‘So, you want to see it?’ Xessa asked casually as they sat around the firepit eating breakfast the next morning. There was still hurt in her – far too much hurt, and a deep-rooted guilt that he hoped the journeying would help rip out – but there was a hint of her usual mischief, too, and something else that seemed a result of her relationship with Toxte. Obviously, the eja could give her something he couldn’t. And frequently does, from the sounds last night.

‘I suppose,’ he replied with equal indifference. ‘If you think it’s worth my time.’

Toxte raised his hands to the sky in supplication, before signing, ‘I can see I’ve made a terrible mistake. Malel, save me from friends who think they’re funny.’

Tayan pulled a slice of meat out of his dawnmeal and waited until he had both dogs’ attention, then threw it at Toxte’s chest and laughed as they flattened him, tongues and drool coating his face and neck.

Toxte fought himself free of the dogs and noticed Xessa and Tayan collapsed in each other’s arms, laughing. ‘Is this how it’s going to be, really? This is my life now?’ he demanded, and they looked at each other and dissolved into fresh giggles. Something loosened in Tayan’s chest – not the weight of fear and hurt about Lilla’s fate; nothing would get rid of that until his husband was back in his arms – but the need he’d had since he and Xessa were children to know that she was happy.

‘Come on then, you monsters,’ Toxte said as they finished eating. He glanced at Xessa. ‘I’m going to tell him what happened, so he knows what to expect,’ he signed. ‘Get the weapons.’ She waved him on and vanished into the house, and when she came back she was loaded down with nets, spears, clubs, and knives, so many that Tayan felt a lurch of unease. She handed one of each to Toxte and, as they made their way uphill through the early morning city towards the womb, the eja told him the story of what happened when he’d gone in on the end of a rope and listened to it sing.