By the third day of the journey, she had begun to drift toward the rear of the company. She still started the morning with Iktan, often gathering gossip over a breakfast of gruel, but by midday, Iktan and Ziha would usually be bickering in fast-paced Tovan, and she had trouble following it. Not that she wanted to. She suspected Iktan picked fights with the commander the same way others cultivated hobbies; it started as something to break the boredom and had grown to genuine enjoyment. Their fighting exacerbated her headaches, too. At first, she had thought them a symptom of her exhaustion, but by the second day, she had begun to suspect that they were caused by something the Teek called land sickness. Stories warned against Teek living too far inland, said there was something about the Teek temperament that made them ill suited for such places, and it was true she had never been this far from the sea for this long.
Whatever it was, it found her at the end of each day falling into her blankets, exhausted. She thought the walking would have made her legs stronger, but they only seemed to be growing weaker. In addition to the headaches and the aching legs, her stomach often wouldn’t settle. It felt as if something had started to suck her dry.
And then there were the dreams. All versions of the same one from the camp in Odo. The woman in blue, the man with the green eyes, both dying because of her reckless Song. Sometimes they would speak to her, accusations and recriminations. Other times, they would simply stare. They left her unrested and haunted, worsening her already deteriorating health.
The fourth evening, when they stopped to make camp, she found herself struggling to set up her tent. The first night, when she and Iktan had raided Ziha’s xtabentún and fallen asleep in what she later found out was Ziha’s private tent, was an anomaly. After that, she had been given her own small tent that she carried on her back and was responsible for pitching and breaking down on her own. The next two nights, she had managed fine, but now, as the sun fell closer to the ragged, snowcapped mountains in the distance, her hands shook, the poles blurred in her vision, and she promptly passed out.
She woke briefly to Ziha’s face above hers, and then someone strong picking her up, and then nothing for a while.
When she did wake again, she was back on the furs that served as rugs in Ziha’s tent, the Golden Eagle woman sitting across from her, hazel eyes watching her intently.
“Water,” Xiala croaked.
“Beside you,” Ziha said, and Xiala looked to her right to see a pitcher and cup.
She drank, and it soothed her somewhat, but she needed something else.
“Iktan is here?” she asked.
“Somewhere in the camp.”
“Xe had salt before.”
The girl frowned. “I have salt.”
“Good. I’ll take yours. And I need pumpkin seeds, crushed. Wild spinach. And fish bones, or bone marrow if you don’t have fish.”
Ziha stood. “I’ll have the cook make a broth.”
Xiala whispered a thank you and fell back into the blankets. She awoke to Ziha proffering her a steaming bowl.
“What is it?” Ziha asked, as Xiala drank.
“I cannot go to the sea, but perhaps I can bring a little of the sea to me. It is seawater, or as close as I could approximate this far inland. My hope is that it will stave off some of the land sickness.”
Even as she drank, her headache began to lessen, and after she had finished the bowl, a measure of vitality had returned to her limbs.
“Is that what made you ill? I found you collapsed beside your tent.” She picked at the skin of her thumb with her teeth, a nervous habit Xiala had not noticed before.
Tonight Ziha looked very young. She had seemed somewhat formidable before, but now Xiala saw the things of which Iktan had accused her—privilege, inexperience, bravado.
“I’m fine now. Thank you.” She shook her head at how easily the lie came. “I just need to get back to the sea.”
“I’m glad you’re better. There are things we need to discuss.”
Xiala’s grip on the bowl tightened. “Perhaps not that much better.”
Ziha bit at her finger, looking undecided. “I’ve sent Iktan on a mission,” she blurted. “Xe won’t be occupied for long, but I knew it was the only way to talk to you without the tsiyo interfering.”
“What is it you need to say to me that Iktan cannot hear?” she asked, wary.
“You cannot trust Iktan, you know. Xe is not your friend.”
Xiala set the empty bowl down carefully, then poured herself and the girl each a cup of water. She offered one to Ziha. She stared at it a moment, as if it might contain poison, before seizing it and swallowing a mouthful. The girl paused, as if waiting for any ill effects to commence, but when they didn’t, she dropped to the place across from Xiala with a tentative smile.