The slaves were the same mix of empty-eyed and zealous converts. Their Pechaqueh owners were neither taller nor more impressive than the lowest of the dog warriors escorting them. Perhaps the hundreds of Star cycles they’d lived inside the song had changed them in some hidden, fundamental way, but Lilla thought not.

He was, being honest, disappointed. Where were the riches and the splendour? Where was the visible proof that this tribe was closer to the gods, or more powerful or beautiful, stronger or more intelligent? How could this be the people who had conquered nearly all Ixachipan?

But they did have one startling, incomprehensible difference, and the Singing City epitomized it. Pechaqueh built their towns and cities next to water, and in that water swam the Drowned – lots of Drowned, both Greater and Lesser. Captives and slaves alike shied away, but the dog warriors and Dakto made them stand close. Made them watch as one of their number was untied, marched down to the water’s edge and shoved in. She screamed and thrashed and the Drowned tore her apart.

The sight had quelled the embers of rebellion more effectively than any beating could, and the days had passed in quiet, hopeless silence as they filed past towns and cities dotted among the farmland, ever farmland. As if there could be nothing else in the world but fields in various stages of green, abundant growth.

‘I had expected beauty,’ he said to Dakto when the macaw came to walk by his side for the final sticks to the Singing City. It grew on the horizon, sprawling and vast, and there were several other limestone roads winding towards it from all corners of the Empire.

‘What you see is wealth.’

‘No. Not wealth. Greed. Where is the balance in this, Dakto?’ Lilla jerked his chin at their surroundings. ‘We would never destroy the jungle or kill all the animals around our homes, tipping that balance from plenty into poverty. You have done all this and more, and all for greed. As children with honeycomb, you are likely to give yourselves a bellyache.’

He had been like this for days now, unable to stop himself poking, poking. Perhaps it was the continuing pain in his skull, the weakness it brought, or the endless high-pitched fucking whine in his head that not even the song could blot out.

The captured Paws had been absorbed into a much larger caravan made up of slaves from the Empire escorted by armed free. Dakto had remained with them when the dog warriors turned around to head back to the war.