Toxte stood. ‘We both will,’ he signed, and although Xessa hadn’t thought it possible, she loved him even more for that.

Tayan slapped Toxte’s shoulder. ‘Welcome to the council of idiots,’ he signed. ‘And just know that if you ever hurt her, I’ll hold her beer while she beats you to death with your own bollocks.’

‘I’d expect nothing less,’ Toxte signed solemnly. ‘And, if you’d be the one to marry us, I would consider it a great honour.’

Xessa winced, because it would hurt him to do it, but Tayan forestalled her protest. ‘If you had asked anyone else, I’d have held Lutek’s beer while she beat you to death with your own bollocks. Now watch me fight!’

It had been a stolen moment. A lightning flash of joy in the darkness of the city’s life as the war drew closer and gave good people the excuse to do bad things.

They’d come out of her house wrapped in secret smiles and stolen kisses, and they’d been on their way to Toxte’s house to gather his belongings when they passed through the market and heard the news: the Quitob slaves rescued by Lilla and Kux’s war party had been slaughtered. All of them: none left alive. They’d been housed in the Jaguar-god temple. Not guarded, but watched. Certainly not roped. Allowed out in the temple’s gardens but just … encouraged not to leave. Shamans and elders had been visiting them each day to remind them what freedom looked like and how they might choose, for themselves, the shape of their lives to come. How if, after some time in the Sky City, they chose to return to their owners, then the Tokob would not stand in their way, though they hoped the Quitob would choose instead to stay with their new friends.

Only when they’d visited this time, to hold a smaller ceremony honouring the Watcher, the temple was awash with blood and the Quitob were dead, piled in heaps and droves, their blood staining walls and murals and idols. Death from spear and knife, arrow and dart, many of them poisoned. There had to have been screaming, but no one admitted to hearing anything. And so Tokob blamed Yaloh, Yaloh blamed Tokob, and the tension between the two tribes increased again.

The market was rife with gossip and speculation and Toxte pointed out how Tokob were trading only with Tokob, and Yaloh with Yaloh. ‘Well, that can’t last,’ Xessa signed sourly. ‘We’re the ones providing food and water for them. When that runs out, they’ll have to trade with us or starve.’

‘They’re just scared,’ Toxte signed.

‘They’re not the only ones,’ a passing merchant had snapped. ‘Not that we’ll have time to starve if they keep on murdering everyone they decide they don’t like. We should throw them out of the city.’