In the end it was Rix who broke. Perhaps Xessa took the threat against her dog’s life too seriously; perhaps the elder didn’t take the threat against his people seriously enough. Either way, Pilos had known it would happen eventually. The elder lunged for him, hands slamming into his chest and sending him over onto his back, then hooking into claws to take out his eyes. The eagle guarding Xessa wrapped his arm around her throat and hauled backwards, readying a knife to plunge into her stomach. The eagle guarding the woman’s dog threw himself at the elder and knocked him off Pilos, then dropped his knee between the old man’s shoulder blades and jammed him into the stone.

‘Stop!’ Pilos ordered with a wheeze. He got up and retrieved his club, studied Xessa for a long moment, and then slammed it into the knee that was swollen against her leggings. She screamed and curled into herself, hands clutching the limb. She wouldn’t understand why he’d done it, but Rix did. Oh yes.

Pilos bent close to him. ‘And now more of your people die,’ he said with genuine regret. ‘And you go to the Singer anyway.’

ILANDEH

Outskirts of Singing City, Pechacan, Empire of Songs

62nd day of the grand absence of the Great Star

Ilandeh had removed the scarlet feather and sewn it back into the seam of her tunic beneath her arm, where it had lived for a year while she played the part of a merchant in Tokoban.

She couldn’t part with it. While it marked her as a half-blood, proclaiming to all Pechaqueh that she was lower than they, it was also a source of fierce pride. The macaws, and the secretive Whispers within their ranks, gave her an identity and a purpose, a steady platform in the chaos of an Empire dedicated to the glory of one half of her blood and the denigration of the other. And yet Pilos had ordered her to thread an eagle feather into her hair – not just any eagle feather, but one from his own fan – and pretend instead to be something she could never be. Something she should never even think about being.

They would know she was a fraud the second she set foot on the processional way. It would be obvious. Ilandeh was no eagle. But none of her inner turmoil showed on her smooth, sweat-beaded face as she ran the last few sticks to the city. She was a Whisper and deception was her greatest strength. Macaw in her heart, she would be an eagle in her skin.