Since Betsu’s departure, Enet had taken him into the city most days in a blatant attempt to overwhelm him with Pechaqueh society. They’d visited gardens and fighting pits, markets including flesh markets, where she pointed out how they selected the appropriate profession for the new slaves, and they’d visited temples to admire the murals of holy Setatmeh and Singers past. He had seen much and learnt very little. It was all empty, a formal nonsense intended to cow him into submission, to reinforce the belief that they could never defeat the Empire of Songs and that the proposed surrender was the only rational choice. Even worse, a small, traitorous part of him was beginning to believe it.

Tayan barely slept, and not just because of the nightmares he’d suffered ever since the ritual at the river. The slave’s face, barred with the Drowned’s fingers and claws, bleeding. Each night, the face changed – sometimes it was Xessa’s, other times it was Lilla’s. Once it had been his own. And through it all the song, worming through his skull and bones like a million ants.

But now, finally, she had summoned him to the so-called small room with its views of the garden. Tayan hadn’t seen most of the other rooms, so its size meant nothing other than that it was almost as big as his and Lilla’s entire home.

They sat, a pitcher of honeyed water and fine pottery cups on the low table between them. ‘Is the holy lord quite well, Great Octave?’

Enet jerked and looked at him. Her eyes were bright – too bright – as if she’d swallowed journey-magic, and although she sat apparently composed opposite him, her hands were rarely still. Her fingers twined and curled about each other like a nest of mating snakes and flickers of emotion raced across her face that she seemed unable to control. She kept running her tongue around her gums, as if she had seeds stuck in her teeth. He hadn’t thought she could be so preoccupied, so vulnerable.

‘What? Of course. The great Singer is in perfect health,’ she said, waving a hand in poor imitation of airy dismissal, and that’s when he identified it. Deep inside, behind the walls and masks of power, privilege, and arrogance, Enet was frightened. Terrified down to her bones.

And that frightens the shit out of me.