The warriors holding him forced one of his arms flat on the table and one of them raised a hatchet, watching Pilos for the order.

Pilos watched her. ‘We will start with his hands.’

Tiamoko watched her. The warriors restraining her watched her; she could feel it. Xessa wanted to scream. She wanted to snatch up a weapon and kill them all, rail against her captivity and that of her people. She wanted to make them see they were wrong, that their lives, their city, their whole Empire was a lie, a deceit built on suffering.

She did none of those things, because she understood some of how they’d become so powerful. They threatened the people you loved and then they stripped away what made you who you were. They turned you into an animal and then slowly they built you back up in their own image, until their beliefs were yours. And one day, if you were very obedient and very lucky, they’d free you and the first thing you’d do would be to buy slaves of your own. And so it went, rolling endlessly like the cycle of the seasons, like the rise and fall of the Great Star at morning and the Great Star at evening. Until you wanted to be Pecha by name the way you were in your heart and you abandoned the traditions of your people and came to hate the hiss of blood in your veins.

They were all waiting for her answer. Xessa raised her hands, and then stopped, picking up the charcoal instead. ‘I will fight,’ she wrote shakily, and the words on the paper writhed and mocked her, taking on a malevolent life that wormed inside her and made her their slave. Their property. Their entertainment. ‘And I wish to claim my family.’

Elaq spoke to the warriors and they dragged Tiamoko away before either Toko could sign anything. Tears blurred Xessa’s vision and her breathing was ragged.

‘Write their names and descriptions down,’ Elaq told her and she did so. Toxte. Tayan. Lilla. Tiamoko. Lutek. At the bottom, she added a question: What happened to my dog?

Elaq took the paper and read it, nodded. He pointed something out to Pilos, who shook his head and gestured. Xessa was lifted to her feet. Elaq led them out of the room and through cool corridors painted with lush murals and back out into the heat of the gardens and along the path to the high gate.

They left the estate, merging into the crowds on a wide limestone road and then veering off between tall buildings that grew shorter and shabbier the further they walked. Xessa craned her neck to take in the sights, memorising their route. Three or four sticks, about an hour’s walk, and the smells of war began to tickle at her nostrils – blood, sweat, shit, fear. The eja faltered and the warriors closed in around her, hustling her along.