Enet lay in a tangle of limbs, gasping, but over her own voice she heard a thin keening wail. Panic flooded her and she lunged upwards. Pikte was cowering near the entrance to the source, fists up to his cheeks at the sight of Enet sprawled and – she realised belatedly – bleeding. The boy’s pet monkey screeched on the end of its tether. Enet shooed Pikte out, but the Singer crossed the space between them in a few long strides and snatched him by the arm.

‘What are you doing in here?’ he yelled. Pikte only cried harder; life for children of the Singer was pleasant, luxurious. It did not include screams or violence or their mothers being thrown across rooms.

‘I’ll take him away, holy lord,’ Enet said as the panic tightened her throat. The Singer grabbed the monkey and snapped its neck, and the boy screamed as if his own body had been broken. Xac raised his hand to him and Enet leapt up, dragging at his arm. The blow that had been meant for her son was loosed on her. She hit the rugs again, her head ringing and her cheek a hot, swollen agony.

Hauling Pikte by one arm, the Singer crossed to where she lay and squatted, examining her features. She shrank away from him and he flushed in pleasure at her fright, and so she forced herself upright and reached for Pikte’s other arm. ‘Hush, boy. Hush now.’ She licked blood from her teeth, tasting the last of the grit from her tonic – her own magic – against her tongue. It was powerless against the holy lord’s might.

For now.

‘You think me a fucking fool, blinded by the delights between your legs?’ the Singer shouted, wrenching the boy out of her grip. Xac spat in her face and she snarled, fury of her own rising to match his. She was his chief courtesan and mother of his eldest song-born. She was Spear and Great Octave. He had no right to treat her so.

This is what scheming brings you to, whispered a voice in her head. She quelled it savagely. She could still save this; save everything. Save the Empire of Songs, which was her true and only desire—

‘You have steered me false ever since I took the song inside me,’ the Singer said abruptly, tiny glimmers of gold sparking in his skin as the magic and the song swelled with his anger. ‘I have no intention of naming you my heir, and as of now not even of naming you as one who will ascend with me. You are nothing but a body to enjoy and one that has produced only a single child.’ He shook Pikte hard. ‘A snivelling little shit that is as much use as a Tlaloxqueh vision-dancer. Your mind is weak and the boy you produced is worse.’