Being asked to fight was far, far worse than being ordered to. Xessa and Toxte stared at each other and the panic Xessa had felt the night before they’d been supposed to capture the Drowned roared back until she was dizzy with it. She held on even tighter, and Toxte tilted his head in silent query: Will you fight? She made herself scan the crowd, take in the non-fighters, the parents holding children tight against them, too tight, crushing.

The Sky City needed her and Xessa had always given it what it needed. She firmed her jaw against the promise of tears, of raw denial, and looked back to Toxte. She nodded, jerky and graceless, and his eyes slipped closed as anguish flickered like lightning across his face, his need to protect her weighed against their joint need to protect the city. Their duty.

‘I’ll be at your side for all of it,’ he signed, fierce as a hawk, his eyes blazing. ‘I won’t leave you. I’m never leaving you.’ Then he pulled her in against him and wrapped hard, warm arms around her. She let him, never wanting to move from the safe darkness against his chest. Couldn’t, because the circle of his arms and the press of his body was safe, whereas the world had been revealed to be anything but.

She held him, because war had come, and not just to Tokoban and the Sky City. War had come to Xessa – and she wasn’t ready.

ILANDEH

Sky City, Malel, Tokoban

19th day of the grand absence of the Great Star

Ilandeh stared down on the Sky City from above. The march around the base of the hill and then up the northern flank had been brutal – mudslides and flash floods had barred their route between the rolling hills, forcing them up and over each one until they were exhausted and mud-splattered to the thighs.

They’d had to get there by the tenth day, though, or risk leaving the High Feather and his Talons vulnerable, and so the mixed force of macaws, eagles, slaves, and dogs had pushed on relentlessly despite the weather and the slick mud and rock beneath their feet. They’d done it, just, reaching their position in the afternoon of the tenth day. Feather Calan had allowed a two-hour rest around the curve of the hill out of sight of the city so the warriors could regain some strength, and then they traversed the slope and filtered out to take control of the ground between the Sky City and Malel’s womb.