‘You should know!’ one of them shouted back, ‘seeing as you were such good friends with her.’ The noise began to build again and the anger was firmly directed at him now. The Tokob, a mix of warriors, ejab and others, tightened their lines and some began shouting back.

Tayan looked back to Lutek and Tiamoko, one hand pressed to the wound in his face that was beginning to take all his attention. ‘What are they on about?’ he demanded.

‘There’s been some trouble,’ Tiamoko began, but then Elder Apok was pushing through the crowd with an armed escort.

‘Peace-weaver Tayan? And … you’re from Fang Lilla’s Paw, aren’t you? Come with me.’

‘What’s going on?’ Lutek demanded. She grabbed Apok by the shoulder and spun him around. ‘What’s going on?’ she repeated, louder now.

A warrior passed his spear between the pair of them. ‘Please release the high elder,’ he said respectfully. Lutek stepped back as if bitten and the shock of his words leapt from one to the other.

‘High elder?’ Tayan stuttered, the words tripping over each other. ‘What has happened to Vaqix?’

‘I am glad to see you returned, Peace-weaver, though in unfortunate circumstances,’ Apok began when they were all seated in the council chamber. There were faces missing, not just Vaqix’s.

‘What are these circumstances?’ Lutek grated. ‘We’re down there in Yalotlan freeing slaves and sending them here to regain their strength so they might fight with us and you’re letting them be killed alongside Xentib who’ve lived here for years? What about the Quitob we sent? Where are they?’

‘I’m sorry, but I must hear your news first. Peace-weaver?’ The council chamber fell silent and Tayan filled it with the same story he’d given Lilla and the others in Yalotlan, Lutek and Tiamoko’s presence adding to the horrible dreamlike sense that he was reliving those moments – but this time without his husband.

The councils of the two tribes descended into the same bickering that had swept the Paws, and Tayan sat in their midst, not listening. Exhausted. Heartsick. His face swollen and caked in dried blood.

Tiamoko stretched across Lutek and patted his knee awkwardly. ‘Fang Lilla won’t give in that easily,’ he murmured. ‘He’ll stay alive, and when we defeat the Empire of Songs you can go and find him.’

The shaman managed to force one corner of his mouth up into some ghastly approximation of a smile he didn’t feel.

‘May we know why the city was on fire and Yaloh were slaughtering guests of the Tokob?’ Lutek demanded when the councils had gone over Tayan’s story for the third time without making any different decisions. Yaloh elders immediately began to protest.

‘Are you saying we are not guests of your tribe?’ one asked and Lutek tensed to stand. Tiamoko and Tayan both clamped a hand on her arms and stilled her.