Understanding the song was the key to it all. The song and the Drowned, the songstone, the magic. Understand the song; learn the language of the Drowned. This was his purpose. Deceive the Great Octave about the war and then get her to open up about their magic. Easy. Tayan snorted and lay back, listening to the rain drumming on the roof. Scents drifted in from the garden and reminded him of home.

Grief welled in him, homesick and heartsick and missing Lilla and Xessa. He wondered even now if he could catch up with Betsu and knew he could not. But he would be lying if he pretended there wasn’t a seed of excitement in his belly, too.

For good or ill, now, he was walking this trail to its end.

‘Good morning, Great Octave. I trust you slept well?’

Enet managed a reasonably sincere smile when he entered, but it faltered when Betsu didn’t follow him in for dawnmeal. ‘The Yalotl is unwell?’

Tayan knelt at the table and helped himself to fruit, noting with distant indifference that his hand was shaking. ‘We accept your offer. After the Wet, when you return to Yalotlan and then Tokoban, we will lay down our weapons. We will embrace the song.’

Perhaps she had not expected it. Perhaps she had taken them to see a woman eaten by monsters in the hope of provoking a war that would benefit her in some mysterious way, Tayan didn’t know. What he did know was that the Great Octave, Spear of the City, was speechless.

Tayan ate the fruit while she studied him, the initial shock quickly hidden behind a neutral, calculating mask. ‘I see. Then allow me to welcome you under the song, Peace-weaver Tayan. And yet you have not answered my question. Where is the Yalotl?’

‘Of course. Betsu is returning home. When we agreed that this was the best – the only – way forward to preserve some tiny remnant of our culture and heritage, we agreed that one of us should take the news back as soon as possible. Of the two of us, the warrior is the natural choice.’

A tiny crease appeared between her eyebrows. ‘And that necessitated leaving in the night, in the rain?’

Tayan helped himself to cornbread, though it was too thick and chewy and bile rose in his throat. He made himself swallow. ‘Betsu was distressed by the events at the river, Great Octave. She was angry – you have seen how her temper ignites. Though the agreement sits ill with her, once it was made, she refused to remain here any longer. I am sorry that she did not bid you farewell. I hope you can forgive her haste.’

Tayan’s skin crawled at the length of the silence that unfurled, at Enet’s serpent-stillness. ‘My slaves did not inform me she had asked to leave.’ She still hadn’t blinked.