‘Bathe and put on those clothes there. Be fast and do not try to escape. There is no way out. And there is nothing to fear if you obey.’ He picked up a spare kilt from a shelf and gestured to the warriors to leave the bathhouse. He changed into the dry kilt and then squeezed water from his tunic and hair. He wandered out.

How readily he’d tried to soothe her, though he wore the feather of a full-blood Pecha that made her his enemy and killer of his gods. She didn’t understand, but she pulled herself out of the bath, shuddering, and checked the room – no other exits, nothing lurking in the shadows or beneath the benches. The clothes he’d indicated were cut in the Pecha style but plain, woven from undyed maguey. Slave clothes.

Xessa ripped off her leggings and shirt and knelt, dipping a cloth into the water and scrubbing her skin. Too many memories – Ossa dragging her away from the bank, venom in them both; Kime in the Swift Water surrounded by Drowned, screaming, his fingers bitten off; Toxte in the womb, fixing the Drowned’s leg; Tayan, calling it a ‘holy Setat’.

As the dirt and old sweat was scrubbed away, she revealed the dark, jagged, unlovely lines on her flesh. Slave brands and Drowned scars and knife scars, the marks of both – of all – her enemies. Eternal reminders imprinted into her flesh that she was not safe and she was not loved. But tied around her neck, filthy and faded, was her marriage cord.

There was a small jug next to the soap and she used it to wash her hair, hissing as she dragged the wooden comb through tangles of blood and dust and sweat and grime.

Lock had said be fast, but now that the fear was gone, or at least banked down, Xessa took her time. Like the whistles, the pretended incomprehension, the drumming, this too was a test to see what she could get away with, and what they would punish. Lock came back and beckoned, but there was no real anger in his face at the delay. He was a strange one, much like Pilos himself, who had such a tight grip on his anger she wasn’t sure he even felt the emotion.

Xessa slipped into the new clothes – they’d even provided a length of material as a breast binding – ignored the sandals and approached the exit, clapping her hands so she didn’t surprise a warrior and take a spear in the gut.

Lock examined her, frowned at her bare feet, shrugged and beckoned, and the small procession returned through the gardens, past the prison to the large house with two floors and a small pyramid perched at the centre of its roof. The High Feather’s house. The jaguar’s den.