Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)(58)

“Here.” Iktan was there, handing her a warm cup. It was filled with an unfamiliar gruel.

“What is this?”

“Your breakfast. Drink it, and be glad I got that much out of the cook. Oh…” Xe pulled a small package from xir pocket and sprinkled a bit of salt on her meal.

She drank the creamlike mixture from the cup. It was grain and ash, not unlike the street breakfasts popular in Cuecola. “It’s good,” she remarked.

Iktan made a sound as if her opinion was offensive. She wondered if all ex-priests were such snobs.

“She’s good, too,” she said, gesturing toward Ziha with her cup.

Iktan watched the Golden Eagle commander at work. “Yes, Ziha makes a lovely despot.”

She laughed, unimpressed by Iktan’s negativity.

“You laugh now,” xe said, “but wait until we’ve been traveling under her thumb for a week. Then tell me what you think.”

Ziha shouted to them, as if she had known they were talking about her. She warned them they were marching out, and they each needed to pick up a pack from the ones yet to be claimed, and once they had a pack, they were to join her in the front. Iktan sighed and lifted a hand to Ziha in a half-hearted salute. Xiala drank the last of her breakfast and grabbed a pack. She threaded the straps through her arms so it rested comfortably on her back, and fell in with the rest of the company.

Together, they walked north across the empty prairie toward the river called Puumun.



* * *



The first days of the journey were the monotony of endless walking, setting camp, and then breaking camp, only to do it all again the next day. And again the next day. Xiala found that traveling on land was much like traveling by ship. There was a sameness to the work of taking one step after another that was similar to that of working a paddle, and the Golden Eagle company passed time the same way Cuecolan sailors did; they gossiped, sang bawdy songs, and told stories.

At first, Xiala had tried to stay close to the front. Ziha and Iktan were the only people who spoke to her, and they both led the company. She would catch the others staring, most looks simply curious and none truly hostile, but she was wary of the fact that she was still among Serapio’s enemies, which made them her enemies, and she did not desire to make friends. She did, however, enjoy the stories, in particular those of the folk heroes called cliff runners and a queen who wore a pair of wings made of hammered gold and took many lovers, so she lingered close to listen. Golden Eagle’s Tovan was slightly different from both Carrion Crow’s and Water Strider’s, with crisper vowels and swallowed word endings. It took her a while to pick it up, but once she did, she enjoyed the shared tales. She imagined telling them to Serapio, his delighted looks and tentative smiles, the rare occasion when she could coax a laugh from him. And oh, her heart ached at the memories. Perhaps they had not known each other that long, but the time they had spent together had meant more to her than any other. It was the first time since she had left home that someone had cared about her, had been genuinely interested in her—not for what she could do for them but simply for her company. She treasured it, and she missed him more with every mile she walked.

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.