Toxte reached forward and took her hand, grazed a kiss across her knuckles and another to her palm that made her shiver. ‘All right, we’re due at the water temple soon. Let’s talk it over after that, yes?’ Toxte signed and Xessa nodded. ‘And then we’ll talk to Tika.’ Xessa’s eyes bulged. ‘I don’t know what she’ll say, but you’ve got a plan. Most of us have a plan. I say we put them all to the elder and see if one stands out as workable. I say we know our enemy.’

In the end, it had been an easy duty at the water, which seemed unfairly at odds with their earlier discussion and conviction that the Drowned’s numbers had increased to critical levels. The queue for water had begun to gather before Toxte had even reached the river, but he hadn’t let anyone’s impatience distract him and she’d watched him move, swift and smooth and strong, a lethal dancer. When she was certain he was out of danger and on his way back uphill, she’d begun turning the water screw’s handle.

Lutek was lurking by the stone trough. She was relating some outrageous tale about a Yalotl she’d slept with the previous week and Xessa was laughing as she drew water into the trough while Lutek ensured everyone took only their daily ration. The warrior’s head jerked around and her hands stopped moving. Xessa looked in the same direction and saw a scuffle in the queue. People pulled them apart and she saw one was Ilandeh and the other three were Yaloh.

Lutek snatched up her spear and hurried out to intercept them. The civilians who’d hauled them apart had started shouting now, too, and Xessa strained to see. Since the incident at the Swift Water, Ilandeh had been cloyingly friendly, but she had also made a determined effort to learn more sign language, and not just from Xessa. The former merchant had little aptitude for it, but the eja allowed herself to be mollified anyway. She liked the woman well enough, despite everything, and felt sorry for her, too. She and Dakto had fled the conquest of their land with family, but they’d been the only two to reach the Sky City alive and if it made them a little strange, quick to anger and overly friendly, well, they didn’t have anyone else, did they?