Ilandeh pressed her forehead to the mat as the breeze blew rain in at them in a fine mist and tugged at her scarlet feather. ‘My loyalty is absolute, High Feather. Tell me how to prove it and I will do so.’

‘If I told you to kill Dakto?’

She twitched, wanting to look up and scan Pilos’s face for deception; didn’t dare. ‘Then I would kill Dakto. For the Singer, the holy Setatmeh, and the Empire. For you.’

Pilos was silent for so long that sweat broke out across her back. Then: ‘Sit up. We will see what is to be done with him when he returns. In the meantime, Sarn is your new Second Flight. He commanded the Talon in your absence.’

‘As the High Feather commands, though my previous Second Flight was Beyt. She did not have command in my absence?’

Pilos stood and stretched. ‘Beyt was given other tasks. Come, there are many sticks to march before nightfall. Take a hundred out ahead and find us someone to fight.’

Sarn crouched behind her in the pre-dawn gloom beneath the trees. He’d made his displeasure at his reduction in status known, and had repeated some of the rumours she knew were flying through the Fourth Talon at Dakto’s unauthorised absence. Had she been tainted too? Was her status as Flight in jeopardy? Her life?

Pathetic, she told herself. They question their own devotion by questioning mine. If they doubt me, it is because their own faith is weak. My allegiance is total, my loyalty without reproach. I will prove it to Pilos. His belief is all that matters.

It wasn’t all that mattered, and everyone knew it. She dismissed the thought and slid on through the brush, concentrating on her task and ignoring the wet leaves rubbing against her face and hair and soaking her clothes. Her hands, knees, and feet were black with mud and clinging leaf mould. Bow and quiver were strapped to her back for ease of movement and her spear was in her right hand. The force they were tracking was both large and alert, and though most of it now lounged around a series of small, spitting fires scattered among the trees, others stood watch at regular intervals. Stood watch but did not see, for Ilandeh was a Whisper, and so were those who moved around her, quieter than snakes.

Ilandeh reached her left hand behind her back and gestured, fingers splayed open and then pointing left; she heard only the faintest scuff and knew Sarn and the others would be spreading out to encircle the camp, awaiting her signal to attack. But not just yet. They could get a little closer still.