High above the street, shadows moved behind the consulates’ cracked windows. Squatters, no doubt, siphoning what they could from the westerners’ meager refuse. Through a hole in the dirty glass, a baby wailed. Luntok stuffed his fists into the pockets of his trousers and quickened his pace. He despised the foreign district. Although the westerners were long gone, their houses still stank of failure, of waste.

The noise grew louder as he worked his way back toward the heart of Mariit. Judging by the swell of music and laughter, the parade was in full swing. The other warriors didn’t tell Luntok where to find them, but he knew well enough to guess. They were waiting for him at the inn that straddled the canal separating the merchant quarter, a smattering of newer dwellings and ancient guildhalls, from the noble town houses of the central district. The family who owned the inn had moved to Mariit from the Kulaws’ kadatuan. In recent years, it had become a popular meeting place for Kulaw-affiliated visitors and any capital dweller with southern roots.

When Luntok stepped through the front door, the innkeeper, a lanky man around his mother’s age, greeted him in the old dialect people only spoke back home. On the wall behind him hung a gigantic wooden carving of a raptor bird⁠—the Kulaw family’s symbol. He gestured to the staircase next to the entryway, which led to the lower dining room reserved for the inn’s most prestigious guests. “Right this way, my lord.”

Over a dozen warriors burst into raucous cheers when Luntok came downstairs. In the fleeting hour he’d stolen with Laya, the group had already drunk themselves merry and red-faced. They’d left their weapons stacked against all four walls of the dining room. Smoky, yellow light winked off the flat edges of their blades. In the spirit of the feast days, they would spend the rest of the evening clustered around the inn’s round mahogany tables, snacking on parade leftovers, and playing dice games.

Luntok grinned as he wove between the warriors, clapping them across their shoulders in greeting. At the opposite end of the room, Vikal leaped to his feet and thrust his glass into the air. “All hail Luntok, the Swift-striker, favored by the old gods of Thu-ki,” he proclaimed.

Around the room, the warriors echoed Vikal’s praise⁠—to Luntok, the Swift-striker⁠—and raised their glasses in turn. Luntok’s grin broadened as he looked Vikal in the eye. His great-great-grandfather, Luntok the First, the last of the Kulaw monarchs, had been given several titles throughout his lifetime: Swift-striker by the warriors who revered him, Beast-maker by the Gatdulas who despised him, and Haribon by his most loyal followers⁠—that was Luntok the Second’s favorite title, meaning Bird King.