Enet put her head on one side and gave them a quizzical smile that masked her seething outrage. ‘That is for the Singer to decide. The song is a glory to all who hear it – as you know. We wish only for as many peoples as possible to live within the joy of the song. We do not steal; we bring a gift of immeasurable bounty to those who join our Empire. This is something you will come to understand.’

‘Join your Empire?’ Betsu mocked. ‘You mean be enslaved by it. Stolen from our homes and our ancestors. Turned into things.’

Enet shrugged. ‘What better way to learn how our society works than from the bottom? With faithful service, slaves are made servants who receive compensation. Servants save up enough to pay off their debt and become free. The free live and farm and make babies and raise livestock under the glory of the song. Peace, peace-weavers,’ she added with another smile. ‘That is what we offer the world.’

Betsu’s face reddened, veins standing out in her throat.

‘Betsu,’ the shaman warned in a low voice. ‘We are guests—’

‘Your Singer has ordered you to flood over the land like locusts, conquering all in your path and forcing them to serve you like dogs, but it was not always so. This noise you call a song is poison and it has poisoned you all. We will never—’

Enet’s polite mask fell from her face. Her slave knelt and pressed his forehead to the floor. The guards rushed forward from their places around the walls. ‘The Singer is a living god and the song is his grace spread across us,’ the Great Octave said in a soft, deadly voice. ‘It unites us in one great, glorious purpose, a purpose every Pecha believes in. And our free, our servants and our slaves all hold that purpose in their hearts alongside the glory of the song.’ She gestured to the slave. ‘You. You’re happy, aren’t you?’

The man bobbed his head and raised it just enough to speak. ‘Of course, high one.’

‘Do you even know his name?’ Betsu demanded.

Enet didn’t so much as glance at her. She wouldn’t be able convince Betsu, but the shaman. Oh, the shaman was promising. ‘The song would light up your lives,’ she said, soft and coaxing now. ‘It would take your small, sad world and polish it like jade. Like pearls from the ocean. It would enhance everything you did and saw and ate and smelt, every feeling, every decision. The song is the world, Tayan.’