Not every way, and not in everyone’s eyes, but enough. It was enough. She was enough, and she refused to believe different. A little unsteady, Ilandeh made her way out of the pyramid and into the infrequent sun. The song cradled her, and in the distance she saw some of the Whispers who had been under her command before, coming to meet her.

PILOS

Melody fortress, the dead plains, Tlalotlan, Empire of Songs

184th day of the Great Star at morning

Pilos, High Feather of the Melody and Spear of the Singer, came out of the song and slumped, breathing harshly. The Melody’s Listener, Citla, was kneeling opposite, holding Pilos’s hands in her own, tight and comforting. She hadn’t been in there with him, but someone had noticed him being pulled under and sent for her. Once he was settled back in his body, he let go and gratitude flickered through him. Citla smiled and waited, patient. There would be messages to send in reply, she knew.

Pilos had come out of the song alone many times, but it was harder and far more dangerous. Even those experienced in such communication could be lost, their minds unable to find their bodies and their spirits stretching ever longer between the two until they snapped. Madness and death always followed. Always.

Feather Ekon was kneeling behind the Listener and he bowed as soon as Pilos straightened his spine and nodded. ‘Feather Atu has been sent for,’ he said. ‘Is there anything you need until then?’

There was a cup of water next to Pilos and he gulped it down. ‘There will be a full report coming from Whisper Ilandeh via a Listener in the Neck,’ he rasped. Citla nodded. ‘The enemy are destroying pyramids, freeing slaves, and killing warriors in Yalotlan. I must inform the Singer.’ Citla nodded again and Ekon swore, very quietly. ‘When Atu arrives, let him know and then get me every Feather in the fortress. And the administrators. We can’t count on either the new slaves or the hawks or the Xentib slave warriors, so I need to know who we can count on.’

Pilos’s mind spun with logistics, racing across the various Talons and where they were based, who he could pull back and replace with Xentib, which parts of the Empire were currently peaceful.

It was too much, coming so soon after that awful moment when the song had jarred out of its natural rhythm so wildly and then taken almost three days to return to normal. Something momentous had happened that had changed the Singer or his grip on his magic. And now Pilos knew instinctively that they would be marching to war – in the Wet – because Ilandeh’s information made that inevitable. At the very time they should be strengthened by the song and the Singer’s magic, the fortress was alive with rumour and whisper and concern.