‘The little fool tried to take on a pair of Drowned at the Swift Water three days ago. Toxte and the dogs had to drag her to safety and Ossa is hurt too. They’re both in the upper healing caves, under Shaman Beztil’s care. Your friend’s good, but she’s reckless. It will get her killed young.’

Worry filled Tayan’s belly, along with anger at Tika’s casual dismissal of Xessa’s abilities. She was one of the best of the thousand or so ejab in the Sky City, despite having seen fewer than twenty-five sun-years, though he had to admit that this wasn’t the first time she’d been injured.

‘How bad?’ he demanded as Lilla’s hand came to rest on the back of his neck in wordless comfort.

‘Poisoned, lost some leg skin. She’ll have a pretty new scar to remind her.’ Tika stroked the four pale lines that extended from her cheek down the side of her neck, reminder of her own tangle with a Drowned two decades before. ‘But she’ll make a full recovery. The dog too.’

‘Thank Malel,’ Tayan breathed. ‘Please, will you take the ancestors’ answer to the council? I need to see her.’

Tika nodded and then twitched, her eyelid flickering rapidly. She rubbed at it. The elder had been consuming spirit-magic for years to deaden her to the songs of the Drowned, and the prolonged exposure was beginning to take its toll.

The pair hurried back uphill towards the upper healing cave dug into Malel’s bones, inwards to the heart of creation, where the goddess’s power was most potent and the shamans’ treatments and spells most effective.

They skipped over the deep, narrow drainage channels carved in the centre of the limestone road that would carry rain downhill to the terraced fields during the Wet. They’d been designed to prevent a Drowned getting so much as one gill beneath water to aid its survival so far from the Swift Water and its many tributaries.

‘Lilla! You’re back!’ a voice called and Tayan would have ignored it if not for his husband’s answering shout.

‘Ilandeh, hello.’ The woman waved and hurried over, Dakto at her side.

‘Blessings on you,’ Ilandeh said, as she always did. ‘And welcome back to the city.’

‘I am glad to see you unhurt, Fang Lilla,’ Dakto added. ‘And you, shaman. I pray your journey to the Zellih was a success.’

Tayan was already hurrying on, leaving Lilla to make their excuses. It didn’t matter that Tika had said she’d live; he had first-hand experience of Drowned venom and knew exactly how awful it was. He had no time to spare for Xentib refugees, no matter how likeable the pair was.