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silence between them, each looking out over the city. Around them the Ways was settling down for the night. Buildings cooled, walls audibly creaking like the groans of a wounded hunter settling to the ground. Cook fires danced shadows along the four main streets that met at Centre Square, while delicious aromas hunted for noses through windows and up stairwells. Stopmouth’s tummy rumbled. Yet he felt no hunger.
    ‘You’re so like him,’ Mossheart said at last. ‘Only he talks more, of course. Always nattering about this or that. If he were here now–you know how he goes on! He’d be talking about the lights in the Roof or even this house. “Who made this city for us?” he’d say. “How did we come to live here?”’
    Stopmouth smiled despite himself. His brother had asked those very questions many times and had invented any number of fantastical explanations. It was part of the reason he loved Wallbreaker so fiercely. It was why the Tribe needed him.
    Mossheart tugged at her lovely hair, tied back now that she was a woman.
    ‘I wanted to ask you a favour,’ she said. ‘My husband…Well, I don’t know if he’s always been like this. I thought you might tell me…But he doesn’t sleep much now. Always pacing. Or if he does sleep, he wakes covered in sweat and he stares at me as if…as if he doesn’t know me.’
    She began to cry. Stopmouth put his arm around her, but she shrugged him off like any other married woman would have done. And then, as the nearby Flyers finished their squabble and took off into the sky, she told him the terrible thing.
    ‘He hasn’t…Wallbreaker hasn’t hunted since our wedding.’
    Stopmouth had guessed as much, but having Mossheart put words to his fears shook him badly. He worked it out.
Twenty days
. Hunting parties were needed all the time to keep the people fed. Tattoo or no tattoo, if Wallbreaker left it any longer, he’d be volunteered to the next beast delegation that came trading for flesh. His child–Mossheart’s child–would be an orphan and might even end up the same way as its father. Unless, of course, Mossheart were to remarry. For a moment Stopmouth gave in to the temptation of that thought. But he pulled himself out of it by smacking his fist into the parapet. Wallbreaker would be dead. In spite of the recent betrayal, Stopmouth couldn’t bear that. He knew Wallbreaker hadn’t done it to hurt him. All his life his brother had protected him from the bullies who’d mocked his speech. He’d kept Stopmouth alive through his first hunt, and when their father had volunteered to feed the Clawfolk, it was Wallbreaker who’d explained why it was such an honour for the family before bursting into tears himself.
    ‘I w-will take him h-hunting,’ said Stopmouth.
    Mossheart smiled at last and wiped her tears away. ‘Thank you, dear Stopmouth. I know you cannot take him to the Hairbeast district with all the strange goings-on there. But a hunting party is setting out for Clawfolk territory the day after tomorrow. They would be glad to have two heroes join them.’
    Stopmouth blushed.
    ‘It would do you no harm either to start building up a bride price for yourself.’
    He bit his lip.
    ‘No, listen, Stopmouth. You can’t stay a boy for ever. I had a friend when I was unmarried. Brighttooth. You know Brighttooth, don’t you?’
    Stopmouth knew her and she wasn’t Mossheart. He shook his head and guided Mossheart firmly to the stairway. He assured her before she left that he’d take Wallbreaker hunting with the others in two days’ time.
    Afterwards he paced around the roof for an hour. Then he took out some Armourback shell and set to work replacing the spear he’d left behind in Hairbeast-Ways.
             
    Stopmouth went to watch some of the tattooed men–some of the
other
tattooed men!–sparring in Centre Square. Their feet shuffled clouds of dust into the air which plastered itself to their sweaty skin. He saw Wallbreaker twirling his spear