I’m still conscious, though, he thought muzzily and even managed a bubbling, wheezing little laugh. Lilla would be proud of me. Maybe I am a warrior after all. Maybe this is my jaguar path. Tayan the warrior. Fear me.

He made another noise – half-laugh, half-sob – and lay in the dark and the hurt, concentrating on the rain on his arms and the horrific pain in his face. Everything else was distant.

‘Shall I put him with the other prisoners, Flight?’

‘No, not yet. Keep him close by but secure. Once the Sky City is ours, High Feather Pilos will want to speak to him, I’m sure. And the holy Setat may demand him as its offering for the atrocities he has committed against it. Do we have a way to transport it to the river yet?’

‘We’re working on it, Flight. I swear.’

‘Work fucking faster.’

Ilandeh stood and nudged Tayan with her foot. ‘Don’t die on me, little shaman,’ she said in a voice like the dry rustle of death. ‘You don’t get away from your crimes that easily.’

ENET

The source, Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs

22nd day of the grand absence of the Great Star

‘Enet! What have you brought me?’

Always the same question, the same eager, desperate, begging tone that filled her with contempt, even as his appearance filled her with dread. Courtesans, slaves, and Chorus warriors were the only people who saw Xac, and Xac was no longer pretty.

One of the blessings of the magic which filled him from the moment he became Singer to the moment he ascended was that he was big, powerful, almost swollen with the song, and that when the magic moved most strongly within him, his skin flushed gold, as if lit from within by his divinity. But these last moons, as together they had explored the depths of his need and depravity, as his power had swelled even more with the use of the stone knife on offering after offering, his body had begun to change even more.

Lustrous black hair had thinned and fallen out in clumps and his skin had paled from a healthy brown to a sickly, brittle grey. When the power moved within him now, of course all that could be seen was the holy lord, mighty in body and in magic, but the rest of the time …

The rate of offerings had escalated, fuelled by the Singer’s raging need, by the ever more elaborate threats of violence if Enet did not acquiesce. One of his body slaves had been found dead in the source two days before. She’d … had her throat eaten out. The Chorus had discovered her near the offering pool and the official story was that a holy Setat had done it. Enet had examined that body. She knew those teeth marks; the Singer had left them in her own flesh more than once during their bed-play.