Dakto grinned at the belligerence in his tone. ‘Someone’s feeling better. You look it, too. Don’t have that moon-mad, blank-eyed gaze your frog-lickers walk around with any more.’

Despite the insults, he was quick to hold a gourd of water to Lilla’s lips. It was warm and bitter with herbs. Lilla balked at the first mouthful, but then identified the familiar taste of healing medicine. He drank it gratefully and his head, which hurt just as much today but seemed to work better, cleared some more.

‘But to answer your question, I’m half-Pecha. My mother was a shaman of the Xentib. Her ancestors told her that Xentiban would be brought under the song. When she tried to tell her village elders, they refused to heed her word. Blind and stupid, like your people, like the Yaloh. She lived near the border with Pechacan, so she crossed over and she listened to the song and she learnt its truth. Its greatness. She tried again to tell the village the best thing they could do when my people – my father’s people – came was to embrace the song. Again they would not listen, but this time in their ignorance the elders banished her. She returned to Pechacan and offered her services as a shaman to my father, as a paid servant. He agreed, intrigued by her cleverness. A few years later, I was born.’

‘She sold herself into slavery?’

Dakto’s punch doubled Lilla over, and the warriors he was tied between stumbled as he dragged, wheezing, at the rope around their necks.

‘My mother was never a slave. And neither am I.’

Dakto hauled Lilla upright. ‘I am half-Pecha and a Whisper. I am elite among the macaws. You are nothing, lower than the mould beneath my sandal, and you will die as nothing unless you take the song within you and become a Pecha in your heart as you never can be in blood.’

Lilla breathed around the fire in his ribs. Dakto had held nothing back in that punch and it had woken the agony in his skull. He pushed, regardless. ‘Nothing, am I? That’s not what you thought when you wanted to fuck me,’ he said and blew a kiss at Dakto. The warriors tied before and behind him jeered and whistled. ‘Do you have to practise being Pechaqueh in your heart, too? Seeing as you’re only a half-blood.’

‘Nothing you say will affect my loyalty,’ Dakto said, but without heat.

‘You knew freedom in the Sky City for a year,’ Lilla croaked after a long pause to collect his scattered thoughts. A half-blood would never be as respected as a full Pecha. Perhaps that gave them some common ground. ‘You had friends among the Tokob, a home, and food. You hunted with us; you fought with us. You had a life with us, Dakto. You could have that again. A partner, children. Freedom.’