It had been different at the pyramid. They’d faced a hundred warriors – what he’d learnt over the past year was called a pod – and three times as many slaves who slept tied in lines of twenty and staked to the ground. They at least hadn’t been a problem. Still, it hadn’t been a sudden skirmish they’d found themselves in this time; in order to destroy the pyramid, they’d had to kill the warriors guarding the slaves and the stone. They’d had to creep in and slaughter as many as they could before the alarm was raised, and then fight the rest. Stabbing people while they slept didn’t sit well with Lilla. Nor with most of them. But as Kux said, it was better than waking them up and asking for a fair fight.

The slaves were a mix of Quitob and Xentib, and the difference between the two was more extensive than their hair and tattoos. The Quitob had been under the song for nearly two Star cycles; the Xentib for half of one. When offered freedom, the latter had leapt for it and Lilla had given them directions to the Sky City, elated and yet concerned. They could be trained in defence, yes, but they were more mouths to feed and water. But what else could they do?

Dakto’s reaction had worried him, though. Seeing his kin enslaved was more traumatising than any of them had expected and he’d taken himself away from the pyramid clearing, unable to bear the brands in their flesh and the thinness of their cheeks. Even the renewed vigour in their eyes as the thick leather collars were sawn from their necks hadn’t soothed him and it had been some hours before he’d returned, quiet but composed.

But the Quitob, oh, the Quitob were different. Slaves, yes, none could doubt that, and out from under the song for the first time in sun-years, but its absence had done little to break their fervour. To Lilla, they’d seemed almost as zealous as the warriors who guarded them and at least forty had died when they’d thrown themselves between his war party and the enemy, even tied to ropes as they were.

The debate had raged for most of the day as they’d escorted the Quitob away from the pyramid clearing and left a Paw behind armed with chisels and hammers to smash the stone blocks. Escorted? Guarded, more like, and just the memory turned Lilla’s stomach.

‘We can’t send them to the Sky City alone, and we can’t be sure what they’ll do when they reach it. We can’t take them with us and I won’t have us roping them and staking them out at night to sleep like animals,’ Lilla had said. ‘We’re not Pechaqueh. We have to let them go.’