Xessa and Toxte hurried away. Xessa left her soon-to-be husband – husband! – arranging his belongings in her home – our home – and went to find Tayan in the womb. It was how he spent his days now – ritual in the morning, then training with the other non-fighters in the plazas, then the hours until duskmeal in the womb. He was getting thinner, but also stronger. But he was tired and she knew he was trying to fill his days so he didn’t think of Lilla. As promised, he’d journeyed with her – in Otek’s presence, though her father was too frail to journey with them – to the Realm of the Ancestors and Kime. Knowing he was safe and that his spirit was ascending to rebirth had leached some of the guilt from her, lancing the poison so that she could begin healing. She didn’t know what she’d have done if Tayan hadn’t come back when he had.

Ossa bounced at her side or raced ahead and then back, covering three times the distance as she jogged easily uphill, his tongue flapping and his tail high.

Xessa was breathing hard but relishing the burn in her legs and lungs and the freshness of the air by the time the trail began to dip into the earth to take her to the womb. The ejab on duty had the rope stretched. ‘Tayan?’ Xessa asked and they nodded. ‘Who’s in with him?’

‘He said he’d do this one alone,’ Esna said. ‘The Drowned won’t speak with an eja there.’

The Drowned won’t speak?

Xessa shoved past them and lunged into the earth’s embrace and pelted along the tunnel towards the glow of torchlight. She burst around the corner and skidded to a halt, squinting at the brightness. Ossa was at her side and she brandished her spear, blinking desperately. Tayan was already standing and facing her, his hands moving. ‘It’s all right. No danger. There’s no danger. I’m perfectly safe.’

Ripples in the water told her the Drowned had shifted at her arrival, and now it was huddled against the rear wall again, one clawed hand clutching at the rock.

‘You don’t need to be scared,’ Tayan signed to her. ‘It won’t hurt me.’ The skin tightened on Xessa’s face. Won’t hurt you? She jerked her head at the exit. ‘No, Xessa, not yet. Let me talk to it. Look at the book over there, look at everything I’ve learnt about it so far. The things I know, they’re, they’re incredible. And it’s quite docile, I promise.’