Weeks back beneath the song as she raced to the capital at Pilos’s bidding, and she still couldn’t get used to it. As Listener Citla had said, it was … wrong. Poisoned. Broken. A clanging dissonance that rubbed against her nerve endings and put a sharpness into her mood. Like that before her blood came, but all the time.

She saw evidence of it everywhere. When she’d stopped to demand food and water she had witnessed slaves punished more harshly than they deserved. She saw the defiance in the eyes of many Pechaqueh whose duty was to provide food for warriors – defiance even though she wore an eagle feather. They resented the rations that were her due, as though she were demanding enough to feed a Talon. There were bodies on the path most days, merchants and farmers, slaves and half-bloods, even full Pechaqueh sometimes. The waterlogged fields and mud-slick trails were sullen, the sky angry, and the song sharp as obsidian.

Elaq had nearly gutted Ilandeh on sight when she arrived wearing an eagle feather, and only respect for Pilos had allowed her entry to the estate to explain herself.

‘I swear by the song the idea was his, eagle,’ Ilandeh said for the second time. ‘A sun-year in the Sky City was easier than the last month with this in my hair, but the High Feather gave me my orders and my life is his to command.’

Elaq stalked back and forth and Ilandeh stood with her hands behind her back, trying not to yawn. She had run and walked every single day from Tokoban to here and she was exhausted. Now she couldn’t sit until Elaq did, and the old eagle seemed determined to remind her that no matter what colour feather she wore, she’d never be his equal.

As if I need reminding of that.

‘What do you know of the song?’ he demanded in the end, sitting and gesturing. They were in a small room far less ornate than any she would expect the High Feather to occupy; she thought it might be Elaq’s own.

‘Listener Citla travelled from her post in Yalotlan to the Sky City to bring us news of its shattering, but she didn’t know what had caused it. I have heard some gossip on my travels, but it is wild. I do not know the truth.’

‘I doubt any of us do,’ Elaq said. ‘All I can say for sure is that the council has vanished, and so have the courtesans and the Chorus. Every one of them, as far as I can tell. I’m pretty sure the councillors are all dead, though not Enet of course. That would be too much to hope for.’

‘But why? She is Great Octave. She is Chosen. What could she gain by killing the entire council?’