He tried to make sense of it all, to understand the faces that leered at him and screamed up close, jeering and prodding him with the butts of spears. Were they spirits? His ancestors? Something hit him in the back, pushing him off balance. He tried to put his hands out but they wouldn’t leave his sides – oh, the rope – and his cheek slapped the dirt and the pain exploded in his head again and it went dark. Not the world, just his eyes. Black.

Water. Blood-warm and sweet, in his mouth. Nectar. Lilla swallowed and there was more, the pressure of a vessel against his lower lip, and the sensation of someone lifting his head, their fingers digging into the monstrous hurt that was the base of his skull, but the water … oh, the water was good.

He drank again, and again, and they let him have as much as he wanted in small, patient sips and the more he swallowed the clearer his vision seemed to get until eventually he looked up and saw a face he knew. Male, a string of red beads in a braid hanging by one ear. A small wooden stud in his lower lip.

‘Hello, Lilla.’

‘Hello,’ Lilla whispered, but then the name floated away again.

‘Time to walk. Up you get.’ The man helped him to stand, carefully. ‘You’ve got some stitches in the back of your head and the shaman thinks your skull might have cracked. You should be feeling better by the time we reach the Singing City and they’ll assess whether you can join the Melody.’

Lilla nodded, not understanding most of it, just happy to see a friendly face. The line of people in front of him began to move and there was a tug on his neck as the rope tightened. Lilla followed.

The movement and the water focused his mind as it had focused his eyes and he looked around. They were moving east and south, as far as he could tell. And now that he concentrated, he recognised most of the faces around him, sullen and bloody and filthy though they were. The warriors – the survivors – of his war party.

Stay.

The word echoed in his head and Lilla remembered it. Remembered saying it as the ambush was sprung and his people began to die around him. Stay.

Tayan.

Stumbling, Lilla scanned the lines for his husband’s familiar slender form, the blue of his kilt or the particular set of his head when he was being stubborn. Couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see him.

The survivors of Lilla’s war party gathered together, tied like sheaves of palm, and Tayan wasn’t with them. Tayan, called the stargazer. Shaman. Peace-weaver. The keeper of Lilla’s heart. Gone.