Enet centred herself with the prayer, clearing her mind and inhaling the song into the very depths of her body. Only when she was sure that she held the Singer foremost in her thoughts, wrapped with the pure love of devotion, did she return to the old, painted fig-bark book one of the traders in her employ had uncovered. A book of prophecies made by the 142nd Singer forty cycles of the Great Star before. Three hundred and twenty sun-years. An eternity and yet the blink of an eye in the grand round of histories and prophecies, ancestors and futures. The space of a single dream during the world spirit’s slumber.

Many of the pages were illegible now, the glyphs faded or stained, and the last fourth of the book itself was missing. Still, Singer Tecotl had lived closer to the time of those first Singers who were said to not have ascended upon death – the stories that had been the cause of her humiliation in front of the Singer a month before. Though he appeared to have forgotten it, even confirming her in the position of Great Octave in the intervening days, Enet hadn’t forgotten it. Enet would never forget it.

But the legends Singer Tecotl knew and had written down in these pages might, to him, have been histories rather than stories. Might have been fact. Enet sat in the small, concealed room within her estate palace. Only two other people knew of the room’s existence. Both were slaves. Both were sworn to her. One still had a tongue and could speak what he knew, but he’d been with her since he was a child. Enet trusted few, but she trusted them.

The room was cramped with shelves of books and loose pages and artefacts and transcribed tales from every land the Empire had brought under the song. Relics from those lands: sacred objects, charms, idols of false gods. Anything that might bring her closer to the truth that even here, in her most secret heart, she could barely bring herself to contemplate. The truth of the Singers who did not die, but nor did they ascend; the Singers who remained themselves and yet undying, and who still walked, she knew, she knew, somewhere in this world.

This truth that was Enet’s path to immortality. For the good of the Empire of Songs. For the waking of the world spirit. For peace.

Her ancestry and wealth guaranteed her a place on the Singer’s council, but it was her mind that had seen her elevated to Spear of the City and then Great Octave. And still there was so much more that she could do for the Empire. This was but a means to achieve stability for Ixachipan and beyond.