His surviving warriors led the way, for they knew the game trails and the safest route up the slopes to avoid the Swift Water that twisted and tumbled across the hill. The Yaloh warriors came last, turning often to stare down the trails for the tell-tale twitch of leaf or sudden silence in the usual clamour of the jungle.

Lilla’s thoughts circled memories of the ambush like a cat returning to its kill, worrying at the meat of events, clawing at his decisions and picking them apart. Lilla was Fang, the leader of his Paw: the fault was his, and so were the deaths, but now, at last, they were in familiar terrain. The humidity had risen steadily until the air was thick as resin and just breathing was a labour. The Wet would come soon, months of rain and storm, deluge and flood, that would wash the Empire of Songs back into its own lands and swell the crops for harvest.

It would bring much-needed respite from the war, but not from death and watchfulness. The Wet carried dangers of its own, ones that ordinary warriors couldn’t fight. But both the Wet and the war slipped from Lilla’s mind, just for a moment, when they finally climbed out of the jungle and onto Malel’s bare skin. Malel, who was at once the mother goddess, the world, and the hill itself upon which the Tokob, her first children, had built their greatest city. Up and to their right, still a few sticks away, the Sky City itself gleamed pale and majestic against the darker rock and splashes of green of the hill. The sun was high, picking out the glyphs and paintings adorning the city’s perimeter wall. Within, a maze of houses and markets, great plazas and temples to Malel and her first creations, the Snake and the Jaguar, kin to the Tokob.

Outside the walls grew widely spaced orchards of fig, mango, palm and nut, and small stands of rubber and pom for practical and ritual purposes, and then rows of terraced fields below, seedlings just showing green against rich, black soil. Most of the Yaloh gathered here now had never seen the Sky City. Their voices were low with awe and wonder, and not a little relief. The Sky City’s walls protected against more than predators; they were sturdy enough to protect its inhabitants from the Empire, too. Perhaps. Lilla heard their relief and felt it loosen something dark and hard in his chest. He was home. Safe. For a little while.

To their right the great bend of the Swift Water glittered and rushed, twisting towards them and then looping back on itself, following the contours of the land and its own channel, carved out of Malel’s belly since the world began.

‘What’s that?’ a child asked, pointing at a series of small, squat stone buildings running across the hill below the lowest fields.