A hand grabbed her shoulder and she spun, spear coming up too slowly, but it was Otek. Her father. The old ejab eyes were wild, but not with spirit-haunting. He was afraid. Ossa was circling them slowly, performing his duty as best he could and if Xessa had had the time or the peace to do it, she would have broken her heart for him.

Two exits out of the plaza were still being contested, but the defenders were outnumbered and they were being cut to pieces even as she watched. The other two avenues were already in Melody hands. Everyone in the plaza was trapped. Xessa was trapped.

‘Run,’ Otek signed. ‘Go, now.’ He shoved at her but then they were under attack again, half a dozen stalking them, Tlaloxqueh and Quitob in their distinctive paint, and there was nowhere to run to anyway.

‘Eja,’ she saw one say, perhaps recognising the bamboo snake-scale over her salt-cotton, and something like ugly triumph blossomed in their faces.

Ossa was bristling and stiff-legged and Otek was wild. Fight or die.

A Quito danced in, holding his hatchet up high: too high. Ossa responded as he’d been trained – as Xessa had trained him – leaping for the lower belly to tear him open. Xessa began the command to recall him when a second warrior spun, graceful as a shaman in celebration, and brought his club down towards the dog’s back.

Everything stopped. Xessa’s breath, lips pursed. The blood in her veins, still. The spear in her hand, motionless.

And then Otek threw himself in the way and the club caved in his skull in a single blow.

Xessa could move again. She threw her spear, punching the warrior off his feet as Otek landed face down with a thud she felt all the way into her heart. She pulled out her knife and tore at the warriors crowding towards them, Ossa slow but snarling, his jet-black coat stiff with blood.

Someone shoved her and Xessa fell to her knees, heedless of the pain and the blood and the danger. The knife fell from her hand and she pulled Otek into her arms.

The impact of falling bodies shivered through the stone and she ignored it. Someone grabbed her shoulder, but she shrugged it off. There were feet and legs in her periphery, encircling her. She ignored them. Otek’s eyes weren’t spirit-haunted. They weren’t empty. They were cenotes of agony. Of love.

Xessa broke. Broke into pieces so sharp that breathing cut her, that thinking flayed her. She kissed his gaping mouth and Ossa, who had always sat so calmly in her father’s lap, licked his unresponsive cheek.

And Otek died.

Someone fell over her. Xessa didn’t care. Something shifted in her heart then, an ember of anger that nothing could quench. They had taken the friend of her heart. They had taken her husband and her father. They had hurt her dog.