except for the eyes,” she finished. “We all have Teek eyes.”
“And hair?”
“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.”