It wasn’t unanimous, but as the Wet strengthened, even Lilla couldn’t help but see that they needed to do something. The enemy were building another line of pyramids, this time in Yalotlan hill country far too close to Tokoban’s border to go unanswered, and there had been another desperate influx of Yaloh refugees to strain Tokob villages and cities. Yet they were not going to war, despite some of the more strident voices on the councils and among the Paws.

Instead, they would destroy the stockpiles of wood and stone and paint that would become pyramids. They would not take life unless they had no choice; they would not hunt down the builders and kill them, for they were likely to be slaves. They would simply … halt construction. Resistance without violence, as far as possible, to prevent the magic within the pyramids being brought to life and thus all the land through which it rang belonging to the Empire.

But before Malel would grant her blessing, she had a demand. And her first children had listened.

Tokob wore their finest tunics and salt-cotton, their best jewellery and paint. There were so many drums that the plaza shook with sound and Lilla could feel it through his chest. The ejab had space at the front of the crowd so that those whose hearing was stopped by the spirit-magic could still take part.

Two thousand warriors of the Yaloh and Tokob were grouped behind the ejab, and as many others as could fit into the biggest festival plaza crowded its edges, its streets, the roofs of the buildings lining it.

The bone flutes joined in, a jarring, skirling, skating sound as though the spirits themselves were flooding into the flesh world with bloody intent. And then the rattles, a low sliding counterpoint slithering between the drumbeats like the Snake-goddess who helped bring the world into being. Malel’s second creation, the wise and patient predator who gave strength and kinship to the ejab.

The heartbeat of Malel. The wails of the spirits. The hiss of the Snake. Lilla’s heart waited, sweat beginning to break out on his skin. And then it came, rushing out of the dawn from a hundred shamanic throats. The coughing roar of the Jaguar, brother to the Snake. The warriors’ god.

Lilla’s heart gave a great liquid thud and began pounding faster than the drums. Malel was listening and so were her daughter and son. Listening to the first children and their allies. They crouched close, their presence felt in wind and cool and pressure. The Jaguar called again; the Snake hissed; Malel’s heart beat. The people crammed into the plaza moved in time, swaying and stamping their feet as the music and the gods swept them up into one creature, a single form with thousands of eyes and mouths and hearts and hands.