Six days into Yalotlan, in the Wet, and the enemy was throwing everything at them. The Talons were ambushed every day, sometimes more, from ahead and behind as small war parties crept past them in the thickness of the forest to pick off a dozen or score of their warriors before melting back into the undergrowth. It was a slow, patient attrition that had the Talons on edge, but Pilos wouldn’t let them lose focus.

Here on this low hill, on the only trail wide enough for his Talons and so of course defended, sprawled forty-six dead warriors with not a Toko or Yalotl among them, from what he could tell. Feather Calan stepped in his footprints behind him, silent as a shadow. Second Flight Sarn came last; it’d been he who brought word. Ahead and behind, four eagles looked beyond the ambush site to the surrounding jungle.

However much Ilandeh knew about Tokoban, she could provide little intelligence on this land, with its sudden lines of hills that seemed intended to hinder their progress, its unexpected pools and hidden cenotes. He’d lost seven slave warriors the day before when a lip of rock hidden by a tangle of undergrowth had given way and taken them screaming down into a cave. Superstitious dog warriors had whispered of the lords of the Underworld aiding the Yaloh, and Pilos had been forced to punish them publicly for it. And now this.

Behind them, in the land they’d retaken, slaves and engineers were hurrying the completion of new pyramids with supplies dragged in from Xentiban. They were working through the night, building the pyramids small so they could be completed faster. The song would be weaker, but it would be there. Once Yalotlan was secure, grander structures would be built to properly honour the Singer and the song. Soon it would ring all through this land and all the way to to the edge of Ixachipan, stick after stick of majesty and hope. The peace of the Empire of Songs brought at last to these uncivilised peoples. Maybe then they’d stop setting fucking ambushes.

And when we are finally finished here, I will return to the Singing City for a conversation with Great Octave Enet, about so many things. And I will stand before the Singer and break her hold over him. And he will abandon the madness she has brought upon him. There will be peace across Ixachipan and a song of glory. And we will waken the world spirit and life will become music.

A dream for a different day.

Pilos pushed at the hanging man, setting his body to swinging again, the rope creaking like the slow laughter of one of the lords of the Underworld. He stared around the clearing some more, squinted up at the canopy. ‘Sarn, you said the trail was clear. Now forty-six dogs and macaws are dead. My macaws. Your Flight’s macaws.’