THE STONE KNIFE
Anna Stephens

Copyright

HarperVoyager

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2020

Copyright © Anna Smith 2020

Map copyright © Nicolette Caven

Cover photographs © Stephen Mulcahey/Trevillion Images (emblem in flames), Shutterstock.com (all other images)

Cover design by Stephen Mulcahey © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2020

Anna Stephens asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008404000

Ebook Edition © July 2019 ISBN: 9780008404024

Version: 2020-09-30

Dedication

For Lisa,

who asked the question when we were fourteen

– and who always believed the answer

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Map

The Singer

Xessa

Lilla

Tayan

Enet

The Singer

Xessa

Tayan

Pilos

Lilla

Tayan

Enet

The Singer

Tayan

Xessa

Pilos

Tayan

Pilos

Lilla

Xessa

Ilandeh

Enet

The Singer

Tayan

Xessa

Lilla

Xessa

Ilandeh

Pilos

Tayan

Enet

The Singer

Lilla

Pilos

Tayan

Lilla

Enet

The Singer

Ilandeh

Pilos

Xessa

Enet

The Singer

Pilos

Lilla

Xessa

Ilandeh

Tayan

Enet

The Singer

Xessa

Pilos

Xessa

Pilos

Ilandeh

Pilos

Tayan

Xessa

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

By Anna Stephens

About the Publisher

Map

THE SINGER

The source, Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs

The song is life and wealth and bounty from the earth. The song is courage in childbirth, strength in war, cleverness in creation.

The song lifts us and binds us, as beautiful and inevitable as my brother, the Great Star, in his endless cycle of appearances at dawn and dusk, and his regular absences to do battle with the lords of the Underworld.

As the Great Star always returns on the appointed place in the calendar, victorious as he rises from the depths to watch over us once more, so the song cannot, does not, falter. For the song is mine and I am its Singer. I take strength from my brother, and I give strength to him. Between us, we bring the earth into harmony.

And today, on the Great Star’s 118th appearance at dawn, I enter the eleventh year of my reign. All you Singers who have gone before, you holy Setatmeh who send the rains that bring the crops to fruition, see me wax into my power and know that you are honoured. My song is but an extension of yours, my glory but a shadow of the glories you achieved.

Soon, all Ixachipan will be ours.

Soon, it will be time to awaken the world spirit.

For I am the Singer, and this is my will.

XESSA

The Swift Water, below Sky City, Malel, Tokoban

118th day of the Great Star at morning

They said that the Drowned were the souls of the dead, angry that the living still walked beneath the sun, still breathed the air and ate the good food of the land. They said that this anger made them vicious and desperate, and that they sang to lure the living into death with them.

They said the Drowned were the ancient spirits of the land displaced by the Tokob people, who were the first children brought into being by Malel, and that the Drowned were slowly reclaiming the world for themselves, one life at a time.

They said the Drowned were those who had died of grief or betrayal, that their hurt was so great they clung to life in another form, their bodies as twisted and ruined as their hearts had been. That they would stop taking people if only they were loved. That their songs were laments.

And they said the Drowned were another branch of life, like the great jaguar and the tiny chulul – the same but different. That they were trying to communicate, and meant no harm, but their songs were irresistible. That they ate what they caught because it was in their nature to do so.

So many tales. Xessa had grown up with the myths and legends of the Drowned, the theories of Tokob historians and shamans and storytellers. She thought the stories were the biggest pile of steaming monkey shit she’d ever read.

Whatever they were or might be, one thing was certain: the Drowned were somehow linked to the vast, sprawling Empire of Songs that these days covered almost all of Ixachipan. To the Pechaqueh of the Empire, the Drowned were sacred, and that said all Xessa needed to know about that people and the lies they told of peace under one Empire, one ruler.

She cleared her mind of thoughts of the war against the Empire to focus on the battle to come. She’d left Toxte, another eja and her duty partner, in the water temple further uphill, ready to begin turning the water screw once she had the pipe in the river and connected the turning rods. The pipe’s hard rubber coating bore fresh claw marks; a Drowned had tried to destroy it during the night. When they succeeded, they smashed the wooden scoops of the screw that lifted water uphill, forcing ejab like Xessa to risk proximity to the water to fix them.

Xessa squatted on her heels, bare toes dug into rich loam, her spear in the crook of an elbow, and studied the river’s edge. A warm breeze tickled beneath her salt-cotton armour and the bamboo scales stitched over it; she ignored it, ignored too the flash of a bright bird whirring from the trees on the slope below, ignored everything but the water before her and the earth beneath her.

Her dog, Ossa, hadn’t signalled; there was no other danger she needed to be aware of. Just the Drowned, then. Xessa’s smile was grim. That was still more than enough for one eja and her spear.

Xessa ran her tongue around her gums and eased forward, dropping her knee into the soil and releasing a spike of scent – rich rotting things, moist earth, life. She ignored it the way she’d ignored the bird. The spear slipped from her elbow down her forearm to slap comfortably into her palm, warm and ready and lethal. Her movement didn’t cause movement in response; there was no explosion of water, of snapping teeth and clawing fingers and long, black talons. The edge of the river was six strides away and seemed serene, innocent. Xessa knew better. She’d known better all her life; all the life she’d lived for this moment, all the training, the hardships.

Water was life and breath and plenty, and water was death and pain and fear, held in a balance like day and night, sun and moon. Xessa was a thief, stealing from the balance without offering anything in return except her sweat, her fear, her blood. One day, perhaps, her life. It was a fair trade for the lives of her people and the refugees from Yalotlan, fleeing the Empire’s endless ravening.

Eja, the ancient Tokob word for snake: patient, cunning, and resourceful. Her brothers and sisters; her kin. Ejab walked the snake path, winding and oblique, stillness into movement without hesitation. The strike and recoil, faster than blinking. The life-and-death dance of sacred harmony, the balance made flesh.

With a snake’s patience, Xessa eased herself onto her feet to approach the river when a double thump like a heartbeat shivered up through the soles of her bare feet and something black flashed in the corner of her eye.

Ossa. She took four rapid steps away from the river before looking. The dog jumped again, landing back feet, front feet, the impact on the hard earth easily missed were it not for her acute focus. She raised her arm, palm forward, requesting information. If she hadn’t seen him, his next action would have been to race towards her and grab her by one padded sleeve, but now he merely pointed his nose and Xessa followed his gaze to the burnt-back ground on the other side of the river.

A spotted cat, its ears back, padding slowly down to the river’s edge, wariness in every smooth, lethal line of its beautiful body. It paid her no attention, its gaze fixed unwaveringly on the water, as alert to its danger as she was. Xessa clicked her tongue twice and Ossa raced to her side. She scratched behind his big ears, tapped his nose once so he looked up at her, and then gestured in a wide circle. The dog bounded away, on the alert again for more danger.

The cat knew she was there, so it was unlikely it would attempt to skirt the edge of the river to get into the fields and orchards and lie in wait. They’d lost four farmers this planting already and there were more cats than ever coming to drink, coming to stare at the fields and livestock and people, their eyes hungry and patient and so very dangerous as they tracked the crowds of hollow-cheeked Yaloh who’d fled the warriors of the Empire of Songs.

Nerves pinched Xessa’s belly as she moved slowly back to the water’s edge, scanning its surface, the spear ready and the net hanging from the back of her belt. The Drowned had two targets now, both armed, both dangerous. Even as she thought it, one’s head broke the surface. Mottled brown and green like the riverbed, thin ribbons of hair on its head like weed, it stretched a clawed hand towards Xessa and opened its mouth.

Xessa knew it was singing; all the Drowned sang and all their songs were lethal, an irresistible lure to any human who heard it. Like nectar to a hummingbird, the Drowned’s song was the sound of life itself, or so those with hearing said. When they sang, people walked straight into their embrace, going to death like a lover to their partner’s bed, and with less regret.

The cat leapt backwards and bared its teeth, but the Drowned had eyes only for Xessa, its arms yearning towards her, its webbed fingers and long black talons beckoning.

But Xessa was eja – water-thief, snake-cunning. Deaf to its song as all ejab were, whether through Malel’s blessing or the shamans’ magic. Its eyes darkened and it slapped at the water in frustration; then it moved closer to the bank. She might not be able to hear it, but the creatures were fast; it could still drag her into the river if she wasn’t careful.

The cat had approached the opposite bank again to drink and Xessa saw the path of still water in the current, how it drifted in that direction. Still water in a swift current: a sure sign of Drowned. A second infesting this stretch of river.

The jaguar didn’t know that still water meant Drowned. The one in front of Xessa sank below the surface, perhaps deciding the cat was the easier target. Meat was meat, to a Drowned.

Using the distraction, Xessa bent and grabbed the handle on the wide-mouthed ceramic pipe. She straightened, the spear in her left hand and up by her jaw, pointing at the water, and walked in an arc, pivoted by the joint in the pipe until it straightened and locked in position at the water’s edge. The most dangerous moment. The pipe was between Xessa and the water, her body twisted side-on and the spear ready to lunge down over it in case of attack.

She began to crouch, lowering the pipe towards the river ready to open the lid, when the water exploded in front of the jaguar and a Drowned leapt for it, hands slashing the air where its head had been. The cat sprang away, up and back, ears flat as a single talon scored a line through the fur of its muzzle. It vanished, leaving the Drowned empty-handed and hungry.

Xessa jumped at the sudden attack and her arm came back in reflex as she straightened up, ready to throw or lunge with her spear. The surface of the river in front of her boiled apart and green-brown hands tipped with wicked claws reached for her as the second Drowned attacked.

Xessa had a glimpse of the round black eyes, the mouth open and filled with teeth like a piranha’s, and then a hand grasped her shin. She screamed and dropped the pipe, the thick rubber-coated ceramic slamming into the Drowned’s arm and breaking its grip, its claws tearing out of her doeskin leggings and flesh, and then her spear was plunging deep into its shoulder and its mouth twisted, opening wider, green blood gouting from its body. It twisted on the end of her spear and Xessa wrenched it free, whipped the shaft through the air and clubbed the creature with the butt end, freeing it from beneath the pipe and sending it splashing back. She dropped to one knee and thumbed open the lid to allow water into the pipe even as it righted itself.

A mistake.

The eja stumbled back to her feet, bloodied, her leg beginning to burn and throb and her arms and armour soaked with spray. She managed a single limping step before the Drowned launched itself off the riverbed again and grabbed the shaft of her spear in both hands, just behind the obsidian head. Xessa yanked backwards. The Drowned didn’t let go and fear flared high in her chest as she pulled the creature half out of the water towards her. It was bigger than she was and, although its stringy limbs didn’t look it, far stronger. One of the rare and even more dangerous Greater Drowned.

It pulled on the spear, jerking it perilously close to its own chest, and Xessa could’ve angled up and punched it through its throat and killed it, but she was off balance, her leg trembling beneath her, her toes bashing into the pipe and most of all shocked, confused that it had recognised the weapon as separate from her body, had understood what it faced. She teetered for a second, mouth open and screaming, at the very edge of the water, and then she threw herself backwards, pulling with all her strength.

The Drowned came out of the river amid a spray of crystal droplets. It flopped onto the soil like a landed fish and flipped onto its hands and feet, skittering towards her. A Drowned could survive on land for almost an hour, the lungs that fed its song sustaining it as it moved between water sources. And an hour was more than enough time for it to eat her alive.

It was on her leg now, its talons punching through leggings and skin, gouging into her again. Same shin, widening the wounds. Even the combination of snake-scale bamboo and salt-cotton padding wouldn’t be enough to save her if she couldn’t fight back; its claws would shred her armour and its teeth would open her belly in seconds.

They’re clumsy on land, her teachers had told her, but this one didn’t seem clumsy. Not clumsy at all. Xessa thrashed and squirmed, but it was anchored to her legs by claws and sinewy muscle. Its skin was slippery and she didn’t dare push at it anyway: its bite would take her fingers off with a single snap. Instead, she stabbed clumsily with the spear, missed, stabbed again and caught it another raking slice down its shoulder, opening up pale flesh and green veins.

The Drowned reared up in agony and Xessa stabbed a third time, not deeply; the point stuck in the hardened plates that protected its chest, barely penetrating. Its hands closed on the haft again and it stared at her with its fish eyes, and Xessa would have sworn there was intelligence there, intelligence and calculation. A plan, even. As though it had allowed itself to be wounded to learn something about her. And then Ossa barrelled into the creature and sent them both into the water, a talon left standing proud in Xessa’s shinbone.

No!

Xessa moved faster than she ever had, faster than she’d known was possible, flipping onto her feet and jumping knee-deep into the river, seizing Ossa by the scruff of his neck and flinging the big dog bodily onto the bank. He landed on his side, leapt to his feet and pranced at the water’s edge, his throat rippling as he barked and barked.

The two Drowned rose on either side of Xessa like spirits come for vengeance. Their hands tangled about her legs, but one was weakening; Ossa’s teeth had opened its throat. Still. She drove her spear tip at the uninjured Drowned and forced it back; a flap of her leg skin tore free in its teeth and she screamed some more, stabbing for it again. Red blood and green mingled in the current and fled downriver.

Even as it righted itself she jumped backwards, up and out. Her right foot came down on the pipe and she felt it crack beneath her weight, lost her balance and fell again. The Drowned came for her and her heels were still in the water, but Ossa seized the padding on her right forearm and dragged her, five strides, ten strides, out of danger while she jabbed with the spear and the monster held its place by the water’s edge. She could feel Ossa’s growls in his throat, in his teeth, as he pulled, straining every sinew to save her as she dug in her heels and shoved back from the river with ugly, desperate haste.

Another dog, Ekka, skidded to a halt on her left side and barked at the water, her legs stiff and her hackles raised. Toxte would have sent her, and he’d be sprinting after her, coming to Xessa’s aid.

The dogs stood over her, silhouetted against the bright sky, barking their warning and their challenge. Xessa forced herself to stand again, to brandish her spear at the water and unhook the net from her belt. One Drowned watched her, eyes just above the surface, and she whirled the net ready to cast. It sank, vanished, gone.

She waited another thirty heartbeats before dropping the net and pulling Ossa to her side to check for wounds – four shallow gouges along his right haunch, bleeding lightly. The Drowned venom coursed in Xessa’s veins, but Toxte would have the medicine already prepared and kept warm over a brazier in the water temple, ready to pour into their wounds and down their throats.

Vision sparking sun-bright with venom and adrenaline, Xessa checked over the pipe – she’d felt the crack, but the rubber coating might have protected it and with Malel’s blessing, they might not lose too much precious water before it was fixed. She was shaking now, badly, but she opened it at the joint and connected the long wooden turning rods to the thicker one leading uphill. Her hands were barely under her control. She closed the pipe and waved her spear overhead. She kept her eyes on the water, trusting that whoever Toxte had left in the temple would see the signal and begin turning the massive handle that drew water uphill. The Sky City would live another day, safe from thirst and from the Drowned.

Xessa wondered if she would. She vomited, Drowned venom snaking up her body from the wounds in her leg and into her chest, her neck, her head, itching-burning like the stings of warrior wasps, hotter than coals. She rubbed her face and mouth, smearing the symbols of protection and strength painted on her cheeks into jumbled incoherence.

Suddenly Toxte was there and the world tilted, jerking out from under her as he wrapped her arm around his neck and hauled her onto his hip and then, gracelessly, over his shoulder. She dropped her spear and tried to tell him, but vomited down his back instead. She had a glimpse of the dogs guarding their retreat, and then the venom drew her into the dark.

LILLA

Southeastern slope of Malel, Tokoban

120th day of the Great Star at morning

When they were a few days away from the border into Tokoban, Lilla had told the refugees they would be safe, that no Empire warriors would have penetrated so far into their land.

He’d been wrong.

Now, ten days and what felt like a thousand regrets and recriminations later, he led the shattered remnant of his warriors uphill through lush, cultivated jungle towards the Sky City. Behind them, trudging in silence broken only by the intermittent complaints of exhausted youngsters, more than three hundred Yaloh came with them. They’d set out with twice that. They’d come with rations and blankets and ceramics, with medicines and seeds for planting. They’d come with hope as well as desperation, responding to the Tokob promise of shelter and protection. Tokob and Yaloh, the last two free tribes, standing together, living together, against the Empire of Songs. A dream that faded a little more with each morning until it left only bitterness on the tongue.

They’d passed a dozen small Tokob villages scattered through the jungle during their flight, each struggling to accommodate the hundreds of Yaloh who had crossed into Tokoban as the war penetrated ever closer to their homes. The Sky City was the only place that still had capacity, and every Tokob Paw that ventured into Yalotlan to aid its warriors returned with more refugees. Most came with tales of ambush or loss. Voices quiet, their mouths turned down, they spoke of kidnapped kin as if they were already dead. As captives of the Empire of Songs, they would be either slave or sacrifice, traded or slaughtered in Pechacan, the Empire’s heartland and home of its song-magic.

Lilla shivered. He had never yet heard the song and had vowed he never would. He would rather die than live as a slave, his life and will held in the hands of another and the song his constant, unavoidable companion. Lilla would fight to free Yalotlan and keep it and Tokoban independent. If it was Malel’s decree that he should die, he would go to the mother goddess without regret to await his rebirth. But he would not surrender his body and mind into the power of another. Not for anything or anyone.

It was a vow thousands of Tokob had taken in the preceding months, some even going so far as to tattoo their promise into their flesh. Lilla’s promise was carved into his heart, and that was enough.

His surviving warriors led the way, for they knew the game trails and the safest route up the slopes to avoid the Swift Water that twisted and tumbled across the hill. The Yaloh warriors came last, turning often to stare down the trails for the tell-tale twitch of leaf or sudden silence in the usual clamour of the jungle.

Lilla’s thoughts circled memories of the ambush like a cat returning to its kill, worrying at the meat of events, clawing at his decisions and picking them apart. Lilla was Fang, the leader of his Paw: the fault was his, and so were the deaths, but now, at last, they were in familiar terrain. The humidity had risen steadily until the air was thick as resin and just breathing was a labour. The Wet would come soon, months of rain and storm, deluge and flood, that would wash the Empire of Songs back into its own lands and swell the crops for harvest.

It would bring much-needed respite from the war, but not from death and watchfulness. The Wet carried dangers of its own, ones that ordinary warriors couldn’t fight. But both the Wet and the war slipped from Lilla’s mind, just for a moment, when they finally climbed out of the jungle and onto Malel’s bare skin. Malel, who was at once the mother goddess, the world, and the hill itself upon which the Tokob, her first children, had built their greatest city. Up and to their right, still a few sticks away, the Sky City itself gleamed pale and majestic against the darker rock and splashes of green of the hill. The sun was high, picking out the glyphs and paintings adorning the city’s perimeter wall. Within, a maze of houses and markets, great plazas and temples to Malel and her first creations, the Snake and the Jaguar, kin to the Tokob.

Outside the walls grew widely spaced orchards of fig, mango, palm and nut, and small stands of rubber and pom for practical and ritual purposes, and then rows of terraced fields below, seedlings just showing green against rich, black soil. Most of the Yaloh gathered here now had never seen the Sky City. Their voices were low with awe and wonder, and not a little relief. The Sky City’s walls protected against more than predators; they were sturdy enough to protect its inhabitants from the Empire, too. Perhaps. Lilla heard their relief and felt it loosen something dark and hard in his chest. He was home. Safe. For a little while.

To their right the great bend of the Swift Water glittered and rushed, twisting towards them and then looping back on itself, following the contours of the land and its own channel, carved out of Malel’s belly since the world began.

‘What’s that?’ a child asked, pointing at a series of small, squat stone buildings running across the hill below the lowest fields.

Lilla followed her gaze. ‘Those are the water temples,’ he said. ‘See those long pipes coming out of them? Every morning, they’re put into the river so that up in the temples, we can turn the handles that draw the water up the pipes. That way, the people get the water they need and only the ejab have to face the Drowned.’

Her little face was round and her eyes were even rounder. Her finger wobbled as it pointed again, this time at the river. ‘They … go down there?’

Lilla nodded. ‘Every day. But you must never, ever, ever go to the river,’ he added when the girl’s mother scowled at him. ‘And you see these markers,’ he added, raising his voice for the Yaloh nearest. ‘These mark safe distance from the river. Never cross them.’

They nodded and he waved them on, waiting for the last Yaloh warriors to make their way out of the jungle, led by Kux. ‘We came the slow and safe way,’ Lilla said as soon as the woman reached him. He gestured right, to where the jungle grew to within a hundred strides of the river and the two solitary trees that stood opposite each other, one on each bank. There was a rope bridge stretched between them. ‘If we’re running, we take the bridge and pray the Drowned don’t spot us. Through the Wet, we’ll build pits and traps and fortifications across here and cut down the bridge to slow the Empire’s advance. It’ll buy us time.’

‘Why waste time digging ditches?’ Kux demanded. ‘We should be in Yalotlan. We will make the enemy pay for every stick of land in blood, and that price will be too much.’

Her voice had risen as she spoke, and her Paw were responding, fire in their eyes and murmurs of agreement on their lips as they crowded close, knuckles yellow through brown skin.

‘Too much?’ Lilla demanded, his own anger matching hers, quick to flare these days. His warriors fought and died by the side of the Yaloh, and for what? For this slow, creeping retreat as they gave and the Empire took, stick after stick, inexorable as encroaching night. ‘There is no such thing as too much blood to them. How many eagle warriors of the Pechaqueh have you fought? Barely any, because they’re sending slave warriors and dog warriors from a dozen conquered tribes against us, making us spend our strength against fighters who are owned and have been corrupted by the Empire and its song. Only after they have broken us will the Pechaqueh themselves come, sweeping through Yalotlan like—’

‘Let them fucking come,’ Kux snarled. ‘I will taste their deaths on my tongue and I will pull their Empire down around their ears. I will shatter their song so its foul magic can no longer hold the other tribes in thrall.’ Her Paw whooped and shouted, silencing the jungle cacophony below them.

‘Then you are free to go,’ Lilla said, sharper than he meant to. He took a breath and lowered his voice, clinging to his temper by his fingernails. ‘The decision is not mine, Kux, and nor is it yours. Our councils will discuss the matter; if they find merit in sending warriors into occupied Yalotlan through the Wet, then that is what we will do. And the Tokob will go with you, I swear by my ancestors. Until that decision is made, at least rest. Eat. Dance the death rites for those we lost, and for yourself as much as them.’

Kux stared at him, her dark eyes unreadable. ‘You seek to delay me?’

‘I did not drag you all the way up Malel’s flank against your will, did I? No, I’m not delaying you; I just want to know you have grieved and rested, so that if we are to fight, I can rely on you.’

Kux snarled. ‘I am the one fighting for my land; you need not concern yourself with me.’ She paused then, and some of the fire went out of her. ‘But I will dance for my dead, Fang Lilla. I will do that. And I will see you at the council meeting at dusk.’

She pushed past him before he could say any more, and the rest of her Paw followed her in silence. In an effort to calm his temper, Lilla stared into the depths of the jungle, lush and green and vibrant, living and dying in the eternal dance, the eternal balance. Was it Malel’s will that her children fall to the Empire’s magic and the Empire’s warriors? Was it time for the first children to pass from the world and be reborn anew?

‘No,’ he whispered fiercely to the sun and the trees and the bright splash of parrots that broke from the canopy above his head, red against the aching blue of the sky. The breeze kissed the sweat on his brow as if in agreement and lifted the heavy curtain of his hair, tugging playfully and stealing cool fingers across the back of his neck. His heart twisted with an almost violent love for his home and his land, this place where his feet rested upon Malel’s skin, where she breathed within him and he within her. ‘No. She cannot want an end to all this. She cannot.’

If the Yaloh and Tokob fell, then all the peoples of Ixachipan would belong to the Pechaqueh of the Empire. And their song would infect them all.

The room was crowded by the councils of two tribes, sitting in a double circle. There was one space free, between Kux and … Lilla came to an abrupt halt, joy swiftly subsumed by a sense of dread. It can’t be him. He shouldn’t be back this soon. Perhaps feeling the weight of his gaze, the man twisted and looked up, confirming what Lilla’s heart was already telling him from a single glance at those slender shoulders.

‘Tayan?’ His voice was hoarse.

Tayan scrambled to his feet and rushed into his arms, his expression complicated by too many emotions, before High Elder Vaqix rapped the smooth, polished stone on the floor in front of him. ‘Sit, please. There is much to talk over.’

‘Are you well, my heart?’ Lilla asked and Tayan nodded quickly, his eyes running over him with worried intensity, looking for fresh wounds or hurts. ‘I’m fine,’ he added soothingly, ‘but you weren’t at home. Have you only just now returned?’

‘I had to go straight to the shamans’ conclave to report; there wasn’t time to—’

Vaqix rapped the stone again.

Lilla tore his gaze from Tayan’s face and looked over his head at the high elder. Vaqix was tall and stooped, his beaked nose adding to the impression he gave of an angry vulture as he hunched on his cushion, glaring. Flanking him was Apok, the warriors’ elder, and Tika, the ejab elder, both sleek and powerful beside his gnarled frame. Lilla glanced back at Tayan again, at the formal blue band painted across his brow, and the second, slender line that ran from his bottom lip down the middle of his chin. The unfamiliar kilt was blue too – he had dressed in borrowed shaman’s finery for this meeting and Lilla’s heart ached to see him. He’d been gone for too long and, despite Vaqix’s glare, which had physical weight now – they were the only two still standing – he stole a soft, chaste kiss from his husband’s mouth and heard the tiny hitch in Tayan’s breathing, a sound he knew as well as he knew his own voice. It spoke of relief, and love, and want.

Lilla had so many questions, but instead they stepped into the circle and sat. Tayan squeezed Lilla’s hand and they held tight through the welcome of councillors, warriors, and travellers, and the formal invitation for Malel to witness the meeting.

‘Peace-weaver Betsu, Peace-weaver Tayan. Your return is swifter than expected. Have the Zellih agreed to our request?’ Vaqix’s tone was formal, his voice neutral, but there was tension in his shoulders.

Tayan’s hand became damp in Lilla’s grip as the silence grew heavy. ‘The Zellih say no, High Elder,’ he croaked, the usual music stolen from his voice. ‘They will not aid us against the Empire of Songs.’

‘They say more than no!’ Peace-weaver Betsu shouted as mutters rose among the elders. She was a short, stocky woman who’d come to council in her armour. She knelt on Tayan’s far side like an angry toad. ‘They say they have no quarrel with the Empire of Songs and no love for the peoples of Ixachipan. They reminded us that three generations ago, when the Pechaqueh suddenly began their conquest of the world, they urged us to stand with the other tribes and grind Pechacan to dust. To stamp the Singing City back into the mud. They know we look outside of Ixachipan for aid now because all the other tribes have fallen and we have nowhere else to turn.’

Her words had silenced the room and into that silence she laughed, bitter as venom. ‘And they’re right. We did ignore the pleas of the Chitenecah when their land was threatened, and the Zellih, even so far away as they are, did urge us to fight. While we cowered in our cities and villages and prayed for the Pechaqueh to look elsewhere, the Zellih called for war. And we said no.’

‘You blame us for this?’ High Elder Vaqix demanded, fury weaving through his voice. An echo of it stirred in Lilla.

‘Yes,’ Betsu said, ‘but no more than I blame my own people and every tribe that walks Ixachipan. Pechacan, its people and its song are a curse upon the world and they have stolen the lives and lands of too many – of almost everyone – but still, not all the obsidian and jade we could offer will make the Zellih fight the Empire now. They believe them too strong; they believe them unstoppable. They trust in their hills and the salt pans to protect them.’ She took a deep breath. ‘We are alone.’

‘You are not.’ Vaqix’s voice was strong as mahogany despite Betsu’s scorn and the shaken expression flickering across his gaunt features. ‘Tokoban stands with you.’

Betsu laughed again, its edges jagged. Lilla leant away from her sharpness. ‘Then perhaps we will survive one season longer as a result. I am sure that will comfort the new parents among both our peoples. They can spend it deciding whether slavery or death is the future they want for their children and themselves.’

The council chamber descended into hostile silence.

‘The Zellih also warned us that refugees will not be welcomed,’ Tayan said. ‘They are stationing warriors on the edge of the salt pans at the border of Ixachipan and Barazal, and they will kill any who attempt to cross.’

Lilla had thought the news couldn’t get any worse, but at Tayan’s pronouncement he felt the blood drain from his face and blinked, suddenly dizzy. At some point he’d let go of the shaman’s hand and now he stared down into his lap, focusing on his fingers with unblinking intensity.

‘What?’ Vaqix shouted, all his composure fleeing. The old man lurched to his feet, the council stone skittering across the floor as he kicked it. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a gross violation of protocol; now no one even glanced at it as it bounced to a stop. ‘If we have nowhere to retreat to, we’ll be massacred. They must help us!’

‘The Zellih elders advise us to either win or surrender,’ Tayan said in a monotone. ‘We will find no succour with them.’

‘Then we fight.’ Kux’s voice was strident with anger. ‘We fight to the very end and we make the Pechaqueh rue the day they sent their Talons against us. Once the Wet is fully upon us, if not before, they will send their warriors home and leave only enough to occupy those parts of Yalotlan they have already stolen. We’ll outnumber them, and I say we show no mercy and we leave none alive. Retake Yalotlan so that when they return after the rains they must begin their conquest all over again. And again, and again, until they give up.’

Every eye turned to Eja Tika at the pronouncement. The woman’s face was hard, her smile bitter. ‘If we fight through the Wet, we will be facing both the Empire and the Drowned at their most active. It would be foolish in the extreme.’

Kux started to protest, but Tika glared her effortlessly into silence. ‘But … we Tokob know our land, and we trust our Yaloh allies to know theirs. We can stay away from the rivers and ponds, and those areas that we know flood through the Wet. It would certainly take the invaders by surprise. It shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.’

Kux was wild-eyed and grinning, savage in her small triumph, and Lilla realised he should say something, either for and against her proposal, but if he opened his mouth he was likely to throw up. So he sat in stricken silence as the argument raged back and forth for war through the Wet, for no break from the stress and terror and eternal vigilance. His chest was hollow with grief and fear, and at his side Tayan, peace-weaver and shaman, his husband and his heart, had no words of comfort.

Because Kux was right. Fight or die. Win or surrender. They had no allies and they were out of options.

TAYAN

Sky City, Malel, Tokoban

120th day of the Great Star at morning

It was deep night when the council meeting finally broke up. No consensus had been reached, and so Tayan had offered to journey to the ancestors and ask them and Malel for guidance. The councils had agreed, though he’d been able to feel Lilla’s disapproval coming off him in waves.

Now, as they left the council house, his husband seized his hand and dragged him along the side of the building into the deepest shadow. The night was intermittently lit with braziers and moonlight, diffuse through building cloud, though Tayan wouldn’t have cared if they’d been standing on the council-house steps at noon. He let Lilla push him back against the wall and slid his arms around his husband’s waist as his face was seized in a gentle, calloused grip. This kiss was not chaste, not in any possible way, but neither could it go where they both wanted it to. Lilla’s body was firm and warm against his and Tayan stretched up onto his toes to wind his arms around his neck.

It was a kiss of promise and welcome and more promise, heating until Tayan could feel his cheeks flushing under Lilla’s palms, and his husband felt it too, one of those hands sliding down his chest and around to his back in a long, languid caress that drew a shiver from his skin and a low whimper from his throat. Lilla smiled against his mouth and kissed him deeper, pressing him closer, and after so many weeks apart and despite his exhaustion, he wanted nothing more than to bury himself in Lilla’s hair and body and never come out. Instead, he broke the kiss.

‘And you’re really unhurt,’ he demanded when Lilla sighed and opened his eyes. Tayan had to swallow at all the promises they contained, but the shaman stroked his back and flanks, searching for a hint of pain in his expression or a flinch.

‘I’m really unhurt, my heart.’ He winced as Tayan’s hands slid along his chest. ‘Ah, except for a small – love, it’s fine.’ He laughed softly and batted away Tayan’s hands as he tried to lift his tunic and examine him. ‘I promise it’s not serious. I promise you can treat it when we get home,’ he added.

Tayan huffed. Neither of them would be going home for hours. Vaqix had made it clear they needed answers tonight.

‘There are other shamans, Tayan. Ones who aren’t newly returned across the salt pans.’

‘I am the one who failed,’ Tayan snapped. He took a breath and stretched up onto his toes again to kiss Lilla’s cheek in unspoken apology. ‘This journey must be mine. We need greater wisdom than the living can provide. I am the peace-weaver; it wouldn’t be fair to ask another to make the attempt for me.’

‘Then I’ll journey with you,’ Lilla said, fingers tingling down his flanks.

Tayan smiled and kissed him again and had a deep, powerful urge to just keep kissing him until the world changed for the better. As if the force of his love alone was enough. Lilla seemed happy to try, too, and it was long moments before they came up for air. ‘I need you here in the flesh world, love. I need you to watch over me and bring me out if … You know how this works.’

‘I know I don’t like it,’ Lilla grumbled and pressed himself back against Tayan and Tayan back against the wall. ‘I like this.’

Tayan arched an eyebrow. ‘I like it, too.’

‘It’s dangerous.’

Tayan pressed his hips forward. ‘This? Are you scared of me, warrior?’ he asked in an attempt at sultry spoilt by a giggle. Lilla just shook his head, but the corner of his mouth turned up.

‘You know what I mean. A journey now, when you’re already exhausted …’

‘Ah. So you stop fighting when you’re tired, do you?’ he asked and Lilla blushed and stood back up. Tayan didn’t blame him for worrying, but that sounded suspiciously like he didn’t trust him. ‘You walk the jaguar path with honour, my love, but mine is a spiral and I must journey it. Tonight. Please.’

Lilla let out a noisy, resigned sigh and kissed Tayan’s knuckles in silent apology. ‘The womb?’ he asked.

‘The womb,’ Tayan confirmed.

They’d stopped back at home to collect Tayan’s ritual tools before making the long climb uphill out of the city to the womb. Unlike the two large healing caves dug into the bones of the city, this system was different: tunnels of dark rock leading to a small cavern made from a paler stone and flecked with tiny crystals. Malel’s womb. The birthplace of the world and all the creatures within it, and the place from where the Tokob first children had sprung.

The birthplace of the shamanic magic, the shamanic ritual.

Tayan knelt on a square blue mat facing the rows of spirit carvings, representations of ancestors and the gods in their many guises. Carefully, he mixed the dried herbs and fungus into the small clay vessel containing the drops of diluted frog-venom, adding a little water before grinding them into a thick paste. He breathed deeply and set out the drum, the idols of his spirit guides and ancestors, and his paints. In the wavering candlelight, Lilla used a thin feather to draw vision symbols on Tayan’s brow, black against the blue.

‘Ready?’ he asked.

Tayan nodded and licked his lips, then began the drumbeat that would bind heart and mind and spirit to the realm of the ancestors. Lilla nodded in his turn, made sure the gourd of water was at hand, and then rose to stand behind him, a familiar, beloved pillar of strength and protection who would guard his flesh. The warding of his spirit, Tayan would have to see to himself.

The drum was the rhythm of life itself, of Malel the mother, who was at once the world, its goddess, and the hill inside which he knelt. She was home and judge and the route to rebirth. She was ancient and new, mother of gods and all the creatures that lived upon her skin. She was life and death, the bringer of disease and its cure. She was all things, and Tayan strove to connect the tiny wisp of his being, brought to life through Malel’s magic, to her immensity.

His spirit vibrated to the drum’s rhythm and the walls of the womb seemed to take the sound and double it and feed it back to him, as if the stone itself breathed. When his spirit was prepared, he swallowed the paste that would spark the journey-magic. It was bitter, sucking the moisture from his mouth and clinging to the insides of his throat, but he fought it down, fingers never faltering as they tapped the beat.

It didn’t take long for the magic to pull him into its grip; the flesh world began to glow and then disappear, the spirit realm, over and within and around it, fading into view. At his feet lay a wide trail, spiralling gently upwards. Innumerable others twisted around, above and even through it. Only one path was true: the others would take him to the Underworld, even as they seemed to lead upwards. If he concentrated, Tayan could see the flesh world too, his hand on the drum and the idols laid on the mat before him. But the flesh world could not answer his questions and so he let it sink and vanish.

Tayan changed the beat, calling on his spirit guides for aid. Something brushed his senses: a presence hot and volatile, a barely contained volcano. A huge black cat appeared on the path before him, tail lashing and fangs bared. Tayan allowed himself no unease, despite the fact that, of all his usual guides, this was the least predictable. Young Jaguar was often filled with caprice and sometimes with malice. More than once he had sought to trick Tayan’s spirit onto the wrong path for his own amusement. And yet his power was undoubted, and if he chose to stand with Tayan’s spirit and defend him, none could harm him.

‘Young Jaguar, I honour your presence here and offer you my thanks. I seek wisdom from the ancestors on the spiral path. Perhaps even from Malel herself. Will you show me the way to them as you have before?’

The spirit guide crouched lower, as if to spring, his eyes glowing with inner fire. Then his lips covered his teeth and he spun on his haunches and bounded away. Tayan spared a single glance down at himself: the golden thread connecting spirit to flesh was strong and anchored within him. It would lead him back to his body. He set out after Young Jaguar, hurrying in the giant cat’s pawprints. The spirit guide leapt onto a particular path and didn’t bother glancing back; Tayan ran after him, stepping off one trail onto another, questing outwards with his senses and his magic to see whether he had been led false. He had not.

When they reached the Gate of the Ancestors, tall and imposing, blocking their advance, Young Jaguar let out a roar that knocked Tayan back a step and then vanished, not waiting for the shaman’s thanks or offering. He provided them anyway, his empty body picking up the carved stone idol of the jaguar from the mat and spitting on it. ‘My body and breath, Young Jaguar,’ he murmured in both the flesh and spirit worlds. ‘My thanks and adoration.’

The Gate of the Ancestors swung open and the path continued on through it. A single path now, the true path, for the lords of the Underworld had no power to confuse here. Tayan checked the golden thread of his life again and stepped forward. From the mists, ancestors began to coalesce, drifting towards him, their translucent outlines shimmering and ragged, motes of light swirling deep within their forms.

The shaman strove for calm as dozens and then scores pressed in around the bright, life-filled shape of his spirit with its golden thread leading back to his body. The ancestors lusted to live again, even though only spirit could animate flesh and the ancestors were what remained when a spirit ascended to rebirth.

Still, if one of them could rip the thread from Tayan and follow it back to his flesh, it would possess the shaman’s body, leaving him formless on the spiral path, neither living nor dead and unable to ascend to Malel for rebirth or return to his form. Eventually, his wanderings would lead him to the Underworld and eternal torment. He would not be the first shaman lost in the spirit world.

And while he was lost, the ancestor would do its best to live again, even though it was but a memory. A half-life in a hollow shell, Tayan’s body stumbling around unable to communicate, food sickening in his belly until he fell down in the dirt and the ancestor was expelled with his flesh’s final breath.

Malel, guide my steps and my words. Malel, watch over me.

‘Ancestors, I honour you. I am Tayan, shaman of the Tokob, called the stargazer,’ he called, drumming faster now, louder, to better tie his spirit to his flesh. Young Jaguar had been one potential danger; the confusion of trails another; but this was the greatest. ‘I come for wisdom about the war, about the Empire of Songs. I come to ask what we must do for peace. Will any advise me?’

Anit, Tayan’s two-times distant father, drifted closer, the shape and feel of him familiar to the shaman. While Anit’s spirit had been reborn more than once since his death, the memory of him, the shape made of light and shadow, remained as an ancestor able to impart wisdom to his people.

Yet Tayan hesitated. Anit was one of the Tokob elders who had rejected the Chitenecah call for aid fifty sun-years before. He had been there when the Pechaqueh began their insatiable expansion and he had let Chitenec fall and its people be taken into slavery.

A low, disturbing chuckle rose from Anit’s form and Tayan realised he’d been lost in thought for too long – and that the ancestors could read strong emotion. ‘You wonder what help I can be, yes? And yet, how are we unalike, stargazer? You let Xentiban fall four sun-years past. You let Quitoban be overrun eleven years before that. Time’s circle turns and old mistakes are made anew. How Malel must grieve for us.’

Tayan let himself hear the beat of the drum in the flesh world. His way home. ‘Then your advice remains the same as it did when you lived: to abandon all others until the might of all Ixachipan is arrayed against us?’

The ancestor chuckled again. ‘Perhaps it is time for the first children to end,’ it said. ‘What have the Tokob ever done with such a gift anyway? Shouldn’t the first children have educated those who came after? Shouldn’t we have shown them the balance so that they might live within it? No, perhaps falling to the Pechaqueh is best.’

Tayan’s spirit shuddered at the words. ‘Malel has a plan for us,’ he began, more harshly than anyone should ever address an ancestor.

‘And who is to say that that plan is not for us to end? For the Tokob to return to her womb and be reborn as a new tribe? Quitoban and Xentiban have both fallen during your lifetime – what have the Tokob done about that?’

The words sawed at the golden thread connecting Tayan’s spirit to his flesh, filling him with shame and regret. He had argued they help the Xentib, had begged the council of elders to listen, but his had been one of few voices. Now their selfishness was returning to haunt them. The Tokob had thought themselves so noble, so secure as the goddess’s firstborn, that they had ignored the plight of others. Anit was right; they should have been teachers and shamans and advisers. Perhaps the people of Pechacan would never have started down this bloodstained road if they’d taught them Malel’s wisdom from the beginning.

‘What of the Zellih, honoured ancestor?’ Tayan persisted, vaguely aware of the sting in his palm as he drummed, hard and relentless, its cadence showing none of the alarm he felt.

‘It is Ixachipan the Pechaqueh want, not mountainous Barazal and its scattered tribes. The Zellih know this and they have already refused you. Do not tempt them to anger by begging them again.’

‘They offered aid during the days you walked Malel’s skin,’ Tayan tried and Anit’s form swirled and blew apart, then coalesced a little darker, the motes within agitated.

‘They did. They do not now. Not even Malel can turn back the sun and make it those days again.’

‘And yet without Zellih aid, we will fall.’

Anit’s shade dissipated again, and this time re-formed directly in front of Tayan, close enough to touch. Its hands rose, clawlike, towards the golden thread of the shaman’s life. Tayan stepped hurriedly backwards. ‘Revered ancestor, how may we survive the storm to come?’ he tried for what he knew was the last time.

Anit was growing in size and density, preparing to fight for possession of Tayan’s flesh. Even more were gathering, drawn by the golden light of life until he was surrounded by swirling blackness. ‘How do we defeat the Empire of Songs?’ he shouted even as he backed further towards the gate. Ancestors blocked his advance up the spiral path – the way to Malel was closed to him.

‘Only a Pecha can defeat the Pechaqueh.’

Anit made a final lunge through the closing gate and Tayan turned and fled, racing back along the golden thread of his own being. In the flesh world, he raised the ancestor idol to his lips and licked it, not having enough saliva for more. ‘Honoured ancestor, I thank you for your guidance. Rest in your realm in peace and seek not to return to life.’ His voice was a croak but it held none of the bitter disappointment – or curdling fear – in his heart.

The thread of connection grew thicker as Tayan drummed the recall beat and his flesh urged him home. He fell into his body and was lost inside it for a time, overwhelmed with sensation, with everything pressing in on him, the weight of his flesh and the rush of blood in his ears. He panicked as he felt his chest move, ragged and too fast, before remembering what breathing was. He concentrated on his hands, one drumming, the other still clutching the idol, observing the sensations from a distance before making cautious contact with them.

Gradually, reluctantly, the spirit world sank back beneath the surface. Sound and sight and smell returned, the weight and presence and solidity of his flesh cocooning him, holding him safe. Smothering the great expanse of his spirit and crushing it down small and tight inside until it flowed into every line and curve and corner of his body. His spirit; not Anit’s. The drumbeat stuttered to a stop and Tayan placed the idol back on the blanket with a shaking hand, focusing in order to make his fingers unclench.

A figure appeared in the corner of his vision and although their movements were slow, Tayan flinched hard and then recognised Lilla. Familiar. Beloved. Husband. Lilla didn’t touch him, instead waiting for him to settle and reconnect with his body.

Thirst was a predator chewing at Tayan’s throat and he fumbled for the gourd; Lilla snatched it up and handed it to him. The shock of their fingers touching rocked Tayan, a contact he struggled to understand and one that wrenched a gasp and then a whimper from his throat. Still, he brought the gourd to his lips. The water was warm and washed the residue of the journey-magic from his mouth and throat, and by the time it was empty, he was almost himself again.

Lilla watched him with forced calm so as not to startle the spirit back out of him. The magic was weakening, but he could still feel his husband’s emotions as if they were his own. He rode them, focused on his breathing.

‘Only a Pecha can defeat the Pechaqueh,’ he said when he had remembered how to speak.

‘What does that mean?’

Tayan shrugged, his spirit sloshing within him, and then packed away his ritual tools with shaking hands. ‘It means I take the peace-weaving to Pechacan and try to convince them to end the war.’

Lilla argued hard once Tayan was able to think and move again, but even he couldn’t deny the logic and the truth of it. There were simply no other options. Someone had to go, and Tayan and Betsu had been appointed by their respective councils.

Tayan was stumbling by the time they got back downhill and into the city, twitches from the aftermath of the journey-magic in his eyelids and fingertips. Lilla wrapped an arm around his waist and supported him through the streets and home. Tayan glanced once at Xessa’s house, which was next to theirs, but there was no candlelight this late and as much as he wanted to see the friend of his heart, he was too exhausted to even think about waking her.

So they unpinned the door curtain and took off their sandals and slipped inside and Tayan headed straight for the long, low wooden-framed bed at the far end, stripping off his kilt and tunic as he went. It was lazy, but he didn’t even have the energy to wash the paint from his face or kneel to take a stoppered jar of water from the storage chamber beneath the floorboards.

Instead, he folded himself onto the bed with a long, heartfelt groan that had Lilla chuckling. The warrior padded around for a while without bothering to light a candle, swearing mildly as he tripped over Tayan’s discarded clothes. Floor mats rustled as they were dragged aside. The shaman smelt cool earth and heard the thump of the jar being lifted out and set down. He needed food and lots of water, but his eyelids were already heavy.

‘Come here, love,’ he breathed, holding out a hand to the darkness, and Lilla took it. Lilla would always take it. His husband forced Tayan to drink, more than he wanted but likely not as much as he needed, and then wrapped him in his arms and pressed kisses lighter than butterfly wings against his temple and hairline.

Tayan slept, smiling.

Dawn had broken before they woke, and mid-morning threatened to be upon them before they extricated themselves from each other’s hands and mouths and bodies, sticky with sweat and sweetly exhausted all over again. The council would be waiting for the results of Tayan’s journey, but he stubbornly refused to contemplate dragging himself out of bed. What he’d learnt was important, but in the golden light of morning it didn’t seem as urgent as it had last night. On balance, he was glad he’d got the journey out of the way and could spend a few more hours in bed. Or so he thought.

‘Ossa! Ossa, here, boy. Come on, dog.’ Lilla whistled, but the sound broke off as Tayan thumped him on the chest. ‘Ow!’

‘I want to sleep.’

‘No, you don’t. You want all the latest Xessa gossip, including whether she and Toxte have fucked yet. I don’t know which of them I want to hit harder for stringing it out this long.’

‘They won’t have.’

‘Bet?’

‘You buy me snake on a skewer when you lose.’

Lilla shrugged: ‘Fair enough,’ and Tayan knew that although it would be expensive, his husband wouldn’t begrudge him such a meal on their first day back.

Lilla stood and found their kilts, threw Tayan’s at his head and slipped into his own.

Tayan huffed and dressed, but his expectant grin faded as no prancing dog and smiling eja burst into their small, neat home. He padded to the door and pulled back the curtain. ‘Firepit’s not lit,’ he said, frowning.

‘Really? Maybe she spent the night at Toxte’s.’

Tayan chewed his lip. ‘And didn’t hear that we’d both returned home on the same day? No. I don’t like this.’

Lilla’s hand was gentle on his arm, and when he turned, he passed him the half-empty jar and then his tunic. ‘Then let’s go and find her,’ Lilla said and drank the last of the water Tayan had left for him. Together, they stepped out into a morning patched with cloud, the humidity already stifling, and strapped on their sandals. ‘Water temple?’

‘Makes sense.’

They were halfway down through the city, hurrying through the plazas and markets and sidestepping shrieking children and squabbling dogs when they heard a piercing whistle behind them and stopped to look. A grin was already breaking across Tayan’s face, but it faded when he saw the woman behind them wasn’t Xessa.

Eja Elder Tika strode towards them, her dog Yalla prancing at her side. ‘What wisdom from the ancestors, shaman?’ she demanded, without even any pleasantries. Tayan wasn’t surprised; Tika was elder because she was tough and well respected and an exceptional eja, though the spirit-magic did not ride her senses today. And at least this way, he could tell an elder what needed to happen and then go and find Xessa without feeling guilty.

‘The ancestors left me with little, elder. They say that only a Pecha can defeat the Pechaqueh. As such, it is clear to me that I must go to Pechacan, to the Singing City itself. There, I must convince a high-ranking Pecha that the war must end, that Yalotlan and Tokoban remain free.’

Tika was silent, tapping a fingertip against her pursed lips as she thought. ‘It is not what I had hoped, but then again neither was the outcome with the Zellih. Perhaps it is the only way, and I admire your courage. That is a long journey and a dangerous one. And I suspect the Singing City itself will be even more lethal. When will you set out?’

Tayan swallowed against the nerves fluttering in his belly. ‘That will be for the council to decide, elder. I would hope for at least some days here, to rest and prepare. And … now that you are here, elder, can you tell me where Eja Xessa is? Her house is empty and—’

‘The little fool tried to take on a pair of Drowned at the Swift Water three days ago. Toxte and the dogs had to drag her to safety and Ossa is hurt too. They’re both in the upper healing caves, under Shaman Beztil’s care. Your friend’s good, but she’s reckless. It will get her killed young.’

Worry filled Tayan’s belly, along with anger at Tika’s casual dismissal of Xessa’s abilities. She was one of the best of the thousand or so ejab in the Sky City, despite having seen fewer than twenty-five sun-years, though he had to admit that this wasn’t the first time she’d been injured.

‘How bad?’ he demanded as Lilla’s hand came to rest on the back of his neck in wordless comfort.

‘Poisoned, lost some leg skin. She’ll have a pretty new scar to remind her.’ Tika stroked the four pale lines that extended from her cheek down the side of her neck, reminder of her own tangle with a Drowned two decades before. ‘But she’ll make a full recovery. The dog too.’

‘Thank Malel,’ Tayan breathed. ‘Please, will you take the ancestors’ answer to the council? I need to see her.’

Tika nodded and then twitched, her eyelid flickering rapidly. She rubbed at it. The elder had been consuming spirit-magic for years to deaden her to the songs of the Drowned, and the prolonged exposure was beginning to take its toll.

The pair hurried back uphill towards the upper healing cave dug into Malel’s bones, inwards to the heart of creation, where the goddess’s power was most potent and the shamans’ treatments and spells most effective.

They skipped over the deep, narrow drainage channels carved in the centre of the limestone road that would carry rain downhill to the terraced fields during the Wet. They’d been designed to prevent a Drowned getting so much as one gill beneath water to aid its survival so far from the Swift Water and its many tributaries.

‘Lilla! You’re back!’ a voice called and Tayan would have ignored it if not for his husband’s answering shout.

‘Ilandeh, hello.’ The woman waved and hurried over, Dakto at her side.

‘Blessings on you,’ Ilandeh said, as she always did. ‘And welcome back to the city.’

‘I am glad to see you unhurt, Fang Lilla,’ Dakto added. ‘And you, shaman. I pray your journey to the Zellih was a success.’

Tayan was already hurrying on, leaving Lilla to make their excuses. It didn’t matter that Tika had said she’d live; he had first-hand experience of Drowned venom and knew exactly how awful it was. He had no time to spare for Xentib refugees, no matter how likeable the pair was.

They had arrived before the last Wet, fleeing the Pechaqueh advance that had swallowed their lands and their people in the conquest four sun-years before. They joined the few hundred other Xentib who already lived here, the lucky escapees from slavery. Together, they’d taken over the duskside lower quadrant of the city, now known as Xentibec.

Ilandeh and Dakto were the last to make it so far north; they’d kept to themselves in the jungles, living hand-to-mouth, until the Empire’s push towards Yalotlan forced them to beg for refuge in the Sky City and there discover the last free remnants of their people.

But in the months since the Yaloh refugees had begun arriving, tensions had risen in the city. The two tribes had shared a border and there were generations of bad blood between them, and despite the fact they were all refugees together, and guests in Tokoban, insults and brawls had been becoming more common before Tayan had left to try to weave an alliance with the Zellih.

Tayan cared for none of it as he pushed his way around the edges of the busy market and up the wide avenue leading to the healing cave before darting in through the wide mouth gaping from the hillside. ‘Eja Xessa,’ he barked and an apprentice pointed the way.

Three days ago. Three days without me. Beztil was a talented shaman, but when it came to healing and medicine for his loved ones, Tayan wouldn’t let anyone else touch them. ‘I heard what happened. Are you all right?’ Tayan demanded as he burst through the curtain into Xessa’s room, and then signed the question after he’d touched her arm. Sometimes she would feel the change in the air when someone entered her presence. The scent of rain, or just the awareness of another person nearby would alert her, even if Ossa didn’t. This time she hadn’t noticed him pushing into the tiny underground cell.

The curtain moved again and Lilla and then the two Xentib crowded around her low cot. Tayan spared an instant to glare at Lilla before fixing his gaze back on the eja and sitting carefully next to her. He stared into her face, sickly grey with venom even now. The smile she managed was alarming rather than reassuring, and by her side Ossa lay in twitching, whimpering misery. Her gaze roamed over the three behind Tayan and she managed a grin and a raise of the eyebrows towards Lilla. The warrior nodded that he was healthy, which Tayan had at least managed to ascertain for himself that morning, and then flickered over the Xentib. She smiled again, but looked quickly away. Neither had learnt more than a few signs for the most basic communication, and Tayan knew their incomprehension made Xessa uncomfortable. He put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed.

A ripple of twitches ran from her scalp to her toes and he peeled back the edge of the cotton bandage swathing her from ankle to knee and sucked his bottom lip as he examined the wounds. While Drowned venom was rarely fatal in an adult, the medicine was slow-acting and it’d be a week before the burning in her bones faded and she stopped praying for death. Xessa’s fingers clenched at a spasm of pain and then she laid her hand on the dog’s head; he flopped onto his side against her flank, curled so his triangular skull was on her hip bone, tail thumping weakly into her armpit. Another shudder racked her and Ossa whined.

Tayan squinted down his nose at them both. ‘You look like shit,’ he said. ‘Want to tell me about it? Tika says you nearly died.’

‘Didn’t though,’ Xessa signed.

Tayan rubbed the back of his neck. ‘Only because your duty partner has more common sense than you do. Two Drowned? You tried to draw water when there were two of the fuckers circling you?’ He sat back and resisted the urge to shake her. She hadn’t followed everything he’d said, but she understood enough.

‘What other choice was there? We share the city with two thousand Yaloh now, plus our old Xentib friends. We need the water.’ She signed it simply, with the fatalistic calm common to ejab, and one that made him clench his teeth every time he witnessed it.

‘We’ve had early rain, in case you hadn’t noticed. People are already hanging gourds from the eaves. We’ll manage. And you’re too important to lose.’

Xessa rolled her head on the mattress. ‘Not enough rain yet. You know that. And it’s not like it was in our ancestors’ time. There are too many Drowned now; we have to cull their numbers where we can. That’s just how it is.’ She paused to cough. Ossa whined again, his pink tongue licking her belly beneath her tunic.

‘Have any more Yaloh agreed to be tested for the snake path while I was gone?’ Lilla asked, signing as he spoke. ‘It would be so useful, even if they just did it for a year or two. Once the Wet is here, all the ejab will have to work harder to keep so many of us safe and the spirit-magic … well, we cannot ask them to use it more often than they do. The toll is already too great.’

‘A hundred have,’ Xessa signed and Lilla repeated it in a low voice for the Xentib. ‘Tika’s taking charge of their training and is giving them the magic one at a time. Sixteen failures so far. Two successes. And another eight who are deaf or partially deaf have joined. They only need a weaker type of spirit-magic or none at all, like me. It might eventually make up for the four we lost this last sun-year when the magic faded during their duty.’

She didn’t need to elaborate. Those ejab, knowing all they did of the Drowned, knowing everything, would have walked into the river with open arms to embrace the teeth and claws of their enemy. Tayan shivered and the rock walls seemed to grow colder and tighter around them.

Ten thousand Tokob kept safe by the efforts of one thousand ejab. And now two thousand Yaloh to add to the burden.

Every problem seemed bigger than the last. We’re losing two wars, not just one. We’re losing everything.

Still, a hundred Yaloh volunteers showed a huge shift in their guests’ thinking. Before fleeing to Tokoban, the Yaloh had lived in small, independent villages of no more than a hundred or so. They had gathered water exclusively from bamboo and water vines, which they cultivated in dense stands around their homes. They dug fire breaks and burnt back the forest half a stick from the edge of any water source, a warning not to approach within hearing distance. It was rare for a Yalotl to come to the Sky City and ask to take the snake path. If a drought came, they had always preferred to trade with the Tokob for the services of an eja – and to pay a stiff price in meat and jewellery – rather than take the risk themselves. Until now, anyway.

‘What did Eja Elder Tika have to say about what happened to you?’ Tayan asked.

Xessa grimaced. ‘That I’m going to get myself killed sooner rather than later if I’m not more careful. Not that there’s anything more I can do. Too many people, too many Drowned, not enough ejab. And it’s getting worse. Tika wants us doubling up whenever we can, but …’ Her hands fell still.

‘But there simply aren’t enough of you, and it takes time to recover from the spirit-magic.’

Xessa shrugged and nodded as a grimace twisted her lips. Sweat popped out on her brow; she’d need to rest soon. And she doesn’t need me making her more worried, Tayan reminded himself. He started to stand up.

‘Why don’t more of your people become ejab?’ Ilandeh asked. ‘Your warriors, at least, who already know how to fight? Why not ask them?’

‘Our people choose their own paths and there’s no shame in that,’ Lilla said, his voice sharp. ‘We won’t start forcing them to take on one of the most dangerous tasks in our society. If we were like that, we’d have asked you to try the spirit-magic by now and sent you off to the river with a spear and a net.’

The Xentib looked away hastily and Tayan tried to feel some sympathy for them, but it was hard. They were good people and good friends, but they’d arrived with nothing and while Dakto was a decent fighter and Ilandeh could weave, neither had made a huge contribution to the city that had fed, housed and clothed them for most of a year.

‘That said, a lot of our people take the test, myself included. I spent my childhood convinced Malel had put me in the world to walk the snake path. When I was old enough, a shaman gave me and the other candidates the spirit-magic. I was so excited at the prospect of the spirits deadening me to the Drowned’s call. And it worked – at first.’

Lilla fell silent and Tayan realised Xessa was watching the warrior. ‘Can you see his lips?’ he signed and she nodded.

‘What happened then?’ she asked, even though she knew the story. It was important the Xentib understood why the snake path was not stepped upon lightly. Tayan shifted on the bed so he could see the rest of the room’s occupants. Lilla gave him a wan smile. Ilandeh and Dakto were silent, rapt.

Lilla signed as he spoke. ‘I heard the spirits. A sort of high, ululating whine. It was all I could hear, just that, and I was so happy, because it was working. I was going to be eja.’ He paused and bitterness chased regret across a face too gentle to be a warrior’s. ‘But then it changed. I could see the spirits too, not just hear them, and they weren’t friendly. They were angry.’

‘What did they look like?’ Ilandeh asked and Tayan translated for Xessa.

Lilla shuddered and met the shaman’s eyes. ‘Awful,’ he whispered and Tayan nodded. While his journeys were mostly spent with ancestors and familiar guides, he’d encountered enough wild spirits in his time to have a healthy respect for both their abilities and the terror and awe they inspired.

‘What happened then?’ Dakto demanded, an ugly sort of fascination in his face.

‘The spirit-magic lasts most of a day, and I spent those hours screaming and fighting things that existed only in the spirit world instead of being able to think and fight and draw water or kill Drowned in this world. And that was the end of my dream.’

‘It takes some like that, love, and there is no shame in it,’ Tayan said and signed at the same time. ‘And now look at you, one of the finest Tokob warriors, your feet firm upon the jaguar path instead. Now the monsters you fight come from Pechacan and its dominions, and that is a fight of just as much importance.’

Lilla mustered a smile for them all, but Tayan knew him and knew it was an old pain and an old shame that he wouldn’t let go.

Xessa snapped her fingers, drawing their attention. ‘Besides, how would I have won any glory if you’d been eja?’ she signed and the Tokob laughed, the Xentib looking on in polite incomprehension.

‘So no,’ Lilla finished, ‘our warriors can’t also become ejab, even if just for the duration of a Wet. It’s too much to ask, even if not for the different fighting styles each employs. Stabbing a Pecha and defeating a Drowned … they’re completely different. We can’t – we won’t – ask our people to face a threat they’re not trained for, or to risk the spirit-magic failing or killing them or making them … different for the rest of their lives. And so we manage, as we have always done.’

‘And if we’re to continue managing, this eja needs her sleep,’ Tayan said, turning back and signing to Xessa. He bent to kiss her cheek.

‘But the Zellih?’ she signed.

‘I’ll come back tonight,’ he promised. ‘I’ll tell you everything then. Sleep now.’

Xessa scowled, but her eyelids were already drooping and Ossa was deeply asleep, paws twitching. Tayan stood and ushered the others out and they were silent until they were back under the open sky.

‘Forgive us,’ Ilandeh said with a grimace. ‘The Sky City … well, it’s beginning to feel like the first proper home we’ve had since Xentiban fell. We have friends here and … we’re afraid. Of the Drowned, of the Empire, of what’s going to happen. If we offended you, any of you, we are sorry.’

The Tokob exchanged looks, but what was there to say? They were all afraid.

‘What about your retired ejab?’ Dakto asked after a decent pause. ‘They couldn’t resume the duty?’

‘No,’ Tayan said and there was an edge in his voice. He was tired, he was worried, and the Xentib endless curiosity scraped at him. He was self-aware enough to know he had the same effect on others, but today he didn’t feel like being charitable.

‘For most, the magic eventually opens a permanent channel between the eja and the spirit world. They give up the duty only when the spirits force them to, when they can’t stand the magic any more and their hearts and thoughts are permanently changed. We honour them and care for them, for they are living testimonies to sacrifice – their lives for ours – but to welcome the spirits now would likely kill them before they even reached the Swift Water. After a lifetime of sacrifice, who would ask them to give even more?’

Tayan’s heart was hurting as they reached the breeze and sunlight and bustle of the upper market again. ‘It was nice to see you both,’ Lilla said, as ever reading his husband’s mood perfectly, ‘but I’m afraid we are both still tired from our travels.’

When the Xentib had said their farewells and vanished into the market, Lilla wrapped big arms around Tayan’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to his hair. ‘Let’s go back to bed,’ he murmured. ‘I just want to forget about the world for a while.’

‘Mm. Don’t forget my snake on a skewer, though,’ Tayan said into his neck.

‘What? You didn’t even ask her about Toxte,’ Lilla grumbled. ‘That bet is—’

‘You really think if they’d started fucking in the last few weeks that he’d be anywhere but at her sickbed? You’ve just propositioned your innocent, unworldly husband in the middle of the day, after all. Which is scandalous, by the way. I am shocked. Really very shocked.’

‘Yes, I can tell,’ Lilla muttered as Tayan’s hands stroked down his hips. Tayan smiled and stretched up for a kiss, and then took his hand and led him home through the market and past the food vendors until Lilla laughingly gave in and bought them both snake on a skewer.

They ate it in bed.

ENET

The source, Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs

122 nd day of the Great Star at morning

The song was a brassy, contented rumble today, stroking along the nerves of every citizen who heard it, its ceaseless melody rippling through hearts and minds and bones and uniting them all in glory. Purpose. Triumph.

The song was their magic, their strength, never ending; it whispered its harmonies into the spirits of every person within the Empire’s bounds, from full-blood Pecha to the lowest slave. It was a sound that Enet had heard every day since her first breath, that made her not only who she was but part of a greater whole. For the song was eternal and soon would be heard across all Ixachipan to the Singer’s glory and the Empire’s triumph. And then, finally, they would have peace in which to attempt the great work – the waking of the world spirit.

Enet lay among pillows with the Singer, her smooth skin lightly sheened with sweat. Beside her, the faintly iridescent glow in the Singer’s own skin was fading as satiation took over from urgency. Enet smiled to herself, a small and secret smile, and trailed her fingers over his lower belly; he twitched and growled, and she laughed. Laughed, but stopped the caress. Best not to rouse his ire so soon after his lust.

‘Eleven years, holy lord, since the magic passed into you and raised you to greatness,’ she murmured. ‘How much you have accomplished in that time. And how your strength yet waxes. Surely you will be remembered as one of our mightiest Singers.’ The Singer didn’t respond. ‘The greatest,’ Enet whispered and caught the hitch in his breath. Ah.

‘Because of you, Tokoban and Yalotlan will be brought under the song. Because of you, Ixachipan will know peace.’ She leant forward to kiss his ear and breathed the next words. ‘Because of you, the world spirit will awaken.’

‘And I will be its eternal consort,’ the Singer murmured. He stared at the bright murals painted on the ceiling, seeming to speak only to himself. ‘The god at its side, the vessel for its will. Forever.’

‘Yes,’ Enet said. ‘Forever.’ Awe and fidelity filled her to the brim. She had a child with this man; her place, too, was guaranteed. She would make sure of it.

‘You are thinking,’ the Singer began, scowling at her. ‘I can’t quite … tell me your thoughts.’

She leant up on her elbow and gave him a lazy smile. ‘Holy lord, it is not easy to think of anything when you have brought me such pleasure.’ His scowl remained, but it was tempered with a smirk. Still, he waited for an answer. ‘I was thinking of the stories my body slave told me when I was a girl. She said the earliest Singers didn’t ascend to godhood, holy lord. She said that, before we truly understood the magic of the songstone and the world spirit’s will, they remained mortal and died as mortals. It saddened me, to think of their great sacrifices going unrewarded.’

‘Heresy,’ the Singer grunted. ‘We have always ascended. We always will. We become the highest expression of our nature. Instead of controlling the song, we go deeper, further, into it. We become song. To say otherwise is to court disaster.’

The Singer rolled towards her and examined her from beneath heavy lids. His eyes, though, were sharp. Sharper than most gave him credit for. He was tall and broad, heavy in the shoulders and arms and sculpted by the song-magic that suffused his ordinary features and strong jaw with divinity, until he was as far above mortals as the pyramid’s songstone cap was above the earth.

The magic didn’t glow in him now that his desires, as ever heightened by the song itself, were sated. Still, Enet allowed herself to be overcome by the power of him lying beside her, by her proximity to glory. ‘To wonder such things as a child is barely acceptable,’ he said, bringing her thoughts back to the conversation. ‘To raise them now is blasphemy, and to do so here, in the very source of the song itself, in my presence … Should I have you punished, Enet, Spear of the City?’

Enet smiled wickedly. ‘As the great Singer desires,’ she murmured. ‘And such desires he has. Of course, I but make idle conversation. Our son asked me for some old tales this morning and those sprang to mind. I think I first heard them when I was about his age. But of course, holy lord, I shall accept your punishment with due humility.’ There was another layer to the story she’d been told as a child, but she didn’t so much as acknowledge it in the depths of her mind, let alone speak it aloud.

Singer Xac grunted again. ‘You’ve never been humble in your life,’ he said, but there was the tiniest smile at the corner of his mouth. Enet let out a silent breath that her gamble had paid off. The Singer’s moods changed faster than a hawk’s stoop and there’d been a chance, just a breath of a chance, that he would have ordered her punished for her arrogance. Despite the truth of it. ‘I hope you at least killed the slave.’

‘Not quite,’ Enet said and pointed to the old woman who knelt at the far wall in the shadow of Nara, leader of the Singer’s personal bodyguards – the Chorus. ‘We removed her tongue though, so that she could not repeat such foulness.’ She made a noose from the Singer’s long hair and looped it around her own throat; then she leant in for a lingering kiss that would stir his song-given desires again.

‘They are strange stories though, are they not?’ she breathed against his mouth as his hand grabbed her shoulder with bruising force.

‘Enough,’ the Singer snarled. ‘Enough talk. It is impossible. Singers are gods and ascend as gods. Those they take with them become divine, too.’

‘Impossible,’ Enet agreed, the word blurred against her mouth as the Singer kissed her again, intent once more upon her body.

‘Perhaps I will put a child in you this time,’ he muttered against her throat.

Enet’s insides clenched. ‘We already have Pikte, holy lord. A finer son you could not hope for. And your first song-born.’ He had other children, at least four that she knew of from before he became Singer, and more since, but Pikte occupied that special, sacred space of the first born from his divinity.

The Singer paused, leaning over her. His expression was hard now. Disappointed. ‘One child. One.’

Enet affected a careless laugh and put her hands on his hips, coaxing him forwards. He resisted. ‘I am Spear of the City, holy lord. I administrate your councils, run the Choosers and the flesh markets and oversee the provision of songstone and erection of new pyramids. My days are full of work on the Empire’s behalf and for your glory. You have fifty other courtesans, great Singer,’ she added when he seemed unmoved. ‘Any of the women among them can and do give you children, and I know of at least five of the men who are actively seeking promising youngsters you might wish to adopt with them. Our time here together is for pleasure, not for—’

‘You are a courtesan,’ the Singer interrupted. ‘My courtesan.’

‘Spear of the City,’ Enet corrected him with a smile. ‘And so much more than a mere vessel for your seed.’

The Singer went very still and too late the words echoed in Enet’s head, the tone of them misjudged and faintly repulsed, curdling with the choir singing softly in another room. Their teasing, faintly barbed banter was a spice to their relationship, but she knew that this time she’d gone too far.

Singer Xac reared up, lurching off her as if she were a week-dead corpse. ‘What?’ His tone was deadly.

Enet scrambled onto her knees and put her forehead to the mats. The quick patter of feet behind her and then the cold, lethal point of Nara’s spear was pressed against the side of her neck. Heartbeats later the soft weight of her body slave crashed onto her back, shielding her from harm.

‘Holy lord?’ Nara’s voice was colder than the obsidian. Just as deadly. The Singer was quiet for far too long and Enet began to sweat again. The slave was little more than wrinkled skin stretched over bird-hollow bones, but her elbow was jammed in the crook of Enet’s neck and shoulder as she sought to protect her, though the absurdity of their tangle was more painful than the pressure. It was also deeply humiliating.

And then the Singer began to laugh. ‘I do love Chitenecah slaves,’ he said. ‘Loyalty is bred so deep in their bones they can’t help themselves. Either that or she wants to fuck you, eh, Enet?’

Enet blushed but was silent. The Singer waved and Nara stepped away and hauled the slave off her back. She still didn’t move. Around them, the song grumbled and then settled, and the Singer’s emotions were palpable, swirling through the source like the breeze through the colonnaded wall out to the gardens.

The slave scurried away and Nara retreated to the wall, slow and wary. Enet still didn’t move.

‘Dancers,’ the Singer called and she heard the slap of bare feet running into the room. A drum began, and then a reed flute. The Singer settled back in the pillows. Enet still didn’t move.

The Spear of the City let none of the scalding humiliation she felt show on her face or in her manners. She refused to think of it, of how the Singer had left her kneeling there through seven dances, before finally dismissing her like a whore, not a courtesan. Like a no-blood slave.

Her own slave had a red handprint slapped into the side of her face and a bead of blood at the corner of her mouth. It was deserved; Enet’s humiliation was not. With ruthless precision, she excised that thought from her mind.

She’d ordered the litter’s curtains left open so that she could be seen as her slaves bore her and Pikte back towards her estate. The old woman laboured behind them where Enet didn’t have to look at her. She let the Pechaqueh awe and excitement at seeing their Spear soothe her until the memory of what the Singer had done … She did not complete the thought, bending her mind to adoration of the holy lord. If Singer Xac or one of his Listeners was reading her through the song, they would find nothing in her heart and mind but love.

The slaves trotted across the plaza in front of the great pyramid which held the source, the Singer’s temple-home and the heart of his power. They moved onto the Way of Prayer, travelling past temples to the holy Setatmeh and former Singers, and out into the city. The wide roads here were built of limestone and swept daily to keep them bright. They contrasted with darker stone of the temples and the councillors’ great palaces. Enet had a palace here herself, owing to her position as Spear, but she preferred her family estate on the outskirts of the city. The air was sweeter, and there were fewer beggars.

Her bearers were swift and smooth, and soon enough they passed from the temple district into the markets. This close to the great pyramid and palaces, only the finest pottery and textiles and carvings were sold, only the freshest and sweetest fruits and meats. Choosers patrolled in pairs, armed with stone-headed clubs, their presence scaring off the cast-out and abandoned who tried to steal from the shops and stalls. There were few enough about this afternoon; the monthly offering to the holy Setatmeh was only a few days away, and those with no status or protection knew better than to fall beneath the gazes of the Choosers so close to new moon.

It both pleased and irritated Enet. Pleased, because she did not have to smell their stench or see their filth. Irritated, because the Choosers would have to hunt them down, searching the whole city and the surrounding fields for offerings.

The Spear put it from her mind and instead allowed Pikte to climb into her lap so that he could point out the market’s finer items. The boy had seen one Star cycle since his birth – eight sun-years – and was as lively and clever as she had prayed for. She revelled in the simple joy of his presence, of his warm wriggling in her lap. She had no need of more children – another thought she cut off before it could form.

Pikte’s status as offspring of the Singer made him both someone for the ambitious to befriend, particularly as he grew older, and a target for disaffected councillors or those ruined by the latest purge. In addition to the four litter-bearers, four warriors surrounded them, clearing the way and ensuring no one came too close.

Everywhere in this district, Pechaqueh in brightly dyed and woven kilts and tunics hurried, glancing up at the darkening sky and the coming rain. Among them were slaves in undyed maguey cloth, holding purchases or carrying messages, their eyes down and brands visible on their upper arms.

‘Look!’ Pikte exclaimed, pointing. ‘Axib.’

Enet gave him an indulgent smile. ‘And how do you know that?’

‘Because they shave one side of their heads. See? And they’re free, too.’

‘So they are,’ Enet murmured, distracted. Free Axib in the most exclusive market in the Singing City. It was … unusual. ‘Guard,’ she called and the warrior leading them looked back. ‘Tell the next Chooser you see to find out what those free are doing in here and move them on. They’re unsightly.’

‘As the Spear commands,’ the man said.

‘They weren’t born free, though,’ Pikte added as they passed the trio. He pointed again. ‘Look, their slave brands have been cut through.’ He was quiet for a while, craning his neck to keep them in view as the litter passed. ‘How horrible to be a slave.’

‘And yet now they are happy and productive members of the Empire,’ Enet said, making him look at her. ‘Why?’

‘Because they have embraced the song and become Pechaqueh in their hearts,’ the boy said obediently. Enet smiled at him and he grinned back, delighted at her approval. ‘Have you ever been outside the Empire? Have you ever not heard the song?’

She shifted him in her lap again. ‘I have, yes.’ His eyes were round. ‘Many years ago. The silence is … unpleasant.’ The Spear changed what she’d been about to say at the last moment. She had no desire to terrify her son. ‘You may hear it too, one day, when you are older. If you join the Melody and become a great warrior, it may be your destiny to travel outside of the Empire and hear the quiet.’

The awful, clanging, emptiness in the blood and body. The disconnection from people and duty and honour. The violent absence of purpose.

Pikte was watching her and she pushed away the memories and found another smile for him. ‘There now, it is not so terrible. All our warriors have done it at least once, even the lowliest dog warriors. But before you are old enough, all Ixachipan will have been brought under the song. We are already close, are we not?’

‘Yes, Mother. And my father the holy lord will wake the world spirit and put an end to hunger and disease and death.’

The Spear smiled. ‘Almost,’ she said indulgently, but the boy was no longer listening. He gave an excited squeal.

‘Oh, look, look at it!’ He scrambled out of her lap and slid off the litter; the slaves stopped immediately and the nearest slave warrior wrapped a long arm around him to hold him close and safe. Pikte didn’t struggle; he peered around the guard’s waist into the shade beneath a bright awning. In a cage of thin bamboo slats sat a spider monkey, young and small and depressed, one tiny paw curled around a bar. ‘I’m going to look closer,’ he said, with the unconscious authority of someone who had never been refused a request by a slave and never would be. The guard looked to Enet and she flicked her fingers at them. Pikte wriggled with impatience, and the warrior released him, following closely as the boy scampered into the shade.

The merchant approached, a Pecha of course, and well enough dressed. ‘Under the song, high one.’

‘Under the song,’ Enet said. ‘My son likes the monkey.’

‘Ah, a fine specimen, brought from the forests in Quitoban only a moon ago. Young enough to tame. Healthy too – a young male. They make good pets, high one.’

‘It comes with the cage?’

‘Of course, and a fine deerskin collar and tether. Already I have trained him to sit on my shoulder. May I demonstrate for the honoured child?’

‘If it bites my son, I will take everything you own and cast you onto the streets for the Choosers and flesh-merchants to fight over.’

The vendor blanched but managed a low, bobbing bow. He sweated as he eased open the cage. The monkey came to him readily enough and he threaded a thin cord through its collar and then coaxed it onto his shoulder. From there it leapt to Pikte’s head and Enet’s guards tensed, fingering weapons, but the boy laughed in delight, standing immobile and rolling his eyes up as if to see through the top of his own skull. He glanced at Enet; she said nothing. Waiting. Testing.

‘He is a fine little beast,’ Pikte said eventually, nearly masking his regret, ‘but we must go. Thank you for letting me look at him.’

Enet’s heart swelled with pleasure. He’d been polite and courteous and restrained, honouring the Pechaqueh status without forgetting his own. ‘We’ll take him,’ she said and the merchant jumped. Pikte gasped and whirled to face her and the monkey screeched, paws clinging to his hair and its long tail tightening around his throat. ‘My slave back there will pay you. I am sure the price will be fair. You, carry the cage. And you, boy, will keep it under control on the journey home, do you hear me?’

‘Truly?’ Pikte breathed, and his joy wiped away the dregs of sourness arising from Enet’s humiliation. She nodded and the vendor passed the tether to him and this time his thanks were effusive and accompanied by a blinding smile he shared equally between the Pecha and his mother. Enet gave Pikte the long, slow cat-blink of affection that was their secret expression of love and he would have run to her if the monkey hadn’t been tangling them both in its tether.

They hadn’t even cleared the markets before Enet began to regret her decision; the monkey stank and, despite his promises, Pikte couldn’t keep it from climbing all over the litter and himself, or from chattering and screaming and tugging at the collar on its neck. Eventually, she made him put the animal back in the small cage the slave woman carried at the rear of their little procession. Pikte knew better than to sulk, though he flirted with the idea for a few moments before subsiding into polite silence. He was learning.

They passed through the merchants’ living district and into the flesh markets. A crop of fresh Yaloh had come in and Enet had the bearers pause to inspect them. Many were still wan from the wounds they’d sustained in their misguided resistance to the will of the Singer and the glory of the song. It would have taken them three weeks to reach the Singing City, heart of Empire, source of magic. Three weeks in which they would have discovered the song and become immersed in it, saturated in its harmony and community.

She climbed out of the litter and approached the nearest, a woman whose eyes were dulled with captivity and hopelessness, who had not yet understood that within the song lay her freedom. The Spear walked up to her, two of her guards flanking her. ‘Listen,’ Enet breathed to the woman. ‘Listen with your skin and your blood. Hear with your heart and your bones. Accept the song into your very spirit, proud woman of Yalotlan. Your freedom – spiritual and physical – lies within its ever-changing, never-changing melody. Listen, and understand how you will one day walk free among us, a proud and noble member of the Empire of Songs.’

The woman was silent, watching her, and for a moment Enet thought she might have got through to her, might have saved her from months or even years of fruitless disobedience or the protracted death of one who would not conform. But then the woman lunged, her bound hands reaching for Enet even though she was tied on a line to the captives on either side of her. There was a mass jerk and stumble and the Spear’s guards leapt between her and the Yalotl. The woman was screaming insults and threats, meaningless babble as grating as the monkey’s screeching.

Enet’s warriors hustled her out of range, one clubbing the Yalotl in the face as he retreated, breaking skin and chipping teeth, but not causing enough damage that the flesh-trader could demand payment for her. The trader flung himself onto his knees and put his head in the dirt, for the insult had been done by his stock and was therefore his responsibility.

‘The song is in you now, all of you,’ Enet said, her voice loud as Pikte ran to her side, concern twisting the delicacy of his features. ‘Its glory can be your glory; its fame your fame. Cast off the superstitions and traditions of your past, honour your ancestors one last time and then sever your link to them, for they cannot help and have only held you back all this time. Embrace the song, embrace the Empire, and be reborn in its image. I promise you will not only live, but you will thrive, if you but see our values for what they are: the future. Your future.’

‘Fuck you, Pecha whore!’ shouted the woman Enet had spoken to. Blood sprayed from her mouth along with the poison of her words. Her guards rushed back in to exact justice, the flesh-trader uttering a horrified little squeak, but Enet held up her hand and stopped them.

‘This one is destined for the Melody, I presume?’ she asked.

The flesh-trader grovelled even deeper. ‘She is, high one, yes. All this line are warriors and will fight for the Empire soon enough. Unless … I could offer her to you for a good price if—’

‘Holy Setatmeh, no,’ the Spear said, waving off his words with mock horror. ‘That one needs the discipline of the Melody and the kinship of warriors. The only thing she would do on my estate is destroy its harmony. Send them off at dawn; there’s too much fire in them. Another week on the road on half water rations should cool them down.’

‘As the Spear commands,’ the flesh-trader said. ‘And I beg your forgiveness for the insult done you.’ Enet said nothing, waiting. The flesh-trader squirmed some more. ‘May I offer you first pick of this stock or the next to make up for the insult?’ he said eventually, as he must. He raised his head just far enough to see her nod, and relief washed over his features.

‘I will take him.’ Enet pointed to the man’s scribe, a youth of perhaps twenty who had been writing the slaves’ names and details in the record that would accompany them to the Melody.

The trader gaped, but it was too late. He could not tell the Spear of the City that she was mistaken, that the boy was not a part of his stock. He could not shame her like that, or bear the risk that such words could provoke.

‘As, as the Spear commands,’ he mumbled. He stood and the youth rose with him, fear and bewilderment smeared across his face. ‘Serve with honour and do everything you are asked. Do not shame me, understand? Do not shame yourself.’

‘High one?’ the scribe whispered, and the flesh-trader’s face twisted.

‘Go.’

‘Un-under the song, high one.’ The youth walked in a daze to the rear of the litter, next to the tongueless body slave. Wordlessly, he took the cage and its tiny, stinking occupant from the old woman. Enet pursed her lips; the boy had initiative, kindness. Perhaps she should … but no. She climbed back into the litter with Pikte and the bearers lifted her smoothly and broke into a trot. The sky was a riot of pink and orange and gold, the sunset wearing its finest plumage, it seemed, just for her. She watched it as they exited the flesh market and approached the wide, lazy loop of the Blessed River and the wooden bridge spanning it. Her estate lay only a stick away on the other side.

‘Here,’ she said and the bearers halted again. She nodded to her guards and they surrounded the youth and began to drag him forward. Enet let Pikte lead the way to the gap in the stone wall bounding the river. The scribe began to struggle and then to scream.

‘It is not time, it is not the appointed day!’ he shouted. ‘It is not new moon; you mustn’t. Please!’

Enet raised her arms and Pikte copied her. ‘Holy Setatmeh, you gods who bring life and plenty to our world, accept this offering from your humble servants.’

A single holy Setat raised its head above the water, watching them out of those wide, black eyes. A claw-tipped hand broke the surface and it flicked its fingers in a way so very human, a simple beckoning. A thrill of fear fluttered through Enet’s stomach as it opened its mouth. Would it sing for her, for all of them? Would it call them to their glorious deaths?

‘Wise Setatmeh, gods of water and of life, take this one in thanks for the bounty and the glory you bring us. Know that we revere you eternally, and pray that one day we will be joined with you forever in the awakened world spirit.’

She gestured and her warriors braced themselves; then they flung the youth into the river. He spluttered and surfaced, striking out for shore with flailing arms, choking and shrieking in an ecstasy of terror. The water god glided forward and snagged his ankle, dragging him back. The holy Setatmeh mouth opened again and this time it did sing, a liquid stream of notes that spoke directly to Enet’s legs and heart. Everyone on the bank stepped forward into the shallows, her son included, all of them yearning towards the perfection of the Setatmeh voice, song within the greater song.

Hearing it, its promise, the scribe turned in the Setatmeh arms and embraced it and it wrapped him up and buried its face in his throat, its song falling silent and releasing those who listened. Blood arced across the sunset, crimson against gold, the very essence of life ending against the ending of the light, and Enet stood in the shallows and watched her god feed, her spirit yearning to hear again its perfect voice.

‘For the glory of the Empire of Songs. For the world spirit. For the Singer,’ she breathed, and under the words – which she meant with every bone and muscle in her – other words drifted, unsaid and unthought. Glory. Influence. The right person to wield the song-magic as it is meant to be wielded.

When it was done, Enet and her attendants returned to the road and the litter. The body slave picked up the cage holding the monkey, the bearers picked up the litter, and, in awestruck, contemplative silence, the party crossed the bridge and made their way past the wide, walled palaces of nobles under a bloody sky and within a triumphant song.

Whatever had happened up to this point, the day had ended in song-given glory, and Enet would not forget it. The Empire was all. And all would live within its bounds.

THE SINGER

The source, Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs

The song and the Empire that lives within its embrace are mine. It is my will that shapes the song and so it is my will that shapes the Empire. And my will cannot be denied.

The song is brought into being by my flesh and mind, my spirit and intentions. It is my duty to the people of the Empire, my greatest gift, my deepest honour. And the honouring of the song and its Singer is the Empire’s own duty. It is my right and the Empire’s truth. Inviolable.

Reverence is my due.

The song sings in their blood and bones as it does in mine, drawing us together into one nation. The song binds us in joy and harmony, restoring the balance when it falters, bringing peace where there is strife. The song is the question and the answer, the bringer of life and the bringer of death – of balance. Harmony.

The song guides and supports all who hear it. It can never be undone, unsung, unheard. My will cannot be denied. Will not be denied.

The song beats in the blood of a million people, lulling them to sleep and rousing them to the defence of their homes, succouring the fearful and strengthening the weak. When all the world is brought beneath its harmony, there will be peace.

When all the world shows the Singer and the song the reverence we are due, there will be glory.

The song is all. The song is good.

And I am its Singer.

XESSA

The Swift Water, below Sky City, Malel, Tokoban

125th day of the Great Star at morning

She was scared, but she was ready and the other ejab needed her. The city needed her. They’d let her leave the healing caves for home four days after her injury, and she’d walked painfully out into a day grey as an eagle’s back and thick with rain. The Wet had come harder and faster than in previous years. It would put an end to the skirmishing in southern Yalotlan – unless the councils decided to fight on through the season, a path they were still debating – but the rain gave the Drowned an advantage, and so despite the lingering burn in her joints and the pull of stitches in her lower leg, she had a duty to perform, and so she would.

And Tayan leaves tomorrow.

The thought brought an almost physical pain. Her lifelong friend, so bright and curious and interested in everything, a skilled shaman and healer, was not suited to long travel along dangerous trails. His eyes couldn’t see far into the distance and while he could bring down small, nearby game with a sling or blowpipe, he was no warrior. And they were walking, not just out of Tokoban, but into the Empire of Songs, into its very heart. Tayan’s ancestor had told him that it would be a Pecha who ended the Pechaqueh thirst for conquest, and so the shaman and the councils were convinced that this weaving would work. Xessa prayed that he was right, but it didn’t help the cold, hard ball of anxiety that grew in her stomach whenever she thought of her friend walking into that Empire and placing himself in its power.

Focus, Xessa reminded herself. The thoughts were a distraction from the fear tickling the edges of her mind as she stared at the river, but distractions were deadly. She frowned, skin tugging with the familiar and yet strange tightness where the paint had dried in swirls and loops that brought her strength and protection. Eja Elder Tika herself had painted the red and blue symbols on Xessa’s brow at dawn, arriving at her house unannounced to do her this honour, to welcome her back onto the snake path.

Ossa was off to her right, a streak of black fur as he raced parallel to the twisting of the Swift Water, his paws kicking up stones and mud and sprays of water. She whistled and he gave her the head-down-rump-up all-clear. Xessa shook out her shoulders and wiped sweat from her eyes. The river was flowing fast, full of the previous day’s rain, brown with silt from the thin soil on the uplands above the Sky City. The murk made it harder than ever to see the skin or shape of a Drowned, and the wounds in her leg throbbed in urgent reminder of the last time she’d been down here.

She glanced left and right along the length of the river. Three other ejab were approaching the water below their own water temples. Four targets. A one-in-four chance of attack – usually.

The hairs on her arms stood up and Xessa raised her spear, trusting the warning of danger at her back. She leapt sideways, parallel to the water – not getting any closer – and spun to face the Drowned bearing down on her, poised to stab.

It wasn’t a Drowned.

Ossa hadn’t given the danger signal because there was no danger. It was Ilandeh. The Xenti wasn’t blank-faced and answering the call of the Drowned; she was standing there with an anxious smile, halfway through an apology Xessa was far too enraged to read. She wasted a second, just gaping at the other woman, and then seized Ilandeh’s wrist and began dragging her back up towards the fields and orchards and city, her heart thudding in her chest.

They got all of three steps before Ilandeh twisted out of her grip and faced the river. Xessa whirled again, bringing her spear up to her jaw, but again there was no danger, again Ilandeh didn’t run for the water. The Xenti tapped her on the arm. ‘I just want to see,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m perfectly safe with you here – I just want to see one.’

Xessa shook her head so hard the rings and charms in her ears and hair slapped against her cheeks, refusing to rest her spear long enough to sign a response – not that Ilandeh would understand anyway. Instead she pointed it uphill and jerked her chin in the same direction.

Ilandeh’s face fell. ‘But I want—’

Xessa click-whistled the guard command and Ossa leapt at the woman, snapping and snarling. Ilandeh stumbled back, face slack with sudden fear as the dog harried her, driving her up the slope. Eja Toxte was in the water temple: why hadn’t he stopped her? The woman never should have got this close.

Xessa made sure Ossa and Ilandeh were well on their way before facing the Swift Water again; best just get it over with now that her stealthy approach had been ruined. She ran forward, scanning the water, scooped up the pipe and pivoted it, dropped to one knee and let it fall into the river with a splash. No time for subtleties. She thumbed open the cap and made it to her feet just as a Drowned struck, launching itself out of the water in a spray of foam.

Xessa leapt away from its slashing claws, twisted and struck back, but it had moved, its powerful froglike legs and wide, webbed feet propelling it further upriver and then out onto the bank. It was another Greater Drowned, taller than she was if it stood upright, its arms and legs sinewy with muscle and its chest, belly and lower back protected by overlapping plates of toughened skin. Its throat sac bulged with air, its mouth of needle teeth opening wide as it began to sing.

Ilandeh!

Xessa went for it again, vaulting the pipe, right hand throwing the net she’d pulled from the back of her belt. The Drowned skittered to its right, plunging into the shallows so that the net flared and fell wide, the edge sliding off a mottled green shoulder. And then it leapt.

Xessa planted both feet and set her spear, watching it come; it was in flight, unable to change its direction, would impale itself through the belly, armour or not. All she had to do was to brace and duck the claws as it died.

Ilandeh slammed into her, sending them both stumbling ankle-deep into the river, and then the Drowned hit them, mouth wide, hands and feet extended like a cat dropping from a tree. The three of them went down in a tangle of thrashing limbs and great sheets of water crystal-bright against the cloud. Xessa’s senses were filled with the stink of it, the cool wet skin of it, the scrabbling, wiry strength as it struggled for purchase. She was fighting two monsters – one on top of her trying to rip her open, and Ilandeh beneath her, desperate to give the Drowned her throat.

By now, Toxte would be on his way, sprinting from the water temple with a net and spear of his own. She hoped he was on his way. She prayed he was.

Xessa got her right hand around the Drowned’s neck and squeezed, shoving it away, but its claws were caught in the snake-scale bamboo sewn into her salt-cotton, anchoring it to her torso. It tightened its grip and pulled, yanking her up off Ilandeh while the claws on its feet dug into the padding stitched into the front of her leggings. Padding that wasn’t going to be enough.

The grip she had on the Drowned’s throat must be preventing it from singing, because Ilandeh was thrashing to get away now, not to give herself to it, but her movements threw off Xessa’s aim and every jab of her spear missed, awkward at such close range. She dropped it and snatched the obsidian knife from her belt instead, rammed into the creature’s side and sawed. Its hide was like wood.

She had a terrifying view of all its teeth as its mouth opened and it strained towards her; its breath, cold as the river, blew across her cheek. Xessa stabbed again, missed. And then Ossa, her brave, brave Ossa, sank his teeth into the Drowned’s leg and began to pull, ripping the claws out of her padding and savaging its limb. The Drowned twisted to face the dog and Xessa tore its face open with her knife.

It turned back and swiped at her, green blood spraying, and she jerked her head away hard, fast, cracking the back of her skull into Ilandeh’s face. The claws cut through the air just above Xessa’s cheek and then the Drowned twisted again and lunged for Ossa. The dog released his grip on its leg and bounded out of reach; the eja kicked it off her, snatched up her spear and scrambled to her feet to stab it through the lung.

Ilandeh, panicked beyond reason, lurched up and yanked on Xessa’s arm, spoiling her aim and dragging her away before she could kill it. By the time Xessa had broken her nose to free herself, it was too late. With a slither and a splash, the Drowned was gone.

Xessa pivoted side-on so she could see both uphill and towards the Swift Water from her periphery. Toxte was pounding down the trail, Ekka streaking ahead. The fight had lasted seconds, though it had felt like hours in that peculiar, stretched way common to moments of terror. To left and right, the other ejab had already placed their pipes. Water would flow uphill to the city and no one was dead. This time, no one was hurt. Except her. Xessa stared at Ilandeh with vicious, all-consuming satisfaction.

The Xenti stood with both hands pressed to her face and blood leaking between her fingers. Her shoulders shook as she cried and Xessa whirled her spear around and smacked it hard into the woman’s flank. Ilandeh stumbled sideways, mouth a rictus of pain as she dropped a bloody hand to her side. Xessa pointed uphill; the woman fled. This time she neither slowed nor looked back.

About fucking time too.

Xessa turned back to the Swift Water and sucked in air as she stilled Ossa, smoothing his hackles with a shaking hand. She tried to contain her anger and failed; she roared at the water in defiance and rage and fear, sparking Ossa into a frenzy of motion. Ekka appeared in her vision and she sent both dogs out on a run to calm their jitters.

She opened the pipe joint and connected the mechanism, and then Toxte was there, his usual calm competence fled. His eyes when he reached her were spirit-haunted and wild; the magic was strong in him and a shock like this could send him into a spirit-daze – or even a rage. Xessa calmed herself – outwardly at least – and checked for the tell-tale hints of a spirit-borne fury building within him.

‘Are you hurt?’ he signed, propping his spear against his chest.

‘No. Take some deep breaths, Toxte. No one’s dead; the pipe is ready. Be calm.’ She squeezed his hand until it unclenched and he laced their fingers together. A little haunting left his face, a little colour returned to his cheeks. He nodded that he had the magic and the spirits under control and she breathed more easily.

Together they backed up the hill as Ossa and Ekka stood guard near the pipe. ‘Stupid bitch said she wanted to see the river,’ Xessa told Toxte when she was sure he was in control – and she was herself. ‘Drowned came up and sang and she nearly got us both killed. She slip past you somehow?’

The colour in his face changed rapidly again, this time flushing with embarrassment. ‘I didn’t see her pass the temple,’ he signed. ‘I’d never have let her distract you, I swear. She must’ve come the long way round.’

‘But why?’ Xessa demanded, her anger heating her again. ‘The fuck did she think she was doing?’

‘Xentib are all moon-mad,’ Toxte signed. ‘No wonder the Empire conquered them.’

Spite surged in Xessa’s heart – she understood now why the Yaloh held their former neighbours in such low esteem. Even so, it didn’t explain how the woman had got to the river’s edge undetected. She watched Toxte watching Ekka. He’d never let anyone approach an eja on duty, but maybe the magic was beginning to slow him. It took some ejab that way, even young ones, furring their decisions, slowing their reactions and capacity for clear thought. Perhaps Toxte’s time on the snake path was coming to an end.

‘Any news from Tika on when the Yaloh ejab will be ready?’ she asked. Toxte chewed the inside of his cheek and it was Xessa’s turn to blush – he could clearly see the path of her thoughts. His mouth thinned and she put her hand on his arm and squeezed an apology. ‘I didn’t mean it like—’ she began but he was already replying.

‘They’ve begun learning to control the spirit-magic,’ he signed, the gestures cold and precise. ‘Some have said they’ll do it only until the crisis is passed, but the others seem to be embracing the life. They won’t be ready before the start of the next Wet, so we’ll just have to manage this one as best we can.’

Toxte gestured and they walked back up towards the water temple, the dogs following. He didn’t look at her as they ducked inside, just loosened his armour and then began to turn the massive handle. Xessa felt the vibration through her soles and moved to the end of the pipe and the stone trough beneath. Twelve revolutions of the handle and the first splash of water spurted from the mouth and she caught a palmful and lifted it to her lips to drink. Thank you, Malel.

She touched the tears in her armour and the places where the bamboo was missing, but she wasn’t even scratched, not this time. Still alive, despite how close it had been. That was one way to come back to the duty after an absence, she supposed.

Xessa watched the muscles in Toxte’s arms flex as he turned the handle, a smooth, tireless motion. He’d braided half his hair back and she watched the pulse in his throat, steady and slow despite the effort. She tapped his arm. ‘Beer later?’ she signed, though ejab weren’t supposed to drink when the spirit-magic was in them. Most of them did anyway – the magic lasted a day and usually by the time night fell, they were starting to get the shakes and beer or honeypot was the only thing that could stop it.

‘You buy it, I’ll drink it,’ Toxte paused long enough to sign, recognising her offer for the apology it was. They were all worried about the increase in their duties, after all; Xessa just wished she hadn’t been so thoughtless. But Toxte was fine; what had happened was bad luck, nothing more. The spirit-magic wasn’t harming him. ‘And lots of it,’ he added with a grin. They were still alive and so was the Sky City and Xessa planned on celebrating that by getting disgustingly drunk. Then he gestured over her shoulder and she turned to see the first Tokob with their gourds and pitchers and buckets, waiting patiently for their day’s ration.

Xessa moved out of their way. ‘You all right here?’ she asked Toxte. He nodded. ‘I’m going to find Tayan and then the Xenti,’ she went on. ‘I want to be sure she’s absolutely clear on what I’m going to tell her. In detail.’

Toxte winced and grinned again, but he waved her off. The water sputtered in fits and splashes from the end of the pipe and into the trough as he worked the mechanism. The city lived, though the Xenti would soon wish she didn’t.

Lilla had insisted on coming along as well, and belatedly Xessa realised that she had interrupted them when they only had today together before Tayan left for Pechacan. Her narrow escape at the river had upset her more than she’d realised, especially being her first duty since her injury, and she was ruining the day for everyone else as a result.

Xessa told them she’d handle it herself, but by then Tayan was angry on her behalf. He and Lilla were closer friends with the Xenti than she was, who had to rely on others to translate for her, but that meant nothing to him in the light of Ilandeh’s incomprehensible actions at the river. Now the three of them stood ranged against Ilandeh, with Dakto just behind looking wary and defensive. Ilandeh was stroking her left thumb over the inside of her right wrist and the small tattoo of a chulul it bore. It was a nervous habit and the eja was disproportionately pleased to see it. Dakto had the same tattoo, on the inside of his bicep, though his didn’t seem to have the same power to soothe.

‘Eja Xessa would like to be very clear that you understand what you have been told.’

Xessa switched her gaze from Tayan’s face to Ilandeh’s. The woman pressed a fingertip to the swollen, bloody mess of her broken nose. A shaman had reset it, but it was swelling up nicely and blackening both her eyes, too. Xessa felt a twinge of savage pleasure. Ilandeh’s nod was a jerk and a stuttering inhalation. She cupped her nose again and said something Xessa missed.

‘She said she is very sorry and it won’t happen again,’ Tayan translated for her. ‘She didn’t mean to put you or herself in danger.’

‘And tell her to stop covering her mouth when she talks,’ Xessa signed. ‘Has she learnt nothing since coming here? Is she deliberately insulting me?’

Xessa clenched her fists as the shaman translated. She was too inexperienced to have been loaned out to the Yaloh during a drought but the thought of that now, of living with people who couldn’t understand her, made her guts watery and her chest tight. She realised suddenly that she might never be sent into Yalotlan – supposing the war ever ended – for that very reason and the tightness grew thorns and pricked at her heart. This was her home and the duty was her life, yet she felt … outcast, even unwelcome.

All Tokob signed, because without it, those ejab who used the spirit-magic would be unable to communicate while it rode their senses and so their sacrifice would also be a punishment, an exclusion from the very life and society they fought to protect.

But the Xentib didn’t know how to speak with signs and neither did the Yaloh, despite the tribes’ close relationship, and they looked at Xessa as if she was different, making her uncomfortable in her own skin as she’d never been before.

‘You nearly killed me,’ Xessa signed so angrily that Lilla took a step sideways and then came back to pat her back. ‘Never, never go near the river again. If you do, I will let them eat you.’

Tayan hesitated, but then he repeated her words aloud and Xessa watched with deep satisfaction as both Xentib nodded frantically. They signed ‘sorry’ to her, but somehow their attempt caused even more anger to burn beneath her skin, and so she squeezed Tayan’s arm in thanks and strode out of the house, straining for calm.

It was nearly time to remove the pipe from the water so the Drowned couldn’t damage it. Any distraction on her part and the encounter from earlier could be repeated – and this time with lethal consequence. It was enough – just – for Xessa to swallow the rest of her anger. Watching Ossa prance ahead of her and concentrating on the grain of her spear shaft against her palm, she stormed out of Xentibec and began the long walk back to the Swift Water.

Xessa’s house was a single room, like most houses in the Sky City, with storage in the rafters and in cool pits dug into a corner beneath the floor and mats. She and Toxte sat cross-legged inside, Xessa’s foot resting on the wooden rocker that moved when trodden on, alerting her to guests.

Ossa and Ekka lounged next to each other, big triangular ears twitching in lazy contentment. The jug of beer was cool and frothy and Xessa was laughing helplessly at one of Toxte’s jokes when Ossa raised his head and looked at the doorway a moment before the rocker jolted under her heel.

Xessa clapped twice and Tayan poked his head through the door curtain. ‘Are we interrupting?’ he signed with a sly smile and Xessa’s gesture needed no translation. Tayan and Lilla came in, and, after a pause, Dakto and then Ilandeh. Xessa’s good humour vanished as fast as the temperature in the room dropped.

‘What is she doing here?’ the eja demanded even as Toxte put his hand on her knee and gave her a crooked, encouraging smile.

Ilandeh knelt opposite her, carefully in the torchlight but not backlit so Xessa and Toxte could see her face and hands. ‘I’m sorry,’ she signed and Xessa huffed out a breath. This again. ‘It was wrong to distract you,’ she continued, ‘and it was wrong to visit the Swift Water. It won’t happen again.’

Her hands were slow and she bore a look of concentration rather than contrition, but Xessa understood. She flashed a glance at Tayan – ever the peace-weaver, it seemed, for of course it was he who’d taught her.

‘I would …’ Ilandeh tried and then paused. She swallowed hard and Xessa narrowed her eyes in suspicion. ‘I would like to learn. If you would teach.’

‘Learn what? To be eja?’ she signed, though she thought she knew the answer.

Ilandeh looked horrified at the suggestion when Tayan translated and Xessa’s chest warmed at it. ‘To sign.’

Everyone was watching her. ‘I’ll be gone soon and for who knows how long?’ Tayan signed when her gaze reached him. ‘You need another friend. You do,’ he interrupted before she could respond.

Ilandeh tapped the wood under Xessa’s foot. ‘Gift for you,’ she signed, clumsier now. Dakto handed her a basket woven from palm and she pulled from it a long cord threaded with tiny, red-dyed bones. A charm. ‘Bat,’ she signed. ‘For …’ She looked to Tayan. ‘Sight,’ she finished.

It was as if they were all holding their breaths waiting for her to respond. Ossa rose to his feet, ears up and ready for her command. Toxte put his hand on her leg again and this time left it there, warm and rough.

Sight. So I can see fucking idiots creeping up on me and trying to get me killed?

‘Thank you,’ she signed instead, and only because Tayan wanted her to. ‘It’s lovely.’ She held out her hand but Ilandeh smiled with delighted relief and scrambled across the mats.

‘… braid it for you,’ Xessa just saw before the Xentib fingers were at her temple. She sat stiff and stony until the charm hung in the mass of her hair with the others. Ilandeh surprised her again, pulling her into a quick hug and kissing the side of her face, before she hurried back across the room to Dakto’s side. Together, they unpacked a stoppered jar and some leaf-wrapped meat and cornbread. Tayan appropriated her spare cups and they filled them with beer and portioned out the food.

‘Please enjoy,’ Dakto signed, and despite Tayan’s protests – Xessa said nothing – the Xentib left them to it.

Xessa realised Toxte’s hand was still on the bare skin of her leg. She put her own over it and squeezed and the look he gave her was hot and questioning. It spoke directly to the part of her mind that watched the way he moved, graceful as a dancer, as a killer, that watched the crinkle around his eyes when he laughed and how comfortable he was in his own skin. She swallowed and then managed an embarrassed smile, wondering if the heat in her cheeks was visible to everyone else.

Tayan flicked the foam off his beer at her. ‘It’s me you’re supposed to be paying attention to tonight,’ he complained. ‘Seeing as Betsu and I leave tomorrow.’

‘That’s why we’re celebrating,’ Lilla told him with mock solemnity and Tayan flicked beer at him, too, but they smiled at each other with such mutual adoration that it made Xessa warm. She had long since outgrown her jealousy at sharing space in Tayan’s heart.

But tomorrow. Her childhood friend was leaving tomorrow, on a journey infinitely more dangerous than his meeting with the Zellih had been. She raised her cup to him in salute and together they downed the contents.

‘… you’ll be gone?’ Toxte was asking.

‘Three moons, perhaps,’ Tayan said, signing at the same time. ‘Depending on how fast we can move through their Empire. Thirty days in the Singing City to find someone senior enough we can negotiate with and get them to understand why it’s in everyone’s best interests they remain content with what they have. The Yaloh have reluctantly agreed to cede the portion of land that the Empire has already stolen in return for peace. And we can offer tithes of meat and gems, skins and obsidian.’

His body language was confident, even excited, though Lilla’s jaw was tense as he watched his husband. The warrior shifted closer until his thigh pressed against Tayan’s and the shaman broke off long enough to look up at him and rest his head on the taller man’s chest for a second. Lilla reached out and ran his finger along the pale yellow marriage cord resting on Tayan’s collarbones, its twin tied around his own throat. The cords were knotted with promises and some were hung with tiny charms that meant those promises were fulfilled. A life mapped out; a life shared.

The gesture was so strangely intimate that Xessa blushed and looked away, and was caught by the lovely planes of Toxte’s face as he watched her in turn, the broad sweep of his cheekbones and the heat of his expression. Toxte stroked her hair back from her cheek and refilled her cup, leaning close as he did. He smelt of sunlight and fresh sweat and smoke, the faint sweetness of honeyed beer.

A sudden twitch as the spirit-magic left his system and the beer slopped over the side of her cup. Xessa steadied his hand, her fingers lingering on his. When she looked up, Tayan was laughing at her again. She repeated the gesture from earlier and drank to hide a foolish grin. A knot loosened in her chest even as another tied in her gut. She was losing Tayan, for a while, but she knew with sudden certainty as her gaze returned, without volition, to Toxte, that she’d gained something – someone – else.

Warrior and shaman left earlier than usual for their own home and bed and privacy before they were separated again. The way their eyes had lingered on each other again and again sparked longing in her belly, and when Toxte, tipsy and laughing, said goodbye later that night, she surprised him with a kiss, the first against his cheek, the second grazing the corner of his mouth.

He blinked at her, hope and caution blurring in his eyes, and Xessa’s belly filled with butterflies. ‘Get some sleep, drunk eja,’ she signed, her cheeks warm, ‘and we’ll see if you remember that in the morning.’

Toxte’s lips parted and she couldn’t prevent her gaze flickering down to watch. They curved in another smile. ‘Believe me, I’ll remember,’ he signed. ‘Though I’m not sure I’ll get much sleep thinking about it.’ And he touched her cheek with his knuckles, light as feathers, and then he was gone.

TAYAN

The Neck, Xentiban, Empire of Songs

140th day of the Great Star at morning

‘We wear the peace feathers; we mean no ill intent or violence, but seek passage to the Singing City to begin a peace-weaving that will end the war on Yalotlan. We would speak with your Singer himself if that is possible; if not, then one of his representatives.’

The warriors surrounding them wore the tattoos, paints and hairstyles of three different tribes. ‘You’ll be lucky,’ one scoffed from the rear of the group that barred the trail. ‘Peace-weaving? May as well turn around now, little shaman, and scurry back home. We’ll be along to take it soon enough.’

‘Enough,’ snapped another. This speaker, a woman, wore a long scarlet feather in her shoulder-length, tightly braided black hair. A frog tattoo was visible at the base of her throat, just above her salt-cotton. She turned back to Tayan and Betsu. ‘Though the Coyote leader speaks true. The Pechaqueh have no need for nor interest in peace-weavings, and you would never be granted so much as to look upon the source, let alone meet the Singer.’ There was a bark of mockery in her tone. ‘No one meets the holy lord, and certainly not a no-blood, frog-licking, god-killing Tokob.’

‘I am Yaloh,’ Betsu said heatedly and was ignored.

Tayan blinked at the raw hostility in the faces of the warriors. ‘One of his council then. You … you do have a council?’

The warrior sneered at him. ‘Even they are too far above you,’ she said.

‘And yet that is our destination,’ Betsu said, her tone even and far calmer than Tayan had expected after her last comment. Her mood had been increasingly unpredictable in the two days they’d been under the song, not that he could blame her. The song didn’t stop, not ever. Worse, they couldn’t even drown it out through music or song of their own, or through plugging their ears or shouting at the tops of their lungs. It was there, a constant, nagging presence, a slow insidious poison. And it was beautiful. Oh, ancestors, it was beautiful. It was what frightened Tayan most about it. The disdain in the Coyote’s voice, and that of the woman, resonated within him. Who was he, after all, to think to negotiate with so mighty an Empire?

Betsu, it seemed, had no such insecurities. ‘Stand aside. You are not even Pechaqueh. Our business is with your owners.’

As one, the group of warriors, at least fifty in number from what Tayan could see under the low branches and heavy rain, brandished weapons. The woman with the scarlet feather lunged forward; Betsu’s spear came up in defence and Tayan bellowed and knocked it down. The Empire warrior’s spear raked across his ribs, and unlike the rest, he wore no salt-cotton. He was a shaman. Fire erupted in his chest and he gasped, his knees suddenly weak, but he planted himself between Betsu and the enemy.

‘Peace,’ he screeched, ‘fucking peace!’ Hot blood ran freely down his side. Tayan tried to ignore it and the churning nausea and the sickening pain. He was fairly sure the woman had sliced off his nipple.

Either his words or the blood had had an effect, for the warriors drew back, their weapons pointing at the ground. Tayan shoved one hand behind him blindly, hoping Betsu wouldn’t be so fucking stupid as to do, well, anything.

‘We wear the peace feathers, and you have broken that sanctity.’ The woman paled a little at his words. ‘You may not believe in our peace-weaving, but you understand peace feathers, I see that in your faces.’ He paused to catch his breath. ‘Yet there was … hastiness on both sides. Please, we must continue our journey to the Singing City. If you will not aid us, then at least do not hinder us.’

‘Already our journey will be slower while the shaman heals,’ Betsu added, and this time the woman with the scarlet feather blushed.

‘I will escort you,’ she said, ‘with seven of my warriors. As for the rest, continue as ordered. Report my whereabouts when you reach your destination.’

Deliberately vague, Tayan thought, but he didn’t question her. Tokob and Yaloh warriors would do the same.

‘I am Beyt of the macaws, of the Fourth Talon of the Melody. I – your wound, it—’

‘I am Tayan, shaman and peace-weaver of the Tokob. This is Betsu, warrior and peace-weaver of the Yaloh. The wound is, I hope, no more than a scratch.’

‘Then tend to it.’ She went into a huddle with a couple of other warriors and Tayan finally allowed himself to sag against a tree. He winced and pulled his shirt away from the wound, and then Betsu was there, yanking up the material. He hissed a curse.

‘You’re right. Little more than a scratch. Won’t need stitching. Straighten up and I’ll bandage it.’ The shaman complied, gritting his teeth at her less-than-gentle touch. ‘Well done on getting them to split up; it’ll be much easier to get rid of this lot now, then we can circle back and pick up the trail of that coyote-fucker with the yapping mouth.’

Tayan gripped Betsu’s wrists, stilling her. ‘We are peace-weavers,’ he hissed. ‘And we now have an escort to guarantee us safe passage to the Singing City. That means they – and we – get to stay alive and that is my only concern at this time. No, listen,’ he continued when she tried to pull away. ‘You are a peace-weaver. Whatever else you are, while we are in the Empire, you are a peace-weaver. And I could do without any more scars when I get home to my husband. When I get home. Understand?’

Betsu’s expression was mutinous and hard as flint, but then she nodded once, a single reluctant jerk of the head. ‘You are right,’ she said at last, and finished bandaging his chest in silence.

‘Are you ready, peace-weavers?’ Beyt called and the pair exchanged a last look before nodding. ‘Then stay close. We’ll reach a proper road in a couple of days and our progress will be swift then. I hope you can keep up.’

That last seemed like a challenge, warrior to warrior, and Betsu took it as such. Tayan sighed and then winced. The bandaging had done absolutely nothing to stem the burning agony in his chest, even if it did stop the bleeding. Beyt and three of her warriors took the lead, and the other four followed the peace-weavers. He had been two days under the song, and had had his flesh torn and was in the hands of enemies. He prayed neither were an omen.

The Neck was so named because it was the narrowest part of Xentiban, a thin corridor of jungle and farmland separating Yalotlan from Pechacan. All too soon they were across it; all too soon they were into Pechacan itself, the song’s heartland.

Tayan hadn’t been sure what to expect – would the song change again, become more powerful, or purer, or have more meaning for him? Would it sweep him up so that he was lost in its promise? They crossed the border marked not with a pyramid but a tall, carved finger of rock, an ancient marker that had once formed a symbolic barrier between two lands and two tribes. The warriors escorting them passed it without a flicker of hesitation, but just as when they had finally come under the song, Tayan and Betsu paused and slowed their steps. The shaman held his breath as he walked through the shadow of the stone.

Nothing.

Sighing and slightly embarrassed, he hurried after the others. The jungle disappeared a little more each day they walked, becoming tamer, shrinking into strips and wedges of trees and shrubs and tumbling vines only a few sticks across between wide tracts of brown and green farmland. Huts were gathered at each end and entire families toiled between the small shoots of beans and maize. Only the bamboo and water vine and wide-leaved plants were allowed to grow wild and lush to provide Pechaqueh and their slaves a safe water supply.

Children ran, arms flapping to scare away the birds pecking at the crops. It took Tayan a couple of days to realise why it made him uncomfortable. Tokob children did the same thing, but they laughed and squealed and chased each other as they did so. Here it was silent, without joy. They were too young to learn such lessons, but the wide leather collars on the children’s necks were eloquent teachers.

Over everything loomed the pyramids, more and more of them, some old and crumbling, liana-covered, others newer and shining in the sun, their paint vibrant, the murals almost alive.

The sky was too open for Tayan’s liking, despite the fact he lived on the sparsely treed slopes of Malel. He was used to the confines of the Sky City, the comforting press of building and plaza and steep, walled streets. This was different, an artificial emptiness, and every horizon was bounded with smoke from burning jungle, acrid, the taste of ash and defeat ever on his lips.

The trail they followed was wide enough for ten people to walk abreast and made of finely carved blocks of limestone and sandstone. ‘This is how they move their warriors so fast,’ Betsu hissed, gesturing at the trail. ‘This is how they conquer so easily, by moving thousands at once to the edge of the territory and then invading in huge numbers, unstoppable. This is what they’re doing to us. The resources to quarry so much stone …’ She paused, both wondering and worried. ‘Are their numbers as vast as the stars at night?’

The steep slopes and narrow trails of hilly Tokoban would slow them when they came, but as the horizon widened day by day and he saw the multitude of slaves toiling in fields too wide for him to see across, and they passed cities greater than the Sky City and stepped off the road to let free people, not only Pechaqueh, pass them, he knew the hills wouldn’t stop them. He began to suspect nothing would. Were they still on a peace mission, or just a negotiation to delay the inevitable? Could trade and tithes stave off their endless numbers? Or would they be forced to accept the song before they were allowed to live in peace? Would even that concession be enough to sate Pechaqueh lust? Would anything?

PILOS

Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs

148th day of the Great Star at morning

It was good to be home. Better than good, it was cleansing to the soul to be back in the Empire, to be back under the song that had been absent his blood for so many months. It coursed both around him and inside him, through his veins, beneath his skin and within his bones, the comforting endless music of divinity, of glory. Of home.

High Feather Pilos, commander of the Melody and all its Talons, wore a fresh tunic and kilt in alternating bands of red and black, new sandals laced up at his ankles, and a cloak of feathers denoting his rank, brushed of dirt and freshly oiled against the rain. More feathers were braided into his hair, war feathers and honour feathers, and the single stiff tail feather of a turkey sticking up over his ear to announce his peaceful intent.

At his side marched Atu; the young warrior was his second in command, not that it was apparent from his gleeful, grinning appearance. He’d been away from his home and wife here in the Singing City for a year, and she’d been one of the first waiting beneath the ceremonial arch to welcome the Melody home in victory. Pilos smirked at the heat of her welcome for him – he knew what Atu would be doing within an hour of being dismissed.

Behind them in a long snake marched the Melody, slave warriors at the rear, dog warriors in the middle and the elite, full-blood Pechaqueh eagle warriors immediately behind the High Feather. The macaws, wearing their scarlet feathers, patrolled to either side of the long lines of captives – they were half-blood Pechaqueh, a step below elite, a step above the no-blood slaves and dogs. Scattered among them were the secretive, anonymous Whispers, more rumour than fact, more legend than living.

Every warrior wore a peace feather above one ear, and that covenant was sacred.

In the Melody’s midst, long lines of Yaloh and even some of their Tokob allies walked, hands bound to their waists, roped at the neck. Men and women brought under the song to learn its glory, to serve its majesty, to understand its power, all taken before the Wet forced Pilos to abandon the offensive for the season. The fighters would be inducted into the Melody as slave warriors, the rest sent to the flesh markets and from there to every corner of the Empire that needed their labours so they might learn of the song and the Singer’s mercy. Not as many as he’d have liked to have brought under the song by now, but enough to give advantage to the Melody and, with the Singer’s blessing, a swift end to the annexation after the rains. Another year and it would be done and then, perhaps, a time of peace.

The Street of Fighters was crowded with cheering Pechaqueh in their brightly coloured kilts, as well as clumps and spatters of house slaves in the dun of undyed maguey, holding palm-leaf rain shields and bowls of fruit and meat for their owners. Pilos was impressed that so many had turned out despite the weather – citizens of the Singing City weren’t known for their enthusiasm for inconveniencing themselves. He acknowledged faces in the crowd with the occasional wave, indulging Atu’s more enthusiastic responses and those of his subordinates behind them.

They reached the first loop of the Blessed River and Pilos and his Feathers came to a halt. The offering was fine – a young, healthy Yalotl with clear skin and wide, dazed eyes. Pilos had ordered her bathed and her clothes washed and now she stood dumb, not understanding why she wasn’t bound with the rest of her people. The long walk had dampened her fire to embers and the holy Setatmeh would be pleased with her quality.

Feather Atu gave her the traditional cup of liquor and she choked it down, and then they approached the edge of the river with the girl gripped between them. She began to squirm and then to yell, digging in her heels as those embers sparked into the raging fire of terror. Behind them, the Melody processed over the wide wooden bridge, the captives in their midst panicking and screeching like monkeys and even some of the slave warriors still skittish. It was the same with every new batch until they understood the way of the world and the Singer’s divine will.

‘Holy Setatmeh, gods of rivers and lakes, you who bring life and plenty to our world, accept this offering as your just due,’ Pilos said, tugging the girl forward. She struggled harder, bound hands clubbing at him. He transferred his grip to the back of her neck, his long fingers compressing the big veins on either side. He squeezed until her face filled with blood and her screams became wheezed whimpers.

‘Wise Setatmeh, gods of streams and waterfalls, you who control the crops and the rain and bring the barren to ripeness, accept this offering as your holy reward,’ he prayed, and scooped her into his arms. Pilos walked forward until he was thigh-deep in the river, a thrill of religious fear raising the hairs on his arms. She was fighting hard as he lowered her into the water and held her head down while she thrashed.

The offering was accepted.

A form glided through the water to Pilos’s side and he suffered the exquisite terror of looking it in the eye. ‘I honour you, god,’ he said. It wrapped webbed hands around the girl’s waist and Pilos let go and stepped back. ‘Take your prize, sacred spirit,’ he added and the offering shrieked again as the black claws bit into her back. The holy Setat dragged her away from shore, and then it tore open her belly and vanished with her beneath the water, trailing bubbles and thick streams of blood.

‘Blessed are the Setatmeh, and glory to the Singer,’ Atu murmured from the bank.

Pilos echoed his words and saw the shadow of awe in Atu’s face as he exited the river. He managed a grimace, making no effort to hide the trembling of his hands. To be so close to one of the gods was to know fear and rapture in their purest forms – there was no shame in shaking afterwards. Besides, there was another loop of river to cross before they reached the heart of the city and the great pyramid, and an offering would be required there too, in thanks for a victorious return to the Empire.

‘To finally meet the Singer himself,’ Atu muttered as they resumed their march. ‘The thought of it frightens me more than facing the enemy ever has,’ he admitted as the next offering was passed forward. This one began struggling straight away, knowing what awaited him.

‘We come to report victory,’ Pilos assured him. ‘The Singer will be pleased with us.’ Despite his words, he felt a flicker of unease. The council was a nest of vipers. The High Feather needed to be on his guard.

As always, the palace never failed to exact its toll in awe. A great tiered pyramid of seven pale stone levels and a grand central staircase that led all the way to the summit, with its precious songstone cap. There was one entrance off the main staircase, halfway up, that led into the pyramid’s interior and then to the very source. Brightly coloured images were carved and painted on its sides, and each level was green with cultivated gardens.

The pyramid crouched at the end of the Way of Prayer, surrounded by the smaller, lesser palaces of the council and of the Singer’s family and confidants. The wide plaza before the pyramid was thronged with more citizens, and it was soon full to capacity as the Melody marched in to accept their cheers. The slave and dog warriors gaped up at the pyramid and their wonder was a tonic to Pilos’s nerves. This is why we do what we do. This is glory. This is Empire.

In a rare show of support, the Singer himself appeared on the flat platform at the pinnacle of the pyramid, surrounded by four tall columns carved with images of the first Singers and Setatmeh. Above the Singer reared the songstone cap, through which his magic and his song poured, spreading across the Empire in a slow, rich tide, like golden honey.

Pilos knelt, the Melody and crowd following suit. Silence, but for the tap of rain on the limestone road and the song, brassy with triumph and loud with power, ringing through them all. Pilos breathed in stone and rain and home and song and triumph. He could have longed for bright sun to show his warriors in their finery, the glint of obsidian and the rich flashes of their feathers and the paint on their arms, but this was somehow more suitable. Within the dull greyness of rain, under a moody, malevolent sky, the Melody was a dark force, ripe with power, rich with violence. No one seeing them could doubt their strength.

The High Feather waited until the song’s pitch changed before looking up; the Singer was gone but in the pyramid’s entrance waited members of the council. Another honour he hadn’t expected. But not just councillors, he noted as he and Atu began the long climb towards them. Singer Xac was surrounding himself with his faithful, men and women who supported him in all things, sycophants who would hang from his every utterance and who would deny him nothing in the hopes of securing his blessing when the time of his ascension was upon him.

Pilos was three years into the eight-year cycle of his other role as Spear of the Singer, the second of the holy lord’s closest advisers, and these days he was increasingly tasked with working for the glory of the Empire and holding together the fractious council, while the Singer’s favourites worked only for the glory of their future selves. As for Enet, the Spear of the City, she was cunning enough to not only appear diligent in her administration while in reality shifting many of her duties to others, but had risen to be the Singer’s primary courtesan. The combination had secured her place in the very heart of the Empire of Songs, and, according to Pilos’s latest information, her power was said to be second only to the Singer’s.

It all fell to Pilos; whether or not he was fighting the Singer’s wars, the reports and messages and pleas found their way to him, and though it was an honour to be so trusted by the holy lord, it was a burden he sometimes longed to put down. Carefully, he turned his thoughts away from criticism.

The Singer was wise and powerful beyond human understanding, a living god, but he had once been a man. And even Pechaqueh were fallible. Singer Het, his predecessor, had been only twelve when she was chosen and had relied so heavily on the counsel of her family that when it was her time to ascend – a mere three years after the magic entered her – it had surprised no one that she chose Xac, her older brother, as her heir. She’d taken thirty members of her family with her when she ascended, but had left behind her council to aid him. They had missed their chance at glory and immortality as a result. It was clear they weren’t prepared to do so again.

And yet Xac still waxes, a full eleven sun-years into his reign. He is strong where Singer Het was not, not in the way the people needed. The holy burden was too much for her. But Xac’s song rings across every stick of Empire. With honest guidance, he will be a Singer remembered through the ages.

With honest guidance.

Pilos cleared his mind as he and Atu bowed to the councillors at the entrance, thighs warm from the climb. They removed their sandals, cloaks, and weapons and entered, all of them bent at the waist and scuttling along the corridors like wading birds looking for food.

The cheering of the Melody and the Pechaqueh faded away, replaced by the sounds and scents of the Singer’s palace: citrus and incense, the trickle of water and soft hush of leaves in a breeze, a child laughing, the crackle of fire. Sounds and scents of life and strength, which the Singer in his power and his magic wove into the song that kept them all safe and united. Pilos had no idea how he did it. In his darker moments, on the front line, when battle was joined and his warriors were dying all around him, he wondered if the Singer knew how he did it.

Pilos shut away the thought and filled his mind with awe and wonder. It wasn’t difficult, even when staring at the floor in front of him, the bright murals painted on the walls only visible from his peripheral vision. He’d be at leisure to examine them on the way out: the stories of war and glory and expansion, the legends of the earliest Singers, and everywhere, repeated, depictions of the holy Setatmeh and the world spirit itself. All of them painted by the best and most famous artists of Pechacan throughout the years and Star cycles since the discovery of the song-magic.

The song hummed and grew in volume and strength as they wove their way through the palace corridors. Choosers and courtesans, body slaves and the elite eagle warriors of the Singer’s Chorus all watching them pass with curiosity and not a little suspicion.

Eventually – and yet too soon – the smooth cool stone beneath their feet changed to thickly woven mats in azure blue and they paused until the council had entered and sat, then stepped into the Singer’s inner sanctum, the very source of the song itself. Atu’s breathing roughened just a little as he took in the huge oval room, the colonnaded wall opening onto vibrant gardens alive with finches and parrots and hummingbirds flitting among the palms and bamboo and small trees. Green life and incense mingled on the gentle breeze. The other walls were covered in murals even more exquisite than those of the corridors, including one that depicted the whole of the Ixachipan peninsula. There was space left to paint in Yalotlan and Tokoban when those lands and tribes were brought under the song. Pilos vowed to be the one to achieve that for the Singer’s glory. Atu had halted, overcome, and Pilos flicked his arm lightly with his fingers.

‘Spear of the Singer and High Feather Pilos, and Feather Atu, second in command of the Melody, request entrance to this council,’ Pilos said. The other councillors had already taken the cushions closest to the holy lord, leaving them on the outside of the circle. It didn’t matter; Pilos was Spear and his voice would still be heard. Should the Singer so wish it.

The song was a living thing here in the source, with weight and substance that sat not just on their skin but in their bones. The Singer’s will, inviolable anywhere in the Empire, was in this room as immovable as the pyramid itself. Everyone inside these walls could do nothing but obey the Singer and the dictates of his song.

As always, the holy lord sat behind a rippling curtain of pale pink cotton, the weave so fine that his bulk was visible through the translucent material, enhanced by the tall headdress of feathers and jade that crowned him. Here, in the innermost of his chambers, the music from which he made his song was constant – the liquid trilling of captive birds, the happy chatter of a small streamlet over carefully placed pebbles, the thumping of a dog’s tail on the rugs. In the distance, children shrieked with laughter as they played.

A woman sang in a sweet, high voice, a hymn of praise for the Empire that listed all 174 Singers from the founder, Tenaca, all the way to Xac. Pilos remembered the hours he’d spent as a boy learning those names, the slaps when he got the order wrong. He rubbed his neck and brought his mind into harmony.

‘High Feather, you are welcome back in the Singing City,’ the holy lord rumbled, the strange harmonics of his voice sending flutters of anxiety and reverence through Pilos’s gut. The councillors fell silent. ‘You have had some recent successes in the war against the Yaloh, and you have had some failures. The first I applaud, but not the second. You will explain.’

The council turned flat, blank gazes on him, calculating, weighing, assessing.

‘Great Singer, the Yaloh are a wily and courageous people and as you know they have convinced the Tokob to join them, swelling their numbers. They fought long and hard, and pushed us back several times, it is true. Their lack of civilisation means they have no great cities we can take and so win a decisive victory, and there are no limestone roads to speed our movement. They conducted small, fast raids on our camps or as we marched and then faded into the jungle again. We have not yet brought sufficient numbers of them to bay to force a decisive reckoning.’

He paused, but there was only attentive silence from behind the curtain.

‘So determined were they to withstand us that when they knew they had lost the southern half of Yalotlan, they burnt their stands of bamboo and water vine, to make it useless to us. Our shamans advised against fighting through the Wet, since the rains have come heavy and early. I brought back the bulk of the Melody to rest, though I have left a Talon of three thousand warriors in Yalotlan. They will protect the builders I have sent there, who will construct pyramids to carry your song through the land. We have taken three and a half thousand prisoners. It is perhaps a fifth of the Yaloh population, and consists mostly of warriors or other adults. So far.’

Pilos took a breath. ‘The war has had one other outcome. The holy Setatmeh of Yalotlan have begun taking offerings again in the old manner. Some of my warriors have been lost.’

There was a rising babble of noise at the revelation; usually the only Pechaqueh taken by the gods were those who’d been cast onto the streets for their crimes, and among whom the Choosers walked like lords of the Underworld when selecting the new moon offerings.

‘This is Yaloh magic, and yet you bring them to the Singing City?’ a councillor squeaked. ‘Who knows what havoc they will wreak in our sacred waters here? You should have offered them all to the holy Setatmeh in their own land.’

‘The Yaloh slaves do not belong to the High Feather,’ Councillor Yana said mildly, though his voice carried over the murmuring. ‘It was not his place to decide what should be done with them.’

Pilos breathed a silent sigh of relief. Yana was as honest and unbending as his back, despite his years. He had been an eagle warrior and Feather and still trained daily with the spear, and Pilos knew he had a warrior’s integrity, a warrior’s commitment to duty and to Empire. He also showed little ambition to supplant the other councillors or any of the Singer’s favourites, which sat well with the others.

‘The holy Setatmeh are righteously angry,’ a woman cut in. ‘Perhaps this is their response to your cowardly retreat from the fight! Why is the Melody here if there is work still to be done? We must do all we can to honour the gods.’

‘You are correct, Councillor Chel,’ Yana said smoothly and with a smile as cold as a snake’s, ‘we must all play our part. A gift of jade or slaves from each councillor will help speed the construction of new pyramids. The Melody is made up of warriors, when what they need are engineers and builders, and the slaves to both carry out the work and present to the holy Setatmeh to prevent … unnecessary offerings from among Pechaqueh. Do not forget the Melody are also there to protect the holy Setatmeh and the workers from Yaloh and Tokob. They cannot do everything.’

‘Then the rest of the Melody should go back and finish what it started,’ Chel snapped. ‘Not come here in triumph and demand reward when the conquest remains unfinished.’

‘Or, as I said, we can assist them in their work. High Feather, I will buy a hundred slaves and send them to Yalotlan to work and be offered as necessary. And I will purchase enough stone for one full pyramid.’

Even Pilos blinked at the size of Yana’s promise. The man must have risen far to afford such a generous gift. And he is planting himself firmly on my side in the struggle to come. Pilos didn’t know whether to be worried or delighted, but Yana was an old friend and an old comrade; his offer was one of support for Pilos personally as well as for the Melody, and the warrior would honour his generosity. He inclined his head to Yana with gratitude.

‘Who expects us to pay for the High Feather’s failure?’ queried a voice and Spear Enet’s head snaked from behind the hanging to stare at him. Pilos’s heart clenched at her sudden appearance. Years before, during the reign of Singer Het, their families had negotiated an alliance the pair had been expected to fulfil through marriage. Yet when it came to it, Enet had refused. Pilos had been a boy and desperately in love with her – or so he’d thought. He’d believed himself shamed in front of the court and council and for years he’d been bitter at the rejection. These days he knew better, and thanked whichever holy Setat had spared him the fate of marrying her.

Now she was the Singer’s chief courtesan as well as his Spear and, despite sharing the status with Pilos, he knew that what she whispered in the pillows carried more weight than the council’s words or the Melody’s needs.

‘Councillor Yana merely proposes a course of action and offers a gift of aid, Enet,’ he said evenly, his voice and face serene, refusing to be goaded. ‘The decision rests with the Singer.’

Her beautiful black eyes narrowed. ‘You will address me correctly.’

Pilos pursed his lips. ‘I have been at war for some time, Enet,’ he said, deliberately using her name again as his gut roiled with unease. ‘I am unaware of any change in your status. Please, how should you be addressed?’

Enet glanced back at the Singer behind the curtain and her face softened, lips curving in a smile that set Pilos’s balls to aching. She’d smiled at him like that, once. ‘I have the honour of being known as Great Octave now,’ she said sweetly, her head on one side to better study his reaction.

Pilos’s balls stopped aching and tried to crawl into his belly. Great Octave? Chief adviser to the Singer, above even the Spears, head of his household, master of wealth, and senior Chooser? The title had not been granted in a hundred sun-years, it was so dangerous to the harmony of the Empire. Between them, Xac and Enet ruled the world – and no one could gainsay them.

Enet was beautiful and powerful and rich, and the Singer, their living god, was in thrall to her, and he either didn’t realise it or, worse, he knew and didn’t care. She would ascend with him, of that there was no doubt. Pilos didn’t care about that – he cared about the amount of damage she would do to the Empire beforehand. And now she had the reach and power to accomplish it.

He stared around the advisers and noted the discomfort in some faces, the pleasure gleaming from others’. The Singer’s cronies had split the council neatly down the middle and as the Singer began to wane, bloodshed would increase as all vied for a position close to his heart and the chance to ascend with him. What damage they did the Empire of Songs during that mad scramble would mean nothing to them. Only those who were left behind would face it. Whatever danger I have been in before, whether in the council or in battle, is as nothing compared with this.

‘We are awaiting your answer, Spear,’ Enet snapped and Pilos dragged his scattered thoughts back together.

‘Singer,’ Pilos said, addressing his lord instead of the Great Octave, ‘you are right: the war is not yet won. We have taken half their territory and expect to complete the conquest after the rains have stopped and the land has firmed enough for battle. If it is your will,’ he placed the tiniest emphasis on the pronoun, ‘I will of course turn the Melody around and march them straight back to war. As Spear and High Feather, by your grace, my advice would be to wait until after the Wet. We have fought through it before, in Quitoban. We lost more than half our warriors and the Empire’s expansion was delayed as a result.’

‘The Singer does not need reminding of your past failures,’ Enet hissed, her face appearing again.

Pilos raised both hands, not even bothering to remind her that he had been been promoted to High Feather only a few days before Quitoban finally fell and that the length of the campaign had been neither his fault nor unexpected. ‘The Quitob were brought under the song, Great Octave. Where is the failure? I mention it only because once we have brought the Yaloh into the Empire, we will still have to face the Tokob – unless we take both tribes at once.’ Atu huffed at that. ‘We cannot afford to wait for our full-blood youngsters to mature and replace any needless losses. And the Yaloh slave warriors will not be fully integrated under the song for years. We won’t be able to trust them.’

There was a rumble from the Singer, as of thunder, that stole Enet’s reply. The council paused, waiting for the lightning to accompany that threat. It didn’t come, or at least it wasn’t aimed at them. ‘High Feather, the shamans were right; the war is over for this season. Rest your warriors, break in the new slaves, and be ready to march after the Wet. I will give you the exact date when I have consulted the stars.’

Pilos bowed his forehead to the floor, hearing the rustle as the council did likewise at the Singer’s rising. Their lord padded from the council room without another word, his favourites scurrying behind. The High Feather stood and beckoned; Atu jumped up and together they strode out of the source without a backward glance, though Pilos could feel eyes on him all the way. Slaves waited at the exit with their sandals, weapons, and cloaks, and they dressed and stepped back out into impending dusk and a city shining with moisture.

They descended the pyramid in silence – the Melody had long since dispersed to barracks and the homes of families, brothels, and drinking huts. The slaves would be penned in the flesh markets for onward transportation.

‘That was … not what I expected,’ Atu said eventually.

Pilos grunted and clapped him on the back. ‘The council meetings rarely are. Go and fuck your wife and get drunk, Feather. There will be many people who seek my favour now they know I’m back. I’ll send the new slaves on to the Melody compound, but depending on how things play here, we might be leaving soon. Make the most of the time you have.’

Atu grinned and touched belly and throat in salute. ‘Under the song, High Feather.’

‘Under the song.’ The young warrior practically sprinted through the plaza towards the litter-bearers for hire at the far end. Pilos smiled again. ‘All right, Elaq, out you come,’ he said and his bodyguard, a retired eagle warrior and the head of his estate here in the Singing City, emerged from the shadows at the edge of the pyramid.

‘Spear,’ he said, touching belly and throat and using the title Pilos preferred when in the Singing City. ‘Under the song.’

‘Under the song, my friend. How are you?’ He clasped Elaq’s wrist and clapped the big man on the arm. Retired a decade and still with shoulders wider than the bole of a mahogany tree.

‘I am well, Spear, thank you, and your estate and the fighting pit too. Your wealth increases.’

‘And much of it is down to you and the others,’ Pilos said as they began to walk. ‘I know it and I will not forget it.’ The look on Elaq’s face reminded him why he preferred paid Pechaqueh to slaves, no matter the cost. All his guards had partners and children who lived on the estate with them and who Pilos educated and cared for at his own expense. It wasn’t entirely altruistic, of course – most of the children entered the Melody when they were old enough and all were fiercely loyal to him. Still, he could afford it and it meant that his estate was secure and his employees virtually incorruptible.

They strode into the temple complex that spiralled out from the great pyramid, and had made it less than half a stick when Elaq paused to kick a babbling, yelling wreck of a woman out of their path. She shrieked and clawed for him, and he clubbed her in the face and dragged her to the side of the street. Pilos trod through blood as he tried to work out whether he’d once known her, back before she was disgraced. There was something familiar about her. Or maybe she was no one, just a slave who’d displeased her owners and wasn’t good enough to offer to the holy Setatmeh. He’d forgotten how commonplace such sights were here in the heart of the Empire, but the woman’s situation sparked a question.

‘I take it there’s been another purge since last I was home?’ he asked.

Elaq grunted his disgust as he wiped the head of his club on the hem of his kilt. ‘There has, Spear, a large one. The properties and wealth of the traitors and dissidents flow ever to where it is most needed, but the … human waste that is left behind causes issues of its own. We have had to throw them off your estate several times; the offal were trying to rob you.’

‘I’ve a proposal to clear this mess from our streets and help the Melody at the same time. It wasn’t something to mention to the Singer on my first day back, but now I see this’ – he gestured at the shacks of pole uprights and leaking thatch roofs tilted drunkenly against the sides of temples – ‘I can see something must be done.’

Elaq gave him an approving nod. ‘I pray your words find the Singer’s ear.’

‘As do I,’ Pilos said. ‘I see Enet has been elevated again.’

‘I only found out myself this morning, Spear, or I would have warned you,’ Elaq said in apology. ‘And the last I’d heard, the Singer had punished her in the very source itself, though why, I couldn’t find out. But as ever, the snake wriggles its way free and flashes its pretty scales to best advantage.’

Pilos punched his arm lightly but there was unspoken warning in his eyes that Elaq noted. Such words were dangerous and Enet was wealthy enough to have her own personal Listener. Pilos, on the other hand, was wary enough to assume that he was always being listened to.

‘She thinks to put me on edge,’ he said and shrugged. ‘But she is not the one who has brought back slaves and taken land.’ He almost hoped her Listener might pick up on that; how it would bite at her, like ants on her skin.

‘No,’ he added with a feral grin, ‘I remain secure in the Singer’s favour, at least for now. But anything you can find out, of course, please do so. Enet’s games are nothing if not long and complex and I would prefer to concentrate on honing the Melody through the Wet rather than avoiding the knives aimed at my throat.’

Elaq scowled. ‘That’s what you have me for,’ he said. ‘I’ve knives of my own and the will to use them.’

‘All in good time, my friend,’ Pilos said. ‘All in good time.’

LILLA

Southern Tokoban, near Yalotlan border

150th day of the Great Star at morning

Lilla sat with his back against the bole of a fig tree and rubbed a handful of water over his face and chest, licking it from his lips and chin and fingertips and palm. It was warm, kissed with salt where it had mixed with the sweat on his skin. There wasn’t much left in the gourd, but the nearby tangle of water vine was full, so he enjoyed the small extravagance, closing his eyes as the liquid momentarily cooled his face.

The rest of his Paw sprawled around him, with the game they’d hunted smoking over wide, low fires. The scent carried on the still air, not just to predators but potentially to enemy warriors; they were only three days’ walk from Yalotlan’s border, and although scouting Paws had confirmed the bulk of the enemy had left when the rains started in earnest, the threat of skirmish or ambush was ever-present – even within Tokoban itself these days. Still, they were too far from home to transport the meat before it spoilt and with so many refugees to feed, the jungle closest to the Sky City was increasingly bare of game. Descending Malel and passing the villages scattered at its base for wilder land was their only option to keep the city fed.

Around them, a Yaloh Paw under Kux’s command was concealed in the trees in a wide perimeter, half a stick out, on the alert.

‘I heard people in the lower market before we headed out,’ Tiamoko was saying. He was young, barely an adult, but big and strong and keen. Perhaps too keen; Lilla needed to watch him. ‘They were saying that if we send the Yaloh back into their own land, Malel would accept that sacrifice and she would ensure the Pechaqueh left us in peace.’

‘And would you live in peace, big man?’ asked Lutek, one of Lilla’s best warriors. She was sitting cross-legged, knapping a new blade for her knife, and although her tone was mild, Tiamoko flushed like the boy he mostly still was. ‘Knowing you’d left your neighbours – our friends – to become the slaves of those bastards? That’d sit easy with you, would it?’

‘Wasn’t me saying it, Lutek. I just heard it.’

‘I heard what Malel wants is a proper sacrifice,’ someone else said and they all went quiet at that. Many faces turned towards Lilla and he sighed. Being married to a shaman had its downsides.

‘Before Tayan left, the subject had been raised in conclave, but the shamans want to see what happens with the peace-weaving first. If Malel demands blood, she will get it. Until then, the councils will continue to debate our next steps and await the outcome of the peace-weaving.’

He was stern enough that the conversation died away and Tiamoko checked the meat on the smoke racks, eager to be of use. Not that Lilla blamed him for his words; he’d heard the same rumours. They all had. That’s what happened when fear gripped a city by its throat and began to squeeze. Next would come the voices urging surrender, that living under the song wouldn’t be so bad. When those arguments began, the Sky City would fall into chaos.

And although he should focus on that, Tayan’s name had fallen from his lips easily, conjuring images and memories of his husband, of their life together that seemed so distant sometimes, almost unreal. Would they have that again, those days spent hunting for game and foraging for medicine, content in each other’s silences and laughter, present and close and warm as sunlight? Or would the shadow of war forever stretch dark and cold around them?

Tayan had already been gone almost a moon and Lilla missed him, the pain a thorn pressed high up behind his lungs when he thought of him walking through conquered land and giving himself into the power of their enemies.

He tried to put it from his mind and concentrate instead on the latest information from Yalotlan. Pyramids were being built in the south, and once those tall, unmissable sentinels of the Empire of Songs marched across the land, they would claim it more fully than Pechaqueh words or spears – or even Yaloh lives and ancestors – could. When the magic in the pyramids came to life, the song would choke the land like a strangler fig, entering the bones and bellies of those who heard it, never to be forgotten.

The song would permeate the soil, the trees and plants and animals. The song would enter all who heard it and bring them under its sway. And the Empire of Songs would grow, its borders marked not by the gold stone and bright paint of the pyramids themselves but by the limits of the song that breathed inside the air and lived inside the living. The eternal presence. The Singer’s will.

Parasite. Master. God.

A single howler monkey screeched an alarm and Lilla’s Paw leapt to their feet and fanned out, ducking behind the smoke racks or into the shadow of trees. The sound of fighting erupted a short distance away as part of Kux’s Paw engaged an enemy and Lutek looked to Lilla. He nodded and signed ‘five’ and she led four warriors at a run towards the noise.

The rest waited, alert, straining every sense. Another of Kux’s Paw called the alarm, from the east this time. ‘Snake’s tongue attack,’ Lilla bellowed. He sent a piercing whistle into the jungle, calling back all those who could extricate themselves so they could stand together in the clearing.

A heavy javelin whined through the trees, and then a dozen more, flying hard and fast, before any of their allies made it back. Another skimmed past Lilla so close it stirred the hair by the side of his face. He jerked sideways, tripping on a root and sprawling to one knee. The javelin buried itself in the tree behind him.

‘Empire!’ Lilla shouted as he recognised the distinctive pattern on the bannerstone halfway along its length. Though of course it was the Empire; they were still in Tokoban and their own people wouldn’t be attacking them. There was a screech as a woman was caught on the thigh, a javelin’s point ripping into and then out of her doeskin leggings, leaving a bright slash of blood and torn flesh behind.

A third volley and the enemy hard after it, sprinting along the game trails from two, then three directions. Impossible to tell their numbers as they lunged out of the jungle or loosed arrows and darts from its shelter. The clearing erupted into motion – the stabbing whirl of spear fights, lightning fast, the hard clack of haft on haft, grunts of impact, screams of pain.

Lilla wrenched the Empire spear out of the tree and flung it at a man racing towards Tiamoko. It clipped a branch overhead and dipped early, landing between his feet so that he tripped, sprawling headlong into the leaf-litter but unhurt. Not for long. Lutek burst from the trees and rammed her own spear into his back, punching him down onto the earth just as he rose to his hands and knees.

Lilla was halfway to her side when a warrior a head taller than him barred his path. The man bared his teeth, the front two filed into points – one of the Tlaloxqueh people from the far southwest. He jabbed and Lilla blocked with his hatchet, thrusting back with his spear. The Tlalox was fast, but so was Lilla, the weapons spinning around them in a blur as they parried and blocked. Lilla split the man’s knuckle with a hard swipe and pain flashed in his eyes, though his hands never faltered.

Screams and roars all around them, cries for help, shrieks for mercy ungiven, and then the Tlalox fell for a feint and Lilla skipped sideways, shearing the hatchet into his throat. It came back out with a puff of blood and a strangled attempt at a scream. The man dropped his spear and slapped both hands against the wound, his eyes so wide Lilla could see himself reflected in them. He didn’t care to look too closely, just stepped around the dying man and back-swung the hatchet into the nape of his neck.

Kux and her Yaloh poured out of the trees and now the Empire’s warriors were trapped between the two forces. Even so, they fought for longer than Lilla expected, neither surrendering nor fleeing. And they took a bloody toll on his forces. Another Toko fell, her salt-cotton armour no match for the stone-headed club that crushed her sternum. She dropped without a sound, her lungs and ribs smashed to ruin and bright blood vomiting from her mouth. Roaring, Lilla leapt at her killer, a man wearing a cap of coyote skin, the animal’s eyeteeth strung in his hair.

Lutek had Lilla’s flank and together they cut him onto his knees, bleeding from a dozen wounds but none of them fatal. Yet. Around them the clearing was falling still, bodies scattered like dead branches after a storm. The Paws had the victory, and those few enemy who fled into the jungle weren’t pursued; the chances of another ambush were too great.

‘Who are you?’ Lilla spat at the man, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. There was a long, freely bleeding slice in his right forearm he couldn’t remember getting, but the hurt of it mingled with adrenaline and anger and shock and twisted his voice into something savage, though the kneeling man didn’t react to it.

‘Aez, Coyote leader of a hundred dog warriors of the Second Talon,’ he said, as calm as though he were chatting among friends. His breath came easily despite the exertion, despite the blood. ‘And you are trespassing in the Empire of Songs.’

Lilla’s lips peeled back from his teeth.

‘You mistake,’ Kux said as she strode over, surprise and anger vying for supremacy in her voice. She held a strip of material to her head and blood leaked from beneath it.

‘The Singer has decided Yalotlan will be brought under the song,’ Aez said, in that same calm and condescending tone. ‘And so this land now belongs to him.’

‘Monkey shit,’ Lilla snarled. ‘And you’re in Tokoban, anyway.’

Aez looked around. ‘Am I?’ he asked mildly. ‘All looks the same to me.’

Lilla itched to hurt him. ‘You understand nothing and your words mean less than nothing. Our land will always be our land.’

‘Of course it always will be,’ Aez said and Lilla paused. ‘I am from Axiban and I will always be a member of the Axib, even as I am also of the Empire.’ He laughed at their confusion. ‘It is you who understands nothing. When you are part of the Empire, you will learn. You will know glory then. And life.’

‘We will never be part of the Empire. We will never be slaves like you,’ Kux snarled.

Aez’s eyes narrowed. ‘I am no slave. I am a Coyote leader of dog warriors. I serve willingly.’

‘Dogs that bark at their master’s command but are too cowed to tear his throat out,’ Kux sneered and Lilla snorted. ‘But you press far north without reinforcements, little barking coyote. Why is that?’ Aez was silent. ‘Are there reinforcements coming?’ Still nothing. The Yalotl spat in his face.

Aez inhaled through flared nostrils as he wiped her saliva from his cheek. But then he settled back on his heels, his gaze fixed somewhere beyond them all. He was looking pale now, though with blood loss and pain rather than fear. ‘Holy Setatmeh and great Singer, judge me by my deeds and not my words, my devotion and not my fears. Sacred spirits, may my death secure your glory, and my name live in your mouths forever. I commend my family into your care, that they too may honour you.’

‘You’re not even a Pecha!’ Kux yelled. Aez paid no attention.

Rage built in Lilla’s chest and he chuckled, low and nasty, a sound that until the war he hadn’t known it was possible to make. A sound that threatened like the low rumbling growl of a jaguar. ‘No need for prayers, slave,’ he said. ‘We’re not killing you. At least, not yet.’ He tore the coyote-skin cap from Aez’s head and stamped on it.

Shock and fury twisted the man’s face. ‘I am no slave! I am a free Axi, a Coyote commander and—’

Lilla punched him in the jaw and he fell, boneless. ‘Bring him and any meat that’s ready that we can haul alongside the wounded,’ Lilla said.

‘What about the dead?’ someone muttered. ‘We drag his carcass with us but not our kin?’

‘We’re at war,’ Kux said, though her jaw was trembling with suppressed emotion. ‘Strip them of talismans, honour them, and then leave them. There’s no time for more.’

‘Besides,’ Lilla added, searching out Tiamoko in the press and relieved to find him alive. ‘There’s been talk Malel might demand a sacrifice.’ He jabbed the unconscious Axi in the ribs with his sandal. ‘Looks like we’ve found one.’

There was a pause, and then they set to work, taking jewellery and hanks of hair from Tokob and Yaloh dead and placing jade beads on their tongues, payment to see them safely through the Gate of the Ancestors. The dead feeding the jungle that fed the living.

‘Be at peace in the harmony of living and dying. We sustain what sustains us, in the endless circle.’ The same whisper, over and over as each corpse was honoured. ‘We will drum for you. We will dance your spirits through the spiral to rebirth. Rest now.’

‘Let’s go,’ Lilla said softly when it was done and the wounded were on their feet or being supported. The Axi dangled like a dead deer from a long carrying pole slung between two warriors.

Lilla took the tail and Kux the head of the group and they set off with many bitter glances back at the clearing and their dead. The mood was blacker than the clouds and guilt filled Lilla’s chest until he thought he would choke.

They encountered no further ambushes during the march back to the Sky City. A march in which two of the wounded died from the brutal pace they set.

Lilla sent the Paws to rest and then he and Kux dragged Aez up through the city to the council chamber, intermittent sun lightening the limestone streets beneath their feet. He tried to coax the embers of his anger back into flame, but he was too tired.

Both councils were there, seated in a double ring on thin mats, spaces left free for the Fangs. Other warriors took possession of Aez and forced him to kneel at the rear of the chamber, spears poised. Even so, Lilla didn’t much like turning his back on him.

High Elder Vaqix called the meeting to order before they were even properly seated. ‘Kux, Lilla, you return from scouting and from hunting – and from battle. How many warriors have stepped onto the spiral path under your command?’

Lilla winced. ‘Seventeen bodies have returned to the earth, High Elder.’

‘What were you doing so far south?’ Vaqix demanded.

‘We weren’t,’ Kux said before Lilla could. ‘We were inside Tokoban. They should not have been within a hundred sticks of us.’

‘This is not the first time,’ Elder Apok said. ‘Other lowland villages have reported sightings and missing hunting parties, bodies discovered on game trails. They haven’t yet reached the towns below Malel’s slopes, but it seems there are Melody warriors at large in Tokoban now, too. It is no longer just in Yalotlan that we are fighting. Although their main strength has retreated, there seems to be a pattern emerging of skirmishes where we least expect them.’

‘Why?’ High Elder Zasso of the Yaloh demanded, her voice a thin croak.

‘Many reasons,’ Lilla found himself saying. ‘To put us on edge; to make us fearful to leave our villages or towns; to cut off communication between settlements. Perhaps they want us sending out double-strength Paws when hunting in order to weaken the defences of villages. Perhaps it’s all a distraction so they can continue building pyramids to bring the song ever closer.’

Behind him, Lilla heard a snort of what might have been laughter from the Axib prisoner. His back prickled.

Kux leant forward, her eyes fixed on Zasso. ‘Whatever they have planned, however many their numbers roaming Tokoban, they seek to keep us off balance and penned in up here while they consolidate their hold on our homes.’ She flung a hand passionately towards Aez. ‘He admitted it when we captured him. He said Yalotlan belongs to the Empire already. He called us trespassers.’ Her voice was a sibilant whisper on the last word and it lingered in the sudden, disbelieving silence. And then, uproar.

Lilla sat within it like a leaf on the current, helplessly buffeted this way and that. He ached for Tayan, for his husband’s pragmatism and unquestioning faith in him, but also for his sense of the absurd. The slender shaman had a knack for dispelling tension and they needed it now, needed it desperately before they worked themselves into a frenzy and made a rash decision. Unless …

‘Stop. Stop!’ Lilla bellowed and the council chamber rang with echoes. ‘The Empire wants unthinking, angry responses; it wants us to mount a poorly planned invasion; it wants us to leave ourselves exposed. None of us know how much of their Melody they marched back to Pechacan. Did they even go that far? Who’s to say they’re not five sticks into Xentiban, just waiting for us to over-extend ourselves trying to regain lost land?’

‘Stolen land,’ Kux grated.

‘Stolen land,’ Lilla amended. ‘But we have to give the peace-weavers a chance. We can’t go on the offensive while Tayan and Betsu argue for peace.’

‘So we just let them keep on stealing land and lives? Stealing people to make into slaves? No!’ Kux was loud, vibrating with anger.

‘They’re building pyramids in southern Yalotlan,’ Lilla said. ‘That we can do something about. It’s not an act of open aggression but one of resistance – and we won’t kill unless we must – but we could prevent their construction. Delay them, smash the stone so they can’t be built while we wait for the peace-weaving to conclude.’

‘And you think they’ll let us do that?’ High Elder Zasso scoffed. ‘Of course not. They’ll defend themselves and their cursed pyramids. When the peace-weavers left, it appeared that the Melody had retreated. Now it seems they are advancing again, perhaps only in small numbers, but we cannot allow them to roam Yalotlan and Tokoban unanswered. We simply cannot. You were ambushed, Fang Lilla, and you lost seventeen warriors between the two Paws and that is a tragedy, but the reports from the market administrators say that you also came back with only a third of the meat you’d hoped to hunt, and – dare I say it – that is a greater tragedy. And one that may well be a shadow of things to come. What happens if we can’t hunt at all? What happens when we are trapped between the Melody and the Drowned, when we are starving, because you want us to delay?’

‘But the peace-weaving—’ Lilla tried.

‘Fuck the peace-weaving,’ Kux yelled. ‘Yours isn’t the land and people stolen.’

‘We fight alongside you,’ Lilla said and his voice was no longer quiet, no longer even. ‘We die alongside you. Do not—’

‘Enough.’ Vaqix’s voice was implacable. ‘Enough. The peace-weavers must be given the time to work.’ He held up a finger to still them. ‘But I agree that having enemies wandering our land is unacceptable. We will send out combined Paws – a show of strength. They will be large and obvious. They will sweep the game trails and ensure our towns are safe. They will show the Melody that we are aware of their presence and not afraid to engage. But we will not attack. We will defend ourselves if we must, but our forces will deter, not provoke.’

‘And what about him?’ Zasso demanded, pointing. She wanted blood; she wanted vengeance and Lilla couldn’t blame her.

The Axi put his head on one side and even dared a smile, as if among friends.

‘The shamanic conclave spoke of the potential for an offering to Malel,’ Vaqix said quietly. Apok was signing for those ejab under the influence of spirit-magic and their heads swivelled between his explanatory hands and the prisoner. ‘We will continue to consult the goddess and the ancestors and spirits. We will continue to show our strength to our enemies. And if Malel demands it, she will have his life.’

TAYAN

Approach to the Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs

152nd day of the Great Star at morning

‘There it is.’ Beyt had halted at the top of a small, flat rise amid muddy fields. The rain out here, without the cover of the canopy, was relentless, and all of them were muddy to the knees, tunics and kilts and hair plastered to their skins. Tayan’s paint had long since washed off and he’d decided not to bother reapplying it until they were dry and able to meet with someone who would respect it.

He squinted, but the Singing City was too far away for him to make out in any detail. One thing he could see, far too close, was the wide, lazy curl of a river below them. He let out an involuntary yelp and leapt backwards from the lip of the hill, Betsu following. The four warriors who always marched at their backs caught them roughly, pinning their arms.

‘We wear the feathers, the peace feathers!’ Tayan shouted.

Beyt was frowning, but it melted into a delighted laugh. She shook her head, clapping. ‘You poor, misguided fools. Another reason why you’d be better off under the song. Bring them.’ She vanished down the other side of the hill and her warriors wrestled Tayan and Betsu forward. Helpless and sliding in the mud, Tayan strained to pull himself free. If this had all been some elaborate joke, some drawn-out murder, he would make them earn their laughter.

The river twisted around the base of the hill, a monstrous, sluggish, lethal snake of brown water, straining its banks with runoff from the Wet. Spanning it was a bridge, wooden and as wide as the limestone road. It wasn’t strung high between the trees like at home, only to be used as a last resort. Instead, it sat solid and stable and only an arm’s length above the water.

Betsu was shouting curses, wrenching at the grips of the men holding her, her muscles bulging. Beyt sent a third warrior back to help and he pulled her into a headlock while the other two dragged her arms up behind her back. She let out a strangled screech of pain. Beyt and the pair of warriors flanking her walked onto the bridge without hesitation.

‘Holy Setatmeh, gods of rivers and lakes, of the rain and the crops, revered spirits, we worship at your feet,’ Beyt said. ‘Know that you live within the song with us, that you live in our hearts with the song, and that the song lives within us all. If it be your will, let us pass.’

Sweat blinded Tayan but he blinked desperately as he was dragged onto the bridge, the planks loud under his scuffling sandals. He squinted right and then left, looking for the mottled skin, the dead black eyes, the reaching hands. He’d only ever seen one up close, and he had the scars from mid-thigh to ankle and a dead eja on his conscience to prove it. His heart was pounding hard enough to burst.

And then they were over, thumping down into waterlogged soil, the river behind them. They were dragged a little further and then released, and Tayan slumped to his knees, barely resisting the urge to embrace the ground and kiss it.

When he looked up, Beyt had her hands on her hips. ‘You’re learning many lessons of the Empire’s greatness on this journey, aren’t you?’ she asked, the mocking edge to her voice sharper than obsidian. ‘You see how proper reverence, proper understanding, shows your childish fears for what they are?’

Humiliation flashed through Tayan, followed by the first unwilling stirrings of awe. The song was right: the Pechaqueh were truly blessed, truly special. They had even tamed the Drowned. But then he saw it, a lucky break in the clouds casting just enough brightness onto the woman’s face. Sweat at her hairline and glistening in the lines on her palm as she wiped casually at her upper lip. She’d been afraid. Terrified. Only bravado was giving strength to her voice now, when in truth crossing that bridge had been as hard for her as it had for them. Tayan deliberately crushed his awe and replaced it with contempt.

‘Admitting fear makes a person stronger than pretending they don’t feel it at all,’ he said and forced himself to his feet. ‘The Drowned are an abomination sent by the lords of the Underworld. They—’

‘You should stop talking before we take you back and throw you in,’ Beyt said, and the edge in her voice had hardened. She jerked her head and the seven warriors spread out around them again. The woman took the lead, striding along the road towards the city.

‘That was well said,’ Betsu murmured as they followed her. The nod of respect was unexpected, but it poured strength and courage into Tayan. He nodded back and set his sights on the Singing City, straining to make out the details and wondering what other tests and horrors lay in wait.

There were horrors, but they were far more mundane – and so all the worse for it. The peace-weavers had become uneasily used to the presence of slaves. On the occasions they’d stopped in a city or village during the trek, slaves had been everywhere, obvious in their undyed maguey and bare of jewellery, charms and feathers. Many still bore tattoos, but without the honour that would have once accompanied them.

Here, too, around the scattered dwellings and in the vast fields lining either side of the road, were slaves. And worse. Tayan hadn’t thought there could be anything below the class of slave. He had been wrong. As they walked towards the most opulent, populous city he had ever seen, the shaman had to force himself not to stare. Starving, filthy, naked beggars, calling out in a dozen accents, the tattoos of their tribes barely visible beneath the grime. Men and women, even children, offering their flesh in return for food. Some had made badly woven baskets or crude pots that hadn’t even been fired, their eyes dull with hopelessness.

‘Why?’ Tayan asked, but his voice broke and he had to repeat it. ‘Why are they here?’

Beyt glanced around as if only just noticing them. ‘The Singing City is the centre of the world and the source of the song. It attracts both the highest and the lowest of society. These have probably displeased their owners and been cast out, or didn’t sell in the flesh markets. Ignore them; the Choosers chip away at their number each new moon.’ She paused in thought. ‘And let me know if one of them touches you,’ she added eventually. ‘It is death for them to touch a free, and while I don’t quite understand your status here in the Empire, I won’t be responsible for your honour being fouled by them.’

‘There would be no dishonour,’ Tayan said quietly, but Beyt had already turned her back and increased her pace. She was as eager to reach the Singing City as Tayan was suddenly reluctant.

‘No wall,’ Betsu murmured. ‘Your Sky City has a wall to protect it from Drowned and to deter cats. This place has no wall. They don’t count either of those as a threat.’

She was right. More and more buildings began springing up to either side of the road, like mushrooms growing in cool shade. There was no clear entrance into the city; rather, it grew around the road – and grew big. Each building was easily the size of the council house back home, surrounded by high stone walls and tree-filled gardens.

‘These have walls,’ Tayan pointed out.

Betsu snorted. ‘That’s because rich Pechaqueh live here and they don’t want their fine senses ruined by having to see or smell these poor broken creatures.’ She gestured at the beggars. ‘Still, it would make taking this city more difficult. Every single estate becomes its own defensive position, and while that means those inside are isolated, it also means scaling walls and knocking down gates every single time. It would slow down any offensive, break it up into hundreds of individual skirmishes. Each estate would fall, but it would take time, and those surrounding it could launch attacks of their own, with multiple places to retreat to.’ Her footsteps slowed. ‘If they have a network of tunnels running between these estates, they could reinforce when necessary, move non-fighters, replenish supplies …’

Tayan let her mutter away to herself. Her warrior instincts had changed from dismissive to intrigued. It would be vital information to take back to the tribes, and he didn’t want to interrupt her as she analysed their surroundings. They might not get another chance to see the city from this angle.

Not that we’re going to need to know the defensive capabilities of the Singing City anyway, he reminded himself, but the words were weak. He shook himself; they were here to negotiate a lasting peace. He brushed at the turkey feathers again, the action instinctive after so many weeks’ travel.

Beyt and the warriors in front turned off the road and padded along a packed dirt track between two tall stone walls. They stopped in front of a thick gate set into the stone and Beyt knocked the butt of her spear against it.

‘Wait, where are we?’ Tayan asked in some alarm. He had expected to stay in the traders’ quarter, if there was such a thing, where rooms could be hired by the night or the week.

‘Spear of the City Enet lives here,’ Beyt said impatiently. ‘I’d brush some of the mud off your sandals if I were you.’

Twelve days they had travelled together, and not once had Beyt alluded to the fact she would bring them directly to someone of power. The idea was so absurd it hadn’t even occurred to them to ask. Tayan exchanged a horrified look with Betsu; they were filthy and he wore no paint. The gate swung open.

ENET

Great Octave’s estate, Singing City,

Pechacan, Empire of Songs

152nd day of the Great Star at morning

The holy lord has my complete devotion. The holy Setatmeh have my worship. And the world spirit holds my hope of rebirth.

Enet centred herself with the prayer, clearing her mind and inhaling the song into the very depths of her body. Only when she was sure that she held the Singer foremost in her thoughts, wrapped with the pure love of devotion, did she return to the old, painted fig-bark book one of the traders in her employ had uncovered. A book of prophecies made by the 142nd Singer forty cycles of the Great Star before. Three hundred and twenty sun-years. An eternity and yet the blink of an eye in the grand round of histories and prophecies, ancestors and futures. The space of a single dream during the world spirit’s slumber.

Many of the pages were illegible now, the glyphs faded or stained, and the last fourth of the book itself was missing. Still, Singer Tecotl had lived closer to the time of those first Singers who were said to not have ascended upon death – the stories that had been the cause of her humiliation in front of the Singer a month before. Though he appeared to have forgotten it, even confirming her in the position of Great Octave in the intervening days, Enet hadn’t forgotten it. Enet would never forget it.

But the legends Singer Tecotl knew and had written down in these pages might, to him, have been histories rather than stories. Might have been fact. Enet sat in the small, concealed room within her estate palace. Only two other people knew of the room’s existence. Both were slaves. Both were sworn to her. One still had a tongue and could speak what he knew, but he’d been with her since he was a child. Enet trusted few, but she trusted them.

The room was cramped with shelves of books and loose pages and artefacts and transcribed tales from every land the Empire had brought under the song. Relics from those lands: sacred objects, charms, idols of false gods. Anything that might bring her closer to the truth that even here, in her most secret heart, she could barely bring herself to contemplate. The truth of the Singers who did not die, but nor did they ascend; the Singers who remained themselves and yet undying, and who still walked, she knew, she knew, somewhere in this world.

This truth that was Enet’s path to immortality. For the good of the Empire of Songs. For the waking of the world spirit. For peace.

Her ancestry and wealth guaranteed her a place on the Singer’s council, but it was her mind that had seen her elevated to Spear of the City and then Great Octave. And still there was so much more that she could do for the Empire. This was but a means to achieve stability for Ixachipan and beyond.

Enet wasn’t like the Singer’s other courtesans. She didn’t just rely on the delights of her body to charm him. Instead, she studied the histories and the prophecies, the old tales and those yet to come. She cast fortunes with dice and bones until she was the most sought-after diviner in the source. She learnt, she thought, she spoke, until Singer Xac was as enamoured of her mind as he was of the warm hollow between her thighs. Enet intended to keep it that way until she had all the pieces and had cast all the possible futures and was ready to act.

There was a knock at the door. Enet flinched, the book dropping from her hands. No one knocked at this door; no one would dare. Heart lurching, she darted a glance at the massive chunk of rock, flecked with tiny crystal until it almost seemed to glow, that dominated the centre of the room. The other item that made this place both secret and sacred. She stood, brushing off her kilt. ‘What?’ Her voice was harsh.

‘High one, there are … there are peace-weavers at the gate,’ her estate slave murmured. ‘From Tokoban and Yalotlan.’

‘Peace-weavers?’

‘Yes, high one. They say they are here to negotiate a truce and a lasting peace between their peoples and the Empire.’

A high, disbelieving laugh broke from Enet’s lips. She put the book back on the shelf and then faced the stone and touched her belly and throat in salute, before licking her finger and running it across the section she’d been working on with the chisel. Her fingertip gathered a fine white coating and Enet sucked it clean, relishing the way the dust had the slightest roughness against her gums and tongue. Then she crossed to the door and pulled it open. The slave stood back against the tall painted screen that normally concealed the entrance.

‘They’ve travelled all the way from Tokoban?’

The slave nodded. ‘Yes, high one. They wear … full heads of turkey feathers.’ Enet’s eyebrows rose. ‘I have sent a boy to fetch what he can, should you wish to see them and be likewise attired. Eight Melody macaws led by Second Flight Beyt brought them. They await your pleasure at the door. The peace-weavers’ – he stumbled over the unfamiliar phrase – ‘I have shown to the small room.’

Irritation took over from amusement. ‘I will see this half-blood macaw and learn their intent in disturbing me. Make sure Pikte is kept away from the northerners.’

‘As the high one commands,’ the slave said. He stood aside and then wrestled the screen back into place so the door was invisible. Enet didn’t wait for him, striding along the brightly painted corridor towards the main door.

The Second Flight stood just inside the entrance, her mouth slightly open as she gazed at the murals and woven hangings adorning the walls and corridors leading to the public and private parts of the palace. Four of Enet’s slave warriors surrounded the woman, while the other macaws waited out in the gardens.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ Enet demanded and the macaw shut her mouth and dropped to her knees.

‘We found them in Xentiban two weeks ago, Spear,’ the woman said. ‘A Tokob shaman and a Yaloh warrior. Peace-weavers. They wanted to come to the Singing City and negotiate. I thought it was best to escort them so they couldn’t get up to any mischief. I … thought you might be prepared to speak with them.’

‘You should have killed them.’

The macaw flinched. ‘High one,’ she said, adding the honorific though her half-Pecha blood didn’t strictly require her to, ‘they wear a multitude of peace feathers. My place is not to determine whether such as they might be harmed.’

‘So you brought them all the way here, into our very heart, instead of to the nearest eagle who could make that decision for you?’ Enet’s voice dripped with scorn, but they were here and, worse, they’d been invited in. The Great Octave’s own honour and status demanded she at least see them.

‘Forgive me, high one,’ the macaw said.

‘No,’ Enet snapped. ‘You will leave your name with my estate slave and you will get out of my house. Now.’ She already knew the warrior’s name, and there was only one macaw Talon in the whole Melody, but the woman needed to understand the consequences of what she’d done.

The warrior pressed her blushing face to the floor and then rose and fled, pausing to whisper to the estate slave who waited at the door. Enet watched her go, sorely tempted to give her guard the nod, but didn’t. She’d have to end all eight of them, and it would be loud and messy before it was done. A boy came in with a basket of turkey feathers soon after, while she was putting on a fresh tunic and kilt and reapplying her cosmetics. She allowed him to bind one into her hair, over her right ear, as the warriors wore it. She would be interested to see what these peace-weavers made of that. She found she was interested to see what they made of everything – and what she made of them.

Peace-weavers. What a novel concept. She smiled to herself as she patted the feather again and then made her way to the small room with the view of the gardens. She paused in the doorway for just the briefest moment, seeking to gain whatever advantage she could. Her mouth thinned and then she smiled to herself. They were filthy. They were exhausted. They’d been brought straight here, judging by the packs her slaves had taken from them and the dampness of their clothes and hair. That, at least, the macaw had done well.

The man was slender and fidgety, hastily rubbing blue paint onto his brow from a small pot, while the woman stood with her arms folded across her chest and looking like she’d just bitten into rotten meat. She was older than Enet, heavyset, shoulders thick with muscle and hands and wrists hatched with scars. There were bands of grey in her hair and lines around her eyes and mouth, but violence sat lightly within her, ever ready to be tapped. The Great Octave didn’t let it bother her.

‘Welcome to the Singing City and the deep magic of the song, honoured guests. I am Spear of the City Enet. I am also Great Octave, though you need not concern yourself with that. Under the song.’

They’d whirled at her first words and Enet recognised the wide-eyed blink from the man as he got his first look at her. She took it as her due. ‘Thank you, Spear, I mean Great Octave. I am Tayan, called the stargazer, shaman of the Tokob and peace-weaver. This is my friend and colleague, the warrior Betsu of Yalotlan. We are honoured that you have agreed to speak with us. And … under the song. Or as we would say, may the ancestors guide your steps.’

He rubbed the last of the paint in a hasty, slightly crooked line from the middle of his lower lip to the point of his chin.

‘Betsu,’ the woman said, as if she needed to imprint her authority on the meeting. Or as if she didn’t like this Tayan speaking for her.

‘And do you offer me the grace of your ancestors, Betsu of Yalotlan?’ Enet asked, her head on one side and her hands clasped before her. The woman grunted. ‘Ah, well. I am sure the Tokob ancestors will watch over me, even if yours do not.’

‘Hundreds more of my people are now ancestors because of you, because of Pechacan and the Empire and your—’

‘Peace, Betsu,’ Tayan barked and then, astoundingly, blushed. ‘Forgive me, Great Octave, I should not have raised my voice in your house. It was impolite and goes against the protocol of the peace-weaving. May we begin?’

Enet suppressed a sigh and sat; then she gestured for them to do the same. She clapped once. ‘Refreshments for my guests, and arrange clean clothes for them. And some cloths so that they may remove the worst of the mud,’ she added. They’d removed their sandals in the entrance, but their feet appeared just as filthy and there were already marks on her mats.

Tayan grimaced and looked down. ‘The Wet is heavy already, is it not?’ he asked. ‘I apologise for the mess we have made. We were, ah, unaware we would be meeting you immediately upon our arrival or we would have ensured we were more presentable. Thank you,’ he added to the slave handing him the square of cotton. He scrubbed at the mud coating his feet and legs, then used a clean corner to squeeze the water from his hair. It was long, coming halfway down his back, threaded with strings of dyed-blue bird bones and painted clay beads. His kilt was patterned with blue squares, as was his sleeveless tunic. Four long, pale scars marred the side of his left leg; that would have been a nasty injury.

‘Would you like to bathe?’ she asked before they were settled and was gratified to see them both recoil.

‘Thank you, no. Unless that is a requirement of your society? We do not wish to cause offence and this is only our first meeting.’

Enet met Betsu’s eyes and an understanding as to the nature of these meetings passed between them.

‘You cause no offence,’ the Great Octave said softly.

The shaman retrieved his bag and knelt opposite Enet. Betsu joined them, impassive, as he began to lay out items on the low table between them. One of Enet’s guards shifted away from the wall and she raised her hand to still them, curious. There was a small clay jar, tightly stoppered, a series of well-carved statues, and a soft deerskin pouch. ‘Do you have a bowl and grinding stone for us to prepare the magic?’ he asked.

‘The … magic?’ Enet asked. The man indicated the vial and the pouch. ‘Oh yes, your frog-magic. It is true you lick them? Is there one in there?’ She leant forward and prodded the pouch with a long fingernail; it was disappointingly soft.

The shaman coughed. ‘See how we already learn about each other?’ he said with forced cheer. ‘When we journey to the realm of the ancestors, or to speak with Malel, our goddess, or those spirits not yet reborn, the path is arduous, and to speak with the dead is a difficult task. Our magic eases that passage. Does your song-magic require the same?’

‘It does not.’

The Toko waited for more, but Enet was silent. Her estate slave knelt behind the peace-weavers, alert to her smallest gesture or requirement. It clearly made the pair nervous to have his silent presence behind them.

‘I hope that over the coming days we will continue to learn about each other, the better to reach an agreement that pleases all parties. For now, shall we begin? The grinding bowl?’

‘Begin what?’ Enet was losing patience. She had been called from her books and her research for this, these childish overtures of friendship, this babbling nonsense of ancestors and herb-magic.

‘At the commencement of a peace-weaving, it is customary to visit the ancestors, so that all know we hold the same purpose and that our hearts are pure. It creates trust. The ancestors will know if anyone has evil intent.’ He picked up the pouch and gave her a bright smile.

Enet ran a considering finger across her lower lip. Betsu rolled her eyes, but Enet’s performance wasn’t for the Yalotl. ‘Forgive me, Tayan – or should I call you Peace-weaver? – but our dead rest within the world spirit, and we access that through the song. The song is the voice of the world, you see. Do you see? We are constantly, endlessly connected with our dead. We need no frog-juice to show us our past. Or our future.’

Tayan lowered his head. All Enet could see was the tension in his shoulders and the rather tatty crown of turkey feathers. Betsu was blank-faced next to him, as if she didn’t even speak the same language. Enet waited, the patient, smiling host, until Tayan’s shoulders dropped and he raised his head. He smiled again.

‘You are right, of course. We have come to your land to request a peace-weaving. It is your traditions we should honour here, not ours.’ He packed away his instruments and tucked the bag behind him. ‘Tell me then, Great Octave, how should we begin the peace-weaving?’

‘Ah, my honoured guests, that is where there is a small problem,’ Enet said, holding up her palms. ‘We have no such thing.’

The silence was dumbfounded – until it was broken by ugly, wheezing laughter. Betsu’s face was red and tears filled her eyes as she laughed, her face twisted into a horrible grimace that was part humour, part despair.

‘Betsu? Betsu, peace,’ Tayan hissed. ‘Great Octave, you have no protocol for establishing peace with others?’

‘We already have peace,’ Enet said, pointedly not looking at the Yalotl as she struggled to contain herself. ‘All the Empire is at peace. When you are brought under the song you, too, will know it.’

‘Then the peace-weaving can proceed,’ Tayan said with clear relief. Enet arched an eyebrow. ‘Your position is that we will only know peace if we join your Empire. Our position is that we wish to retain our autonomy and end the war. The negotiation now will lead to a compromise satisfactory to all parties.’

‘Yes, indeed you can end the war here and now,’ Enet said and she let irritation trickle into her voice. ‘Join the Empire and not one more of your people will be lost to our weapons. Look around you, look at our wealth, feel the song’s might in your hearts. You walked through hundreds of sticks of farmland: imagine the amount of crops they grow. Your warriors can join our Melody and serve with honour. Your artists will find new subjects and new markets. Your shamans can learn about the song and our magic, our ways. The whole world will open up to you.’

‘We do not wish to join your Empire,’ Tayan said when she paused for breath, and his voice was as smooth as polished jade. ‘But let us not try to solve everything in one day. A peace-weaving traditionally lasts for thirty days, so we have plenty of time to—’

Enet threw back her head and laughed, genuinely amused. ‘Thirty days?’ she gasped, one hand pressed to her chest. ‘You expect me to sit here and listen to such nonsense for thirty days? Only because you arrived unexpected and unasked-for at my home have I done you the courtesy of listening so far. But do not forget: you are in my home, and you are here unannounced. You come in spouting traditions and waving around herbs and you demand my attention and time – and then you demand thirty days of it? No, honoured guests, no. I am curious, and so I will grant you seven days of my valuable time. You will stay in my home and I will show you the city and Pechaqueh ways and all that might be yours upon joining the Empire of Songs.’

She stood and they stared up at her, dumbstruck. Enet snapped her fingers and the slave kneeling behind the peace-weavers rose, collecting their bags.

‘I’m sure that by the end of our time together you will be eager to return home to tell your people of the virtues of laying down their weapons and surrendering. We will speak again tomorrow. You, show them to a room and feed them.’

‘You subjugate your neighbours and keep them as property,’ Betsu said, her voice heavy with scorn as she rose. ‘You worship the Drowned. You steal from the balance and the Ixachipan you profess to love suffers as a result. Ancestors’ bones are disturbed, spirits forced from their resting places in tree and rock. That is not balance; it is sacrilege against Malel – against the world. And you say we will beg to join you in this wholesale slaughter?’

‘Betsu, peace,’ the shaman snapped, his eyes flashing with an uneasy mix of anger and pleading. ‘This is not how to begin a peace-weaving.’

‘How much land is enough land?’ Betsu demanded, strident.

Enet put her head on one side and gave them a quizzical smile that masked her seething outrage. ‘That is for the Singer to decide. The song is a glory to all who hear it – as you know. We wish only for as many peoples as possible to live within the joy of the song. We do not steal; we bring a gift of immeasurable bounty to those who join our Empire. This is something you will come to understand.’

‘Join your Empire?’ Betsu mocked. ‘You mean be enslaved by it. Stolen from our homes and our ancestors. Turned into things.’

Enet shrugged. ‘What better way to learn how our society works than from the bottom? With faithful service, slaves are made servants who receive compensation. Servants save up enough to pay off their debt and become free. The free live and farm and make babies and raise livestock under the glory of the song. Peace, peace-weavers,’ she added with another smile. ‘That is what we offer the world.’

Betsu’s face reddened, veins standing out in her throat.

‘Betsu,’ the shaman warned in a low voice. ‘We are guests—’

‘Your Singer has ordered you to flood over the land like locusts, conquering all in your path and forcing them to serve you like dogs, but it was not always so. This noise you call a song is poison and it has poisoned you all. We will never—’

Enet’s polite mask fell from her face. Her slave knelt and pressed his forehead to the floor. The guards rushed forward from their places around the walls. ‘The Singer is a living god and the song is his grace spread across us,’ the Great Octave said in a soft, deadly voice. ‘It unites us in one great, glorious purpose, a purpose every Pecha believes in. And our free, our servants and our slaves all hold that purpose in their hearts alongside the glory of the song.’ She gestured to the slave. ‘You. You’re happy, aren’t you?’

The man bobbed his head and raised it just enough to speak. ‘Of course, high one.’

‘Do you even know his name?’ Betsu demanded.

Enet didn’t so much as glance at her. She wouldn’t be able convince Betsu, but the shaman. Oh, the shaman was promising. ‘The song would light up your lives,’ she said, soft and coaxing now. ‘It would take your small, sad world and polish it like jade. Like pearls from the ocean. It would enhance everything you did and saw and ate and smelt, every feeling, every decision. The song is the world, Tayan.’

She stepped between her guards and put her hand on the shaman’s chest, felt his heart thudding against his ribs, and looked deep enough to see his spirit burning in his eyes. ‘It has been inside you for weeks now, brightening you, glorifying you; I see its light in your face. When you reach the border you will no longer hear it. You will be lost. Bereft. Don’t throw it away. Don’t discard the glory inside you and condemn your thousands of brave warriors to pointless death.’

‘She is a scorpion, Tayan. Her words are venom.’

‘Betsu, peace,’ the shaman said, but he neither looked at her nor moved away from the pressure of Enet’s hand on his chest. They stared into each other and she felt him waver, she felt him teeter on the edge of surrender. And step back. ‘May we speak again tomorrow, Great Octave?’ he asked formally.

‘I have duties in the source, with the Singer,’ Enet said. ‘But I will find some time to show you the city.’ She walked to the door and looked back over her shoulder. ‘You are lucky you arrived when you did,’ she added as if it was an afterthought. ‘The new moon will come before you leave. You can take part in our ritual offerings to the holy Setatmeh.’

‘Is that a threat?’ Betsu demanded, clenching her fists.

Enet only smiled. ‘Under the song.’

THE SINGER

The source, Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs

The song is eternal. My song shall be eternal, spreading across Ixachipan and then the world until all know my strength and the Pechaqueh power.

I, Xac, 174th Singer of Pechacan, wielder of the magic that binds the Empire, will be the once, last, and only Singer, walking at the world spirit’s side for eternity.

I honour my ancestors, who have brought the Empire so close to its final glory. Because of them and the grand work of expansion they began, I shall wake the world spirit.

Because of myself and all the reverence I am owed, I shall achieve greatness so radiant it will reflect back through the years to burnish their legacy brighter.

Through me Ixachipan will be brought to harmonious glory. Through me will be an end to war and division. Through me will the Pechaqueh rule supreme and the Empire be prosperous. Through me the world spirit will awaken.

And with that awakening, I shall wax into my full power. None shall withstand us. None shall want to withstand us. The world spirit and I will make a garden of the world, and a music of living. All shall know my name. All shall know me.

For I am the Singer, and my will is stone.

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