‘I will cross no more words with you,’ Betsu interrupted and the moment fled like a darting hummingbird. Pilos exhaled, the heat of the moment tempered by the cold in her voice. ‘I will speak with the Singer himself and none other. I will ask him to explain why he thinks he already rules us when he does not and never will. I will discover whether he is right to be as arrogant as the great black cat or is instead merely as stupid as the sloth.’

‘Betsu, peace!’ the shaman gasped. ‘Spear Pilos, Great Octave, forgive—’

‘You dare speak so, you who wear the peace feathers?’ Enet demanded before he could finish, rising from her place on the mats without grace, so the girl slave had to scramble from her path. Betsu barked a laugh and ripped the turkey feather crown from her head as she leapt up. She threw her arms wide in challenge.

Enet was shaking and they were all standing now, Tayan babbling something, though none of them bothered to listen. ‘When we come to your land, when we rip you from your pathetic, petty delusions of gods and monsters, when we enslave your entire populations, when we sell your children to the brothels, I will make sure to buy you first, Peace-weaver Betsu. And you will serve me in ways you cannot begin to imagine—’

‘Enet, that is enough,’ Pilos barked, reaching for her. She wrenched away, nearly overbalancing as Betsu’s hand spasmed at her belt for knife or hatchet. ‘You goad your guests; you seek to disrupt these proceedings for your own pleasure. The peace-weavers have visited us with honest intentions and you deliberately antagonise them.’

‘How dare you speak to me so in my own house,’ Enet hissed, and now she was even more snake-like than before, her eyes glittering in the glow of torches. The hairs stood up on Pilos’s neck and he had to bite back the urge to call for Elaq. ‘And how dare they? I am Great Octave. I outrank all of you. I act on the Singer’s orders and his alone. You would be wise to step aside, Spear.’

Pilos adjusted his kilt to hide the instinctive grab he’d made for a weapon that wasn’t there. ‘Then it is the Singer’s direct order that you delay the peace-weavers here on your estate? Singer Xac wishes you to treat them with contempt, does he, to threaten and provoke them in order to justify a vicious campaign instead of a peaceful one? He told you he craves their blood, did he? Those were his orders?’