‘What?’ Vaqix shouted, all his composure fleeing. The old man lurched to his feet, the council stone skittering across the floor as he kicked it. Under normal circumstances, it would have been a gross violation of protocol; now no one even glanced at it as it bounced to a stop. ‘If we have nowhere to retreat to, we’ll be massacred. They must help us!’

‘The Zellih elders advise us to either win or surrender,’ Tayan said in a monotone. ‘We will find no succour with them.’

‘Then we fight.’ Kux’s voice was strident with anger. ‘We fight to the very end and we make the Pechaqueh rue the day they sent their Talons against us. Once the Wet is fully upon us, if not before, they will send their warriors home and leave only enough to occupy those parts of Yalotlan they have already stolen. We’ll outnumber them, and I say we show no mercy and we leave none alive. Retake Yalotlan so that when they return after the rains they must begin their conquest all over again. And again, and again, until they give up.’

Every eye turned to Eja Tika at the pronouncement. The woman’s face was hard, her smile bitter. ‘If we fight through the Wet, we will be facing both the Empire and the Drowned at their most active. It would be foolish in the extreme.’

Kux started to protest, but Tika glared her effortlessly into silence. ‘But … we Tokob know our land, and we trust our Yaloh allies to know theirs. We can stay away from the rivers and ponds, and those areas that we know flood through the Wet. It would certainly take the invaders by surprise. It shouldn’t be dismissed out of hand.’

Kux was wild-eyed and grinning, savage in her small triumph, and Lilla realised he should say something, either for and against her proposal, but if he opened his mouth he was likely to throw up. So he sat in stricken silence as the argument raged back and forth for war through the Wet, for no break from the stress and terror and eternal vigilance. His chest was hollow with grief and fear, and at his side Tayan, peace-weaver and shaman, his husband and his heart, had no words of comfort.

Because Kux was right. Fight or die. Win or surrender. They had no allies and they were out of options.

TAYAN

Sky City, Malel, Tokoban

120th day of the Great Star at morning

It was deep night when the council meeting finally broke up. No consensus had been reached, and so Tayan had offered to journey to the ancestors and ask them and Malel for guidance. The councils had agreed, though he’d been able to feel Lilla’s disapproval coming off him in waves.