Fevered Star (Between Earth and Sky, #2)(84)

A ship? she had asked, breathless with possibility. I want to sail my own ship.

Women do not sail in the Southern Cities, he had said, annoyed, as he laid her on the sand. But you can bear me many children. And then he had pushed himself inside her.

I love him! she had screamed at her mother, and for her declaration had received a backhand that split her lip.

We do not love them, you stupid girl, her mother had hissed. We beguile, we seduce, and then we rut to bear children. And then we Sing them to the sharks so that they may never tell another how they found us.

I won’t let you hurt him. Sibaan loves me, and I love him.

You little fool. The contempt on her mother’s face had made her want to run, but she stood her ground, facing down both her mother and the storm that raged around them.

And then her mother had stepped to the side to let her see what lay behind her. There, in her mother’s house, on her mother’s bed. The man with the long black hair and the sun-bronzed skin, the one with honeysuckle kisses and a voice like wine, lay sleeping and spent, tangled naked in her mother’s sheets. If he loves you, then why is he in my bed?

He promised!

Men promise, Xiala. But you are the fool who believed.

The roar in her head was deafening, her fear morphing into rage. Her Song beckoned, begged her to act. She would howl a Song of rage, of betrayal. She would shake the heavens. She would make them both pay.



* * *



“Wake up, Xiala.” A hand on her shoulder, shaking her loose from the past. Iktan dropped to a crouch in front of the fire and handed her a bowl. “Ziha’s gone to town. I brought you your broth.”

She exhaled, tried to gather herself. The memory so long suppressed now felt fresh. It shivered through her like she was fifteen again, lost and alone. And guilty of the greatest crime known to her people.

“I killed someone once with my Song,” she whispered.

Iktan gave her a half-smile. “Only one?”

“Please.” She sighed, tracing a finger around the edge of the bowl. “Do not make fun of it.”

Iktan raised xir hands in forbearance. “I am a cynical being, Xiala. It is good that you are not. Do you want to tell me about it?”

“No. Yes.” She scraped her hands over her face in frustration. “It is the reason I cannot go home.”

“Ah.” Iktan dropped to sitting, hands folded, patient. “So someone important to you. Someone you loved.”

She nodded, the shame welling up to stick in her throat.

“Who was it?”

She could not meet Iktan’s eyes when she said it. “My mother.”

She told xir the meat of it. The foolishness of first love, the promises, the betrayal.

“I was so angry to find them together, to know the depth of my naivete. I lashed out. I wanted to hurt them. To hurt her.”

“And so you did.”

“But it wasn’t supposed to be possible. Women are immune to our Song.”

“But your mother was not?”

She pulled her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “There was so much blood. I’m not even sure what happened after that. I just remember the blood, and the screams… and the bodies. And my aunt was there, a curse on her lips, and I ran. But where is there to run on an island except into the sea?”

“And one cannot run from such guilt.”

“I tried. I became a captain, the thing I had wanted most. I commanded men, I sailed the Crescent Sea. I told myself as long as I used my Song only to soothe, only to defend and not to attack, that it was okay. That I was okay. But then the day of the Convergence, I used it to try to clear my path, and people died.”

“You did not mean for them to die.”

“Does it matter?” She rested her head on her knees. “They were in my way, and I wanted them gone. I did not think of the consequences. So when those men threatened me today, all I could think about was the people I killed before. What if I accidentally killed them when I only meant to defend myself? What if others in the camp or the town heard my Song and it killed them, too? What if there is no safe way to Sing, and this is why the Teek stay hidden?”

“I do not believe the Teek hide themselves away because they fear the power of their Song. From what you told me, your mother seemed perfectly willing to feed your onetime lover to the sharks. I imagine it is their independence they protect after the War of the Spear, and so they keep themselves separate from all of the Meridian.”

“I don’t know.” She closed her eyes. “I feel so lost so far from the sea. Even away from Teek, I always had her, my true Mother. And now I have nothing.”

Shouting from outside the tent broke her reverie, and Ziha came striding through the entrance.

“Good, you are both here.” Her voice was clipped and her eyes wild, like an animal caught in a trap. “Xiala, are you well enough to travel to town?”

“What’s wrong?” Iktan asked.

Ziha hesitated, just a breath, as if bracing herself. “My mother is here.”

Xe whistled low in surprise. “It seems it is the day for maternal reckonings.”

“She came in on eagleback. My sister is with her.” She bit at her thumb, now raw and red. “Something has happened in Tova.”

That was enough to rally Xiala. “Is it the Odo Sedoh?”