The Second Flight stood just inside the entrance, her mouth slightly open as she gazed at the murals and woven hangings adorning the walls and corridors leading to the public and private parts of the palace. Four of Enet’s slave warriors surrounded the woman, while the other macaws waited out in the gardens.

‘What is the meaning of this?’ Enet demanded and the macaw shut her mouth and dropped to her knees.

‘We found them in Xentiban two weeks ago, Spear,’ the woman said. ‘A Tokob shaman and a Yaloh warrior. Peace-weavers. They wanted to come to the Singing City and negotiate. I thought it was best to escort them so they couldn’t get up to any mischief. I … thought you might be prepared to speak with them.’

‘You should have killed them.’

The macaw flinched. ‘High one,’ she said, adding the honorific though her half-Pecha blood didn’t strictly require her to, ‘they wear a multitude of peace feathers. My place is not to determine whether such as they might be harmed.’

‘So you brought them all the way here, into our very heart, instead of to the nearest eagle who could make that decision for you?’ Enet’s voice dripped with scorn, but they were here and, worse, they’d been invited in. The Great Octave’s own honour and status demanded she at least see them.

‘Forgive me, high one,’ the macaw said.

‘No,’ Enet snapped. ‘You will leave your name with my estate slave and you will get out of my house. Now.’ She already knew the warrior’s name, and there was only one macaw Talon in the whole Melody, but the woman needed to understand the consequences of what she’d done.

The warrior pressed her blushing face to the floor and then rose and fled, pausing to whisper to the estate slave who waited at the door. Enet watched her go, sorely tempted to give her guard the nod, but didn’t. She’d have to end all eight of them, and it would be loud and messy before it was done. A boy came in with a basket of turkey feathers soon after, while she was putting on a fresh tunic and kilt and reapplying her cosmetics. She allowed him to bind one into her hair, over her right ear, as the warriors wore it. She would be interested to see what these peace-weavers made of that. She found she was interested to see what they made of everything – and what she made of them.