Enet stared through the body slave, who had stopped weaving, awaiting orders. She swore and stood and the slave rose too, with a muffled grunt. She scurried ahead and opened the door for Enet, and the estate slave stepped back and bowed. He had the report in his hand, but she swept past him to the room facing her gardens and sat there instead. Her slaves brought water, honey, fruit, and incense, an extra cushion should she want it, and only then did the Great Octave hold out her hand for the report.

She read quickly, lips pursing as the implications became clear. Someone was watching her and they had gathered information that was not theirs to know. Potentially damaging information. Enet needed to consolidate her claim on the songstone in Tokoban, and she needed the Singer’s approval to do it.

‘Setatmeh be praised he didn’t want to see Pilos when they passed the city,’ she muttered, and then handed the report back to be filed with the others. ‘Finest clothes and jewellery, and prepare those spiced monkey skewers the holy lord prefers. And a bath. And oils for my hair and skin. My formal headdress, and make sure the feathers aren’t bent this time.’

The slaves bowed and scurried to do her bidding and Enet stood and began peeling off her clothes and jewellery.

Eyes watching eyes, she mused as she stretched and bent and reminded herself of the dances the Singer most enjoyed watching her perform. I wonder which one of us will blink first.

The song hungered. As Enet’s litter moved through the streets towards the source, she saw the effect of that hunger. Her guards made the litter-bearers backtrack and take an alternative route when they came upon a mass brawl in one of the avenues. Choosers and city overseers were trying to break it up, but the level of violence they employed to do so only added to the chaos. Crowds were watching, jeering and placing bets on the outcome. The air smelt of blood.

Xac’s song blared stronger than any Enet had heard in the forty sun-years of her life, louder and more imperious than his sister’s or the two Singers before her that Enet remembered back to when she was a child.

‘… ruined the entire meal. Of course, I had him killed,’ a noblewoman in the cloth market said later as the litter floated past. ‘The other kitchen slaves won’t make his mistake.’ Slaves killed for errors that would normally warrant only a whipping. And killed, not saved as offerings for the holy Setatmeh at the next new moon.