“Skies, Iktan. Your games are too much for me.”
Xe smiled. “Cursing like a Tovan? You’ll be one of us soon enough.”
“Mother save me,” she said, and they both laughed.
She rubbed at the wet spot on her knee and then poured herself a bit more tea.
“I heard you were ill.” Iktan’s voice did not give away xir concern, but Xiala felt it and was surprised.
“I’m fine.”
“Xiala…”
“I said I am fine.” She didn’t want the ex-priest prying.
“No. What she said about me was true.”
She exhaled, setting her cup down to give herself time. “I know.”
“I betrayed not just a friend but the woman I once loved. I killed the Carrion Crow matron. I conspired with Golden Eagle and conspire still.”
“I know.”
“What will you do?”
She knew what Iktan was asking. Would she think less of xir, as Ziha had hoped? Had the girl’s words driven a wedge between them in their budding friendship? But she also knew Iktan wanted to know if she would tell Carrion Crow who had killed their matron. She could only assume there would be punishment for such a crime should the clan be given a chance at justice. It was a secret that carried a death sentence, and she held it in her hands, unwillingly.
“I think,” she said, “I will go back to my tent and go to bed. It has been a long day, and tomorrow we reach the river. I want to be ready for whatever is next.”
She briefly touched a hand against Iktan’s cheek before standing and slowly, deliberately, walking out the door. She pretended she did not see the glint of light off the blade cupped in Iktan’s palm, but her legs shook on the long walk back to her tent.
CHAPTER 19
THE CRESCENT SEA
YEAR 1 OF THE CROW
What strange creatures humans are, to dream so much and achieve so little.
—From The Manual of the Dreamwalkers, by Seuq, a spearmaiden
Balam stood at the bow of the great ship and watched as it cut neatly through the Crescent Sea. The waters were calm on their first morning out of Cuecola and parted like flesh under a sharpened blade. An image popped into his mind: his fingers wrapped around the hilt of an obsidian knife, the chest of a blue-painted man sliced open under his hand, blood welling like the froth of the tide.
He closed his eyes, willing the vision to pass. It was a memory, but not his. Since he had started dreamwalking, such images came more and more frequently, often when he was wide awake. Walking nightmares, he had thought at first. But he had quickly begun to suspect they were something more.
He saw himself as a priest of old most often, but sometimes he was the blue-painted victim, the terror thick in his throat as the blade sliced open his own chest. And there were worse things. He stood atop a mountain and watched a city burn. He waved his hand, and the sea boiled crimson as dead fish floated in the maelstrom. He spoke a word, and a line of men walked calmly to the edge of a great pyramid and stepped off to splatter on the ground below.
These were memories from the War of the Spear more than three hundred years ago, he had no doubt. But he did not know why they haunted him. Were they some strange remnant of spirit magic from the time of the dreamwalkers? Was he seeing their deeds play out as if they were his own? Or did the visions serve as a warning for what was to come should he pursue the path he had set for himself?
If it was the latter, he was unswayed. There was no cost he was not willing to pay to achieve his goal, even if cities burned and oceans boiled. And people died every day. What were a hundred more in service to a greater cause?
Raised voices behind him turned his head, and he saw the captain of the ship, a short, bow-legged man in a wide-brimmed hat by the name of Keol. He had a map of the western waters of the Crescent Sea splayed out across an unused bench. Three of the seven merchant lords of Cuecola gathered around him, peppering the man with questions. Balam shook off the dark visions of war and death and wandered over to see what the fuss was about, his presence making the lord count four.
“A few days extra is all that is required, my lords,” the captain was explaining. “We have to go the long way around. Through the shallow parts.”
“Shallow parts?” a lord named Sinik asked. “It looks all one depth to me.” He was a small man with an industrious demeanor, a pinched face, and a ridiculous braided forelock that he insisted was in fashion. Balam had no great quarrel with him, and he often found his comments in the gatherings of the Seven Lords quite astute when it came to finances, but it was difficult to take him seriously with that absurd hairstyle. Perhaps that’s why he wears it, Balam thought. To distract one from the keen mind beneath. Or perhaps Balam was giving him too much credit.