Tika had written out a list of things, experiments, that she’d planned on carrying out on the Drowned when they caught it. During the aftermath of her death, when they’d gathered to dance her to rebirth, Xessa had asked after those notes. No one had been able to find them. They’d vanished along with her body and now that they had a Drowned, they were fumbling around doing little more than poking it with sticks and making sure it didn’t escape.

She didn’t know what to do.

Tayan would know.

The thought hit her like a club to the chest. Xessa missed Tayan with sudden, biting intensity and that yearning drove her onto her feet. Taking a candle from inside, she crossed to Tayan and Lilla’s house, suppressing a twinge of guilt at intruding into their home without permission. Again.

The house’s interior was so familiar that it brought a lump to Xessa’s throat. Bunches of herbs and medicine hung from the roof beams, as well as charms and feathers and items of clothing. Lilla’s spare spear stood inside the entrance, and their spare sandals were lined up neatly as if they’d just stepped out for the evening. But it smelt empty, the herb-smell long since faded. Shelves of pots and jars and sealed gourds containing mysterious substances lined a wall. She ignored them and ran her gaze along the shelf below instead. Bark-paper books, eight of them. No. Xessa tapped her fingers against her lips, looking around the room, thinking. The storage chamber? She dragged the mats free and then lifted the wooden lid: empty but for a few beetles that shrank out of sight behind a dusty pitcher.

Come on, Tayan. You didn’t take it all the way to the Empire of Songs, did you?

She replaced the lid and the mats and stood again. The last shelf contained bedding, bandages and a few more folded items of clothing. She rummaged beneath the blankets and lifted the basket of rocks and pieces of wood and trinkets and … things. Tayan insisted they were all for some lofty shamanic purpose, but she and Lilla knew he just liked interesting shapes and shiny stones, and collected them for the simple reason they brought him pleasure.

And there it was. Another bark-paper book, but much thinner and written in Tayan’s own hand. Xessa hesitated, not quite touching it. It was an invasion of his privacy, a terrible violation of his trust, but if her friend had written down his ideas for capturing a Drowned anywhere, it would be here. And not just capturing it, but what he’d do afterwards. He was the most curious person she’d ever met and they’d spent enough lazy evenings discussing what they thought Drowned were that surely he’d have made notes somewhere.