Midnight tides

CHAPTER ONE

Year of the Late Frost

One year before the Letherii Seventh Closure

The Ascension of the Empty Hold

HERE, THEN, IS THE TALE. BETWEEN THE SWISH OF THE TIDES, when giants knelt down and became mountains. When they fell scattered on the land like the ballast stones of the sky, yet could not hold fast against the rising dawn. Between the swish of the tides, we will speak of one such giant. Because the tale hides with his own.

And because it amuses.

Thus.

In darkness he closed his eyes. Only by day did he elect to open them, for he reasoned in this manner: night defies vision and so, if little can be seen, what value seeking to pierce the gloom?

Witness as well, this. He came to the edge of the land and discovered the sea, and was fascinated by the mysterious fluid. A fascination that became a singular obsession through the course of that fated day. He could see how the waves moved, up and down along the entire shore, a ceaseless motion that ever threatened to engulf all the land, yet ever failed to do so. He watched the sea through the afternoon’s high winds, witness to its wild thrashing far up along the sloping strand, and sometimes it did indeed reach far, but always it would sullenly retreat once more.

When night arrived, he closed his eyes and lay down to sleep. Tomorrow, he decided, he would look once more upon this sea.

In darkness he closed his eyes.

The tides came with the night, swirling up round the giant. The tides came and drowned him as he slept. And the water seeped minerals into his flesh, until he became as rock, a gnarled ridge on the strand. Then, each night for thousands of years, the tides came to wear away at his form. Stealing his shape.

But not entirely. To see him true, even to this day, one must look in darkness. Or close one’s eyes to slits in brightest sunlight. Glance askance, or focus on all but the stone itself.

Of all the gifts Father Shadow has given his children, this one talent stands tallest. Look away to see. Trust in it, and you will be led into Shadow. Where all truths hide.

Look away to see.

Now, look away.

The mice scattered as the deeper shadow flowed across snow brushed blue by dusk. They scampered in wild panic, but, among them, one’s fate was already sealed. A lone tufted, taloned foot snapped down, piercing furry flesh and crushing minute bones.

At the clearing’s edge, the owl had dropped silently from its branch, sailing out over the hard-packed snow and its litter of seeds, and the arc of its flight, momentarily punctuated by plucking the mouse from the ground, rose up once more, this time in a heavy flapping of wings, towards a nearby tree. It landed one-legged, and a moment later it began to feed.

The figure who jogged across the glade a dozen heartbeats later saw nothing untoward. The mice were all gone, the snow solid enough to leave no signs of their passing, and the owl froze motionless in its hollow amidst the branches of the spruce tree, eyes wide as they followed the figure’s progress across the clearing. Once it had passed, the owl resumed feeding.

Dusk belonged to the hunters, and the raptor was not yet done this night.

As he weaved through the frost-rimed humus of the trail, Trull Sengar’s thoughts were distant, making him heedless of the forest surrounding him, uncharacteristically distracted from all the signs and details it offered. He had not even paused to make propitiation to Sheltatha Lore, Daughter Dusk, the most cherished of the Three Daughters of Father Shadow – although he would make recompense at tomorrow’s sunset – and, earlier, he had moved unmindful through the patches of lingering light that blotted the trail, risking the attention of fickle Sukul Ankhadu, the Daughter of Deceit, also known as Dapple. The Calach breeding beds swarmed with seals. They’d come early, surprising Trull in his collecting of raw jade above the shoreline. Alone, the arrival of the seals would engender only excitement in the young Tiste Edur, but there had been other arrivals, in ships ringing the bay, and the harvest had been well under way.

Letherii, the white-skinned peoples from the south.

He could imagine the anger of those in the village he now approached, once he delivered the news of his discovery – an anger he shared. This encroachment on Edur territories was brazen, the theft of seals that rightly belonged to his people an arrogant defiance of the old agreements.

There were fools among the Letherii, just as there were fools among the Edur. Trull could not imagine this broaching being anything but unsanctioned. The Great Meeting was only two cycles of the moon away. It served neither side’s purpose to spill blood now. No matter that the Edur would be right in attacking and destroying the intruder ships; the Letherii delegation would be outraged at the slaughter of its citizens, even citizens contravening the laws. The chances of agreeing upon a new treaty had just become minuscule.

And this disturbed Trull Sengar. One long and vicious war had just ended for the Edur: the thought of another beginning was too hard to bear.

He had not embarrassed his brothers during the wars of subjugation; on his wide belt was a row of twenty-one red-stained rivets, each one marking a coup, and among those seven were ringed in white paint, to signify actual kills. Only his elder brother’s belt sported more trophies among the male children of Tomad Sengar, and that was right and proper, given Fear Sengar’s eminence among the warriors of the Hiroth tribe.

Of course, battles against the five other tribes of the Edur were strictly bound in rules and prohibitions, and even vast, protracted battles had yielded only a handful of actual deaths. Even so, the conquests had been exhausting. Against the Letherii, there were no rules to constrain the Edur warriors. No counting coup. Just killing. Nor did the enemy need a weapon in hand – even the helpless and the innocent would know the sword’s bite. Such slaughter stained warrior and victim alike.

But Trull well knew that, though he might decry the killing that was to come, he would do so only to himself, and he would stride alongside his brothers, sword in hand, to deliver the Edur judgement upon the trespassers. There was no choice. Turn away from this crime and more would follow, in waves unending.

His steady jog brought him past the tanneries, with their troughs and stone-lined pits, to the forest edge. A few Letherii slaves glanced his way, quickly bowing in deference until he was past. The towering cedar logs of the village wall rose from the clearing ahead, over which woodsmoke hung in stretched streams. Fields of rich black soil spread out to either side of the narrow, raised track leading to the distant gate. Winter had only just begun to release its grip on the earth, and the first planting of the season was still weeks away. By midsummer, close to thirty different types of plants would fill these fields, providing food, medicine, fibres and feed for the livestock, many among the thirty of a flowering variety, drawing the bees from which honey and wax were procured. The tribe’s women oversaw the slaves in such harvesting. The men would leave in small groups to journey into the forest, to cut timber or hunt, whilst others set out in the Knarri ships to harvest from the seas and shoals.

Or so it should be, when peace ruled the tribes. The past dozen years had seen more war-parties setting out than any other kind, and so the people had on occasion suffered. Until the war, hunger had never threatened the Edur. Trull wanted an end to such depredations. Hannan Mosag, Warlock King of the Hiroth, was now overlord to all the Edur tribes. From a host of warring peoples, a confederacy had been wrought, although Trull well knew that it was a confederacy in name only. Hannan Mosag held as hostage the firstborn sons of the subjugated chiefs – his K’risnan Cadre – and ruled as dictator. Peace, then, at the point of a sword, but peace none the less.

A recognizable figure was striding from the palisade gate, approaching the fork in the trail where Trull now halted. ‘I greet you, Binadas,’ he said.

A spear was strapped to his younger brother’s back, a hide pack slung round one shoulder and resting against a hip; at the opposite side a single-edged longsword in a leather-wrapped wooden scabbard. Binadas was half a head taller than Trull, his visage as weathered as his buckskin clothes. Of Trull’s three brothers, Binadas was the most remote, evasive and thus difficult to predict, much less understand. He resided in the village only infrequently, seeming to prefer the wilds of the western forest and the mountains to the south. He had rarely joined others in raids, yet often when he returned he carried trophies of coup, and so none doubted his bravery.

‘You are winded, Trull,’ Binadas observed, ‘and I see distress once more upon your face.’

‘There are Letherii moored off the Calach beds.’

Binadas frowned. ‘I shall not delay you, then.’

‘Will you be gone long, brother?’

The man shrugged, then stepped past Trull, taking the westerly fork of the trail.

Trull Sengar moved on, through the gate and into the village.

Four smithies dominated this inland end of the vast walled interior, each surrounded by a deep sloping trench that drained into a buried channel that led away from the village and the surrounding fields. For what seemed years the forges had rung almost ceaselessly with the fashioning of weapons, and the stench of heavy, acrid fumes had filled the air, rising up to coat nearby trees in white-crusted soot. Now, as he passed, Trull saw that only two were occupied, and the dozen or so visible slaves were unhurried in their work.

Beyond the smithies ran the elongated, brick-lined storage chambers, a row of segmented beehive-shaped buildings that held surplus grains, smoked fish and seal meat, whale oil and harvested fibre plants. Similar structures existed in the deep forest surrounding each village – most of which were empty at the moment, a consequence of the wars.

The stone houses of the weavers, potters, carvers, lesser scribes, armourers and other assorted skilled citizens of the village rose round Trull once he was past the storage chambers. Voices called out in greeting, to which he made the minimal response that decorum allowed, such gestures signifying to his acquaintances that he could not pause for conversation.

The Edur warrior now hurried through the residential streets. Letherii slaves called villages such as this one cities, but no citizen saw the need for changing their word usage – a village it had been at birth, thus a village it would always be, no matter that almost twenty thousand Edur and thrice that number of Letherii now resided within it.

Shrines to the Father and his Favoured Daughter dominated the residential area, raised platforms ringed by living trees of the sacred Blackwood, the surface of the stone discs crowded with images and glyphs. Kurald Emurlahn played ceaselessly within the tree-ringed circle, rippling half-shapes dancing along the pictographs, the sorcerous emanations awakened by the propitiations that had accompanied the arrival of dusk.

Trull Sengar emerged onto the Avenue of the Warlock, the sacred approach to the massive citadel that was both temple and palace, and the seat of the Warlock King, Hannan Mosag. Black-barked cedars lined the approach. The trees were a thousand years old, towering over the entire village. They were devoid of branches except for the uppermost reaches. Invested sorcery suffused every ring of their midnight wood, bleeding out to fill the entire avenue with a shroud of gloom.

At the far end, a lesser palisade enclosed the citadel and its grounds, constructed of the same black wood, these boles crowded with carved wards. The main gate was a tunnel formed of living trees, a passage of unrelieved shadow leading to a footbridge spanning a canal in which sat a dozen K’orthan raider longboats. The footbridge opened out onto a broad flagstoned compound flanked by barracks and storehouses. Beyond stood the stone and timber longhouses of the noble families – those with blood-ties to Hannan Mosag’s own line – with their wood-shingled roofs and Blackwood ridgepoles, the array of residences neatly bisected by a resumption of the Avenue, across yet another footbridge to the citadel proper.

There were warriors training in the compound, and Trull saw the tall, broad-shouldered figure of his elder brother, Fear, standing with a half-dozen of his assistants nearby, watching the weapons practice. A pang of sympathy for those young warriors flickered through Trull. He himself had suffered beneath his brother’s critical, unrelenting eye during the years of his own schooling.

A voice hailed him and Trull glanced over to the other side of the compound, to see his youngest brother, Rhulad, and Midik Buhn. They had been doing their own sparring, it seemed, and a moment later Trull saw the source of their uncharacteristic diligence – Mayen, Fear’s betrothed, had appeared with four younger women in tow, probably on their way to the market, given the dozen slaves accompanying them. That they had stopped to watch the sudden, no doubt impromptu martial demonstration was of course obligatory, given the complex rules of courtship. Mayen was expected to treat all of Fear’s brothers with appropriate respect.

Although there was nothing untoward in the scene Trull looked upon, he nevertheless felt a tremor of unease. Rhulad’s eagerness to strut before the woman who would be his eldest brother’s wife had crept to the very edge of proper conduct. Fear was, in Trull’s opinion, displaying far too much indulgence when it came to Rhulad.

As have we all. Of course, there were reasons for that.

Rhulad had clearly bested his childhood companion in the mock contest, given the flushed pride in his handsome face. ‘Trull!’ He waved his sword. ‘I have drawn blood once this day, and now thirst for more! Come, scrape the rust off that sword at your side!’

‘Some other time, brother,’ Trull called back. ‘I must speak with our father without delay.’

Rhulad’s grin was amiable enough, but even from ten paces away Trull saw the flash of triumph in his clear grey eyes. ‘Another time, then,’ he said, with a final dismissive wave of his sword as he turned back to face the women.

But Mayen had gestured to her companions and the party was already moving off.

Rhulad opened his mouth to say something to her, but Trull spoke first. ‘Brother, I invite you to join me. The news I must give our father is of grave import, and I would that you are present, so that your words are woven into the discussion that will follow.’ An invitation that was normally made only to those warriors with years of battle on their belts, and Trull saw the sudden pride lighting his brother’s eyes.

‘I am honoured, Trull,’ he said, sheathing his sword.

Leaving Midik standing alone and tending to a sword-cut on his wrist, Rhulad joined Trull and they strode to the family Ionghouse.

Trophy shields cluttered the outside walls, many of them sun-faded by the centuries. Whale bones clung to the underside of the roof’s overhang. Totems stolen from rival tribes formed a chaotic arch over the doorway, the strips of fur, beaded hide, shells, talons and teeth looking like an elongated bird’s nest.

They passed within.

The air was cool, slightly acrid with woodsmoke. Oil lamps sat in niches along the walls, between tapestries and stretched furs. The traditional hearthstone in the centre of the chamber, where each family had once prepared its meals, remained stoked with tinder, although the slaves now worked in kitchens behind the Ionghouse proper, to reduce the risk of fires. Blackwood furniture marked out the various rooms, although no dividing walls were present. Hung from hooks on the crossbeams were scores of weapons, some from the earliest days, when the art of forging iron had been lost in the dark times immediately following Father Shadow’s disappearance, the rough bronze of these weapons pitted and warped.

Just beyond the hearthstone rose the bole of a living Blackwood, from which the gleaming upper third of a longsword thrust upward and outward at just above head height: a true Emurlahn blade, the iron treated in some manner the smiths had yet to rediscover. The sword of the Sengar family, signifier of their noble bloodline; normally, these original weapons of the noble families, bound against the tree when it was but a sapling, were, after centuries, gone from sight, lying as they did along the heartwood. But some twist in this particular tree had pried the weapon away, thus revealing that black and silver blade. Uncommon, but not unique.

Both brothers reached out and touched the iron as they passed.

They saw their mother, Uruth, flanked by slaves as she worked on the bloodline’s tapestry, finishing the final scenes of the Sengar participation in the War of Unification. Intent on her work, she did not look up as her sons strode past.

Tomad Sengar sat with three other noble-born patriarchs around a game board fashioned from a huge palmate antler, the playing pieces carved from ivory and jade.

Trull halted at the edge of the circle. He settled his right hand over the pommel of his sword, signifying that the words he brought were both urgent and potentially dangerous. Behind him, he heard Rhulad’s quickly indrawn breath.

Although none of the elders looked up, Tomad’s guests rose as one, while Tomad himself began putting away the game pieces. The three elders departed in silence, and a moment later Tomad set the game board to one side and settled back on his haunches.

Trull settled down opposite him. ‘I greet you, Father. A Letherii fleet is harvesting the Calach beds. The herds have come early, and are now being slaughtered. I witnessed these things with my own eyes, and have not paused in my return.’

Tomad nodded. ‘You have run for three days and two nights, then.’

‘I have.’

‘And the Letherii harvest, it was well along?’

‘Father, by dawn this morning, Daughter Menandore will have witnessed the ships’ holds filled to bursting, and the sails filling with wind, the wake of every ship a crimson river.’

‘And new ships arriving to take their places!’ Rhulad hissed.

Tomad frowned at his youngest son’s impropriety, and made his disapproval clear with his next words. ‘Rhulad, take this news to Hannan Mosag.’

Trull sensed his brother’s flinch, but Rhulad nodded. ‘As you command, Father.’ He pivoted and marched away.

Tomad’s frown deepened. ‘You invited an unblooded warrior to this exchange?’

‘I did, Father.’

‘Why?’

Trull said nothing, as was his choice. He was not about to voice his concern over Rhulad’s undue attentions towards Fear’s betrothed.

After a moment, Tomad sighed. He seemed to be studying his large, scarred hands where they rested on his thighs. ‘We have grown complacent,’ he rumbled.

‘Father, is it complacency to assume the ones with whom we treat are honourable?’

‘Yes, given the precedents.’

‘Then why has the Warlock King agreed to a Great Meeting with the Letherii?’

Tomad’s dark eyes flicked up to pin Trull’s own. Of all Tomad’s sons, only Fear possessed a perfect, unwavering match to his father’s eyes, in hue and indurative regard. Despite himself, Trull felt himself wilt slightly beneath that scornful gaze.

‘I withdraw my foolish question,’ Trull said, breaking contact to disguise his dismay. A measuring of enemies. This contravention, no matter its original intent, will become a double-pointed blade, given the inevitable response to it by the Edur. A blade both peoples shall grasp. ‘The unblooded warriors will be pleased.’

‘The unblooded warriors shall one day sit in the council, Trull.’

‘Is that not the reward of peace, Father?’

Tomad made no reply to that. ‘Hannan Mosag shall call the council. You must needs be present to relate what you witnessed. Further, the Warlock King has made a request of me, that I give my sons to him for a singular task. I do not think that decision will be affected by the news you deliver.’

Trull worked through his surprise, then said, ‘I passed Binadas on the way into the village-’

‘He has been informed, and will return within a moon’s time.’

‘Does Rhulad know of this?’

‘No, although he will accompany you. An unblooded is an unblooded.’

‘As you say, Father.’

‘Now, rest. You shall be awakened in time for the council.’

A white crow hopped down from a salt-bleached root and began picking through the midden. At first Trull had thought it to be a gull, lingering on the strand in the fast-fading light, but then it cackled and, mussel shell in its pallid beak, sidled down from the midden towards the waterline.

Sleep had proved an impossibility. The council had been called for midnight. Restless, nerves jangling along his exhausted limbs, Trull had walked down to the pebble beach north of the village and the river mouth.

And now, as darkness rolled in with the sleepy waves, he had found himself sharing the strand with a white crow. It had carried its prize down to the very edge, and with each whispering approach, the bird dipped the mussel shell into the water. Six times.

A fastidious creature, Trull observed, watching as the crow hopped onto a nearby rock and began picking at the shell.

White was evil, of course. Common enough knowledge. The blush of bone, Menandore’s hateful light at dawn. The sails of the Letherii were white, as well, which was not surprising. And the clear waters of Calach Bay would reveal the glimmer of white cluttering the sea bottom, from the bones of thousands of slaughtered seals.

This season would have marked a return to surplus for the six tribes, beginning the replenishment of depleted reserves to guard against famine. Thoughts that led him to another way of seeing this illegal harvesting. A perfectly timed gesture to weaken the confederacy, a ploy intended to undermine the Edur position at the Great Meeting. The argument of inevitability. The same argument first thrown into our faces with the settlements on the Reach. ‘The kingdom of Lether is expanding, its needs growing. Your camps on the Reach were seasonal, after all, and with the war they had been all but abandoned.’

It was inevitable that more and more independent ships would come to ply the rich waters of the north coast. One could not police them all. The Edur need only look at other tribes that had once dwelt beyond the Letherii borderlands, the vast rewards that came with swearing fealty to King Ezgara Diskanar of Lether.

But we are not as other tribes.

The crow cackled from atop its stone throne, flinging the mussel shell away with a toss of its head, then, spreading its ghostly wings, rose up into the night. A final drawn out cawl from the darkness. Trull made a warding gesture.

Stones turned underfoot behind him and he swung about to see his elder brother approaching.

‘I greet you, Trull,’ Fear said in a quiet voice. ‘The words you delivered have roused the warriors.’

‘And the Warlock King?’

‘Has said nothing.’

Trull returned to his study of the dark waves hissing on the strand. ‘Their eyes are fixed upon those ships,’ he said.

‘Hannan Mosag knows to look away, brother.’

‘He has asked for the sons of Tomad Sengar. What do you know of that?’

Fear was at his side now, and Trull sensed his shrug. ‘Visions have guided the Warlock King since he was a child,’ Fear said after a moment. ‘He carries blood memories all the way back to the Dark Times. Father Shadow stretches before him with every stride he takes.’

The notion of visions made Trull uneasy. He did not doubt their power – in fact, the very opposite. The Dark Times had come with the rivening of Tiste Edur, the assault of sorceries and strange armies and the disappearance of Father Shadow himself. And, although the magic of Kurald Emurlahn was not denied to the tribes, the warren was lost to them: shattered, the fragments ruled by false kings and gods. Trull suspected that Hannan Mosag possessed an ambition far vaster than simply unifying the six tribes.

‘There is reluctance in you, Trull. You hide it well enough, but I can see where others cannot. You are a warrior who would rather not fight.’

‘That is not a crime,’ Trull muttered, then he added: ‘Of all the Sengar, only you and Father carry more trophies.’

‘I was not questioning your bravery, brother. But courage is the least of that which binds us. We are Edur. We were masters of the Hounds, once. We held the throne of Kurald Emurlahn. And would hold it still, if not for betrayal, first by the kin of Scabandari Bloodeye, then by the Tiste Andii who came with us to this world. We are a beset people, Trull. The Letherii are but one enemy among many. The Warlock King understands this.’

Trull studied the glimmer of starlight on the placid surface of the bay. ‘I will not hesitate in fighting those who would be our enemies, Fear.’

‘That is good, brother. It is enough to keep Rhulad silent, then.’

Trull stiffened. ‘He speaks against me? That unblooded… pup?’

‘Where he sees weakness…’

‘What he sees and what is true are different things,’ Trull said.

‘Then show him otherwise,’ Fear said in his low, calm voice.

Trull was silent. He had been openly dismissive of Rhulad and his endless challenges and postures, as was his right given that Rhulad was unblooded. But more significantly, Trull’s reasons were raised like a protective wall around the maiden that Fear was to wed. Of course, to voice such things now would be unseemly, whispering as they would of spite and malice. After all, Mayen was Fear’s betrothed, not Trull’s, and her protection was Fear’s responsibility.

Things would be simpler, he ruefully reflected, if he had a sense of Mayen herself. She did not invite Rhulad’s attention, but nor did she turn a shoulder to it. She walked the cliff-edge of propriety, as self-assured as any maiden would – and should – be when privileged to become the wife of the Hiroth’s Weapons Master. It was not, he told himself once again, any of his business. ‘I will not show Rhulad what he should already see,’ Trull growled. ‘He has done nothing to warrant the gift of my regard.’

‘Rhulad lacks the subtlety to see your reluctance as anything but weakness-’

‘His failing, not mine!’

‘Do you expect a blind elder to cross a stream’s stepping stones unaided, Trull? No, you guide him until in his mind’s eye he finally sees that which everyone else can see.’

‘If everyone else can see,’ Trull replied, ‘then Rhulad’s words against me are powerless, and so I am right to ignore them.’

‘Brother, Rhulad is not alone in lacking subtlety.’

‘Is it your wish, Fear, that there be enemies among the sons of Tomad Sengar?’

‘Rhulad is not an enemy, not of you nor of any other Edur. He is young and eager for blood. You once walked his path, so I ask that you remember yourself back then. This is not the time to deliver wounds sure to scar. And, to an unblooded warrior, disdain delivers the deepest wound of all.’

Trull grimaced. ‘I see the truth of that, Fear. I shall endeavour to curtail my indifference.’

His brother did not react to the sarcasm. ‘The council is gathering in the citadel, brother. Will you enter the King’s Hall at my side?’

Trull relented. ‘I am honoured, Fear.’

They turned away from the black water, and so did not see the pale-winged shape gliding over the lazy waves a short distance offshore.

Thirteen years ago Udinaas had been a young sailor in the third year of his family’s indenture to the merchant Intaros of Trate, the northernmost city of Lether. He was aboard the whaler Brunt and on the return run from Beneda waters. They had slipped in under cover of darkness, killing three sows, and were towing the carcasses into the neutral Troughs west of Calach Bay when five K’orthan ships of the Hiroth were sighted in hard pursuit.

The captain’s greed had spelled their doom, as he would not abandon the kills.

Udinaas well remembered the faces of the whaler’s officers, the captain included, as they were bound to one of the sows to be left to the sharks and dhenrabi, whilst the common sailors were taken off the ship, along with every piece of iron and every other item that caught the Edur’s fancy. Shadow wraiths were then loosed on the Brunt, to devour and tear apart the dead wood of the Letherii ship. Towing the other two sows, the five Blackwood K’orthan ships then departed, leaving the third whale to the slayers of the deep.

Even back then, Udinaas had been indifferent to the grisly fate of the captain and his officers. He had been born into debt, as had his father and his father before him. Indenture and slavery were two words for the same thing. Nor was life as a slave among the Hiroth particularly harsh. Obedience was rewarded with protection, clothing and a dwelling sheltered from the rain and snow, and, until recently, plenty of food.

Among Udinaas’s many tasks within the household of the Sengar was the repair of nets for the four Knarri fisherboats owned by the noble family. Because he had been a sailor, he was not permitted to leave land, and knotting the nets and affixing weight-stones down on the strand south of the river mouth was as close as he ever came to the open waters of the sea. Not that he had any desire to escape the Edur. There were plenty of slaves in the village – all Letherii, of course – so he did not miss the company of his own kind, miserable as it often was. Nor were the comforts of Lether sufficient lure to attempt what was virtually impossible anyway – he had memory of seeing such comforts, but never of partaking in them. And finally, Udinaas hated the sea with a passion, just as he had done when he was a sailor.

In the failing light he had seen the two eldest sons of Tomad Sengar on the beach on the other side of the river mouth, and was not surprised to hear the faint, indistinguishable words they exchanged. Letherii ships had struck again – the news had raced among the slaves before young Rhulad had even reached the entrance of the citadel. A council had been called, which was to be expected, and Udinaas assumed that there would be slaughter before too long, that deadly, terrifying merging of iron-edged ferocity and sorcery that marked every clash with the Letherii of the south. And, truth be told, Udinaas wished them good hunting. Seals taken by the Letherii threatened famine among the Edur, and in famine it was the slaves who were the first to suffer.

Udinaas well understood his own kind. To the Letherii, gold was all that mattered. Gold and its possession defined their entire world. Power, status, self-worth and respect – all were commodities that could be purchased by coin. Indeed, debt bound the entire kingdom, defining every relationship, the motivation casting the shadow of every act, every decision. This devious hunting of the seals was the opening move in a ploy the Letherii had used countless times, against every tribe beyond the borderlands. To the Letherii, the Edur were no different. But they are, you fools.

Even so, the next move would come at the Great Meeting, and Udinaas suspected that the Warlock King and his advisers, clever as they were, would walk into that treaty like blind elders. What worried him was all that would follow.

Like hatchlings borne on the tide, the peoples of two kingdoms were rushing headlong into deep, deadly waters.

Three slaves from the Buhn household trotted past, bundles of bound seaweed on their shoulders. One called out to Udinaas. ‘Feather Witch will cast tonight, Udinaas! Even as the council gathers.’

Udinaas began folding the net over the drying rack. ‘I will be there, Hulad.’

The three left the strand, and Udinaas was alone once more. He glanced north and saw Fear and Trull walking up the slope towards the outer wall’s postern gate.

Finished with the net, he placed his tools in the small basket and fastened the lid, then straightened.

He heard the flap of wings behind him and turned, startled by the sound of a bird in flight so long after the sun had set. A pale shape skimmed the waterline, and was gone.

Udinaas blinked, straining to see it again, telling himself that it was not what it had appeared to be. Not that. Anything but that. He moved to his left to a bare patch of sand. Crouching, he quickly sketched an invoking sigil into the sand with the small finger of his left hand, lifting his right hand to his face, first two fingers reaching to his eyes to pull the lids down for a brief moment, as he whispered a prayer, ‘Knuckles cast, Saviour look down upon me this night. Errant! Look down upon us all!’

He lowered his right hand and dropped his gaze to the symbol he had drawn.

‘Crow, begone!’

The sigh of wind, the murmur of waves. Then a distant cackle. Shivering, Udinaas bolted upright. Snatching up the basket, he ran for the gate.

The King’s Meet was a vast, circular chamber, the Blackwood boles of the ceiling reaching up to a central peak lost in smoke. Unblooded warriors of noble birth stood at the very edge, the outermost ring of those attending to witness the council. Next, and seated on backed benches, were the matrons, the wedded and widowed women. Then came the unwedded and the betrothed, cross-legged on hides. A pace before them, the floor dropped an arm’s length to form a central pit of packed earth where sat the warriors. At the very centre was a raised dais, fifteen paces across, where stood the Warlock King, Hannan Mosag, with the five hostage princes seated around him, facing outward.

As Trull and Fear descended to the pit to take their place among the blooded warriors, Trull stared up at his king. Of average height and build, Hannan Mosag seemed unprepossessing at first glance. His features were even, a shade paler than most Edur, and there was a wide cast to his eyes that gave him a perpetually surprised look. The power, then, was not physical. It lay entirely in his voice. Rich and deep, it was a voice that demanded to be listened to without regard to volume.

Standing in silence, as he did now, Hannan Mosag’s claim to kingship seemed a mere accident of placement, as if he had wandered into the centre of the huge chamber, and now looked about with a vaguely bemused expression. His clothing was no different from that of any other warriors, barring the absence of trophies – for his trophies, after all, were seated around him on the dais, the first sons of the five subjugated chiefs.

A more concerted study of the Warlock King revealed another indication of his power. His shadow reared behind him. Huge, hulking. Long, indistinct but deadly swords gripped in both gauntleted hands. Helmed, the shoulders angular with plates of armour. Hannan Mosag’s shadow wraith bodyguard never slept. There was, Trull reflected, nothing bemused in its wide stance.

Few warlocks were capable of conjuring such a creature when drawing from the life-force of their own shadows. Kurald Emurlahn flowed raw and brutal in that silent, ever-vigilant sentinel.

Trull’s gaze fell to those of the hostages facing him. The K’risnan. More than representatives of their fathers, they were Hannan Mosag’s apprentices in sorcery. Their names had been stripped from them, the new ones chosen in secret by their master and bound with spells. One day, they would return to their tribes as chiefs. And their loyalty to their king would be absolute.

The hostage from the Merude tribe was directly opposite Trull. Largest of the six tribes, the Merude had been the last to capitulate. They had always maintained that, with their numbers approaching one hundred thousand, forty thousand of which were blooded or soon-to-be-blooded warriors, they should by right have held pre-eminence among the Edur. More warriors, more ships, and ruled by a chief with more trophies at his belt than had been seen in generations. Domination belonged to the Merude.

Or it should have, if not for Hannan Mosag’s extraordinary mastery of those fragments of Kurald Emurlahn from which power could be drawn. Chief Hanradi Khalag’s skill with the spear far outweighed his capacity as a warlock.

No-one but Hannan Mosag and Hanradi Khalag knew the details of that final surrendering. Merude had been holding strong against the Hiroth and their contingents of Arapay, Sollanta, Den-Ratha and Beneda warriors, and the ritual constraints of the war were fast unravelling, in their place an alarming brutality born of desperation. The ancient laws had been on the verge of shattering.

One night, Hannan Mosag had walked, somehow unseen by anyone, into the chief’s village, into the ruler’s own longhouse. And by the first light of Menandore’s cruel awakening, Hanradi Khalag had surrendered his people.

Trull did not know what to make of the tales that persisted, that Hanradi no longer cast a shadow. He had never seen the Merude chief.

That man’s first son now sat before him, head shaved to denote the sundering from his bloodline, a skein of deep-cut, wide scars ribboning his face with shadows, his eyes flat and watchful, as if anticipating an assassination attempt here in the Warlock King’s own hall.

The oil lamps suspended from the high ceiling flickered as one, and everyone grew still, eyes fixing on Hannan Mosag.

Though he did not raise his voice, its deep timbre reached across the vast space, leaving none with the necessity to strain to hear his words. ‘Rhulad, unblooded warrior and son of Tomad Sengar, has brought to me words from his brother, Trull Sengar. This warrior had travelled to the Calach shore seeking jade. He was witness to a dire event, and has run without pause for three days and two nights.’ Hannan Mosag’s eyes fixed on Trull. ‘Rise to stand at my side, Trull Sengar, and relate your tale.’

He walked the path the other warriors made for him and leapt up onto the raised dais, fighting to disguise the exhaustion in his legs that made him come close to sagging with the effort. Straightening, he stepped between two K’risnan and positioned himself to the right of the Warlock King. He looked out onto the array of upturned faces, and saw that what he would say was already known to most of them. Expressions dark with anger and a hunger for vengeance. Here and there, frowns of concern and dismay.

‘I bring these words to the council. The tusked seals have come early to the breeding beds. Beyond the shallows I saw the sharks that leap in numbers beyond counting. And in their midst, nineteen Letherii ships-’

‘Nineteen!’

A half-hundred voices uttered that cry in unison. An uncharacteristic breach of propriety, but understandable none the less. Trull waited a moment, then resumed. ‘Their holds were almost full, for they sat low in the water, and the waters around them were red with blood and offal. Their harvest boats were alongside the great ships. In the fifty heartbeats that I stood and watched, I was witness to hundreds of seal carcasses rising on hooks to swing into waiting hands. On the strand itself twenty boats waited in the shallows and seventy men were on the beach, among the seals-’

‘Did they see you?’ one warrior asked.

It seemed Hannan Mosag was prepared to ignore the rules – for the time being at least.

‘They did, and checked their slaughter… for a moment. I saw their mouths move, though I could not hear their words above the roar of the seals, and I saw them laugh-’

Rage erupted among the gathering. Warriors leapt upright. Hannan Mosag snapped out a hand. Sudden silence.

‘Trull Sengar is not yet finished his tale.’

Clearing his throat, Trull nodded. ‘You see me before you now, warriors, and those of you who know me will also know my preferred weapon – the spear. When have you seen me without my iron-hafted slayer of foes? Alas, I have surrendered it… in the chest of the one who first laughed.’

A roar answered his words.

Hannan Mosag settled a hand on Trull’s shoulder, and the young warrior stepped aside. The Warlock King scanned the faces before him for a moment, then spoke. ‘Trull Sengar did as every warrior of the Edur would do. His deed has heartened me. Yet here he now stands, weaponless.’

Trull stiffened beneath the weight of that hand.

‘And so, in measured thought, such as must be made by a king,’ Hannan Mosag went on, ‘I find I must push my pride to one side, and look beyond it. To what is signified. A thrown spear. A dead Letherii. A disarmed Edur. And now, I see upon the faces of my treasured warriors a thousand flung spears, a thousand dead Letherii. A thousand disarmed Edur.’

No-one spoke. No-one countered with the obvious retort: We have many spears.

‘I see the hunger for vengeance. The Letherii raiders must be slain. Even as prelude to the Great Meeting, for their slaying was desired. Our reaction was anticipated, for these are the games the Letherii would play with our lives. Shall we do as they intended? Of course. There can be but one answer to their crime. And thus, by our predictability, we serve an unknown design, which shall no doubt be unveiled at the Great Meeting.’

Deep-etched frowns. Undisguised confusion. Hannan Mosag had led them into the unfamiliar territory of complexity. He had brought them to the edge of an unknown path, and now would lead them forward, step by tentative step.

‘The raiders will die,’ the Warlock King resumed, ‘but not one of you shall spill their blood. We do as predicted, but in a manner they could not imagine. There will be a time for slaughter of the Letherii, but this is not that time. Thus, I promise you blood, my warriors. But not now. The raiders shall not know the honour of dying at your hands. Their fates shall be found within Kurald Emurlahn.’

Despite himself, Trull Sengar shivered.

Silence once more in the hall.

‘A full unveiling,’ Hannan Mosag continued in a rumble, ‘by my K’risnan. No weapon, no armour, shall avail the Letherii. Their mages will be blind and lost, incapable of countering that which arrives to take them. The raiders will die in pain and in terror. Soiled by fear, weeping like children – and that fate will be writ on their faces, there for those who find them.’

Trull’s heart was pounding, his mouth bone-dry. A full unveiling. What long-lost power had Hannan Mosag stumbled upon? The last full unveiling of Kurald Emurlahn had been by Scabandari Bloodeye, Father Shadow himself. Before the warren had been sundered. And that sundering had not healed. It would, Trull suspected, never be healed.

Even so, some fragments were vaster and more powerful than others. Had the Warlock King discovered a new one?

Faded, battered and chipped, the ceramic tiles lay scattered before Feather Witch. The casting was done, even as Udinaas stumbled into the mote-filled barn to bring word of the omen – to warn the young slave woman away from a scanning of the Holds. Too late. Too late.

A hundred slaves had gathered for the event, fewer than was usual, but not surprising, since many Edur warriors would have charged their own slaves with tasks of preparation for the anticipated skirmish.

Heads turned as Udinaas entered the circle. His eyes remained fixed on Feather Witch.

Her soul had already walked well back on the Path to the Holds. Her head drooped, chin between the prominent bones of her clavicles, thick yellow hair hanging down, and rhythmic trembling ran through her small, child-like body. Feather Witch had been born in the village eighteen years ago, a rare winter birth – rare in that she had survived – and her gifts had become known before her fourth year, when her dreams walked back and spoke in the voices of the ancestors. The old tiles of the Holds had been dug up from the grave of the last Letherii in the village who’d possessed the talent, and given to the child. There had been none to teach her the mysteries of those tiles, but, as it turned out, she’d needed no instruction from mortals – ghostly ancestors had provided that.

She was a handmaid to Mayen, and, upon Mayen’s marriage to Fear Sengar, she would enter the Sengar household. And Udinaas was in love with her.

Hopeless, of course. Feather Witch would be given a husband from among the better born of the Letherii slaves, a man whose bloodline held title and power back in Letheras. An Indebted, such as Udinaas, I had no hope of such a pairing.

As he stood staring at her, his friend Hulad reached up and took his wrist. Gentle pressure drew Udinaas down to a cross-legged position amidst the other witnesses.

Hulad leaned close. ‘What ails you, Udinaas?’

‘She has cast…’

‘Aye, and now we wait while she walks.’

‘I saw a white crow.’

Hulad flinched back.

‘Down on the strand. I beseeched the Errant, to no avail. The crow but laughed at my words.’

Their exchange had been overheard, and murmurs rippled out among the witnesses.

Feather Witch’s sudden moan silenced the gathering. All eyes fixed upon her, as she slowly raised her head.

Her eyes were empty, the whites clear as the ice on a mountain stream, iris and pupils vanished as if they had never been. And through the translucence swam twin spirals of faint light, smeared against the blackness of the Abyss.

Terror twisted her once-beautiful features, the terror of Beginnings, the soul standing before oblivion. A place of such loneliness that despair seemed the only answer. Yet it was also the place where power was thought, and thought flickered through the Abyss bereft of Makers, born from flesh yet to exist – for only the mind could reach back into the past, only its thoughts could dwell there. She was in the time before the worlds, and now must stride forward.

To witness the rise of the Holds.

Udinaas, like all Letherii, knew the sequences and the forms. First would come the three Fulcra known as the Realm Forgers. Fire, the silent scream of light, the very swirl of the stars themselves. Then Dolmen, bleak and rootless, drifting aimless in the void. And into the path of these two forces, the Errant. Bearer of its own unknowable laws, it would draw Fire and Dolmen into fierce wars. Vast fields of destructions, instance upon instance of mutual annihilation. But occasionally, rarely, there would be peace made between the two contestants. And Fire would bathe but not burn, and Dolmen would surrender its wandering ways, and so find root.

The Errant would then weave its mysterious skein, forging the Holds themselves. Ice. Eleint. Azath. Beast. And into their midst would emerge the remaining Fulcra. Axe, Knuckles, Blade, the Pack, Shapefinder and White Crow.

Then, as the realms took shape, the spiralling light would grow sharper, and the final Hold would be revealed. The Hold that had existed, unseen, at the very beginning. The Empty Hold – heart of Letherii worship – that was at the very centre of the vast spiral of realms. Home to the Throne that knew no King, home to the Wanderer Knight, and to the Mistress who waited still, alone in her bed of dreams. To the Watcher, who witnessed all, and the Walker, who patrolled borders not even he could see. To the Saviour, whose outstretched hand was never grasped. And, finally, to the Betrayer, whose loving embrace destroyed all it touched.

‘Walk with me to the Holds.’

The witnesses sighed as one, unable to resist that sultry, languid invitation.

‘We stand upon Dolmen. Broken rock, pitted by shattered kin, its surface seething with life so small it escapes our eyes. Life locked in eternal wars. Blade and Knuckles. We are among the Beasts. I can see the Bone Perch, slick with blood and layered with the ghost memories of countless usurpers. I see the Elder, still faceless, still blind. And Crone, who measures the cost in the scrawling passage of behemoths. Seer, who speaks to the indifferent. I see Shaman, seeking truths among the dead. And Hunter, who lives in the moment and thinks nothing of the consequences of slaughter. And Tracker, who sees the signs of the unknown, and walks the endless paths of tragedy. The Hold of the Beast, here in this valley that is but a scratch upon Dolmen’s hard skin.

‘There is no-one upon Bone Perch. Chaos hones every weapon, and the killing goes on and on. And from the maelstrom powerful creatures arise, and the slaying reaches beyond measure.

‘Such powers must be answered. The Errant returns, and casts the seed into blood-soaked earth. Thus rises the Hold of the Azath.

‘Deadly shelter for the tyrants, oh they are so easily lured. And so balance is achieved. But it remains a grisly balance, yes? No cessation to the wars, although they are much diminished, so that, finally, their cruel ways come into focus.’

Her voice was like sorcery unbound. Its rough-edged song entranced, devoured, unveiled vistas into the minds of all those who heard it. Feather Witch had walked from the terror of the Beginnings, and there was no fear in her words.

‘But the tread of time is itself a prison. We are shackled with progression. And so the Errant comes once more, and the Ice Hold rises, with its attendant servants who journey through the realms to war against time. Walker, Huntress, Shaper, Bearer, Child and Seed. And upon the Throne of Ice sits Death, cowled and frost-rimed, stealer of caring, to shatter the anxious shackles of mortal life. It is a gift, but a cold one.

‘Then, to achieve balance once more, is born the Eleint, and chaos is given flesh, and that flesh is draconic. Ruled by the Queen, who must be slain again and again by every child she bears. And her Consort, who loves none but himself. Then Liege, servant and guardian and doomed to eternal failure. Knight, the very sword of chaos itself – ’ware his path! And Gate, that which is the Breath. Wyval, spawn of the dragons, and the Lady, the Sister, Blood-Drinker and Path-Shaper. The Fell Dragons.

‘One Hold remains…’

Udinaas spoke with the others as they whispered, ‘The Empty Hold.’

Feather Witch tilted her head suddenly, a frown marring her forehead. ‘Something circles above the Empty Throne. I cannot see it, yet it… circles. A pallid hand, severed and dancing… no, it is-’

She stiffened, then red spurted from wounds on her shoulders, and she was lifted from the ground.

Screams, the witnesses surging to their feet, rushing forward, arms outstretched.

But too late, as invisible talons clenched tighter and invisible wings thundered the dusty air of the barn. Carrying Feather Witch into the shadows beneath the curved ceiling. She shrieked.

Udinaas, heart hammering in his chest, pushed away, through the jostling bodies, to the wooden stairs reaching to the loft. Splinters stabbed his hands as he clawed his way up the steep, rough-hewn steps. Feather Witch’s shrieks filled the air now, as she thrashed in the grip of the unseen talons. But crows have no talons-

He reached the loft, skidding as he raced across its uneven planks, eyes fixed on Feather Witch, then, one step from the edge, he leapt into the air. Arms outstretched, he sailed over the heads of the crowd below.

His target was the swirling air above her, the place where the invisible creature hovered. And when he reached that place, he collided hard with a massive, scaled body. Leathery wings hammered wildly at him as he wrapped his arms tight about a clammy, muscle-clenched body. He heard a wild hiss, then a jaw snapped down over his left shoulder. Needle-like teeth punched through his skin, sank deep into his flesh.

Udinaas grunted.

A Wyval, spawn of Eleint-

With his left hand, he scrabbled for the net-hook at his belt.

The beast tore at his shoulder, and blood gushed out.

He found the tool’s worn wooden grip, dragged the hooked blade free. Its inner edge was honed sharp, used to trim knots. Twisting round, teeth clenched in an effort to ignore the lizard jaws slashing his shoulder again and again until little more than shreds remained, Udinaas chopped downward to where he thought one of the Wyval’s legs must be. Solid contact. He ripped the inside edge of the blade into the tendons.

The creature screamed.

And released Feather Witch.

She plummeted into the mass of upraised arms below.

Talons hammered against Udinaas’s chest, punched through.

He slashed, cutting deep. The leg spasmed back.

Jaws drew away, then snapped home once again, this time round his neck.

Net-hook fell from twitching hand. Blood filled his mouth and nose.

Darkness writhed across his vision – and he heard the Wyval scream again, this time in terror and pain, the sound emanating from its nostrils in hot gusts down his back. The jaws ripped free.

And Udinaas was falling.

And knew nothing more.

The others were filing out when Hannan Mosag touched Trull’s shoulder. ‘Stay,’ he murmured. ‘Your brothers as well.’

Trull watched his fellow warriors leave in small groups. They were troubled, and more than one hardened face revealed a flash of dismay when casting a final parting glance back at the Warlock King and his K’risnan. Fear had moved up to stand close by, Rhulad following. Fear’s expression was closed – nothing surprising there – while Rhulad seemed unable to keep still, his head turning this way and that, one hand dancing on the pommel of the sword at his hip. A dozen heartbeats later and they were alone.

Hannan Mosag spoke. ‘Look at me, Trull Sengar. I would you understand – I intended no criticism of your gesture. I too would have driven my spear into that Letherii in answer to his jest. I made sore use of you, and for that I apologize-’

‘There is no need, sire,’ Trull replied. ‘I am pleased that you found in my actions a fulcrum by which you could shift the sentiments of the council.’

The Warlock King cocked his head. ‘Fulcrum.’ He smiled, but it was strained. ‘Then we shall speak no more of it, Trull Sengar.’ He fixed his attention next upon Rhulad, and his voice hardened slightly as he said, ‘Rhulad Sengar, unblooded, you attend me now because you are a son of Tomad… and my need for his sons includes you. I expect you to listen, not speak.’

Rhulad nodded, suddenly pale.

Hannan Mosag stepped between two of his K’risnan – who had yet to relinquish their vigilant positions – and led the three sons of Tomad down from the dais. ‘I understand that Binadas wanders once more. He knows no anchor, does he? Ah, well, there is no diminishment in that. You will have to apprise your brother upon his return of all that I tell you this night.’

They entered the Warlock King’s private chamber. There was no wife attending, nor any slaves. Hannan Mosag lived simply, with only his shadow sentinel for company. The room was sparse, severe in its order.

‘Three moons past,’ the Warlock King began, turning to face them, ‘my soul travelled when I slept, and was witness to a vision. I was on a plain of snow and ice. Beyond the lands of the Arapay, east and north of the Hungry Lake. But in the land that is ever still, something had risen. A violent birth, a presence demanding and stern. A spire of ice. Or a spear – I could not close with it – but it towered high above the snows, glittering, blinding with all the sun’s light it had captured. Yet something dark waited in its heart.’ His eyes had lost their focus, and Trull knew, with a shiver, that his king was once more in that cold, forlorn place. ‘A gift. For the Edur. For the Warlock King.’ He was silent then.

No-one spoke.

Abruptly, Hannan Mosag reached out and gripped Fear’s shoulder, gaze sharpening on Trull’s older brother. ‘The four sons of Tomad Sengar shall journey to that place. To retrieve this gift. You may take two others – I saw the tracks of six in my vision, leading towards that spire of ice.’

Fear spoke. ‘Theradas and Midik Buhn.’

The Warlock King nodded. ‘Well chosen, yes. Fear Sengar, I charge you as leader of this expedition. You are my will and shall not be disobeyed. Neither you nor any other in your party must touch the gift. Your flesh must not make contact with it, is that understood? Retrieve it from the spire, wrap it in hides if that is possible, and return here.’

Fear nodded. ‘It will be as you command, sire.’

‘Good.’ He scanned the three brothers. ‘It is the belief of many – perhaps even you – that the unification of the tribes was my singular goal as leader of the Hiroth. Sons of Tomad, know that it is but the beginning.’

All of a sudden a new presence was in the room, sensed simultaneously by the king and the brothers, and they turned as one to the entrance.

A K’risnan stood in the threshold.

Hannan Mosag nodded. ‘The slaves,’ he muttered, ‘have been busy this night. Come, all of you.’

Shadow wraiths had gathered round his soul, for soul was all he was, motionless and vulnerable, seeing without eyes, feeling without flesh as the vague, bestial things closed in, plucking at him, circling like dogs around a turtle.

They were hungry, those shadow spirits. Yet something held them back, some deep-set prohibition. They poked and prodded, but did nothing more.

They scattered – reluctantly – at the approach of something, someone, and Udinaas felt a warm, protective presence settle at his side.

Feather Witch. She was whole, her face luminous, her grey eyes quizzical as she studied him. ‘Son of Debt,’ she said, then sighed. ‘They say you cut me free. Even as the Wyval tore into you. You cared nothing for that.’ She studied him for a moment longer, then said, ‘Your love burns my eyes, Udinaas. What am I to do about this truth?’

He found he could speak. ‘Do nothing, Feather Witch. I know what is not to be. I would not surrender this burden.’

‘No. I see that.’

‘What has happened? Am I dying?’

‘You were. Uruth, wife to Tomad Sengar, came in answer to our… distress. She drew upon Kurald Emurlahn, and has driven the Wyval away. And now she works healing upon us both. We lie side by side, Udinaas, on the blood-soaked earth. Unconscious. She wonders at our reluctance to return.’

‘Reluctance?’

‘She finds she struggles to heal our wounds – I am resisting her, for us both.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I am troubled. Uruth senses nothing. Her power feels pure to her. Yet it is… stained.’

‘I do not understand. You said Kurald Emurlahn-’

‘Aye. But it has lost its purity. I do not know how, or what, but it has changed. Among all the Edur, it is changed.’

‘What are we to do?’

She sighed. ‘Return, now. Yield to her command. Offer our gratitude for her intervention, for the healing of our torn flesh. And in answer to the many questions she has, we can say little. It was confused. Battle with an unknown demon. Chaos. And of this conversation, Udinaas, we will say nothing. Do you understand?’

‘I do.’

She reached down and he felt her hand close about his – suddenly he was whole once more – and its warmth flowed through him.

He could hear his heart now, thundering in answer to that touch. And another heart, distant yet quickly closing, beating in time. But it was not hers, and Udinaas knew terror.

His mother stepped back, the knot of her brow beginning to unclench. ‘They approach,’ she said.

Trull stared down at the two slaves. Udinaas, from his own household. And the other, one of Mayen’s servants, the one they knew as Feather Witch for her divinatory powers. The blood still stained the puncture holes in their shirts, but the wounds themselves had closed. Another kind of blood was spilled across Udinaas’s chest, gold and glistening still.

‘I should outlaw these castings,’ Hannan Mosag growled. ‘Permitting Letherii sorcery in our midst is a dangerous indulgence.’

‘Yet there is value, High King,’ Uruth said, and Trull could see that she was still troubled.

‘And that is, wife of Tomad?’

‘A clarion call, High King, which we would do well to heed.’

Hannan Mosag grimaced. ‘There is Wyval blood upon the man’s shirt. Is he infected?’

‘Possibly,’ Uruth conceded. ‘Much of that which passes for a soul in a Letherii is concealed from my arts, High King.’

‘A failing that plagues us all, Uruth,’ the Warlock King said, granting her great honour by using her true name. ‘This one must be observed at all times,’ he continued, eyes on Udinaas. ‘If there is Wyval blood within him, the truth shall be revealed eventually. To whom does he belong?’

Tomad Sengar cleared his throat. ‘He is mine, Warlock King.’

Hannan Mosag frowned, and Trull knew he was thinking of his dream, and of his decision to weave into its tale the Sengar family. There were few coincidences in the world. The Warlock King spoke in a harder voice. ‘This Feather Witch, she is Mayen’s, yes? Tell me, Uruth, could you sense her power when you healed her?’

Trull’s mother shook her head. ‘Unimpressive. Or…’

‘Or what?’

Uruth shrugged. ‘Or she hid it well, despite her wounds. And if that is the case, then her power surpasses mine.’

Impossible. She is Letherii. A slave and still a virgin.

Hannan Mosag’s grunt conveyed similar sentiments. ‘She was assailed by a Wyval, clearly a creature that proved far beyond her ability to control. No, the child stumbles. Poorly instructed, ignorant of the vastness of all with which she would play. See, she only now regains awareness.’

Feather Witch’s eyes fluttered open, revealing little comprehension, and that quickly overwhelmed by animal terror.

Hannan Mosag sighed. ‘She will be of no use to us for a time. Leave them in the care of Uruth and the other wives.’ He faced Tomad Sengar. ‘When Binadas returns…’

Tomad nodded.

Trull glanced over at Fear. Behind him knelt the slaves that had attended the casting, heads pressed to the earth and motionless, as they had been since Uruth’s arrival. It seemed Fear’s hard eyes were fixed upon something no-one else could see.

When Binadas returns… the sons of Tomad will set forth. Into the ice wastes.

A sickly groan from Udinaas.

The Warlock King ignored it as he strode from the barn, his K’risnan flanking him, his shadow sentinel trailing a step behind. At the threshold, that monstrous wraith paused of its own accord, for a single glance back – though there was no way to tell upon whom it fixed its shapeless eyes.

Udinaas groaned a second time, and Trull saw the slave’s limbs trembling.

At the threshold, the wraith was gone.

CHAPTER TWO

A GLANCE BACK. IN THE MISTY HAZE FAR BELOW AND TO THE WEST glimmered the innermost extent of Reach Inlet, the sky’s pallid reflection thorough in disguising that black, depthless water. On all other sides, apart from the stony trail directly behind Seren Pedac, reared jagged mountains, the snow-clad peaks gilt by a sun she could not see from where she stood at the south end of the saddle pass.

The wind rushing past her stank of ice, the winter’s lingering breath of cold decay. She drew her furs tighter and swung round to gauge the progress of the train on the trail below.

Three solid-wheeled wagons, pitching and clanking. The swarming, bare-backed figures of the Nerek tribesmen as they flowed in groups around each wagon, the ones at the head straining on ropes, the ones at the rear advancing the stop-blocks to keep the awkward conveyances from rolling backward.

In those wagons, among other trade goods, were ninety ingots of iron, thirty to each wagon. Not the famed Letherii steel, of course, since sale of that beyond the borders was forbidden, but of the next highest quality grade, carbon-tempered and virtually free of impurities. Each ingot was as long as Seren’s arm, and twice as thick.

The air was bitter cold and thin. Yet those Nerek worked half naked, the sweat steaming from their slick skins. If a stop-block failed, the nearest tribesman would throw his own body beneath the wheel. And for this, Buruk the Pale paid them two docks a day. Seren Pedac was Buruk’s Acquitor, granted passage into Edur lands, one of seven so sanctioned by the last treaty. No merchant could enter Edur territory unless guided by an Acquitor. The bidding for Seren Pedac and the six others had been high. And, for Seren, Buruk’s had been highest of all, and now he owned her. Or, rather, he owned her services as guide and finder – a distinction of which he seemed increasingly unmindful.

But this was the contract’s sixth year. Only four remaining.

Maybe.

She turned once more, and studied the pass ahead. They were less than a hundred paces’ worth of elevation from the treeline. Knee-high, centuries-old dwarf oaks and spruce flanked the uneven path. Mosses and lichens covered the enormous boulders that had been dragged down by the rivers of ice in ages past. Crusted patches of snow remained, clinging to shadowed places. Here the wind moved nothing, not the wiry spruce, not even the crooked, leafless branches of the oaks.

Against such immovable stolidity, it could only howl.

The first wagon clattered onto level ground behind her, Nerek tongues shouting as it was quickly rolled ahead, past Seren Pedac, and anchored in place. The tribesmen then rushed back to help their fellows still on the ascent.

The squeal of a door, and Buruk the Pale clambered out from the lead wagon. He stood with his stance wide, as if struggling to regain the memory of balance, turning with a wince from the frigid wind, reaching up to keep his fur-lined cap on his head as he blinked over at Seren Pedac.

‘I shall etch this vision against the very bone of my skull, blessed Acquitor! There to join a host of others, of course. That umber cloak of fur, the stately, primeval grace as you stand there. The weathered majesty of your profile, so deftly etched by these wild heights.

‘You – Nerek! Find your foreman – we shall camp here. Meals must be prepared. Unload those bundles of wood in the third wagon. I want a fire, there, in the usual place. Be on with it!’

Seren Pedac set her pack down and made her way along the path. The wind quickly dragged Buruk’s words away. Thirty paces on, she came to the first of the old shrines, a widening of the trail, where level stretches of scraped bedrock reached out to the sides and the walls of the flanking mountains had been cut sheer. On each flat, boulders had been positioned to form the full-sized outline of a ship, both prow and stern pointed and marked by upright menhirs. The prow stones had been carved into a likeness of the Edur god, Father Shadow, but the winds had ground the details away. Whatever had originally occupied these two flanking ships had long vanished, although the bedrock within was strangely stained.

The sheer walls of rock alone retained something of their ancient power. Smooth and black, they were translucent, in the manner of thin, smoky obsidian. And shapes moved behind them. As if the mountains had been hollowed out, and each panel was a kind of window, revealing a mysterious, eternal world within. A world oblivious of all that surrounded it, beyond its own borders of impenetrable stone, and of these strange panels, either blind or indifferent.

The translucent obsidian defied Seren’s efforts to focus on the shapes moving on the other side, as it had the past score of times she had visited this site. But that very mystery was itself an irresistible lure, drawing her again and again.

Stepping carefully around the stern of the ship of boulders, she approached the eastern panel. She tugged the fur-lined glove from her right hand, reached and set it against the smooth stone. Warm, drinking the stiffness from her fingers, taking the ache from the joints. This was her secret, the healing powers she had discovered when she first touched the rock.

A lifetime in these hard lands stole suppleness from the body. Bones grew brittle, misshapen with pain. The endless hard rock underfoot soon sent shocks through the spine with each step taken. The Nerek, the tribe that, before kneeling to the Letherii king, had dwelt in the range’s easternmost reach, believed that they were the children of a woman and a serpent, and that the serpent dwelt still within the body, that gently curved spine, the stacked knuckles reaching up to hide its head in the centre of the brain. But the mountains despised that serpent, desired only to drag it back to the ground, to return it once more to its belly, slithering in the cracks and coiled beneath rocks. And so, in the course of a life, the serpent was made to bow, to bend and twist.

Nerek buried their dead beneath flat stones.

At least, they used to, before the king’s edict forced them to embrace the faith of the Holds.

Now they leave the bodies of their kin where they fall. Even unto abandoning their huts. It had been years ago, but Seren Pedac remembered with painful clarity coming over a rise and looking upon the vast plateau where the Nerek dwelt. The villages had lost all distinction, merging together in chaotic, dispirited confusion. Every third or fourth hut had been left to ruin, makeshift sepulchres for kin that had died of disease, old age, or too much alcohol, white nectar or durhang. Children wandered untended, trailed by feral rock rats that now bred uncontrolled and had become too disease-ridden to eat.

The Nerek people were destroyed, and from that pit there would be no climbing out. Their homeland was an overgrown cemetery, and the Letherii cities promised only debt and dissolution. They were granted no sympathy. The Letherii way of life was hard, but it was the true way, the way of civilization. The proof was found in its thriving where other ways stumbled or remained weak and stilted.

The bitter wind could not reach Seren Pedac now. The stone’s warmth flowed through her. Eyes closed, she leaned her forehead against its welcoming surface.

Who walks in there? Are they the ancestral Edur, as the Hiroth claim? If so, then why could they see no more clearly than Seren herself? Vague shapes, passing to and fro, as lost as those Nerek children in their dying villages.

She had her own beliefs, and, though unpleasant, she held to them. They are the sentinels of futility. Acquitors of the absurd. Reflections of ourselves forever trapped in aimless repetition. Forever indistinct, for that is all we can manage when we look upon ourselves, upon our lives. Sensations, memories and experiences, the fetid soil in which thoughts take root. Pale flowers beneath an empty sky.

If she could, she would sink into this wall of stone. To walk for eternity among those formless shapes, looking out, perhaps, every now and then, and seeing not stunted trees, moss, lichen and the occasional passer-by. No, seeing only the wind. The ever howling wind.

She could hear him walking long before he came into the flickering circle of firelight. The sound of his footfalls awakened the Nerek as well, huddled beneath tattered furs in a rough half-circle at the edge of the light, and they swiftly rose and converged towards that steady beat. Seren Pedac kept her gaze fixed on the flames, the riotous waste of wood that kept Buruk the Pale warm while he got steadily drunker on a mix of wine and white nectar, and fought against the tug at one corner of her mouth, that unbidden and unwelcome ironic curl that expressed bitter amusement at this impending conjoining of broken hearts.

Buruk the Pale carried with him secret instructions, a list long enough to fill an entire scroll, from other merchants, speculators and officials, including, she suspected, the Royal Household itself. And whatever those instructions entailed, their content was killing the man. He’d always liked his wine, but not with the seductive destroyer, white nectar, mixed in. That was this journey’s new fuel for the ebbing fires of Buruk’s soul, and it would drown him as surely as would the deep waters of Reach Inlet.

Four more years. Maybe.

The Nerek were mobbing their visitor, scores of voices blending into an eerie murmur, like worshippers beseeching a particularly bemusing god, and though the event was hidden in the darkness beyond the fire, Seren Pedac could see it well enough in her imagination. He was trying, only his eyes revealing his unease at the endless embraces, seeking to answer each one with something – anything – that could not be mistaken for benediction. He was, he would want to say, not a man worthy of such reverence. He was, he would want to say, a sordid culmination of failures – just as they were. All of them lost, here in this cold-hearted world. He would want to say – but no, Hull Beddict never said anything. Not, in any case, things so boldly… vulnerable.

Buruk the Pale had lifted his head at the commotion, blinking blearily. ‘Who comes?’

‘Hull Beddict,’ Seren Pedac answered.

The merchant licked his lips. ‘The old Sentinel?’

‘Yes. Although I advise you not to call him by that title. He returned the King’s Reed long ago.’

‘And so betrayed the Letherii, aye.’ Buruk laughed. ‘Poor, honourable fool. Honour demands dishonour, now that is amusing, isn’t it? Ever seen a mountain of ice in the sea? Calving again and again beneath the endless gnawing teeth of salt water. Just so.’ He tilted his bottle back, and Seren watched his throat bob.

‘Dishonour makes you thirsty, Buruk?’

He pulled the bottle down, glaring. Then a loose smile. ‘Parched, Acquitor. Like a drowning man who swallows air.’

‘Only it’s not air, it’s water.’

He shrugged. ‘A momentary surprise.’

‘Then you get over it.’

‘Aye. And in those last moments, the stars swim unseen currents.’

Hull Beddict had done as much as he could with the Nerek, and he stepped into the firelight. Almost as tall as an Edur. Swathed in the white fur of the north wolf, his long braided hair nearly as pale. The sun and high winds had darkened his visage to the hue of tanned hide. His eyes were bleached grey, and it seemed the man behind them was ever elsewhere. And, Seren Pedac well knew, that place was not home.

No, as lost as his flesh and bones, this body standing before us. ‘Take some warmth, Hull Beddict,’ she said.

He studied her in his distracted way – a seeming contradiction that only he could achieve.

Buruk the Pale laughed. ‘What’s the point? It’ll never reach him through those furs. Hungry, Beddict? Thirsty? I didn’t think so. How about a woman? I could spare you one of my Nerek half-bloods – the darlings wait in my wagon.’ He drank noisily from his bottle and held it out. ‘Some of this? Oh dear, he hides poorly his disgust.’

Eyes on the old Sentinel, Seren asked, ‘Have you come down the pass? Are the snows gone?’

Hull Beddict glanced over at the wagons. When he replied, the words came awkwardly, as if it had been some time since he last spoke. ‘Should do.’

‘Where are you going?’

He glanced at her once more. ‘With you.’

Seren’s brows rose.

Laughing, Buruk the Pale waved expansively with his bottle – which was empty save for a last few scattering drops that hit the fire with a hiss. ‘Oh, welcome company indeed! By all means! The Nerek will be delighted.’ He tottered upright, weaving perilously close to the fire, then, with a final wave, he stumbled towards his wagon.

Seren and Hull watched him leave, and Seren saw that the Nerek had returned to their sleeping places, but all sat awake, their eyes glittering with reflected flames as they watched the old Sentinel, who now stepped closer to the fire and slowly sat down. He held out battered hands to the heat.

They could be softer than they appeared, Seren recalled. The memory did little more than stir long-dead ashes, however, and she tipped another log into the hungry fire before them, watched the sparks leap into the darkness.

‘He intends to remain a guest of the Hiroth until the Great Meeting?’

She shot him a look, then shrugged. ‘I think so. Is that why you’ve decided to accompany us?’

‘It will not be like past treaties, this meeting,’ he said. ‘The Edur are no longer divided. The Warlock King rules unchallenged.’

‘Everything’s changed, yes.’

‘And so Diskanar sends Buruk the Pale.’

She snorted, kicked back into the flames an errant log that had rolled out. ‘A poor choice. I doubt he’ll remain sober enough to manage much spying.’

‘Seven merchant houses and twenty-eight ships have descended upon the Calach beds,’ Hull Beddict said, flexing his fingers.

‘I know.’

‘Diskanar’s delegation will claim the hunting was unsanctioned. They will decry the slaughter. Then use it to argue that the old treaty is flawed, that it needs to be revised. For the lost seals, they will make a magnanimous gesture – by throwing gold at Hannan Mosag’s feet.’

She said nothing. He was right, after all. Hull Beddict knew better than most King Ezgara Diskanar’s mind – or, rather, that of the Royal Household, which wasn’t always the same thing. ‘There is more to it, I suspect,’ she said after a moment.

‘How so?’

‘I imagine you have not heard who will be leading the delegation.’

He grunted sourly. ‘The mountains are silent on such matters.’

She nodded. ‘Representing the king’s interests, Nifadas.’

‘Good. The First Eunuch is no fool.’

‘Nifadas will be sharing command with Prince Quillas Diskanar.’

Hull Beddict slowly turned to face her. ‘She’s risen far, then.’

‘She has. And for all the years since you last crossed her son’s path… well, Quillas has changed little. The queen keeps him on a short leash, with the Chancellor close at hand to feed him sweet treats. It’s rumoured that the primary holder of interest in the seven merchant houses that defied the treaty is none other than Queen Janall herself.’

‘And the Chancellor dares not leave the palace,’ Hull Beddict said, and she heard the sneer. ‘So he sends Quillas. A mistake. The prince is blind to subtlety. He knows his own ignorance and stupidity so is ever suspicious of others, especially when they say things he does not understand. One cannot negotiate when dragged in the wake of emotions.’

‘Hardly a secret,’ Seren Pedac replied. And waited.

Hull Beddict spat into the fire. They don’t care. The queen’s let him slip the leash. Allowing Quillas to flail about, to deliver clumsy insults in the face of Hannan Mosag. Is this plain arrogance? Or do they truly invite war?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘And Buruk the Pale – whose instructions does he carry?’

‘I’m not sure. But he’s not happy.’

They fell silent then.

Twelve years past, King Ezgara Diskanar charged his favoured Preda of the Guard, Hull Beddict, with the role of Sentinel. He was to journey to the north borders, then beyond. His task was to study the tribes who still dwelt wild in the mountains and high forests. Talented warrior though he was, Hull Beddict had been naive. What he had embraced as a journey in search of knowledge, the first steps towards peaceful coexistence, had in fact been a prelude to conquest. His detailed reports of tribes such as the Nerek, and the Faraed and the Tarthenal, had been pored over by minions of Chancellor Triban Gnol. Weaknesses had been prised from the descriptions. And then, in a series of campaigns of subjugation, brutally exploited.

And Hull Beddict, who had forged blood-ties with those fierce tribes, was there to witness all his enthusiasm delivered. Gifts that were not gifts at all, incurring debts, the debts exchanged for land. The deadly maze lined with traders, merchants, seducers of false need, purveyors of destructive poisons. Defiance answered with annihilation. The devouring of pride, independence, and self-sufficiency. In all, a war so profoundly cynical in its cold, heartless expediting that no honourable soul could survive witness. Especially when that soul was responsible for it. For all of it.

And to this day, the Nerek worshipped Hull Beddict. As did the half-dozen indebted beggars who were all that was left of the Faraed. And the scattered remnants of the Tarthenal, huge and shambling and drunk in the pit towns outside the cities to the south, still bore the three bar tattoos beneath their left shoulders – a match to those on Hull’s own back.

He sat now in silence beside her, his eyes on the ebbing flames of the dying hearth. One of his guards had returned to the capital, bearing the King’s Reed. The Sentinel was Sentinel no longer. Nor would he return to the southlands. He had walked into the mountains.

She had first met him eight years ago, a day out from High Fort, reduced to little more than a scavenging animal in the wilds.

And had brought him back. At least some of the way. Oh, but it was far less noble than it first seemed. Perhaps it would have been. Truly noble. Had I not then made sore use of him.

She had succumbed to her own selfish needs, and there was nothing glorious in that.

Seren wondered if he would ever forgive her. She then wondered if she would ever forgive herself.

‘Buruk the Pale knows all that I need to learn,’ Hull Beddict said.

‘Possibly.’

‘He will tell me.’

Not of his own volition, he won’t. ‘Regardless of his instructions,’ she said, ‘he remains a small player in this game, Hull. Head of a merchant house conveniently placed in Trate, with considerable experience dealing with the Hiroth and Arapay.’ And, through me, legitimate passage into Edur lands.

‘Hannan Mosag will send his warriors after those ships,’ Hull Beddict said. ‘The queen’s interest in those merchant houses is about to take a beating.’

‘I expect she has anticipated the loss.’

The man beside her was not the naive youth he had once been. But he was long removed from the intricate schemes and deadly sleight of hand that was so much the lifeblood of the Letherii. She could sense him struggling with the multiplicity of layers of intent and design at work here. ‘I begin to see the path she takes,’ he said after a time, and the bleak despair in his voice was so raw that she looked away, blinking.

He went on, ‘This is the curse, then, that we are so inclined to look ahead, ever ahead. As if the path before us should be any different from the one behind us.’

Aye, and it pays to remind me, every time I glance back.

I really should stop doing that.

‘Five wings will buy you a grovel,’ Tehol Beddict muttered from his bed. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered how odd it is? Of course, every god should have a throne, but shouldn’t it also follow that every throne built for a god is actually occupied? And if it isn’t, who in their right mind decided that it was worthwhile to worship an empty throne?’

Seated on a low three-legged stool at the foot of the bed, Bugg paused in his knitting. He held out and examined the coarse wool shirt he was working on, one eye squeezing into a critical squint.

Tehol’s gaze flicked down at his servant. ‘I’m fairly certain my left arm is of a length close to, if not identical with, that of my right. Why do you persist in this conceit? You’ve no talent to speak of, in much of anything, come to think of it. Probably why I love you so dearly, Bugg.’

‘Not half as much as you love yourself,’ the old man replied, resuming his knitting.

‘Well, I see no point in arguing that.’ He sighed, wiggling his toes beneath the threadbare sheet. The wind was freshening, blessedly cool and only faintly reeking of the south shore’s Stink Flats. Bed and stool were the only furniture on the roof of Tehol’s house. Bugg still slept below, despite the sweltering heat, and only came up when his work demanded light enough to see. Saved on lamp oil, Tehol told himself, since oil was getting dreadfully expensive now that the whales were getting scarce.

He reached down to the half-dozen dried figs on the tarnished plate Bugg had set down beside him. ‘Ah, more figs. Another humiliating trip to the public privies awaits me, then.’ He chewed desultorily, watching the monkey-like clambering of the workers on the dome of the Eternal Domicile. Purely accidental, this exquisitely unobstructed view of the distant palace rising from the heart of Letheras, and all the more satisfying for that, particularly the way the nearby towers and Third Height bridges so neatly framed King Ezgara Diskanar’s conceit. ‘Eternal Domicile indeed. Eternally unfinished.’

The dome had proved so challenging to the royal architects that four of them had committed suicide in the course of its construction, and one had died tragically – if somewhat mysteriously – trapped inside a drainage pipe. ‘Seventeen years and counting. Looks like they’ve given up entirely on that fifth wing. What do you think, Bugg? I value your expert opinion.’

Bugg’s expertise amounted to rebuilding the hearth in the kitchen below. Twenty-two fired bricks stacked into a shape very nearly cubic, and indeed it would have been if three of the bricks had not come from a toppled mausoleum at the local cemetery. Grave masons held to peculiar notions of what a brick’s dimensions should be, pious bastards that they were.

In response to Tehol’s query, Bugg glanced up, squinting with both eyes.

Five wings to the palace, the dome rising from the centre. Four tiers to those wings, except for the shoreside one, where only two tiers had been built. Work had been suspended when it was discovered that the clay beneath the foundations tended to squeeze out to the sides, like closing a fist on a block of butter. The fifth wing was sinking.

‘Gravel,’ Bugg said, returning to his knitting.

‘What?’

‘Gravel,’ the old man repeated. ‘Drill deep wells down into the clay, every few paces or so, and fill ’em with gravel, packed down with drivers. Cap ‘em and build your foundation pillars on top. No weight on the clay means it’s got no reason to squirm.’

Tehol stared down at his servant. ‘All right. Where in the Errant’s name did you come by that? And don’t tell me you stumbled onto it trying to keep our hearth from wandering.’

Bugg shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that heavy. But if it was, that’s what I would’ve done.’

‘Bore a hole? How far down?’

‘Bedrock, of course. Won’t work otherwise.’

‘And fill it with gravel.’

‘Pounded down tight, aye.’

Tehol plucked another fig from the plate, brushed dust from it – Bugg had been harvesting from the market leavings again. Outwitting the rats and dogs. ‘That’d make for an impressive cook hearth.’

‘It would at that.’

‘You could cook secure and content in the knowledge that the flatstone will never move, barring an earthquake-’

‘Oh no, it’ll handle an earthquake too. Gravel, right? Flexible, you see.’

‘Extraordinary.’ He spat out a seed. ‘What do you think? Should I get out of bed today, Bugg?’

‘Got no reason to-’ The servant stopped short, then cocked his head, thinking. ‘Mind you, maybe you have.’

‘Oh? And you’d better not be wasting my time with this.’

‘Three women visited this morning.’

‘Three women.’ Tehol glanced up at the nearest Third Height bridge, watched people and carts moving across it. ‘I don’t know three women, Bugg. And if I did, all of them arriving simultaneously would be cause for terror, rather than an incidental “oh by the way”.’

‘Aye, but you don’t know them. Not even one of them. I don’t think. New faces to me, anyway.’

‘New? You’ve never seen them before? Not even in the market? The riverfront?’

‘No. Might be from one of the other cities, or maybe a village. Odd accents.’

‘And they asked for me by name?’

‘Well, not precisely. They wanted to know if this was the house of the man who sleeps on his roof.’

‘If they needed to ask that, they are from some toad-squelching village. What else did they want to know? The colour of your hair? What you were wearing while standing there in front of them? Did they want to know their own names as well? Tell me, are they sisters? Do they share a single eyebrow?’

‘Not that I noticed. Handsome women, as I recall. Young and meaty. Sounds as though you’re not interested, though.’

‘Servants shouldn’t presume. Handsome. Young and meaty. Are you sure they were women?’

‘Oh yes, quite certain. Even eunuchs don’t have breasts so large, or perfect, or, indeed, lifted so high the lasses could rest their chins-’

Tehol found himself standing beside the bed. He wasn’t sure how he got there, but it felt right. ‘You finished that shirt, Bugg?’

The servant held it out once more. ‘Just roll up the sleeve, I think.’

‘Finally, I can go out in public once more. Tie those ends off or whatever it is you do to them and give it here.’

‘But I haven’t started yet on the trousers-’

‘Never mind that,’ Tehol cut in, wrapping the bed sheet about his waist, once, twice, thrice, then tucking it in at one hip. He then paused, a strange look stealing across his features. ‘Bugg, for Errant’s sake, no more figs for a while, all right? Where are these mountainously endowed sisters, then?’

‘Red Lane. Huldo’s.’

‘The pits or on the courtyard?’

‘Courtyard.’

‘That’s something, at least. Do you think Huldo might have forgotten?’

‘No. But he’s been spending a lot of time down at the Drownings.’

Tehol smiled, then began rubbing a finger along his teeth. ‘Winnin’ or roosin’?’

‘Loosing.’

‘Hah!’ He ran a hand through his hair and struck a casual pose. ‘How do I look?’

Bugg handed him the shirt. ‘How you manage to keep those muscles when you do nothing baffles me,’ he said.

‘A Beddict trait, dear sad minion of mine. You should see Brys, under all that armour. But even he looks scrawny when compared to Hull. As the middle son, I of course represent the perfect balance. Wit, physical prowess and a multitude of talents to match my natural grace. When combined with my extraordinary ability to waste it all, you see, standing before you, the exquisite culmination.’

‘A fine and pathetic speech,’ Bugg said with a nod.

‘It was, wasn’t it? I shall be on my way now.’ Tehol gestured as he walked to the ladder. ‘Clean up the place. We might have guests this evening.’

‘I will, if I find the time.’

Tehol paused at the ragged edge of the section of roof that had collapsed. ‘Ah yes, you have trousers to make – have you enough wool for that?’

‘Well, I can make one leg down all the way, or I can make both short.’

‘How short?’

‘Pretty short.’

‘Go with the one leg.’

‘Aye, master. And then I have to find us something to eat. And drink.’

Tehol turned, hands on his hips. ‘Haven’t we sold virtually everything, sparing one bed and a lone stool? So, just how much tidying up is required?’

Bugg squinted. ‘Not much,’ he conceded. ‘What do you want we should eat tonight?’

‘Something that needs cooking.’

‘Would that be something better when cooked, or something that has to be cooked?’

‘Either way’s fine.’

‘How about wood?’

‘I’m not eating-’

‘For the hearth.’

‘Oh, right. Well, find some. Look at that stool you’re sitting on – it doesn’t really need all three legs, does it? When scrounging doesn’t pay, it’s time to improvise. I’m off to meet my three destinies, Bugg. Pray the Errant’s looking the other way, will you?’

‘Of course.’

Tehol made his way down the ladder, discovering, in a moment of panic, that only one rung in three remained.

The ground-level room was bare except for a thin mattress rolled up against one wall. A single battered pot rested on the hearth’s flatstone, which sat beneath the front-facing window, a pair of wooden spoons and bowls on the floor nearby. All in all, Tehol reflected, elegant in its severity.

He swung aside the ratty curtain that served as a door, reminding himself to tell Bugg to retrieve the door latch from the hearth-bed. A bit of polishing and it might earn a dock or two from Cusp the Tinkerer. Tehol stepped outside.

He was in a narrow aisle, so narrow he was forced to sidle sideways out to the street, kicking rubbish aside with each step. Meaty women… wish I’d seen them squeezing their way to my door. An invitation to dinner now seemed essential. And, mindful host that he was, he could position himself with a clear view, and whatever pleasure they saw on his face they could take for welcome.

The street beyond was empty save for three Nerek, a mother and two half-blood children, who’d found in the recessed niche in the wall opposite a new home and seemed to do nothing but sleep. He strode past their huddled forms, kicking at a rat that had been edging closer, and threaded his way between the high-stacked wooden crates that virtually blocked this end of the street. Biri’s warehouse was perpetually overstocked, and Biri viewed the last reach of Cul Street this side of Quillas Canal as his own personal compound.

Chalas, the watchman of the yard, was sprawled on a bench on the other side, where Cul opened out onto Burl Square, his leather-wrapped clout resting on his thighs. Red-shot eyes found Tehol. ‘Nice skirt,’ the guard said.

‘You’ve lightened my step, Chalas.’

‘Happy to oblige, Tehol.’

Tehol paused, hands on hips, and surveyed the crowded square. ‘The city thrives.’

‘No change there… exceptin’ the last time.’

‘Oh, that was a minor sideways tug, as far as currents go.’

‘Not to hear Biri talk of it. He still wants your head salted and in a barrel rolling out to sea.’

‘Biri always did run in place.’

Chalas grunted. ‘It’s been weeks since you last came down. Special occasion?’

‘I have a date with three women.’

‘Want my clout?’

Tehol glanced down and studied the battered weapon. ‘I wouldn’t want to leave you defenceless.’

‘It’s my face scares ’em away. Exceptin’ those Nerek. Got past me, those ones did.’

‘Giving you trouble?’

‘No. The rat count’s way down, in fact. But you know Biri.’

‘Better than he knows himself. Remind him of that, Chalas, if he starts thinking of giving them trouble.’

‘I will.’

Tehol set out, winding through the seething press in the square. The Down Markets opened out onto it from three sides; a more decrepit collection of useless items for sale Tehol had yet to see. And the people bought in a frenzy, day after blessed day. Our civilization thrives on stupidity. And it only took a sliver of cleverness to tap that idiot vein and drink deep of the riches. Comforting, if slightly depressing. The way of most grim truths.

He reached the other side, entered Red Lane. Thirty strides on and he came opposite the arched entrance to Huldo’s. Down the shadowed walkway and back into the courtyard’s sunlight. A half-dozen tables, all occupied. Repose for the blissfully ignorant or those without the coin to sample the pits in Huldo’s inner sanctum, where various sordid activities were conducted day and night, said activities occasionally approaching the artistic expression of the absurd. One more example, Tehol reflected, of what people would pay for, given the chance.

The three women at a table in the far corner stood out for not just the obvious detail – they were the only women present – but for a host of subtler distinctions. Handsome is… just the right word. If they were sisters it was in sentiment only, and for the shared predilection for some form of martial vigour, given their brawn, and the bundled armour and covered weapons heaped beside the table.

The one on the left was red-haired, the fiery tresses sun-bleached and hanging in reluctant ripples down onto her broad shoulders. She was drinking from a clay-wrapped bottle, disdaining or perhaps not understanding the function of the cup that had accompanied it. Her face belonged to a heroic statue lining a colonnade, strong and smooth and perfect, her blue eyes casting a stony regard with the serene indifference of all such statues. Next to her, and leaning with both forearms on the small tabletop, was a woman with a hint of Faraed blood in her, given the honeyed hue of her skin and the faint up-tilt of her dark eyes. Her hair was either dark brown or black, and had been tied back, leaving clear her heart-shaped face. The third woman sat slouched back in her chair, left leg tipped out to one side, the right incessantly jittering up and down – fine legs, Tehol observed, clad in tight rawhide, tanned very nearly white. Her head was shaved, the pale skin gleaming. Wide-set, light grey eyes lazily scanning the other patrons, finally coming to rest on Tehol where he stood at the courtyard’s threshold.

He smiled.

She sneered.

Urul, Huldo’s chief server, edged out from a nearby shadow and beckoned Tehol over.

He came as close as he dared. ‘You’re looking… well, Urul. Is Huldo here?’

The man’s need for a bath was legendary. Patrons gave their orders with decisive brevity and rarely called Urul over for more wine until the meal was finished. He stood before Tehol now, brow gleaming with oily sweat, hands fidgeting over the wide sash of his belt. ‘Huldo? No, Errant be praised. He’s on the Low Walk at the Drownings. Tehol, those women – they’ve been here all morning! They frighten me, the way they scowl whenever I get close.’

‘Leave them to me, Urul,’ Tehol said, risking a pat on the man’s damp shoulder.

‘You?’

‘Why not?’ With that, Tehol adjusted his skirt, checked his sleeves, and threaded his way between the tables. Halting before the three women, he glanced round for a chair. He found one and dragged it close, then settled with a sigh.

‘What do you want?’ asked the bald one.

‘That was my question. My servant informs me that you visited my residence this morning. I am Tehol Beddict… the one who sleeps on his roof.’

Three sets of eyes fixed on him.

Enough to make a stalwart warlord wilt… but me? Only slightly.

‘You?’

Tehol scowled at the bald woman. ‘Why does everyone keep asking that? Yes, me. Now, by your accent, I’d hazard you’re from the islands. I don’t know anyone in the islands. Accordingly, I don’t know you. Not to say I wouldn’t like to, of course. Know you, that is. At least, I think so.’

The red-haired woman set her bottle down with a clunk. ‘We’ve made a mistake.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that-’

‘No,’ the bald woman said to her companion. ‘This is an affectation. We should have anticipated a certain degree of… mockery.’

‘He has no trousers.’

The dark-eyed woman added, ‘And his arms are lopsided.’

‘Not quite accurate,’ Tehol said to her. ‘It’s only the sleeves that are somewhat askew.’

‘I don’t like him,’ she pronounced, crossing her arms.

‘You don’t have to,’ the bald woman said. ‘Errant knows, we’re not going to bed him, are we?’

‘I’m crushed.’

‘You would be,’ the red-haired woman said, with an unpleasant smile.

‘Bed him? On the roof? You must be insane, Shand.’

‘How can not liking him be unimportant?’

The bald woman, the one named Shand, sighed and rubbed her eyes. ‘Listen to me, Hejun. This is business. Sentiments have no place in business – I’ve already told you that.’

Hejun’s arms remained crossed, and she shook her head. ‘You can’t trust who you don’t like.’

‘Of course you can!’ Shand said, blinking.

‘It’s his reputation I’m not happy with,’ said the third, as yet unnamed, woman.

‘Rissarh,’ Shand said, sighing again, ‘it’s his reputation what’s brought us here.’

Tehol clapped his hands. Once, loud enough to startle the three women. ‘Excellent. Rissarh with the red hair. Hejun, with Faraed blood. And Shand, no hair at all. Well,’ he set his hands on the table and rose, ‘I’m content with that. Goodbye-’

‘Sit down!’

The growl was so menacing that Tehol found himself seated once more, the prickle of sweat beneath his woollen shirt.

‘That’s better,’ Shand said in a more mellow tone. She leaned forward. ‘Tehol Beddict. We know all about you.’

‘Oh?’

‘We even know why what happened happened.’

‘Indeed.’

‘And we want you to do it again.’

‘You do?’

‘Yes. Only this time, you’ll have the courage to go through with it. All the way.’

‘I will?’

‘Because we – myself, Hejun and Rissarh – we’re going to be your courage. This time. Now, let’s get out of here, before that server comes back. We’ve purchased a building. We can talk there. It doesn’t smell.’

‘Now that’s a relief,’ Tehol said.

The three women rose.

He did not.

‘I told you,’ Hejun said to Shand. ‘It’s not going to work. There’s nothing left in there. Look at him.’

‘It’ll work,’ Shand said.

‘Hejun is, alas, right,’ Tehol said. ‘It won’t.’

‘We know where the money went,’ Shand said.

‘That’s no secret. Riches to rags. I lost it.’

But Shand shook her head. ‘No you didn’t. Like I said, we know. And if we talk…’

‘You keep saying you know something,’ Tehol said, adding a shrug.

‘As you said,’ she replied, smiling, ‘we’re from the islands.’

‘But not those islands.’

‘Of course not – who’d go there? And that’s what you counted on.’

Tehol rose. ‘As they say, five wings will buy you a grovel. All right, you’ve purchased a building.’

‘You’ll do it,’ Shand insisted. ‘Because if it comes out, Hull will kill you.’

‘Hull?’ Finally Tehol could smile. ‘My brother knows nothing about it.’

He savoured the pleasure, then, in seeing these three women knocked off balance. There, now you know how it feels.

‘Hull may prove a problem.’

Brys Beddict could not hold his gaze on the man standing before him. Those small, placid eyes peering out from the folds of pink flesh seemed in some way other than human, holding so still that the Finadd of the Royal Guard imagined he was looking into the eyes of a snake. A flare-neck, coiled on the centre of the river road when the rains are but days away. Up from the river, three times as long as a man is tall, head resting on the arm-thick curl of its body. ‘Ware the plodding cattle dragging their carts on that road. ’Ware the drover stupid enough to approach.

‘Finadd?’

Brys forced his eyes back to the huge man. ‘First Eunuch, I am at a loss as to how to respond. I have neither seen nor spoken with my brother in years. Nor will I be accompanying the delegation.’

First Eunuch Nifadas turned away, and walked noiselessly to the high-backed wooden chair behind the massive desk that dominated the chamber of his office. He sat, the motion slow and even. ‘Be at ease, Finadd Beddict. I have immense respect for your brother Hull. I admire the extremity of his conviction, and understand to the fullest extent the motivation behind his… choices in the past.’

‘Then, if you will forgive me, you are farther down the path than I, First Eunuch. Of my brother – of my brothers – I understand virtually nothing. Alas, it has always been so.’

Nifadas blinked sleepily, then he nodded. ‘Families are odd things, aren’t they? Naturally, my own experience precludes many of the subtleties regarding that subject. Yet, if you will, my exclusion has, in the past, permitted me a certain objectivity, from which I have often observed the mechanisms of such fraught relationships with a clear eye.’ He looked up and fixed Brys once more with his regard. ‘Will you permit me a comment or two?’

‘Forgive me, First Eunuch-’

Nifadas waved him silent with one plump hand. ‘No need. I was presumptuous. Nor have I explained myself. As you know, preparations are well along. The Great Meeting looms. I am informed that Hull Beddict has joined Buruk the Pale and Seren Pedac on the trail to Hiroth lands. Further, it is my understanding that Buruk is charged with a host of instructions – none issued by me, I might add. In other words, it is likely that those instructions not only do not reflect the king’s interests, but in fact may contradict our Sire’s wishes.’ He blinked again, slow and measured. ‘Precarious, agreed. Unwelcome, as well. My concern is this. Hull may… misunderstand…’

‘By assuming that Buruk acts on behalf of King Diskanar, you mean.’

‘Just so.’

‘He would then seek to counter the merchant.’

Nifadas sighed his agreement.

‘Which,’ Brys continued, ‘is itself not necessarily a bad thing.’

‘True, in itself not necessarily a bad thing.’

‘Unless you intend, as the king’s official representative and nominal head of the delegation, to counter the merchant in your own way. To deflect those interests Buruk has been charged with presenting to the Edur.’

The First Eunuch’s small mouth hinted at a smile.

Nothing more than that, yet Brys understood. His gaze travelled to the window behind Nifadas. Clouds swam blearily through the bubbled, wavy glass. ‘Not Hull’s strengths,’ he said.

‘No, we are agreed in that. Tell me, Finadd, what do you know of this Acquitor, Seren Pedac?’

‘Reputation only. But it’s said she owns a residence here in the capital. Although I have never heard if she visits.’

‘Rarely. The last time was six years ago.’

‘Her name is untarnished,’ Brys said.

‘Indeed. Yet one must wonder… she is not blind, after all. Nor, I gather, unthinking.’

‘I would imagine, First Eunuch, that few Acquitors are.’

‘Just so. Well, thank you for your time, Finadd. Tell me,’ he added as he slowly rose, indicating the audience was at an end, ‘have you settled well as the King’s Champion?’

‘Uh, well enough, First Eunuch.’

‘The burden is easily shouldered by one as young and fit as you, then?’

‘Not easily. I would make no claim to that.’

‘Not comfortable, but manageable.’

‘A fair enough description.’

‘You are an honest man, Brys. As one of the king’s advisers, I am content with my choice.’

But you feel I need the reminder. Why is that? ‘I remain honoured, First Eunuch, by the king’s faith, and of course, yours.’

‘I will delay you no longer, Finadd.’

Brys nodded, turned and strode from the office.

A part of him longed for the days of old, when he was just an officer in the Palace Guard. When he carried little political weight, and the presence of the king was always at a distance, with Brys and his fellow guardsmen standing at attention along one wall at official audiences and engagements. Then again, he reconsidered as he walked down the corridor, the First Eunuch had called him because of his blood, not his new role as King’s Champion.

Hull Beddict. Like a restless ghost, a presence cursed to haunt him no matter where he went, no matter what he did. Brys remembered seeing his eldest brother, resplendent in the garb of Sentinel, the King’s Reed at his belt. A last and lasting vision for the young, impressionable boy he had been all those years ago. That moment remained with him, a tableau frozen in time that he wandered into in his dreams, or at reflective moments like these. A painted image. Brothers, man and child, the two of them cracked and yellowed beneath the dust. And he would stand witness, like a stranger, to the boy’s wide-eyed, adoring expression, and would follow that uplifted gaze and then shift his own uneasily, suspicious of that uniformed soldier’s pride.

Innocence was a blade of glory, yet it could blind on both sides.

He’d told Nifadas he did not understand Hull. But he did. All too well.

He understood Tehol, too, though perhaps marginally less well. The rewards of wealth beyond measure had proved cold; only the hungry desire for that wealth hissed with heat. And that truth belonged to the world of the Letherii, the brittle flaw at the core of the golden sword. Tehol had thrown himself on that sword, and seemed content to bleed to death, slowly and with amiable aplomb. Whatever final message he sought in his death was a waste of time, since no-one would look his way when that day came. No-one dared. Which is why, I suspect, he’s smiling.

His brothers had ascended their peaks long ago – too early, it turned out – and now slid down their particular paths to dissolution and death. And what of me, then? I have been named King’s Champion. Judged the finest swordsman in the kingdom. I believe I stand, here and now, upon the highest reach. There was no need to take that thought further.

He reached a T-intersection and swung right. Ten paces ahead a side door spilled light into the corridor. As he came opposite it a voice called to him from the chamber within.

‘Finadd! Come quick.’

Brys inwardly smiled and turned. Three strides into the spice-filled, low-ceilinged room. Countless sources of light made a war of colours on the furniture and tables with their crowds of implements, scrolls and beakers.

‘Ceda?’

‘Over here. Come and see what I’ve done.’

Brys edged past a bookcase extending out perpendicularly from one wall and found the King’s Sorceror behind it, perched on a stool. A tilted table with a level bottom shelf was at the man’s side, cluttered with discs of polished glass.

‘Your step has changed, Finadd,’ Kuru Qan said, ‘since becoming the King’s Champion.’

‘I was not aware of that, Ceda.’

Kuru Qan spun on his seat and raised a strange object before his face. Twin lenses of glass, bound in place side by side with wire. The Ceda’s broad, prominent features were made even more so by a magnifying effect from the lenses. Kuru Qan set the object against his face, using ties to bind it so that the lenses sat before his eyes, making them huge as he blinked up at Brys.

‘You are as I imagined you. Excellent. The blur diminishes in importance. Clarity ascends, achieving pre-eminence among all the important things. What I hear now matters less than what I see. Thus, perspective shifts. The world changes. Important, Finadd. Very important.’

‘Those lenses have given you vision? That is wonderful, Ceda!’

‘The key was in seeking a solution that was the antithesis of sorcery. Looking upon the Empty Hold stole my sight, after all. I could not effect correction through the same medium. Not yet important, this detail. Pray indeed it never becomes so.’

Ceda Kuru Qan never held but one discourse at any one time. Or so he had explained it once. While many found this frustrating, Brys was ever charmed.

‘Am I the first to be shown your discovery, Ceda?’

‘You would see its importance more than most. Swordsman, dancing with place, distance and timing, with all the material truths. I need to make adjustments.’ He snatched the contraption off and hunched over it, minuscule tools flicking in his deft hands. ‘You were in the First Eunuch’s chamber of office. Not an altogether pleasing conversation for you. Unimportant, for the moment.’

‘I am summoned to the throne room, Ceda.’

‘True. Not entirely urgent. The Preda would have you present… shortly. The First Eunuch enquired after your eldest brother?’

Brys sighed.

‘I surmised,’ Kuru Qan said, glancing up with a broad smile. ‘Your unease tainted your sweat. Nifadas is sorely obsessed at the moment.’ He set the lenses against his eyes once more. Focused on the Finadd’s eyes – disconcerting, since it had never happened before. ‘Who needs spies when one’s nose roots out all truths?’

‘I hope, Ceda, that you do not lose that talent, with this new invention of yours.’

‘Ah, see! A swordsman indeed. The importance of every sense is not lost on you! What a measurable delight – here, let me show you.’ He slid down from the stool and approached a table, where he poured clear liquid into a translucent beaker. Crouched low to check its level, then nodded. ‘Measurable, as I had suspected.’ He plucked the beaker from its stand and tossed the contents back, smacking his lips when he was done. ‘But it is both brothers who haunt you now.’

‘I am not immune to uncertainty.’

‘One should hope not! An important admission. When the Preda is done with you – and it shall not be long – return to me. We have a task before us, you and I.’

‘Very well, Ceda.’

‘Time for some adjustments.’ He pulled off the lenses once more. ‘For us both,’ he added.

Brys considered, then nodded. ‘Until later, then, Ceda.’

He made his way from the sorceror’s chamber.

Nifadas and Kuru Qan, they stand to one side of King Diskanar. Would that there was no other side.

The throne room was misnamed, in that the king was in the process of shifting the royal seat of power to the Eternal Domicile, now that the leaks in its lofty roof had been corrected. A few trappings remained, including the ancient rug approaching the dais, and the stylized gateway arching over the place where the throne had once stood.

When Brys arrived, only his old commander, Preda Unnutal Hebaz, was present. As always, a dominating figure, no matter how exalted her surroundings. She stood taller than most women, nearly Brys’s own height. Fair-skinned, with a burnished cast to her blonde hair yet eyes of a dark hazel, she turned to face him at his approach. In her fortieth year, she was none the less possessed of extraordinary beauty that the weather lines only enhanced.

‘Finadd Beddict, you are late.’

‘Impromptu audiences with the First Eunuch and the Ceda-’

‘We have but a few moments,’ she interrupted. ‘Take your place along the wall, as would a guard. They might recognize you, or they might assume you are but one of my underlings, especially given the poor light now that the sconces have been taken down. Either way, you are to stand at attention and say nothing.’

Frowning, Brys strode to his old guard’s niche, turned about to face the chamber, then edged back into the shadows until hard stone pressed against his shoulders. He saw the Preda studying him for a moment, then she nodded and swung to face the doorway at the far corner of the wall behind the dais.

Ah, this meeting belongs to the other side…

The door slammed open to the gauntleted hand of a Prince’s Guardsman, and the helmed, armoured figure of that man strode warily into the chamber. His sword was still in its scabbard, but Brys knew that Moroch Nevath could draw it in a single beat of a heart. He knew, also, that Moroch had been the prince’s own candidate for King’s Champion. And well deserved too. Moroch Nevath not only possesses the skill, he also has the presence… And, although that bold manner irritated Brys in some indefinable way, he found himself envying it as well.

The Prince’s Guard studied the chamber, fixing here and there on shadowed recesses, including the one wherein Brys stood – but it was a momentary thing, seeming only to acknowledge the presence of one of the Preda’s guards – and Moroch finally settled his attention on Unnutal Hebaz.

A single nod of acknowledgement, then Moroch stepped to one side.

Prince Quillas Diskanar entered. Behind him came Chancellor Triban Gnol. Then, two figures that made Brys start. Queen Janall and her First Consort, Turudal Brizad.

By the Errant, the entire squalid nest.

Quillas bared his teeth at Unnutal Hebaz as would a dog at the end of his chain. ‘You have released Finadd Gerun Eberict to Nifadas’s entourage. I want him taken back, Preda. Choose someone else.’

Unnutal’s tone was calm. ‘Gerun Eberict’s competence is above reproach, Prince Quillas. I am informed that the First Eunuch is pleased with the selection.’

Chancellor Triban Gnol spoke in an equally reasonable voice, ‘Your prince believes otherwise, Preda. It behoves you to accord that opinion due respect.’

‘The prince’s beliefs are his own concern. I am charged by his father, the king, in this matter. Regarding what I do and do not respect, Chancellor, I strongly suggest you retract your challenge.’

Moroch Nevath growled and stepped forward.

The Preda’s hand snapped out – not to the Prince’s Guardsman, but towards the niche where Brys stood, halting him a half-stride from his position. The sword was already in his hand, and its freeing from the scabbard had been as silent as it had been fast.

Moroch’s gaze flashed to Brys, the startled expression giving way to recognition. The man’s own sword was but halfway out of its scabbard.

A dry chuckle from the queen. ‘Ah, the Preda’s decision for but one guard is… explained. Step forward, if you please, Champion.’

‘That will not be necessary,’ Unnutal said.

Brys nodded and slowly stepped back, sheathing his sword as he did so.

Queen Janall’s brows rose at the Preda’s brusque countermand. ‘Dear Unnutal Hebaz, you rise far above your station.’

‘The presumption is not mine, Queen. The Royal Guard answer to the king and no-one else.’

‘Well, forgive me if I delight in challenging that antiquated conceit.’ Janall fluttered one thin hand. ‘Strengths are ever at risk of becoming weaknesses.’ She stepped close to her son. ‘Heed your mother’s advice, Quillas. It was folly to cut at the Preda’s pedestal, for it has not yet turned to sand. Patience, beloved one.’

The Chancellor sighed. ‘The queen’s advice-’

‘Is due respect,’ Quillas mimed. ‘As you will, then. As you all will. Moroch!’

Bodyguard trailing, the prince strode from the chamber.

The queen’s smile was tender as she said, ‘Preda Unnutal Hebaz, we beg your forgiveness. This meeting was not of our choice, but my son insisted. From the moment our procession began, the Chancellor and I both sought to dissuade him.’

‘To no avail,’ the Chancellor said, sighing once more.

The Preda’s expression did not change. ‘Are we done?’

Queen Janall wagged a single finger in mute warning, then gestured to her First Consort, slipping her arm through his as they left.

Triban Gnol remained a moment longer. ‘My congratulations, Preda,’ he said. ‘Finadd Gerun Eberict was an exquisite choice.’

Unnutal Hebaz said nothing.

Five heartbeats later and she and Brys were alone in the chamber.

The Preda turned. ‘Your speed, Champion, never fails to take my breath away. I did not hear you, only… anticipated. Had I not, Moroch would now be dead.’

‘Possibly, Preda. If only because he had dismissed my presence.’

‘And Quillas would have only himself to blame.’

Brys said nothing.

‘I should not have halted you.’

He watched her leave.

Gerun Eberict, you poor bastard.

Recalling that the Ceda wanted him, Brys swung about and strode from the chamber.

Leaving behind no blood.

And he knew that Kuru Qan would hear the relief in his every step.

The Ceda had been waiting outside his door, seemingly intent on practising a dance step, when Brys arrived.

‘A few fraught moments?’ Kuru Qan asked without looking up. ‘Unimportant. For now. Come.’

Fifty paces on, down stone steps, along dusty corridors, and Brys guessed at their destination. He felt his heart sinking. A place he had heard of, but one he had yet to visit. It seemed the King’s Champion was permitted to walk where a lowly Finadd was not. This time, however, the privilege was suspect.

They came to a pair of massive copper-sheathed doors. Green and rumpled with moss, they were bare of markings and showed no locking mechanism. The Ceda leaned on them and they parted with a grinding squeal.

Beyond rose narrow steps, leading to a walkway suspended knee-high above the floor by chains that reached down from the ceiling. The room was circular, and in the floor were set luminous tiles forming a spiral. The walkway ended at a platform in the chamber’s centre.

‘Trepidation, Finadd? Well deserved.’ Gesturing, Kuru Qan led Brys onto the walkway.

It swayed alarmingly.

‘The striving for balance is made manifest,’ the Ceda said, arms held out to the sides. ‘One’s steps must needs find the proper rhythm. Important, and difficult for all that there are two of us. No, do not look down upon the tiles – we are not yet ready. To the platform first. Here we are. Stand at my side, Finadd. Look with me upon the first tile of the spiral. What do you see?’

Brys studied the glowing tile. It was large, not quite square. Two spans of a spread hand in length, slightly less so in width.

The Holds. The Cedance. Kuru Qan’s chamber of divination. Throughout Letheras there were casters of the tiles, readers of the Holds. Of course, their representations were small, like flattened dice. Only the King’s Sorceror possessed tiles such as these. With ever-shifting faces. ‘I see a barrow in a yard.’

‘Ah, then you see truly. Good. An unhinged mind would reveal itself at this moment, its vision poisoned with fear and malice. Barrow, third from last among the tiles of the Azath Hold. Tell me, what do you sense from it?’

Brys frowned. ‘Restlessness.’

‘Aye. Disturbing, agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

‘But the Barrow is strong, is it not? It will not yield its claim. Yet, consider for a moment. Something is restless, there beneath that earth. And each time I have visited here in the past month, this tile has begun the spiral.’

‘Or ended it.’

Kuru Qan tilted his head. ‘Possibly. A swordsman’s mind addresses the unexpected. Important? We’ll see, won’t we? Begins, or ends. So. If the Barrow is in no danger of yielding, then why does this tile persist? Perhaps we but witness what is, whilst that restlessness promises what will be. Alarming.’

‘Ceda, have you visited the site of the Azath?’

‘I have. Both tower and grounds are unchanged. The Hold’s manifestation remains steadfast and contained. Now, drag your gaze onward, Finadd. Next?’

‘A gate, formed of a dragon’s gaping jaws.’

‘Fifth in the Hold of the Dragon. Gate. How does it relate to Barrow of the Azath? Does the Gate precede or follow? In the span of my life, this is the first time I have seen a tile of Dragon Hold in the pattern. We are witness – or shall be witness – to a momentous occasion.’

Brys glanced at the Ceda. ‘We are nearing Seventh Closure. It is momentous. The First Empire shall be reborn. King Diskanar shall be transformed – he shall ascend and assume the ancient title of First Emperor.’

Kuru Qan hugged himself. ‘The popular interpretation, aye. But the true prophecy, Finadd, is somewhat more… obscure.’

Brys was alarmed by the Ceda’s reaction. Nor had he known that the popular interpretation was other than accurate. ‘Obscure? In what way?’

‘ “The king who rules at the Seventh Closure shall be transformed and so shall become the First Emperor reborn.” Thus. Yet, questions arise. Transformed – how? And reborn – in the flesh? The First Emperor was destroyed along with the First Empire, in a distant land. Leaving the colonies here bereft. We have existed in isolation for a very long time, Finadd. Longer than you might believe.’

‘Almost seven thousand years.’

The Ceda smiled. ‘Language changes over time. Meaning twists. Mistakes compound with each transcribing. Even those stalwart sentinels of perfection – numbers – can, in a single careless moment, be profoundly altered. Shall I tell you my belief, Finadd? What would you say to my notion that some zeroes were dropped? At the beginning of this the Seventh Closure.’

Seventy thousand years? Seven hundred thousand?

‘Describe for me the next four tiles.’

Feeling slightly unbalanced, Brys forced his attention back to the floor. ‘I recognize that one. Betrayer of the Empty Hold. And the tile that follows: White Crow, of the Fulcra. The third is unknown to me. Shards of ice, one of which is upthrust from the ground and grows bright with reflected light.’

Kuru Qan sighed and nodded. ‘Seed, last of the tiles in the Hold of Ice. Another unprecedented appearance. And the fourth?’

Brys shook his head. ‘It is blank.’

‘Just so. The divination ceases. Is blocked, perhaps, by events yet to occur, by choices as yet unmade. Or, it marks the beginning, the flux that is now, this very moment. Leading to the end, which is the last tile – Barrow. Unique mystery. I am at a loss.’

‘Has anyone else seen this, Ceda? Have you discussed your impasse with anyone?’

‘The First Eunuch has been informed, Brys Beddict. To ensure that he does not walk into the Great Meeting blind to whatever portents might arise there. And now, you. Three of us, Finadd.’

‘Why me?’

‘Because you are the King’s Champion. It is your task to guard his life.’

Brys sighed. ‘He keeps sending me away.’

‘I will remind him yet again,’ Kuru Qan said. ‘He must surrender his love of solitude, or come to see no-one when he glances your way. Now, tell me what the queen incited her son to do in the old throne room.’

‘Incited? She claimed the very opposite.’

‘Unimportant. Tell me what your eyes witnessed, what your ears heard. Tell me, Brys Beddict, what your heart whispered.’

Brys stared down at the blank tile. ‘Hull may prove a problem,’ he said in a dull voice.

‘This is what your heart whispered?

‘It is.’

‘At the Great Meeting?’

He nodded.

‘How?’

‘I fear, Ceda, that he might kill Prince Quillas Diskanar.’

The building had once housed a carpenter’s shop on the ground floor, with a modest collection of low-ceilinged residential rooms on the upper level, reached via a drop-down staircase. The front faced out onto Quillas Canal, opposite a landing where, presumably, the carpenter had received his supplies.

Tehol Beddict walked around the spacious workshop, noting the holes in the hardwood floor where mechanisms had been fitted, hooks on walls for tools still identifiable by the faded outlines. The air still smelled of sawdust and stains, and a single worktable ran the full length of the wall to the left of the entrance. The entire front wall, he saw, was constructed with removable panels. ‘You purchased this outright?’ he asked, facing the three women who had gathered at the foot of the staircase.

‘The owner’s business was expanding,’ Shand said, ‘as was his family.’

‘Fronting the canal… this place was worth something…’

‘Two thousand thirds. We bought most of his furniture upstairs. Ordered a desk that was delivered last night.’ Shand waved a hand to encompass the ground level. ‘This area’s yours. I’d suggest a wall or two, leaving a corridor from the door to the stairs. That clay pipe is the kitchen drain. We knocked out the section leading to the kitchen upstairs, since we expect your servant to feed the four of us. The privy’s out in the backyard, empties into the canal. There’s also a cold shed, with a water-tight ice box big enough for a whole Nerek family to live in.’

‘A rich carpenter with time on his hands,’ Tehol said.

‘He has talent,’ Shand said, shrugging. ‘Now, follow me. The office is upstairs. We’ve things to discuss.’

‘Doesn’t sound like it,’ he replied. ‘Sounds like everything is already decided. I can imagine Bugg’s delight at the news. I hope you like figs.’

‘You could take the roof,’ Rissarh said with a sweet smile.

Tehol crossed his arms and rocked on his heels. ‘Let me see if I understand all this. You threaten to expose my terrible secrets, and then offer me some kind of partnership for some venture you haven’t even bothered describing. I can see this relationship setting deep roots, given such fertile soil.’

Shand scowled.

‘Let’s beat him senseless first,’ Hejun said.

‘It’s simple,’ Shand said, ignoring Hejun’s suggestion. ‘We have thirty thousand thirds and with it we want you to make ten.’

‘Ten thousand thirds?’

‘Ten peaks.’

Tehol stared at her. ‘Ten peaks. Ten million thirds. I see, and what precisely do you want with all that money?’

‘We want you to buy the rest of the islands.’

Tehol ran a hand through his hair and began pacing. ‘You’re insane. I started with a hundred docks and damn near killed myself making a single peak-’

‘Only because you were frivolous, Tehol Beddict. You did it inside of a year, but you only worked a day or two every month.’

‘Well, those days were murderous.’

‘Liar. You never stepped wrong. Not once. You folded in and folded out and left everyone else wallowing in your wake. And they worshipped you for it.’

‘Until you knifed them all,’ Rissarh said, her smile broadening.

‘Your skirt’s slipping,’ Hejun observed.

Tehol adjusted it. ‘It wasn’t exactly a knifing. What terrible images you conjure. I made my peak. I wasn’t the first to ever make a peak, just the fastest.’

‘With a hundred docks. Hard with a hundred levels, maybe. But docks? I made a hundred docks every three months when I was a child, picking olives and grapes. Nobody starts with docks. Nobody but you.’

‘And now we’re giving you thirty thousand thirds,’ Rissarh said. ‘Work the columns, Beddict. Ten million peaks? Why not?’

‘If you think it’s so easy why don’t you do it yourselves?’

‘We’re not that smart,’ Shand said. ‘We’re not easily distracted, either. We stumbled onto your trail and we followed it and here we are.’

‘I left no trail.’

‘Not one most could see, true. But as I said, we don’t get distracted.’

Tehol continued pacing. ‘The Merchant Tolls list Letheras’s gross at between twelve and fifteen peaks, with maybe another five buried-’

‘Is that five including your one?’

‘Mine was written off, remember.’

‘After a whole lot of pissing blood. Ten thousand curses tied to docks at the bottom of the canal, all with your name on them.’

Hejun asked in surprise, ‘Really, Shand? Maybe we should get dredging rights-’

‘Too late,’ Tehol told her. ‘Biri’s got those.’

‘Biri’s a front man,’ Shand said. ‘You’ve got those rights, Tehol. Biri may not know it but he works for you.’

‘Well, that’s a situation I’ve yet to exploit.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. Then he halted and stared at Shand. ‘There’s no way you could know that.’

‘You’re right. I guessed.’

His eyes widened. ‘You could make ten peaks, with an instinct like that, Shand.’

‘You’ve fooled everyone because you don’t make a wrong step, Tehol Beddict. They don’t think you’ve buried your peak – not any more, not after this long with you living like a rat under the docks. You’ve truly lost it. Where, nobody knows, but somewhere. That’s why they wrote off the loss, isn’t it?’

‘Money is sleight of hand,’ Tehol said, nodding. ‘Unless you’ve got diamonds in your hands. Then it’s not just an idea any more. If you want to know the cheat behind the whole game, it’s right there, lasses. Even when money’s just an idea, it has power. Only it’s not real power. Just the promise of power. But that promise is enough so long as everyone keeps pretending it’s real. Stop pretending and it all falls apart.’

‘Unless the diamonds are in your hands,’ Shand said.

‘Right. Then it’s real power.’

‘That’s what you began to suspect, isn’t it? So you went and tested it. And everything came within a stumble of falling apart.’

Tehol smiled. ‘Imagine my dismay.’

‘You weren’t dismayed,’ she said. ‘You just realized how deadly an idea could be, in the wrong hands.’

‘They’re all the wrong hands, Shand. Including mine.’

‘So you walked away.’

‘And I’m not going back. Do your worst with me. Let Hull know. Take it all down. What’s written off can be written back in. The Tolls are good at that. In fact, you’ll trigger a boom. Everyone will sigh with relief, seeing that it was all in the game after all.’

‘That’s not what we want,’ Shand said. ‘You still don’t get it. When we buy the rest of the islands, Tehol, we do it the same way you did. Ten peaks… disappearing:

‘The entire economy will collapse!’

At that the three women all nodded.

‘You’re fanatics!’

‘Even worse,’ Rissarh said, ‘we’re vengeful.’

‘You’re all half-bloods, aren’t you?’ He didn’t need their answers to that. It was obvious. Not every half-blood had to look like a half-blood. ‘Faraed, for Hejun. You two? Tarthenal?’

‘Tarthenal. Letheras destroyed us. Now, we’re going to destroy Letheras.’

‘And,’ Rissarh said, smiling again, ‘you’re going to show us how.’

‘Because you hate your own people,’ Shand said. ‘The whole rapacious, cold-blooded lot of them. We want those islands, Tehol Beddict. We know about the remnants of the tribes you delivered to the ones you bought. We know they’re hiding out there, trying to rebuild all that they had lost. But it’s not enough. Walk this city’s streets and the truth of that is plain. You did it for Hull. I had no idea he didn’t know about it – you surprised me there. You know, I think you should tell him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he needs healing, that’s why.’

‘I can’t do that.’

Shand stepped close and settled a hand on Tehol’s shoulder. The contact left him weak-kneed, so unexpected was the sympathy. ‘You’re right, you can’t. Because we both know, it wasn’t enough.’

‘Tell him our way,’ Hejun said. ‘Tehol Beddict. Do it right this time.’

He pulled away and studied them. These three damned women. ‘It’s the Errant’s curse, that he walks down paths he’s walked before. But that trait of yours, of not getting distracted, it blinds both ways, I’m afraid.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, Shand, that Lether is about to fall – and not through my doing. Find Hull and ask him – I’m sure he’s up there, somewhere. In the north. And, you know, it’s rather amusing, how he fought so hard for your people, for every one of those tribes Lether then devoured. Because now, knowing what he knows, he’s going to fight again. Only, this time, not for a tribe – not for the Tiste Edur. This time, for Lether. Because he knows, my friends, that we’ve met our match in those damned bastards. This time, it’s the Edur who will do the devouring.’

‘What makes you think so?’ Shand demanded, and he saw the disbelief in her expression.

‘Because they don’t play the game,’ he said.

‘What if you’re wrong?’

‘It’s possible. Either way, it’s going to be bloody.’

‘Then let’s make it easier for the Tiste Edur.’

‘Shand, you’re talking treason.’

Her lips pressed into a thin line.

Rissarh barked a laugh. ‘You idiot. We’ve been doing that all along.’

Errant take me, she’s right. ‘I’m not convinced a host of barbaric Edur overlords will do any better.’

‘We’re not talking about what’s better,’ Shand said. ‘We’re talking about revenge. Think of Hull, of what was done to him. Do it back, Tehol.’

I don’t believe Hull would see it that way. Not quite. Not for a long, long time. ‘You realize, don’t you, that I’ve worked very hard at cultivating apathy. In fact, it seems to be bearing endless fruit.’

‘Yes, the skirt doesn’t hide much.’

‘My instincts may be a bit dull.’

‘Liar. They’ve just been lying in wait and you know it. Where do we start, Tehol Beddict?’

He sighed. ‘All right. First and foremost, we lease out this ground floor. Biri needs the storage.’

‘What about you?’

‘I happen to like my abode, and I don’t intend to leave. As far as anyone else is concerned, I’m still not playing the game. You three are the investors. So, put those damned weapons away; we’re in a far deadlier war now. There’s a family of Nerek camped outside my house. A mother and two children. Hire them as cook and runners. Then head down to the Merchant Tolls and get yourselves listed. You deal in property, construction and transportation. No other ventures. Not yet. Now, seven properties are for sale around the fifth wing of the Eternal Domicile. They’re going cheap.’

‘Because they’re sinking.’

‘Right. And we’re going to fix that. And once we’ve done that, expect a visit from the Royal Surveyor and a motley collection of hopeful architects. Ladies, prepare to get rich.’

Looking for solid grounding? Bugg’s Construction is your answer.

Until the flood sweeps the entire world away, that is.

‘Can we buy you some clothes?’

Tehol blinked. ‘Why?’

Seren stared down. The valley stretched below, its steep sides unrelieved forest, a deep motionless green. The glitter of rushing water threaded through the shadows in the cut’s nadir. Blood of the Mountains, the Edur called that river. Tis’forundal. Its waters ran red with the sweat of iron.

The track they would take crossed that river again and again.

The lone Tiste Edur far below had, it seemed, emerged from that crimson stream. Striding to the head of the trail then beginning the ascent.

As if knowing we’re here.

Buruk the Pale was taking his time with this journey, calling a halt shortly after midday. The wagons would not tip onto that rocky, sliding path into the valley until the morrow. Caution or drunk indifference, the result was the same.

Hull stood at her side. Both of them watched the Tiste Edur climb closer.

‘Seren.’

‘Yes?’

‘You weep at night.’

‘I thought you were asleep.’

He said nothing for a moment, then, ‘Your weeping always woke me.’

And this is as close as you dare, isn’t it? ‘Would that yours had me.’

‘I am sure it would have, Seren, had I wept.’

And this eases my guilt? She nodded towards that distant Tiste Edur. ‘Do you recognize him?’

‘I do.’

‘Will he cause us trouble?’

‘No, I don’t think so. I believe he will be our escort back to Hiroth lands.’

‘Noble-born?’

Hull nodded. ‘Binadas Sengar.’

She hesitated, then asked, ‘Have you cut flesh for him?’

‘I have. As he has for me.’

Seren Pedac drew her furs tighter about her shoulders. The wind had not relented, though something of the valley’s damp rot now rode its bludgeoning rush. ‘Hull, do you fear this Great Meeting?’

‘I need only look back to see what lies ahead.’

‘Are you so sure of that?’

‘We will buy peace, but it will be, for the Tiste Edur, a deadly peace.’

‘But peace none the less, Hull.’

‘Acquitor, you might as well know, and so understand me clearly. I mean to shatter that gathering. I mean to incite the Edur into war with Letheras.’

Stunned, she stared at him.

Hull Beddict turned away. ‘With that knowledge,’ he said, ‘do as you will.’

CHAPTER THREE

A HARD SILENCE THAT SEEMED AT HOME IN THE DENSE, IMPENETRABLE fog. The Blackwood paddles had been drawn from water thick as blood, which ran in rivulets, then beads, down the polished shafts, finally drying with a patina of salt in the cool, motionless air. And now there was nothing to do but wait.

Daughter Menandore had delivered a grim omen that morning. The body of a Beneda warrior. A bloated corpse scorched by sorcery, skin peeled back by the ceaseless hungers of the sea. The whispering roar of flies stung into flight by the arrival of those Edur whose slaves had first found it.

Letherii sorcery.

The warrior wore no scabbard, no armour. He had been fishing.

Four K’orthan longboats had set out from the river mouth shortly after the discovery. In the lead craft rode Hannan Mosag and his K’risnan Cadre, along with seventy-five blooded warriors. Crews of one hundred followed in the three additional raiders.

The tide carried them out for a time. It soon became clear that no wind waited offshore, so they left the three triangular sails on each ship furled and, thirty-five warriors to a side, had begun paddling.

Until the Warlock King had signalled a halt.

The fog enclosed the four raider longboats. Nothing could be seen twenty strokes of the paddle in any direction. Trull Sengar sat on the bench behind Fear. He had set his paddle down and now gripped the new iron-sheathed spear his father had given him.

The Letherii ships were close, he knew, drifting in the same manner as the Edur longboats. But they relied solely upon sail and so could do nothing until a wind rose.

And Hannan Mosag had made certain there would be no wind. Shadow wraiths flickered over the deck, roving restlessly, long-clawed hands reaching down as they clambered on all fours. They prowled as if eager to leave the confines of the raider. Trull had never seen so many of them, and he knew that they were present on the other longboats as well. They would not, however, be the slayers of the Letherii. For that, the Warlock King had summoned something else.

He could feel it. Waiting beneath them. A vast patience, suspended in the depths.

Near the prow, Hannan Mosag slowly raised a hand, and, looking beyond the Warlock King, Trull saw the hulk of a Letherii harvest ship slowly emerge from the fog. Sails furled, lanterns at the end of out-thrust poles, casting dull, yellow light.

And then a second ship, bound to the first by a thick cable.

Shark fins cut the pellucid surface of the water around them.

And then, suddenly, those fins were gone.

Whatever waited below rose.

Emerged unseen with a shivering of the water.

A moment, blurred and uncertain.

Then screams.

Trull dropped his spear and clapped both hands to his ears – and he was not alone in that response, for the screams grew louder, drawn out from helpless throats and rising to shrieks. Sorcery flashed in the fog, briefly, then ceased.

The Letherii ships were on all sides now. Yet nothing could be seen of what was happening on them. The fog had blackened around them, coiling like smoke, and from that impenetrable gloom only the screams clawed free, like shreds of horror, the writhing of souls.

The sounds were in Trull’s skull, indifferent to his efforts to block them. Hundreds of voices. Hundreds upon hundreds. Then silence. Hard and absolute. Hannan Mosag gestured.

The white cloak of fog vanished abruptly.

The calm seas now rolled beneath a steady wind. Above, the sun glared down from a fiercely blue sky. Gone, too, was the black emanation that had engulfed the Letherii fleet. The ships wallowed, burned-out lanterns pitching wildly.

‘Paddle.’

Hannan Mosag’s voice seemed to issue from directly beside Trull. He started, then reached down, along with everyone else, for a paddle. Rose to plant his hip against the gunnel, then chopped down into the water.

The longboat surged forward.

In moments they were holding blades firm in the water, halting their craft alongside the hull of one of the ships.

Shadow wraiths swarmed up its red-stained side.

And Trull saw that the waterline on the hull had changed. Its hold was, he realized, now empty.

‘Fear,’ he hissed. ‘What is going on? What has happened?’

His brother turned, and Trull was shocked by Fear’s pallid visage. ‘It is not for us, Trull,’ he said, then swung round once more.

It is not for us. What does he mean by that? What isn’t?

Dead sharks rolled in the waves around them. Their carcasses were split open, as if they had exploded from within. The water was streaked with viscid froth.

‘We return now,’ Hannan Mosag said. ‘Man the sails, my warriors. We have witnessed. Now we must leave.’

Witnessed – in the name of Father Shadow, what?

Aboard the Letherii ships, canvas snapped and billowed.

The wraiths will deliver them. By the Dusk, this is no simple show of power. This – this is a challenge. A challenge, of such profound arrogance that it far surpassed that of these Letherii hunters and their foolish, suicidal harvest of the tusked seals. At that realization, a new thought came to Trull as he watched other warriors tending to the sails. Who among the Letherii would knowingly send the crews of nineteen ships to their deaths? And why would those crews even agree to it?

It was said gold was all that mattered to the Letherii. But who, in their right mind, would seek wealth when it meant certain death? They had to have known there would be no escape. Then again, what if I had not stumbled upon them? What if I had not chosen the Calach strand to look for jade? But no, now he was the one being arrogant. If not Trull, then another. The crime would never have gone unnoticed. The crime was never intended to go unnoticed.

He shared the confusion of his fellow warriors. Something was awry here. With both the Letherii and with… us. With Hannan Mosag. Our Warlock King.

Our shadows are dancing. Letherii and Edur, dancing out a ritual – but these are not steps I can recognize. Father Shadow forgive me, I am frightened.

Nineteen ships of death sailed south, while four K’orthan raiders cut eastward. Four hundred Edur warriors, once more riding a hard silence.

It fell to the slaves to attend to the preparations. The Beneda corpse was laid out on a bed of sand on the floor of a large stone outbuilding adjoining the citadel, and left to drain.

The eye sockets, ears, nostrils and gaping mouth were all cleaned and evened out with soft wax. Chewed holes in its flesh were packed with a mixture of clay and oil.

With six Edur widows overseeing, a huge iron tray was set atop a trench filled with coals that had been prepared alongside the corpse. Copper coins rested on the tray, snapping and popping as the droplets of condensation on them sizzled and hissed then vanished.

Udinaas crouched beside the trench, staying far enough back to ensure that his sweat did not drip onto the coins – a blasphemy that meant instant death for the careless slave – and watched the coins, seeing them darken, becoming smoky black. Then, as the first glowing spot emerged in each coin’s centre, he used pincers to pluck it from the tray and set it down on one of a row of fired-clay plates – one plate for each widow.

The widow, kneeling before the plate, employed a finer set of pincers to pick up the coin. And then pivoted to lean over the corpse.

First placement was the left eye socket. A crackling hiss, worms of smoke rising upward as the woman pressed down with the pincers, keeping the coin firmly in place, until it melded with the flesh and would thereafter resist being dislodged. Right eye socket followed. Nose, then forehead and cheeks, every coin touching its neighbours.

When the body’s front and sides, including all the limbs, were done, melted wax was poured over the coin-sheathed corpse. And, when that had cooled, it was then turned over. More coins, until the entire body was covered, excepting the soles of the feet and the palms of the hands. Another layer of melted wax followed.

The task of sheathing consumed most of the day, and it was near dusk when Udinaas finally stumbled from the outbuilding and stood, head bowed, while the cool air plucked at the sweat on his skin. He spat in an effort to get the foul stench out of his mouth. Burnt, rotting flesh in the building’s turgid, oven-hot confines. The reek of scorched hair. No amount of scented oil and skin-combing could defeat what had seeped into his pores. It would be days before Udinaas had rid himself of that cloying, dreadful taste.

He stared down at the ground between his feet. His shoulder still ached from the forced healing done by Uruth. Since that time, he had had no opportunity to speak with Feather Witch.

To his masters, he had explained nothing. They had, in truth, not pressed him very hard. A handful of questions, and they’d seemed content with his awkward, ineffectual answers. Udinaas wondered if Uruth had been as unmotivated in her own questioning of Feather Witch. The Tiste Edur rarely displayed much awareness of their slaves, and even less understanding of their ways. It was, of course, the privilege of the conquerors to be that way, and the universal fate of the conquered to suffer that disregard.

Yet identities persisted. On a personal level. Freedom was little more than a tattered net, draped over a host of minor, self-imposed bindings. Its stripping away changed little, except, perhaps, the comforting delusion of the ideal. Mind bound to self, self to flesh, flesh to bone. As the Errant wills, we are a latticework of cages, and whatever flutters within knows but one freedom, and that is death.

The conquerors always assumed that what they conquered was identity. But the truth was, identity could only be killed from within, and even that gesture was but a chimera. Isolation had many children, and dissolution was but one of them – yet its path was unique, for that path began when identity was left behind.

From the building behind him emerged the song of mourning, the Edur cadence of grief. Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh… A sound that always chilled Udinaas. Like emotion striking the same wall, again and again and again. The voice of the trapped, the blocked. A voice overwhelmed by the truths of the world. For the Edur, grieving was less about loss than about being lost.

Is that what comes when you live a hundred thousand years?

The widows then emerged, surrounding the corpse that floated waist-high on thick, swirling shadows. A figure of copper coins. The Edur’s singular use of money. Copper, tin, bronze, iron, silver and gold, it was the armour of the dead.

At least that’s honest. Letherii use money to purchase the opposite. Well, not quite. More like the illusion of the opposite. Wealth as life’s armour. Keep, fortress, citadel, eternally vigilant army. But the enemy cares nothing for all that, for the enemy knows you are defenceless.

‘Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh…’

This was Daughter Sheltatha Lore’s hour, when all things material became uncertain. Smudged by light’s retreat, when the air lost clarity and revealed its motes and grains, the imperfections both light and dark so perfectly disguised at other times. When the throne was shown to be empty.

Why not worship money? At least its rewards are obvious and immediate. But no, that was simplistic. Letherii worship was more subtle, its ethics bound to those traits and habits that well served the acquisition of wealth. Diligence, discipline, hard work, optimism, the personalization of glory. And the corresponding evils: sloth, despair, and the anonymity of failure. The world was brutal enough to winnow one from the other and leave no room for doubt or mealy equivocation. In this way, worship could become pragmatism, and pragmatism was a cold god.

Errant make ours a cold god, so we may act without constraint. A suitable Letherii prayer, though none would utter it in such a bold fashion. Feather Witch said that every act made was a prayer, and thus in the course of a day were served a host of gods. Wine and nectar and rustleaf and the imbibing thereof was a prayer to death, she said. Love was a prayer to life. Vengeance was a prayer to the demons of righteousness. Sealing a business pact was, she said with a faint smile, a prayer to the whisperer of illusions. Attainment for one was born of deprivation for another, after all. A game played with two hands.

‘Hunh, hunh, hunh, hunh…’

He shook himself. His sodden tunic now wrapped him in damp chill.

A shout from the direction of the sea. The K’orthan raiders were returning. Udinaas walked across the compound, towards the Sengar household. He saw Tomad Sengar and his wife Uruth emerge, and dropped to his knees, head pressed to the ground, until they passed. Then he rose and hurried into the longhouse.

The copper-sheathed corpse would be placed within the hollowed trunk of a Blackwood, the ends sealed with discs of cedar. Six days from now, the bole would be buried in one of a dozen sacred groves in the forest. Until that moment, the dirge would continue. The widows taking turns with that blunt, terrible utterance.

He made his way to the small alcove where his sleeping pallet waited. The longboats would file into the canal, one after the other in the grainy half-light. They would not have failed. They never did. The crews of nineteen Letherii ships were now dead – no slaves taken, not this time. Standing on both sides of the canal, the noble wives and fathers greeted their warriors in silence.

In silence.

Because something terrible has happened.

He lay down on his back, staring up at the slanted ceiling, feeling a strange, unnerving constriction in his throat. And could hear, in the rush of his blood, a faint echo behind his heart. A double beat. Hunh hunh Huh huh. Hunh hunh Huh huh…

Who are you? What are you waiting for? What do you want with me?

Trull clambered onto the landing, the cold haft of his spear in his right hand, its iron-shod butt striking sparks on the flagstones as he stepped away from the canal’s edge and halted beside Fear. Opposite them, but remaining five paces away, stood Tomad and Uruth. Rhulad was nowhere to be seen.

Nor, he realized, was Mayen.

A glance revealed that Fear was scanning the welcoming crowd. There was no change in expression, but he strode towards Tomad.

‘Mayen is in the forest with the other maidens,’ Tomad said. ‘Collecting morok. They are guarded by Theradas, and Midik and Rhulad.’

‘My son.’ Uruth stepped closer, eyes searching Fear’s visage. ‘What did he do?’

Fear shook his head.

‘They died without honour,’ Trull said. ‘We could not see the hand that delivered that death, but it was… monstrous.’

‘And the harvest?’ Tomad asked.

‘It was taken, Father. By that same hand.’

A flash of anger in Uruth’s eyes. ‘This was no full unveiling. This was a demonic summoning.’

Trull frowned. ‘I do not understand, Mother. There were shadows-’

‘And a darkness,’ Fear cut in. ‘From the depths… darkness.’

She crossed her arms and looked away. Trull had never seen Uruth so distressed.

And in himself, his own growing unease. Fully three-fifths of the Tiste Edur employed sorcery. A multitude of fragments from the riven warren of Kurald Emurlahn. Shadow’s power displayed myriad flavours. Among Uruth’s sons, only Binadas walked the paths of sorcery. Fear’s words had none the less triggered a recognition in Trull. Every Tiste Edur understood his own, after all. Caster of magic or not.

‘Mother, Hannan Mosag’s sorcery was not Kurald Emurlahn.’ He did not need their expressions to realize that he had been the last among them to understand that truth. He grimaced. ‘Forgive me my foolish words-’

‘Foolish only in speaking them aloud,’ Uruth said. ‘Fear, take Trull and Rhulad. Go to the Stone Bowl-’

‘Stop this. Now.’ Tomad’s voice was hard, his expression dark. ‘Fear. Trull. Return to the house and await me there. Uruth, tend to the needs of the widows. A fallen warrior faces his first dusk among kin. Propitiations must be made.’

For a moment Trull thought she was going to object. Instead, lips pressed into a line, she nodded and strode away.

Fear beckoned Trull and they walked to the longhouse, leaving their father standing alone beside the canal.

‘These are awkward times,’ Trull said.

‘Is there need,’ Fear asked, ‘when you stand between Rhulad and Mayen?’

Trull clamped his mouth shut. Too off-balance to deflect the question with a disarming reply.

Fear took the silence for an answer. ‘And when you stand between them, who do you face?’

‘I – I am sorry, Fear. Your question was unexpected. Is there need, you ask. My answer is: I don’t know.’

‘Ah, I see.’

‘His strutting… irritates me.’

Fear made no response.

They came to the doorway. Trull studied his brother. ‘Fear, what is this Stone Bowl? I have never heard-’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he replied, then walked inside.

Trull remained at the threshold. He ran a hand through his hair, turned and looked back across the compound. Those who had stood in welcome were gone, as were their warrior kin. Hannan Mosag and his K’risnan Cadre were nowhere to be seen. A lone figure remained. Tomad.

Are we so different from everyone else?

Yes. For the Warlock King has asked for Tomad’s sons. To pursue a vision.

He has made us his servants. Yet… is he the master?

In his dream, Udinaas found himself kneeling in ashes. He was cut and bleeding. His hands. His legs. The ash seemed to gnaw into the wounds with avid hunger. The tightness in his throat made him gasp for breath. He clawed at the air as he clambered onto his feet and stood, wavering – and the sky roared and raced in on all sides.

Fire. A storm of fire.

He screamed.

And found himself on his knees once more.

Beyond his ragged breathing, only silence. Udinaas lifted his head. The storm was gone.

Figures on the plain. Walking, dust roiling up behind them like wind-tossed shrouds. Weapons impaled them. Limbs hung from shreds of tendon and muscle. Sightless eyes and expressions twisted with fearful recognition – faces seeing their own deaths – blind to his own presence as they marched past.

Rising up within him, a vast sense of loss. Grief, then the bitter whisper of betrayal.

Someone will pay for this. Someone will pay.

Someone.

Someone.

The words were not his, the thoughts were another’s, but the voice, there in the centre of his skull – that voice was his own.

A dead warrior walked close. Tall, black-skinned. A sword had taken most of his face. Bone gleamed, latticed with red cracks from some fierce impact.

A flash of motion.

Metal-clad hand crashed into the side of Udinaas’s head. Blood sprayed. He was in a cloud of grey ash, on the ground. Blinking burning fire.

He felt gauntleted fingers close about his left ankle. His leg was viciously yanked upward.

And then the warrior began dragging him.

Where are we going?

‘The Lady is harsh.’

The Lady?

‘Is harsh.’

She awaits us at journey’s end?

‘She is not one who waits.’

He twisted as he was pulled along, found himself staring back at the furrow he’d made in the ashes. A track reaching to the horizon. And black blood was welling from that ragged gouge. How long has he been dragging me? Whom do I wound?

The thunder of hoofs.

‘She comes.’

Udinaas turned onto his back, struggled to raise his head.

A piercing scream.

Then a sword ripped through the warrior dragging Udinaas. Cutting it in half. The hand fell away from his ankle and he rolled to one side as iron-shod hoofs thundered past.

She blazed, blinding white. A sword flickering like lightning in one hand. In the other, a double-bladed axe that dripped something molten in its wake. The horse-

Naught but bones, bound by fire.

The huge skeletal beast tossed its head as it wheeled round. The woman was masked in flat, featureless gold. A headdress of arching, gilt scales rose like hackles about her head. Weapons lifted.

And Udinaas stared into her eyes.

He flinched away, scrabbling to his feet, then running.

Hoofs pounded behind him.

Daughter Dawn. Menandore-

Before him were sprawled the warriors that had walked alongside the one dragging him. Flames licking along wounds, dull smoke rising from torn flesh. None moved. They keep dying, don’t they? Again and again. They keep dying-

He ran.

Then was struck. A wall of ridged bone smashing into his right shoulder, spinning him through the air. He hit the ground, tumbled and rolled, limbs flopping.

His eyes stared up into swirling dust, the sky behind it spinning.

A shape appeared in its midst, and a hard-soled boot settled on his chest.

When she spoke, her voice was like the hissing of a thousand snakes. ‘The blood of a Locqui Wyval… in the body of a slave. Which heart, mortal, will you ride?’

He could not draw breath. The pressure of the boot was building, crushing his chest. He clawed at it.

‘Let your soul answer. Before you die.’

I ride… that which I have always ridden.

‘A coward’s answer.’

Yes.

‘A moment remains. For you to reconsider.’

Blackness closed around him. He could taste blood in the grit filling his mouth. Wyval! I ride the Wyval!

The boot slipped to one side.

A gauntleted hand reached down to the rope he used as a belt. Fingers clenched and he was lifted from the ground, arching, head dangling. Before him, a world turned upside down. Lifted, until his hips pushed up against the inside of her thighs.

He felt his tunic pulled up onto his belly. A hand tearing his loincloth away. Cold iron fingers clamped round him.

He groaned.

And was pushed inside.

Fire in his blood. Agony in his hips and lower back as, with one hand, she drove him up again and again.

Until he spasmed.

The hand released him and he thumped back onto the ground, shuddering.

He did not hear her walk away.

He heard nothing. Nothing but the two hearts within him. Their beats drawing closer, ever closer.

After a time someone settled down beside Udinaas.

‘Debtor.’

Someone will pay. He almost laughed.

A hand on his shoulder. ‘Udinaas. Where is this place?’

‘I don’t know.’ He turned his head, stared up into the frightened eyes of Feather Witch. ‘What do the tiles tell you?’

‘I don’t have them.’

‘Think of them. Cast them, in your mind.’

‘What do you know of such things, Udinaas?’

He slowly sat up. The pain was gone. No bruises, not even a scratch beneath the layer of ash. He dragged his tunic down to cover his crotch. ‘Nothing,’ he replied.

‘You do not need divination,’ she said, ‘to know what has just happened.’

His smile was bitter. ‘I do. Dawn. The Edur’s most feared Daughter. Menandore. She was here.’

‘The Letherii are not visited by Tiste Edur gods-’

‘I was.’ He looked away. ‘She, uh, made use of me.’

Feather Witch rose. ‘Wyval blood has taken you. You are poisoned with visions, Debtor. Madness. Dreams that you are more than the man everyone else sees.’

‘Look at the bodies around us, Feather Witch. She cut them down.’

‘They are long dead.’

‘Aye, yet they were walking. See this track – one of them dragged me and that is my trail. And there, her horse’s hoofs made those.’

But she was not looking, her gaze instead fixed on Udinaas. ‘This is a world of your own conjuring,’ she said. ‘Your mind is beset by false visions.’

‘Cast your tiles.’

‘No. This is a dead place.’

‘The Wyval’s blood is alive, Feather Witch. The Wyval’s blood is what binds us to the Tiste Edur.’

‘Impossible. Wyval are spawn of the Eleint. They are the mongrels of the dragons, and even the dragons do not control them. They are of the Hold, yet feral.’

‘I saw a white crow. On the strand. That is what I was coming to tell you, hoping to reach you before you cast the tiles. I sought to banish it, and its answer was laughter. When you were attacked, I thought it was the White Crow. But don’t you see? White, the face of Menandore, of Dawn. That is what the Fulcra were showing us.’

‘I will not be devoured by your madness, Debtor.’

‘You asked me to lie to Uruth and the other Edur. I did as you asked, Feather Witch.’

‘But now the Wyval has taken you. And soon it will kill you, and even the Edur can do nothing. As soon as they realize that you are indeed poisoned, they will cut out your heart.’

‘Do you fear that I will become a Wyval? Is that my fate?’

She shook her head. ‘This is not the kiss of a Soletaken, Udinaas. It is a disease that attacks your brain. Poisons the clear blood of your thoughts.’

‘Are you truly here, Feather Witch? Here, in my dream?’

With the question her form grew translucent, wavered, then scattered like windblown sand.

He was alone once more.

Will I never awaken?

Motion in the sky to his right drew him round.

Dragons. A score of the creatures, riding distant currents just above the uncertain horizon. Around them swarmed Wyval, like gnats.

And Udinaas suddenly understood something.

They are going to war.

Morok leaves covered the corpse. Over the next few days, those leaves would begin to rot, leaching into the amber wax a bluish stain, until the coin-sheathed body beneath became a blurred shape, as if encased in ice.

The shadow in the wax, enclosing the Beneda warrior for all time. A haven for wandering wraiths, there within the hollowed log.

Trull stood beside the corpse. The Blackwood bole was still being prepared in an unlit building to one side of the citadel. Living wood resisted the hands that would alter its shape. But it loved death and so could be cajoled.

Distant cries in the village as voices lifted in a final prayer to Daughter Dusk. Night was moments from arriving. The empty hours, when even faith itself must be held quiescent, lay ahead. Night belonged to the Betrayer. Who sought to murder Father Shadow at their very moment of triumph, and who very nearly succeeded.

There were prohibitions against serious discourse during this passage of time. In darkness prowled deceit, an unseen breath that any could draw in, and so become infected.

No swords were buried beneath the threshold of homes wherein maidens dwelt. To seal marriage now would be to doom its fate. A child delivered was put to death. Lovers did not touch one another. The day was dead.

Soon, however, the moon would rise and shadows would return once more. Just as Scabandari Bloodeye emerged from the darkness, so too did the world. Failure awaits the Betrayer. It could not be otherwise, lest the realms descend into chaos.

He stared down at the mound of leaves beneath which lay the body of the warrior. He had volunteered to stand guard this first night. No Edur corpse was ever left unattended when darkness prowled, for it cared naught whether its breath flowed into warm flesh or cold. A corpse could unleash dire events as easily as the acts of someone alive. It had no need for a voice or gestures of its own. Others were ever eager to speak for it, to draw blade or dagger.

Hannan Mosag had proclaimed this the greatest flaw among the Edur. Old men and the dead were the first whisperers of the word vengeance. Old men and the dead stood at the same wall, and while the dead faced it, old men held their backs to it. Beyond that wall was oblivion. They spoke from the end times, and both knew a need to lead the young onto identical paths, if only to give meaning to all they had known and all they had done.

Feuds were now forbidden. Crimes of vengeance sentenced an entire bloodline to disgraced execution.

Trull Sengar had watched, from where he stood in the gloom beneath a tree – the body before him – had watched his brother Rhulad walk out into the forest. In these, the dark hours, he had been furtive in his movement, stealing like a wraith from the village edge.

Into the forest, onto the north trail.

That led to the cemetery that had been chosen for the Beneda warrior’s interment.

Where a lone woman stood vigil against the night.

It may be an attempt… that will fail. Or it is a repetition of meetings that have occurred before, many times. She is unknowable. As all women are unknowable. But he isn’t. He was too late to the war and so his belt is bare. He would draw blood another way.

Because Rhulad must win. In everything, he must win. That is the cliff-edge of his life, the narrow strand he himself fashions, with every slight observed – whether it be real or imagined matters not – every silent moment that, to him, screams scorn upon the vast emptiness of his achievements.

Rhulad. Everything worth fighting for is gained without fighting. Every struggle is a struggle against doubt. Honour is not a thing to be chased, for it, as with all other forces of life, is in fact impelled, streaking straight for you. The moment of collision is where the truth of you is revealed.

An attempt. Which she will refuse, with outrage in her eyes.

Or their arms are now entwined, and in the darkness there is heat and sweat. And betrayal.

And he could not move, could not abandon his own vigil above this anonymous Beneda warrior.

His brother Fear had made a sword, as was the custom. He had stood before Mayen with the blade resting on the backs of his hands. And she had stepped forward, witnessed by all, to take the weapon from him. Carrying it back to her home.

Betrothal.

A year from that day – less than five weeks from now – she would emerge from the doorway with that sword. Then, using it to excavate a trench before the threshold, she would set it down in the earth and bury it. Iron and soil, weapon and home. Man and woman.

Marriage.

Before that day when Fear presented the sword, Rhulad had not once looked at Mayen. Was it the uninterest of youth? No, the Edur were not like Letherii. A year among the Letherii was as a day among the Edur. There were a handful of prettier women among the maidens of noble-born households. But he had set his eyes upon her thereafter.

And that made it what it was.

He could abandon this vigil. A Beneda warrior was not a Hiroth warrior, after all. A sea-gnawed corpse clothed in copper, not gold. He could set out on that trail, padding through the darkness.

To find what? Certainty, the sharp teeth behind all that gnawed at his thoughts.

And the worth of that?

It is these dark hours-

Trull Sengar’s eyes slowly widened. A figure had emerged from the forest edge opposite him. Heart thudding, he stared.

It stepped forward. Black blood in its mouth. Skin a pallid, dulled reflection of moonlight, smeared in dirt, smudged by something like mould. Twin, empty scabbards of polished wood at its hips. Fragments of armour hanging from it. Tall, yet stoop-shouldered, as if height had become its own imposition.

Eyes like dying coals.

‘Ah,’ it murmured, looking down on the heap of leaves, ‘what have we here?’ It spoke the language of night, close kin to that of the Edur.

Trembling, Trull forced himself to step forward, shifting his spear into a two-handed grip, the iron blade hovering above the corpse. ‘He is not for you,’ he said, his throat suddenly parched and strangely tight.

The eyes glowed brighter for a moment as the white-skinned apparition glanced up at Trull. ‘Tiste Edur, do you know me?’

Trull nodded. ‘The ghost of darkness. The Betrayer.’

A yellow and black grin.

Trull flinched as it drew a step closer and then settled to a crouch on the other side of the leaves. ‘Begone from here, ghost,’ the Edur said.

‘Or you will do what?’

‘Sound the alarm.’

‘How? Your voice is but a whisper now. Your throat is clenched. You struggle to breathe. Is it betrayal that strangles you, Edur? Never mind. I have wandered far, and have no desire to wear this man’s armour.’ It straightened. ‘Move back, warrior, if you wish to draw breath.’

Trull held himself where he was. The air hissed its way down his constricted throat, and he could feel his limbs weakening.

‘Well, cowardice was never a flaw among the Edur. Have it your way, then.’ The figure turned and walked towards the forest edge.

Blessed lungful of air, then another. Head spinning, Trull planted his spear and leaned on it. ‘Wait!’

The Betrayer halted, faced him once more.

‘This – this has never happened before. The vigil-’

‘Contested only by hungry earth spirits.’ The Betrayer nodded. ‘Or, even more pathetic, by the spirits of uprooted Blackwoods, sinking into the flesh to do… what? Nothing, just as they did in life. There are myriad forces in this world, Tiste Edur, and the majority of them are weak.’

‘Father Shadow imprisoned you-’

‘So he did, and there I remain.’ Once again, that ghastly smile. ‘Except when I dream. Mother Dark’s reluctant gift, a reminder to me that She does not forget. A reminder to me that I, too, must never forget.’

‘This is not a dream,’ Trull said.

‘They were shattered,’ the Betrayer said. ‘Long ago. Fragments scattered across a battlefield. Why would anyone want them? Those broken shards can never be reunited. They are, each and every one, now folded in on themselves. So, I wonder, what did he do with them?’

The figure walked into the forest and was gone.

‘This,’ Trull whispered, ‘is not a dream.’

Udinaas opened his eyes. The stench of the seared corpse remained in his nose and mouth, thick in his throat. Above him, the longhouse’s close slanted ceiling, rough black bark and yellowed chinking. He remained motionless beneath the blankets.

Was it near dawn?

He could hear nothing, no voices from the chambers beyond. But that told him little. The hours before the moon rose were silent ones.

As were, of course, the hours when everyone slept. He had nets to repair the coming day. And rope strands to weave.

Perhaps that is the truth of madness, when a mind can do nothing but make endless lists of the mundane tasks awaiting it, as proof of its sanity. Mend those nets. Wind those strands. See? I have not lost the meaning of my life.

The blood of the Wyval was neither hot nor cold. It did not rage. Udinaas felt no different in his body. But the clear blood of my thoughts, oh, they are stained indeed. He pushed the blankets away and sat up. This is the path, then, and I am to stay on it. Until the moment comes.

Mend the nets. Weave the strands.

Dig the hole for that Beneda warrior, who would have just opened his eyes, had he any. And seen not the blackness of the imprisoning coins. Seen not the blue wax, nor the morok leaves reacting to that wax and turning wet and black. Seen, instead, the face of… something else.

Wyval circled dragons in flight. He had seen that. Like hounds surrounding their master as the hunt is about to be unleashed. I know, then, why I am where I have arrived. And when is an answer the night is yet to whisper – no, not whisper, but howl. The call to the chase by Darkness itself.

Udinaas realized he was among the enemy. Not as a Letherii sentenced to a life of slavery. That was as nothing to the peril his new blood felt, here in this heart of Edur and Kurald Emurlahn.

Feather Witch would have been better, I suppose, but Mother Dark moves unseen even in things such as these.

He made his way into the main chamber.

And came face to face with Uruth.

‘These are not the hours to wander, slave,’ she said.

He saw that she was trembling.

Udinaas sank to the floor and set his forehead against the worn planks.

‘Prepare the cloaks of Fear, Rhulad and Trull, for travel this night. Be ready before the moon’s rise. Food and drink for a morning’s repast.’

He quickly climbed to his feet to do as she bid, but was stopped by an outstretched hand.

‘Udinaas,’ Uruth said. ‘You do this alone, telling no-one.’

He nodded.

Shadows crept out from the forest. The moon had risen, prison world to Menandore’s true father, who was trapped within it. Father Shadow’s ancient battles had made this world, shaped it in so many ways. Scabandari Bloodeye, stalwart defender against the fanatic servants of implacable certitude, whether that certitude blazed blinding white, or was the all-swallowing black. The defeats he had delivered – the burying of Brother Dark and the imprisonment of Brother Light there in that distant, latticed world in the sky – were both gifts, and not just to the Edur but to all who were born and lived only to one day die.

The gifts of freedom, a will unchained unless one affixed upon oneself such chains – the crowding host’s uncountable, ever-rattling offers, each whispering promises of salvation against confusion – and wore them like armour.

Trull Sengar saw chains upon the Letherii. He saw the impenetrable net which bound them, the links of reasoning woven together into a chaotic mass where no beginning and no end could be found. He understood why they worshipped an empty throne. And he knew the manner in which they would justify all that they did. Progress was necessity, growth was gain. Reciprocity belonged to fools and debt was the binding force of all nature, of every people and every civilization. Debt was its own language, within which were used words like negotiation, compensation and justification, and legality was a skein of duplicity that blinded the eyes of justice.

An empty throne. Atop a mountain of gold coins.

Father Shadow had sought a world wherein uncertainty could work its insidious poison against those who chose intransigence as their weapon – with which they held wisdom at bay. Where every fortress eventually crumbled from within, from the very weight of those chains that exerted so inflexible an embrace.

In his mind he argued with that ghost – the Betrayer. The one who sought to murder Scabandari Bloodeye all those thousands of years ago. He argued that every certainty is an empty throne. That those who knew but one path would come to worship it, even as it led to a cliff’s edge. He argued, and in the silence of that ghost’s indifference to his words he came to realize that he himself spoke – fierce with heat – from the foot of an empty throne.

Scabandari Bloodeye had never made that world. He had vanished in this one, lost on a path no-one else could follow.

Trull Sengar stood before the corpse and its mound of rotting leaves, and felt desolation in his soul. A multitude of paths waited before him, and they were all sordid, sodden with despair.

The sound of boots on the trail. He turned.

Fear and Rhulad approached. Wearing their cloaks. Fear carried Trull’s own in his arms, and from the man’s shoulders hung a small pack.

Rhulad’s face was flushed, and Trull could not tell if it was born of anxiety or excitement.

‘I greet you, Trull,’ Fear said, handing him the cloak.

‘Where are we going?’

‘Our father passes this night in the temple. Praying for guidance.’

‘The Stone Bowl,’ Rhulad said, his eyes glittering. ‘Mother sends us to the Stone Bowl.’

‘Why?’

Rhulad shrugged.

Trull faced Fear. ‘What is this Stone Bowl? I have never heard of it.’

‘An old place. In the Kaschan Trench.’

‘You knew of this place, Rhulad?’

His younger brother shook his head. ‘Not until tonight, when Mother described it. We have all walked the edge of the Trench. Of course the darkness of its heart is impenetrable – how could we have guessed that a holy site hid within it?’

‘A holy site? In absolute darkness?’

‘The significance of that,’ Fear said, ‘will be made evident soon enough, Trull.’

They began walking, eldest brother in the lead. Into the forest, onto a trail leading northwest. ‘Fear,’ Trull said, ‘has Uruth spoken to you of the Stone Bowl before?’

‘I am Weapons Master,’ Fear replied. ‘There were rites to observe…’

Among them, Trull knew, the memorization of every battle the Edur ever fought. He then wondered why that thought had come to him, in answer to Fear’s words. What hidden linkages was his own mind seeking to reveal, and why was he unable to discern them?

They continued on, avoiding pools of moonlight unbroken by shadows. ‘Tomad forbade us this journey,’ Trull said after a time.

‘In matters of sorcery,’ Fear said, ‘Uruth is superior to Tomad.’

‘And this is a matter of sorcery?’

Rhulad snorted behind Trull. ‘You stood with us in the Warlock King’s longboat.’

‘I did,’ agreed Trull. ‘Fear, would Hannan Mosag approve of what we do, of what Uruth commands of us?’

Fear said nothing.

‘You,’ Rhulad said, ‘are too filled with doubt, brother. It binds you in place-’

‘I watched you walk the path to the chosen cemetery, Rhulad. After Dusk’s departure and before the moon’s rise.’

If Fear reacted to this, his back did not reveal it, nor did his steps falter on the trail.

‘What of it?’ Rhulad asked, his tone too loose, too casual.

‘My words, brother, are not to be answered with flippancy.’

‘I knew that Fear was busy overseeing the return of weapons to the armoury,’ Rhulad said. ‘And I sensed a malevolence prowling the darkness. And so I stood in hidden vigil over his betrothed, who was alone in the cemetery. I may be unblooded, brother, but I am not without courage. I know you believe that inexperience is the soil in which thrive the roots of false courage. But I am not false, no matter what you think. For me, inexperience is unbroken soil, not yet ready for roots. I stood in my brother’s place.’

‘Malevolence in the night, Rhulad? Whose?’

‘I could not be certain. But I felt it.’

‘Fear,’ Trull said, ‘have you no questions for Rhulad on this matter?’

‘No,’ Fear replied drily. ‘There is no need for that… when you are around.’

Trull clamped his mouth shut, thankful that the night obscured the flush on his face.

There was silence for some time after that.

The trail began climbing, winding among outcrops of lichen-skinned granite. They climbed over fallen trees here and there, scrambled up steep slides. The moon’s light grew diffuse, and Trull sensed it was near dawn by the time they reached the highest point of the trail.

The path now took them inland – eastward – along a ridge of toppled trees and broken boulders. Water trapped in depressions in the bedrock formed impenetrable black pools that spread across the trail. The sky began to lighten overhead.

Fear then led them off the path, north, across tumbled scree and among the twisted trees. A short while later Kaschan Trench was before them.

A vast gorge, like a knife’s puncturing wound in the bedrock, its sides sheer and streaming with water, it ran in a jagged line, beginning beneath Hasana Inlet half a day to the west, and finally vanishing into the bedrock more than a day’s travel to the east. They were at its widest point, two hundred or so paces across, the landscape opposite slightly higher but otherwise identical – scattered boulders looking as if they had been pushed up from the gorge and mangled trees that seemed sickened by some unseen breath from the depths.

Fear unclasped his cloak, dropped his pack and walked over to a misshapen mound of stones. He cleared away dead branches and Trull saw that the stones were a cairn of some sort. Fear removed the capstone, and reached down into the hollow beneath. He lifted clear a coil of knotted rope.

‘Remove your cloak and your weapons,’ he said as he carried the coil to the edge.

He found one end and tied his pack, cloak, sword and spear to it.

Trull and Rhulad came close with their own gear and all was bound to the rope. Fear then began lowering it over the side.

‘Trull, take this other end and lead it to a place of shadow. A place where the shadow will not retreat before the sun as the day passes.’

He picked up the rope end and walked to a large, tilted boulder. When he fed the end into the shadows at its base he felt countless hands grasp it. Trull stepped back. The rope was now taut.

Returning to the edge, he saw that Fear had already begun his descent. Rhulad stood staring down.

‘We’re to wait until he reaches the bottom,’ Rhulad said. ‘He will tug thrice upon the rope. He asked that I go next.’

‘Very well.’

‘She has the sweetest lips,’ Rhulad murmured, then looked up and met Trull’s eyes. ‘Is that what you want me to say? To give proof to your suspicions?’

‘I have many suspicions, brother,’ Trull replied. ‘We have sun-scorched thoughts, we have dark-swallowed thoughts. But it is the shadow thoughts that move with stealth, creeping to the very edge of the rival realms – if only to see what there is to be seen.’

‘And if they see nothing?’

‘They never see nothing, Rhulad.’

‘Then illusions? What if they see only what their imagination conjures? False games of light? Shapes in the darkness? Is this not how suspicion becomes a poison? But a poison like white nectar, every taste leaving you thirsting for more.’

Trull was silent for a long moment. Then he said, ‘Fear spoke to me not long ago. Of how one is perceived, rather than how one truly is. How the power of the former can overwhelm that of the latter. Hov indeed, perception shapes truth like waves on stone.’

‘What would you ask of me, Trull?’

He faced Rhulad directly. ‘Cease your strutting before Mayen.’

A strange smile, then, ‘Very well, brother.’

Trull’s eyes widened slightly.

The rope snapped three times.

‘My turn,’ Rhulad said. He grasped hold of the rope and was quickly gone from sight.

The knots of these words were anything but loose. Trull drew a deep breath, let it out slowly, wondering at that smile. The peculiarity of it. A smile that might have been pain, a smile born of hurt.

Then he turned upon himself and studied what he was feeling. Difficult to find, to recognize, but… Father Shadow forgive me. I feel… sullied.

The three tugs startled him.

Trull took the heavy rope in his hands, feeling the sheath of beeswax rubbed into the fibres to keep them from rotting. Without the knots for foot- and hand-holds, the descent would be treacherous indeed. He walked out over the edge, facing inward, then leaned back and began making his way down.

Glittering streams ran down the raw stone before him. Red-stained calcretions limned the surface here and there. Flea-like insects skipped across the surface. The scrapes left by the passage of Rhulad and Fear glistened in the fading light, ragged furrows wounding all that clung to the rock.

Knot to knot, he went down the rope, the darkness deepening around him. The air grew cool and damp, then cold. Then his feet struck mossy boulders, and hands reached out to steady him.

His eyes struggled to make out the forms of his brothers. ‘We should have brought a lantern.’

‘There is light from the Stone Bowl,’ Fear said. ‘An Elder Warren. Kaschan.’

‘That warren is dead,’ Trull said. ‘Destroyed by Father Shadow’s own hand.’

‘Its children are dead, brother, but the sorcery lingers. Have your eyes adjusted? Can you see the ground before you?’

A tumble of boulders and the glitter of flowing water between them. ‘I can.’

‘Then follow me.’

They made their way out from the wall. Footing was treacherous, forcing them to proceed slowly. Dead branches festooned with mushrooms and moss. Trull saw a pallid, hairless rodent of some kind slip into a crack between two rocks, tail slithering in its wake. ‘This is the Betrayer’s realm,’ he said.

Fear grunted. ‘More than you know, brother.’

‘Something lies ahead,’ Rhulad said in a whisper.

Vast, towering shapes. Standing stones, devoid of lichen or moss, the surface strangely textured, made, Trull realized as they drew closer, to resemble the bark of the Blackwood. Thick roots coiled out from the base of each obelisk, spreading out to entwine with those of the stones to each side. Beyond, the ground fell away in a broad depression, from which light leaked like mist.

Fear led them between the standing stones and they halted at the pit’s edge.

The roots writhed downward, and woven in their midst were bones. Thousands upon thousands. Trull saw Kaschan, the feared ancient enemies of the Edur, reptilian snouts and gleaming fangs. And bones that clearly belonged to the Tiste. Among them, finely curved wing-bones from Wyval, and, at the very base, the massive skull of an Eleint, the broad, flat bone of its forehead crushed inward, as if by the blow of a gigantic, gauntleted fist.

Leafless scrub had grown up from the chaotic mat on the slopes, the branches and twigs grey and clenching. Then the breath hissed between Trull’s teeth. The scrub was stone, growing not in the manner of crystal, but of living wood.

‘Kaschan sorcery,’ Fear said after a time, ‘is born of sounds our ears cannot hear, formed into words that loosen the bindings that hold all matter together, that hold it to the ground. Sounds that bend and stretch light, as a tidal inflow up a river is drawn apart at the moment of turning. With this sorcery, they fashioned fortresses of stone that rode the sky like clouds. With this sorcery, they turned Darkness in upon itself with a hunger none who came too close could defy, an all-devouring hunger that fed first and foremost upon itself.’ His voice was strangely muted as he spoke. ‘Kaschan sorcery was sent into the warren of Mother Dark, like a plague. Thus was sealed the gate from Kurald Galain to every other realm. Thus was Mother Dark driven into the very core of the Abyss, witness to an endless swirl of light surrounding her – all that she would one day devour, until the last speck of matter vanishes into her. Annihilating Mother Dark. Thus the Kaschan, who are long dead, set upon Mother Dark a ritual that will end in her murder. When all Light is gone. When there is naught to cast Shadow, and so Shadow too is doomed to die.

‘When Scabandari Bloodeye discovered what they had done, it was too late. The end, the death of the Abyss, cannot be averted. The journey of all that exists repeats on every scale, brothers. From those realms too small for us to see, to the Abyss itself. The Kaschan locked all things into mortality, into the relentless plunge towards extinction. This was their vengeance. An act born, perhaps, of despair. Or the fiercest hatred imaginable. Witness to their own extinction, they forced all else to share that fate.’

His brothers were silent. The dull echoes of Fear’s last words faded away.

Then Rhulad grunted. ‘I see no signs of this final convergence, Fear.’

‘A distant death, aye. More distant than one could imagine. Yet it will come.’

‘And what is that to us?’

‘The Tiste Invasions drove the Kaschan to their last act. Father Shadow earned the enmity of every Elder god, of every ascendant. Because of the Kaschan ritual, the eternal game among Dark, Light and Shadow would one day end. And with it, all of existence.’ He faced his brothers. ‘I tell you this secret knowledge so that you will better understand what happened here, what was done. And why Hannan Mosag speaks of enemies far beyond the mortal Letherii.’

The first glimmerings of realization whispered through Trull. He dragged his gaze from Fear’s dark, haunted eyes, and looked down into the pit. To the very base, to the skull of that slain dragon. ‘They killed him.’

‘They destroyed his corporeal body, yes. And imprisoned his soul.’

‘Scabandari Bloodeye,’ Rhulad said, shaking his head as if to deny all that he saw. ‘He cannot be dead. That skull is not-’

‘It is,’ Fear said. ‘They killed our god.’

‘Who?’ Trull demanded.

‘All of them. Elder gods. And Eleint. The Elder gods loosed the blood in their veins. The dragons spawned a child of indescribable terror, to seek out and hunt down Scabandari Bloodeye. Father Shadow was brought down. An Elder god named Kilmandaros shattered his skull. They then made for Bloodeye’s spirit a prison of eternal pain, of agony beyond measure, to last until the Abyss itself is devoured.

‘Hannan Mosag means to avenge our god.’

Trull frowned. ‘The Elder gods are gone, Fear. As are the Eleint. Hannan Mosag commands six tribes of Tiste Edur and a fragmented warren.’

‘Four hundred and twenty-odd thousand Edur,’ Rhulad said. ‘And, for all our endless explorations, we have found no kin among the fragments of Kurald Emurlahn. Fear, Hannan Mosag sees through stained thoughts. It is one thing to challenge Letherii hegemony with summoned demons and, if necessary, iron blades. Are we now to wage war against every god in this world?’

Fear slowly nodded. ‘You are here,’ he told them, ‘and you have been told what is known. Not to see you bend to one knee and praise the Warlock King’s name. He seeks power, brothers. He needs power, and he cares nothing for its provenance, nor its taint.’

‘Your words are treasonous,’ Rhulad said, and Trull heard a strange delight in his brother’s voice.

‘Are they?’ Fear asked. ‘Hannan Mosag has charged us to undertake a perilous journey. To receive for him a gift. To then deliver it into his hands. A gift, brothers, from whom?’

‘We cannot deny him,’ Trull said. ‘He will simply choose others to go in our stead. And we will face banishment, or worse.’

‘Of course we shall not deny him, Trull. But we must not journey like blind old men.’

‘What of Binadas?’ Rhulad asked. ‘What does he know of this?’

‘Everything,’ Fear replied. ‘More, perhaps, than Uruth herself.’

Trull stared down once more at the mouldy dragon skull at the bottom of the pit. ‘How are you certain that is Scabandari Bloodeye?’

‘Because it was the widows who brought him here. The knowledge was passed down every generation among the women.’

‘And Hannan Mosag?’

‘Uruth knows he has been here, to this place. How he discovered the truth remains a mystery. Uruth would never have told me and Binadas, if not for her desperation. The Warlock King is drawing upon deadly powers. Are his thoughts stained? If not before, they are now.’

Trull’s eyes remained on that skull. A blunt, brutal execution, that mailed fist. ‘We had better hope,’ he whispered, ‘that the Elder gods are indeed gone.’

CHAPTER FOUR

THE NEREK BELIEVED THE TISTE EDUR WERE CHILDREN OF DEMONS. There was ash in their blood, staining their skin. To look into an Edur’s eyes was to see the greying of the world, the smearing of the sun and the rough skin of night itself.

As the Hiroth warrior named Binadas strode towards the group, the Nerek began keening. Fists beating their own faces and chests, they fell to their knees.

Buruk the Pale marched among them, screaming curses and shrieking demands, but they were deaf to him. The merchant finally turned to where stood Seren Pedac and Hull Beddict, and began laughing.

Hull frowned. ‘This will pass, Buruk,’ he said.

‘Oh, will it now? And the world itself, will that too pass? Like a deathly wind, our lives swirling like dust amidst its headlong rush? Only to settle in its wake, dead and senseless – and all that frenzied cavorting empty of meaning? Hah! Would that I had hired Faraed!’

Seren Pedac’s attention remained on the approaching Tiste Edur. A hunter. A killer. One who probably also possessed the trait of long silences. She could imagine this Binadas, sharing a fire in the wilderness with Hull Beddict. In the course of an evening, a night and the following morning, perhaps a half-dozen words exchanged between them. And, she suspected, the forging of a vast, depthless friendship. These were the mysteries of men, so baffling to women. Where silences could become a conjoining of paths. Where a handful of inconsequential words could bind spirits in an ineffable understanding. Forces at play that she could sense, indeed witness, yet ever remaining outside them. Baffled and frustrated and half disbelieving.

Words knit the skein between and among women. And the language of gesture and expression, all merging to fashion a tapestry that, as every woman understood, could tear in but one direction, by deliberate vicious effort. A friendship among women knew but one enemy, and that was malice.

Thus, the more words, the tighter the weave.

Seren Pedac had lived most of her life in the company of men, and now, on her rare visits to her home in Letheras, she was viewed by women who knew her with unease. As if her choice had made her loyalty uncertain, cause for suspicion. And she had found an unwelcome awkwardness in herself when in their company. They wove from different threads, on different frames, discordant with her own rhythms. She felt clumsy and coarse among them, trapped by her own silences.

To which she answered with flight, away from the city, from her past. From women.

Yet, in the briefest of moments, in a meeting of two men with their almost indifferent exchange of greetings, she was knocked a step back – almost physically – and shut out. Here, sharing this ground, this trail with its rocks and trees, yet in another world.

Too easy to conclude, with a private sneer, that men were simple. Granted, had they been strangers, they might well be circling and sniffing each other’s anuses right now. Inviting conclusions that swept aside all notions of complexity, in their place a host of comforting generalizations. But the meeting of two men who were friends destroyed such generalizations and challenged the contempt that went with them, invariably leading a woman to anger.

And the strange, malicious desire to step between them.

On a cobbled beach, a man looks down and sees one rock, then another and another. A woman looks down and sees… rocks. But perhaps even this is simplistic. Man as singular and women as plural. More likely we are bits of both, some of one in the other.

We just don’t like admitting it.

He was taller than Hull, shoulders level with the Letherii’s eyes. His hair was brown and bound in finger-length braids. Eyes the colour wet sand. Skin like smeared ash. Youthful features, long and narrow barring the broad mouth.

Seren Pedac knew the Sengar name. It was likely she had seen this man’s kin, among the delegations she had treated with in her three official visits to Hannan Mosag’s tribe.

‘Hiroth warrior,’ Buruk the Pale said, shouting to be heard above the wailing Nerek, ‘I welcome you as guest. I am-’

‘I know who you are,’ Binadas replied.

At his words the Nerek voices trailed off, leaving only the wind moaning its way up the trail, and the constant trickling flow of melt water from the higher reaches.

‘I bring to the Hiroth,’ Buruk was saying, ‘ingots of iron-’

‘And would test,’ Hull Beddict interrupted, ‘the thickness of the ice.’

‘The season has turned,’ Binadas replied to Hull. ‘The ice is riven with cracks. There has been an illegal harvest of tusked seals. Hannan Mosag will have given answer.’

Seren Pedac swung to the merchant. Studied Buruk the Pale’s face. Alcohol, white nectar and the bitter wind had lifted the blood vessels to just beneath the pallid skin on his nose and cheeks. The man’s eyes were bleary and shot with red. He conveyed no reaction at the Edur’s words. ‘Regrettable. It is unfortunate that, among my merchant brethren, there are those who choose to disregard the agreements. The lure of gold. A tide none can withstand.’

‘The same can be said of vengeance,’ Binadas pointed out.

Buruk nodded. ‘Aye, all debts must be repaid.’

Hull Beddict snorted. ‘Gold and blood are not the same.’

‘Aren’t they?’ Buruk challenged. ‘Hiroth warrior, the interests I represent would adhere now and evermore to the bound agreements. Alas, Lether is a many-headed beast. The surest control of the more voracious elements will be found in an alliance – between the Edur and those Letherii who hold to the words binding our two peoples.’

Binadas turned away. ‘Save your speeches for the Warlock King,’ he said. ‘I will escort you to the village. That is all that need be understood between us.‘

Shrugging, Buruk the Pale walked back to his wagon. ‘On your feet, Nerek! The trail is downhill from here on, isn’t it just!’

Seren watched the merchant climb into the covered back, vanishing from sight, as the Nerek began scurrying about. A glance showed Hull and Binadas facing each other once more. The wind carried their words to her.

‘I will speak against Buruk’s lies,’ Hull Beddict said. ‘He will seek to ensnare you with smooth assurances and promises, none of which will be worth a dock.’

Binadas shrugged. ‘We have seen the traps you laid out before the Nerek and the Tarthenal. Each word is a knot in an invisible net. Against it, the Nerek’s swords were too blunt. The Tarthenal too slow to anger. The Faraed could only smile in their confusion. We are not as those tribes.’

‘I know,’ Hull said. ‘Friend, my people believe in the stacking of coins. One atop another, climbing, ever climbing to glorious heights. The climb signifies progress, and progress is the natural proclivity of civilization. Progress, Binadas, is the belief from which emerge notions of destiny. The Letherii believe in destiny – their own. They are deserving of all things, born of their avowed virtues. The empty throne is ever there for the taking.’

Binadas was smiling at Hull’s words, but it was a wry smile. He turned suddenly to Seren Pedac. ‘Acquitor. Join us, please. Do old wounds mar Hull Beddict’s view of Lether?’

‘Destiny wounds us all,’ she replied, ‘and we Letherii wear the scars with pride. Most of us,’ she added with an apologetic look at Hull.

‘One of your virtues?’

‘Yes, if you could call it that. We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedom. As for past acts of depravity, we prefer to ignore those. Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have trampled in our wake is best forgotten.’

‘Progress, then,’ Binadas said, still smiling, ‘sees no end.’

‘Our wagons ever roll down the hill, Hiroth. Faster and faster.’

‘Until they strike a wall.’

‘We crash through most of those.’

The smile faded, and Seren thought she detected a look of sadness in the Edur’s eyes before he turned away. ‘We live in different worlds.’

‘And I would choose yours,’ Hull Beddict said.

Binadas shot the man a glance, his expression quizzical. ‘Would you, friend?’

Something in the Hiroth’s tone made the hairs rise on the back of Seren Pedac’s neck.

Hull frowned, suggesting that he too had detected something awry in that question.

No more words were exchanged then, and Seren Pedac permitted Hull and Binadas to take the lead on the trail, allowing them such distance that their privacy was assured. Even so, they seemed disinclined to speak. She watched them, their matching strides, the way they walked. And wondered.

Hull was so clearly lost. Seeking to make the Tiste Edur the hand of his own vengeance. He would drive them to war, if he could. But destruction yielded only strife, and his dream of finding peace within his soul in the blood and ashes of slaughter filled her with pity for the man. She could not, however, let that blind her to the danger he presented.

Seren Pedac held no love for her own people. The Letherii’s rapacious hunger and inability to shift to any perspective that did not serve them virtually assured a host of bloody clashes with every foreign power they met. And, one day, they would meet their match. The wagons will shatter against a wall more solid than any we have seen. Will it be the Tiste Edur? It did not seem likely. True, they possessed formidable sorcery, and the Letherii had yet to encounter fiercer fighters. But the combined tribes amounted to less than a quarter-million. King Diskanar’s capital alone was home to over a hundred thousand, and there were a half-dozen cities nearly as large in Lether. With the protectorates across Dracons Sea and to the east, the hegemony could amass and field six hundred thousand soldiers, maybe more. Attached to each legion there would be a master of sorcery, trained by the Ceda, Kuru Qan himself. The Edur would be crushed. Annihilated.

And Hull Beddict…

She turned her thoughts from him with an effort. The choices were his to make, after all. Nor, she suspected, would he listen to her warnings.

Seren Pedac acknowledged her own uncertainty and confusion. Would she advocate peace at any price? What were the rewards of capitulation? Letherii access to the resources now claimed by the Edur. The harvest from the sea. And the Blackwood…

Of course. It’s the living wood that we hunger for, the source of ships that can heal themselves, that cut the waves faster than our sleekest galleys, that resist magic unleashed upon them. That is at the heart of this game.

But King Diskanar was not a fool – he was not the one harbouring such aspirations. Kuru Qan would have seen to that. No, this gambit was the queen’s. Such conceit, to believe the Letherii could master the living wood. That the Edur would so easily surrender their secrets, their arcane arts in coaxing the will of the Blackwood, in binding its power to their own.

Harvesting the tusked seals was a feint. The monetary loss was part of a much larger scheme, an investment with the aim of generating political dividends, which in turn would recoup the losses a hundredfold. And only someone as wealthy as the queen or Chancellor Triban Gnol could absorb such losses. Ships crewed by the Indebted, with the provision of clearing those debts upon the event of their deaths. Lives given up for the sake of children and grandchildren. They would have had no trouble manning those ships. Blood and gold, then.

She could not be certain of her suspicions, but they seemed to fit, and were as bitterly unpalatable to her as they probably were to Buruk the Pale. The Tiste Edur would not surrender the Blackwood. The conclusion was foregone. There was to be war. And Hull Beddict will make of himself its fiercest proponent. The queen’s own unwitting agent. No wonder Buruk tolerates his presence.

And the part she would play? I am the escort of this snarled madness. Nothing more than that. Keep your distance, Seren Pedac. She was Acquitor. She would do as she had been charged to do. Deliver Buruk the Pale.

Nothing will be decided. Not by us. The game’s end awaits the Great Meeting.

If only she could find comfort in that thought.

Twenty paces ahead, the forest swallowed Hull Beddict and Binadas Sengar. Darkness and shadows, drawing closer with every step she took.

Any criminal who could swim across the canal with a sack of docks strapped to his back won freedom. The amount of coin was dependent upon the nature of the transgression. Theft, kidnapping, failure to pay a debt, damage to property and murder yielded the maximum fine of five hundred docks. Embezzlement, assault without cause, cursing in public upon the names of the Empty Throne, the king or the queen, demanded three hundred docks in reparation. The least of the fines, one hundred docks, were levied upon loitering, voiding in public and disrespect.

These were the fines for men. Women so charged were accorded half-weights.

If someone could pay the fine, he did so, thus expunging his criminal record.

The canal awaited those who could not.

The Drownings were more than public spectacle, they were the primary event among a host of activities upon which fortunes were gambled every day in Letheras. Since few criminals ever managed to make it across the canal with their burden, distance and number of strokes provided the measure for wagering bets. As did Risings, Flailings, Flounderings and Vanishings.

The criminals had ropes tied to them, allowing for retrieval of the coins once the drowning was confirmed. The corpse was dumped back into the river. Guilty as sludge.

Brys Beddict found Finadd Gerun Eberict on the Second Tier overlooking the canal, amidst a crowd of similarly privileged onlookers to the morning’s Drownings. Bookmakers swarmed through the press, handing out payment tiles and collecting wagers. Voices rang in the air above the buzz of excited conversation. Nearby, a woman squealed, then laughed. Male voices rose in response.

‘Finadd.’

The flat, scarred face known to virtually every citizen swung to Brys, thin eyebrows lifting in recognition. ‘King’s Champion. You’re just in time. Ublala Pung is about to take a swim. I’ve eight hundred docks on the bastard.’

Brys Beddict leaned on the railing. He scanned the guards and officials on the launch below. ‘I’ve heard the name,’ he said, ‘but cannot recall his crime. Is that Ublala?’ He pointed down to a cloaked figure towering above the others.

‘That’s him. Tarthenal half-blood. So they’ve added two hundred docks to his fine.’

‘What did he do?’

‘What didn’t he do? Murder times three, destruction of property, assault, kidnapping times two, cursing, fraud, failure to pay debt and voiding in public. All in one afternoon.’

‘The ruckus at Urum’s Lenders?’ The criminal had flung off his cloak. He was wearing naught but a loincloth. His burnished skin was lined with whip scars. The muscles beneath it were enormous.

‘That’s the one.’

‘So what’s he carrying?’

‘Forty-three hundred.’

And Brys now saw the enormous double-lined sack being manhandled onto the huge man’s back. ‘Errant’s blessing, he’ll not manage a stroke.’

‘That’s the consensus,’ Gerun said. ‘Every call’s on Flailing, Floundering and Vanishing. No strokes, no Risings.’

‘And your call?’

‘Seventy to one.’

Brys frowned. Odds like that meant but one thing. ‘You believe he’ll make it!’

Heads turned at his exclamation, the buzz around them grew louder.

Gerun leaned on the railing, drawing a long breath through his teeth, making that now infamous whistling sound. ‘Most half-blood Tarthenal get the worst traits,’ he muttered in a low voice, then grinned. ‘But not Ublala Pung.’

A roar from the crowds lining the walkway and tiers, and from the opposite side. The guards were leading the criminal down the launch. Ublala walked hunched over, straining with the weight of the sack. At the water’s edge he pushed the guards away and turned.

Pulling down his loincloth. And urinating in an arcing stream.

Somewhere, a woman screamed.

‘They’ll collect that body,’ one merchant said, awed, ‘down at the Eddies. I’ve heard there’re surgeons who can-’

‘And wouldn’t you pay a peak for that, Inchers!’ his companion cut in.

‘I’m not lacking, Hulbat – watch yourself! I was just saying-’

‘And ten thousand women are dreaming!’

A sudden hush, as Ublala Pung turned to face the canal.

Then strode forward. Hips. Chest. Shoulders.

A moment later his head disappeared beneath the thick, foul water.

Not a flounder, not a flail. Those who had bet on Vanishing crowed. Crowds pulled apart, figures closing on bookmakers.

‘Brys Beddict, what’s the distance across?’

‘A hundred paces.’

‘Aye.’

They remained leaning on the railing. After a moment, Brys shot the Finadd a quizzical look. Gerun nodded towards the launch below. ‘Look at the line, lad.’

There was some commotion around the retrieval line, and Brys saw – at about the same time as, by the rising voices, did others – that the rope was still playing out. ‘He’s walking the bottom!’

Brys found he could not pull his eyes from that uncoiling rope. A dozen heartbeats. Two dozen. A half-hundred. And still that rope snaked its way into the water.

The cries and shouts had risen to deafening pitch. Pigeons burst into the air from nearby rooftops, scattering in panic. Bettors were fighting with bookmakers for payment tiles. Someone fell from the Third Tier and, haplessly, missed the canal by a scant two paces. He struck flagstones and did not move, a circle of witnesses closing round his body.

‘That’s it,’ Gerun Eberict sighed.

A figure was emerging on the far-side launch. Streaming mud.

‘Four lungs, lad.’

Eight hundred docks. At seventy to one. ‘You’re a rich man who’s just got richer, Finadd.’

‘And Ublala Pung’s a free one. Hey, I saw your brother earlier. Tehol. Other side of the canal. He was wearing a skirt.’

‘Don’t stand so close – no, closer, so you can hear me, Shand, but not too close. Not like we know each other.’

‘You’ve lost your mind,’ she replied.

‘Maybe. Anyway, see that man?’

‘Who?’

‘That criminal, of course. The half-blood who tore apart Urum’s – the extortionist deserved it by the way-’

‘Tarthenal have four lungs.’

‘And so does he. I take it you didn’t wager?’

‘I despise gambling.’

‘Very droll, lass.’

‘What about him?’

‘Hire him.’

‘With pleasure.’

‘Then buy him some clothes.’

‘Do I have to?’

‘He’s not being employed because of his physical attributes – well, not those ones, anyway. You three need a bodyguard.’

‘He can guard my body any time.’

‘That’s it, Shand. I’m done talking with you today.’

‘No you’re not, Tehol. Tonight. The workshop. And bring Bugg.’

‘Everything is going as planned. There’s no need-’

‘Be there.’

Four years ago, Finadd Gerun Eberict single-handedly foiled an assassination attempt on King Diskanar. Returning to the palace late one night, he came upon the bodies of two guards outside the door to the king’s private chambers. A sorcerous attack had filled their lungs with sand, resulting in asphyxiation. Their flesh was still warm. The door was ajar.

The palace Finadd had drawn his sword. He burst into the king’s bedchamber to find three figures leaning over Ezgara Diskanar’s sleeping form. A mage and two assassins. Gerun killed the sorceror first, with a chop to the back of the man’s neck, severing his spinal cord. He had then stop-thrust the nearest assassin’s attack, the point of his sword burying itself in the man’s chest, just beneath the left collarbone. It would prove to be a mortal wound. The second assassin thrust his dagger at the Finadd’s face. Probably he had been aiming for one of Gerun’s eyes, but the Finadd threw his head back and the point entered his mouth, slicing through both lips, then driving hard between his front teeth. Pushing them apart, upon which the blade jammed.

The sword in Gerun’s hand chopped down, shattering the outstretched arm. Three more wild hacks killed the assassin.

This last engagement was witnessed by a wide-eyed king.

Two weeks later, Finadd Gerun Eberict, his breath whistling through the new gap in his front teeth, knelt before Ezgara Diskanar in the throne room, and before the assembled masses was granted the King’s Leave. For the remainder of the soldier’s life, he was immune to criminal conviction. He was, in short, free to do as he pleased, to whomever he pleased, barring the king’s own line.

The identity of the person behind the assassination attempt was never discovered.

Since then, Gerun Eberict had been on a private crusade. A lone, implacable vigilante. He was known to have personally murdered thirty-one citizens, including two wealthy, highly respected and politically powerful merchants, and at least a dozen other mysterious deaths were commonly attributed to him. He had, in short, become the most feared man in Letheras.

He had also, in that time, made himself rich.

Yet, for all that, he remained a Finadd in the King’s Guard, and so was bound to the usual responsibilities. Brys Beddict suspected the decision to send Gerun Eberict with the delegation was as much to relieve the city of the pressure of his presence as it was a statement to the queen and the prince. And Brys wondered if the king had come to regret his sanction.

The two palace guards walked side by side across Soulan Bridge and into the Pursers’ District. The day was hot, the sky white with thin, high clouds. They entered Rild’s, an establishment known for its fish cuisine, as well as an alcoholic drink made from orange rinds, honey and Tusked Seal sperm. They sat in the inner courtyard, at Gerun’s private table.

As soon as drinks and lunch were ordered, Gerun Eberict leaned back in his chair and regarded Brys with curiosity. ‘Is my guest this day the King’s Champion?’

‘In a manner of speaking,’ Brys admitted. ‘My brother, Hull, is accompanying Buruk the Pale. It is believed that Buruk will remain with the Edur until the Great Meeting. There is concern about Hull.’

‘What kind of concern?’

‘Well, you knew him years ago.’

‘I did. Rather well, in fact. He was my Finadd back then. And upon my promotion, he and I got roaring drunk at Porul’s and likely sired a dozen bastards each with a visiting troupe of flower dancers from Trate. In any case, the company folded about ten months later, or so we heard.’

‘Yes, well. He’s not the same man, you know.’

‘Isn’t he?’

The drinks arrived, an amber wine for Brys, the Tusked Milk for Gerun.

‘No,’ Brys said in answer to the Finadd’s question, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Hull believes in one thing, and that is loyalty. The only gift he feels is worth giving. Granted, it was sorely abused, and the legacy of that is a new list in your brother’s head, with the names of every man and woman who betrayed him.’ Gerun tossed back his drink and gestured for another one. ‘The only difference between him and me is that I’m able to cross names off my list.’

‘And what if,’ Brys said quietly, ‘the king’s name is on Hull’s list?’ Gerun’s eyes went flat. ‘As I said, I’m the only one crossing off names.’

‘Then why is Hull with Buruk the Pale?’

‘Buruk is not the king’s man, Brys. The very opposite, in fact. I look forward to finally meeting him.’

A cold chill ran through Brys.

‘In any case,’ Gerun went on, ‘it’s your other brother who interests me.’

‘Tehol? Don’t tell me he’s on your list.’

Gerun smiled, revealing the sideways tilt of his upper and lower teeth. ‘And I’d tell you if he was? Relax, he isn’t. Not yet, in any case. But he’s up to something.’

‘I find that hard to believe. Tehol stopped being up to anything a long time ago.’

‘That’s what you think.’

‘I know nothing to suggest otherwise, but it seems that you do.’

Gerun’s second drink arrived. ‘Were you aware,’ the Finadd said, dipping a finger into the thick, viscid liquid, ‘that Tehol still possesses myriad interests, in property, licences, mercantile investments and transportation? He’s raised pretty solid fronts, enough to be fairly sure that no-one else knows that he’s remained active.’

‘Not solid enough, it seems.’

Gerun shrugged. ‘In many ways, Tehol walked the path of the King’s Leave long before me, and without the actual sanction.’

‘Tehol’s never killed anyone-’

Gerun’s smile grew feral. ‘The day the Tolls collapsed, Brys, an even dozen financiers committed suicide. And that collapse was solely and exclusively by Tehol’s hand. Perfectly, indeed brilliantly timed. He had his own list, only he didn’t stick a knife in their throats; instead, he made them all his business partners. And took every one of them down-’

‘But he went down, too.’

‘He didn’t kill himself over it, though, did he? Didn’t that tell you something? It should have.’

‘Only that he didn’t care.’

‘Precisely. Brys, tell me, who is Tehol’s greatest admirer?’

‘You?’

‘No. Oh, I’m suitably impressed. Enough to be suspicious as the Errant’s Pit now that he’s stirring the pot once more. No. Someone else.’

Brys looked away. Trying to decide if he liked this man sitting opposite him. Liked him enough for this conversation. He knew he hated the subject matter.

Their lunches arrived.

Gerun Eberict focused his attention on the grilled fillet on the silver plate in front of him, after ordering a third Tusked Milk.

It occurred to Brys that he had never seen a woman drink that Particular concoction.

‘I don’t speak to Tehol,’ he said after a time, his gaze on his own serving as he slowly picked the white flesh apart, revealing the row of vertebrae and the dorsal spines.

‘You despise what he did?’

Brys frowned, then shook his head. ‘No. What he did after.’

‘Which was?’

‘Nothing.’

‘The water had to clear, lad. So he could look around once more and see what remained.’

‘You’re suggesting diabolical genius, Gerun.’

‘I am. Tehol possesses what Hull does not. Knowledge is not enough. It never is. It’s the capacity to do something with that knowledge. To do it perfectly. Absolute timing. With devastating consequences. That’s what Tehol has. Hull, Errant protect him, does not.’

Brys looked up and met the Finadd’s pale eyes. ‘Are you suggesting that Hull is Tehol’s greatest admirer?’

‘Hull’s very own inspiration. And that is why he is with Buruk the Pale.’

‘Do you intend to stand in his way at the Great Meeting?’

‘It might well be too late by that time, Brys. Assuming that is my intention.’

‘It isn’t?’

‘I haven’t decided.’

‘You want war?’

Gerun’s gaze remained level. ‘That particular tide stirs the deepest silts. Blinding everyone. A man with a goal can get a lot done in that cloud. And, eventually, it settles.’

‘And lo,’ Brys said, unable to hide his bitterness, ‘the world has changed.’

‘Possibly.’

‘War as the means-’

‘To a peaceful end-’

‘That you will find pleasing to your eye.’

Gerun pushed his plate away and sat back once more. ‘What is life without ambition, Brys?’

Brys rose, his meal pried apart into a chaotic mass on the plate before him. ‘Tehol would be better at answering that than am I, Finadd.’

Gerun smiled up at him. ‘Inform Nifadas and Kuru Qan that I am not unaware of the complexities wrought through the impending Great Meeting. Nor am I blind to the need to usher me out of the city for a time. I have, of course, compensated for my own absence, in anticipation of my triumphant return.’

‘I will convey your words, Finadd.’

‘I regret your loss of appetite, Brys. The fish was excellent. Next time, we will speak of inconsequential things. I both respect and admire you, Champion.’

‘Ah, so I am not on your list.’

‘Not yet. A joke, Brys,’ he added upon seeing the Champion’s expression. ‘Besides, you’d cut me to pieces. How can I not admire that? I see it this way – the history of this decade, for our dear Letheras, can be most succinctly understood by a faithful recounting of the three Beddict brothers. And, as is clear, the tale’s not yet done.’

So it would seem. ‘I thank you, Finadd, for the company and the invitation.’

Gerun leaned forward and picked up the Champion’s plate. ‘Take the back exit, if you please,’ he said, offering Brys the plate. ‘There’s a starveling lad living in the alley. Mind, he’s to return the silver – make sure he understands that. Tell him you were my guest.’

‘Very well, Finadd.’

‘Try these on.’

Tehol stared at the woollen trousers, then reached for them. ‘Tell me, Bugg, is there any point in you continuing?’

‘Do you mean these leggings, or with my sorry existence?’

‘Have you hired your crew?’ He stripped off his skirt and began donning the trousers.

‘Twenty of the most miserable malcontents I could find.’

‘Grievances?’

‘Every one of them, and I’m pretty certain they are all legitimate. Granted, a few probably deserved their banishment from the trade.’

‘Most de-certifications are political, Bugg. Just be sure none of them are incompetent. All we need is for them to keep a secret, and for that, spite against the guilds is the best motivation.’

‘I’m not entirely convinced. Besides, we’ve had some warnings from the guilds.’

‘In person?’

‘Delivered missives. So far. Your left knee will stay warm.’

‘Warm? It’s hot out there, Bugg, despite what your old rheumy bones tell you.’

‘Well, they’re trousers for every season.’

‘Really? Assure the guilds we’re not out to underbid. In fact, the very opposite. Nor do we pay our crew higher rates. No benefits, either-’

‘Barring a stake in the enterprise.’

‘Say nothing of that, Bugg. Look at the hairs on my right thigh. They’re standing on end.’

‘It’s the contrast they don’t like.’

‘The guilds?’

‘No, your hairs. The guilds just want to know where by the Errant I came from. And how dare I register a company.’

‘Don’t worry about that, Bugg. Once they find out what you’re claiming to be able to do, they’ll be sure you’ll fail and so ignore you thereafter. Until you succeed, that is.’

‘I’m having second thoughts.’

‘About what?’

‘Put the skirt back on.’

‘I’m inclined to agree with you. Find some more wool. Preferably the same colour, although that is not essential, I suppose. In any case, we have a meeting with the three darlings this evening.’

‘Risky.’

‘We must be circumspect.’

‘That goes both ways. I stole that wool.’

Tehol wrapped the sheet once more about his waist. ‘I’ll be back down later to collect you. Clean up around here, will you?’

‘If I’ve the time.’

Tehol climbed the ladder to the roof.

The sun’s light was deepening, as it edged towards the horizon, bathing the surrounding buildings in a warm glow. Two artists had set up easels on the Third Tier, competing to immortalize Tehol and his bed. He gave them a wave that seemed to trigger a loud argument, then settled down on the sun-warmed mattress. Stared up at the darkening sky.

He had seen his brother Brys at the Drownings. On the other side of the canal, in conversation with Gerun Eberict. Rumour had it that Gerun was accompanying the delegation to the Tiste Edur. Hardly surprising. The King needed that wild man out of the city.

The problem with gold was the way it crawled. Where nothing else could. It seeped out from secrets, flowered in what should have been lifeless cracks. It strutted when it should have remained hidden, beneath notice. Brazen as any weed between the cobbles, and, if one was so inclined, one could track those roots all the way down. Sudden spending, from kin of dead hirelings, followed quickly – but not quickly enough – by sudden, inexplicable demises. A strange severing that left the king’s inquisitors with no-one to question, no-one to torture to find the source of the conspiracy. Assassination attempts were no small thing, after all, especially when the king himself was the target. Extraordinary, almost unbelievable success – to have reached Diskanar’s own bedchamber, to stand poised above the man, mere heartbeats from delivering death. That particular sorceror had never before shown such skill in the relevant arts. To conjure sand to fill the chests of two men was highest sorcery.

Natural curiosity and possible advantage, these had been Tehol’s motives, and he’d been much quicker than the royal inquisitors. A fortune, he had discovered, had been spent on the conspiracy, a life’s savings.

Clearly, only Gerun Eberict had known the full extent of the scheme. His hirelings would not have anticipated their employer’s attacking them. Killing them. They’d fought back, and one had come close to succeeding. And the Finadd carried the scars still, lips and crooked teeth, to show the nearness of the thing.

Immunity from conviction. So that Gerun Eberict could set out and do what he wanted to do. Judge and executioner, for crimes real and imagined, for offences both major and minor.

In a way, Tehol admired the man. For his determination, if not his methods. And for devising and gambling all on a scheme that took one’s breath away with its bold… extremity.

No doubt Brys had official business with the man. As King’s Champion.

Even so, worrying. It wouldn’t do to have his young brother so close to Gerun Eberict.

For if Tehol possessed a true enemy, a foe to match his own cleverness who – it would appear – surpassed Tehol himself in viciousness – it was Finadd Gerun Eberict, possessor of the King’s Leave.

And he’d been sniffing around, twisting arms. Safer, then, to assume Gerun knew that Tehol was not as destitute as most would believe. Nor entirely… inactive.

Thus, a new fold to consider in this rumpled, tangled tapestry.

Gerun was immune. But not without enemies. Granted, deadly with a sword, and known to have a dozen sworn, blood-bound bodyguards to protect him when he slept. His estate was rumoured to be impregnable, and possessed of its own armoury, apothecary with resident alchemist well versed in poisons and their antidotes, voluminous store-houses, and independent source of water. All in all, Gerun had planned for virtually every contingency.

Barring the singular focus of the mind of one Tehol Beddict.

Sometimes the only solution was also the simplest, most obvious. See a weed between the cobbles… pull it out.

‘Bugg!’

A faint voice from below. ‘What?’

‘Who was holding Gerun’s tiles on that bet this afternoon?’

His servant’s grizzled head appeared in the hatch. ‘You already know, since you own the bastard. Turble. Assuming he’s not dead of a heart attack… or suicide.’

‘Turble? Not a chance. My guess is, the man’s packing. A sudden trip to the Outer Isles.’

‘He’ll never make it to the city gates.’

‘Meaning Gerun is on the poor bastard.’

‘Wouldn’t you be? With that payoff?’

Tehol frowned. ‘Suicide, I’m now thinking, might well be Turble’s conclusion to his sorry state of affairs. Unexpected, true, and all the more shocking for it. He’s got no kin, as I recall. So the debt dies with him.’

‘And Gerun is out eight hundred docks.’

‘He might wince at that, but not so much as you’d notice. The man’s worth a peak, maybe more.’

‘You don’t know?’

‘All right, so I was generalizing. Of course I know, down to the last dock. Nay, the last stripling. In any case, I was saying, or, rather, suggesting, that the loss of eight hundred docks is not what would make Gerun sting. It’s the escape. The one trail even Gerun can’t doggedly follow – not willingly, anyway. Thus, Turble has to commit suicide.’

‘I doubt he’ll agree to it.’

‘No, probably not. But set it in motion, Bugg. Down to the Eddies. Find us a suitable corpse. Fresh, and not yet drained. Get a bottle or two of Turble’s blood from him in exchange-’

‘What’ll it be? Fire? Who commits suicide using fire?’

‘The fire will be an unfortunate consequence of an unattended oil lamp. Unattended because of the suicide. Burnt beyond recognition, alas, but the scrivers will swear by the blood’s owner. That’s how they work, isn’t it?’

‘A man’s veins never lie.’

‘Right. Only, they can.’

‘Right, if you’re insane enough to drain a corpse and pump new blood into it.’

‘A ghastly exercise, Bugg. Glad you’re up to it.’

The wizened face at the hatch was scowling. ‘And Turble?’

‘We smuggle him out the usual way. He’s always wanted to take up fishing. Put someone in the tunnel, in case he bolts sooner than we expect. Gerun’s watchers will be our finest witnesses. Oh, and won’t the Finadd spit.’

‘Is this wise?’ Bugg asked.

‘No choice. He’s the only man who can stop me. So I’m getting him first.’

‘If he catches a whiff that it’s you-’

‘Then I’m a dead man.’

‘And I’m out of work.’

‘Nonsense. The lasses will carry on. Besides, you are my beneficiary – unofficially, of course.’

‘Should you have told me that?’

‘Why not? I’m lying.’

Bugg’s head sank back down.

Tehol settled back onto the bed. Now, I need to find me a thief. A good one.

Ah! I know the very one. Poor lass…

‘Bugg!’

Shurq Elalle’s fate had taken a turn for the worse. Nothing to do with her profession, for her skills in the art of thievery were legendary among the lawless class. An argument with her landlord, sadly escalating to attempted murder on his part, to which she of course – in all legality – responded by flinging him out the window. The hapless man’s fall had, unfortunately, been broken by a waddling merchant on the street below. The landlord’s neck broke. So did the merchant’s.

Careless self-defence leading to the death of an innocent had been the charge. Four hundred docks, halved. Normally, Shurq could have paid the fine and that would have been that. Alas, her argument with the landlord had been over a certain hoard of gold that had inexplicably vanished from Shurq’s cache. Without a dock to her name, she had been marched down to the canal.

Even then, she was a fit woman. Two hundred docks were probably manageable – had not the retrieval rope snagged on the spines of a forty-stone lupe-fish that had surfaced for a look at the swimmer, only to dive back down to the bottom, taking Shurq with it.

Lupe fish, while rare in the canal, ate only men. Never women. No-one knew why this was the case.

Shurq Elalle drowned.

But, as it turned out, there was dead and then there was dead. Unbeknownst to her, Shurq had been cursed by one of her past victims. A curse fully paid for and sanctified by the Empty Temple. So, though her lungs filled with foul water, though her heart stopped, as did all other discernible functions of the body and mind, there she stood when finally retrieved from the canal, sheathed in mud, eyes dull and the whites browned by burst vessels and lifeless blood, all in all most miserable and sadly bemused.

Even the lawless and the homeless shunned her thereafter. All the living, in fact. Walking past as if she was in truth a ghost, a dead memory.

Her flesh did not decay, although its pallor was noticeably unhealthy. Nor were her reactions and deft abilities in any way diminished. She could speak. See. Hear. Think. None of which improved her mood, much.

Bugg found her where Tehol had said she’d be found. In an alley behind a bordello. Listening, as she did every night, to the moans of pleasure – real and improvised – issuing from the windows above.

‘Shurq Elalle.’

Listless, murky eyes fixed on him. ‘I give no pleasure,’ she said.

‘Alas, neither do I, these days. I am here to deliver to you an indefinite contract from my master.’

‘And who would that be?’

‘Not yet, I’m afraid. Thieving work, Shurq.’

‘What need have I for riches?’

‘Well, that would depend on their substance, I’d imagine.’

She stepped out from the shadowed alcove where she’d been standing. ‘And what does your master imagine I desire?’

‘Negotiable.’

‘Does he know I’m dead?’

‘Of course. And sends his regrets.’

‘Does he?’

‘No, I made that up.’

‘No-one hires me any more.’

‘That is why he knew you would be available.’

‘No-one likes my company.’

‘Well, a bath wouldn’t hurt, but he’s prepared to make allowances.’

‘I will speak to him.’

‘Very good. He has anticipated your wishes. Midnight.’

‘Where?’

‘A rooftop. With a bed.’

‘Him?’

‘Yes.’

‘In his bed?’

‘Um, I’m not sure if that was in his mind-’

‘Glad to hear it. I may be dead, but I’m not easy. I’ll be there. Midnight, until a quarter past. No more. If he can convince me in that time, all and well. If not, too bad.’

‘A quarter should be more than enough, Shurq.’

‘You are foolish to be so confident of that.’

Bugg smiled. ‘Am I?’

‘Where’s Bugg?’

‘He’ll be meeting us here.’ Tehol walked over to the couch and settled down on it, drawing his legs up until he was in a reclining position. He eyed the three women. ‘Now, what is so important that I must risk discovery via this reckless meeting?’

Shand ran a calloused palm over her shaved head. ‘We want to know what you’ve been up to, Tehol.’

‘That’s right,’ Rissarh said.

Hejun’s arms were crossed, and there was a scowl on her face as she added, ‘We don’t need a bodyguard.’

‘Oh, forgot about him. Where is he?’

‘Said he had some belongings to collect,’ Shand said. ‘He should be here any time now. No, the others haven’t met him yet.’

‘Ah, so they are sceptical of your enthusiasm.’

‘She’s been known to exaggerate,’ Rissarh said.

‘Besides,’ Hejun snapped, ‘what’s all that got to do with being a bodyguard? I don’t care how big his-’

The warehouse door creaked, and everyone looked over.

Ublala Pung’s round face peered timidly inside, from just under the overhang.

‘Dear sir!’ Tehol called out. ‘Please, come in!’

The half-blood hesitated. His pale eyes flitted among Shand, Rissarh and Hejun. ‘There’s… three of them,’ he said.

‘Three of what?’

‘Women.’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Tehol. ‘And…?’

Ublala frowned, lips drawing together into something much resembling a pout.

‘Don’t worry,’ Tehol invited with a wave of a hand, ‘I promise to protect you from them.’

‘Really?’

‘Absolutely. Come in, Ublala Pung, and be welcome.’

The huge man pushed the door back further and edged inside.

Ublala’s belongings did not, it was clear, include trousers or loincloth. He was as naked as he had been down at the canal. Not that clothing would have much disguised his attributes, Tehol concluded after a moment of despondent reflection. Well, never mind that. ‘Hungry? Thirsty? Relax, friend. Set your bag down… yes, there is just fine. Sit down – no, the bench, not the chair – you’d end up wearing it, which, now that I think on it… no, probably not. Ublala, these women require a bodyguard. I assume you accepted the offer from Shand-’

‘I thought it was just her.’

‘And that makes a difference?’

‘Makes it harder.’

‘Granted. But, most of the time you’ll be here…’ Tehol’s voice trailed away, as he finally noticed that Shand, Rissarh and Hejun had neither moved since Ublala’s arrival, nor said a word. Oh, now really…

Nisall had been the King’s First Concubine for three years. No official power was accorded the title, barring what the personality of the woman in question could achieve. There had been considerable variation throughout history, often dependent upon the fortitude of the king at the time, as well as that of the queen and the chancellor.

At present, there were six concubines in all, the others young, minor daughters of powerful families. Potential investments in the future there as much to capture the prince’s attention as the king’s. Like the queen’s four consorts, they were housed in a private, isolated quarter of the palace. Only the First Consort, Turudal Brizad, and the First Concubine were permitted contact with anyone other than the royal personages themselves.

Brys Beddict bowed to Nisall, then saluted Preda Unnutal Hebaz. He was not surprised to find the First Concubine in the Preda’s office. Nisall had decided her loyalties long ago.

‘Champion,’ the young woman smiled. ‘Unnutal and I were just discussing you.’

‘More precisely,’ the Preda said, ‘we were conjecturing on the content of your conversation with Finadd Gerun Eberict earlier today.’

‘Preda, I regret my delay in reporting to you.’

‘A well-rehearsed report by now,’ Nisall said, ‘given that you have already been required to provide it to the First Eunuch and Ceda Kur Qan. Thus, we will allow you a certain lack of animation in your telling.’

Brys frowned, his eyes on his commander. ‘Preda, it occurs to me that Gerun Eberict remains one of your officers, regardless of the King’s Leave. I am surprised he has not already reported to you the details of today’s conversation.’

‘And who is to say he hasn’t?’ Unnutal enquired. Then she waved a hand. ‘An uncharitable response on my part. I apologize, Brys. It has been a long day indeed.’

‘No apology required, Preda. I spoke out of turn-’

‘Brys,’ Nisall interrupted. ‘You are the King’s Champion now. There is no place where you can speak out of turn. Even unto Ezgara himself. Forgive the Preda her brusque manner. Conversations with Gerun tend to make one exasperated.’

‘He has a certain hauteur about him,’ Brys said.

‘Arrogance,’ Unnutal snapped. ‘He did not give you cause to call him out?’

‘No.’

‘How unfortunate,’ Nisall sighed.

‘Although I believe I was warned.’

Both women fixed their eyes on him.

Brys shrugged. ‘I was reminded that his list is an ongoing project.’

‘He considers killing Buruk the Pale.’

‘I believe so. The First Eunuch has been made aware of that possibility.’

‘Now,’ Nisall said, beginning to pace in the room, ‘should the king be informed of this development, he might be inclined to withdraw Gerun from the delegation. Which will be perceived as a victory by the queen and the Chancellor.’

‘Perceptions can be made integral to strategy,’ Brys said.

‘Spoken as a duellist,’ Nisall said. ‘But the advantages to the queen granted by Gerun’s absence perhaps outweigh any advantage we might fashion. Besides, we know Buruk the Pale proceeds under directions from her camp, so his loss will not hurt us.’

Brys considered this, uneasy at such a cavalier dismissal of a man’s life. ‘How well does Buruk sit with his burdens?’

‘We have a spy close to him, of course,’ the Preda said. ‘The man is tortured by his conscience. He escapes with white nectar and drink, and dissolute sexual indulgences.’

‘The queen…’

‘Wants war,’ Nisall finished with a sharp nod. ‘The irresponsible, greedy, short-sighted sea-cow. A fine partner to the stupidest chancellor in the history of Letheras. And a thick, easily led prince waiting impatiently to take the throne.’

Brys shifted uncomfortably. ‘Perhaps, if Buruk’s conscience is haunting him, he can be swayed to another course.’

‘Beneath the hawk gaze of Moroch Nevath? Not likely.’

The Champion’s eyes narrowed on Nisall. This was all leading to something. He just wasn’t sure what.

The Preda sighed. ‘Gerun needs to add a name to his list.’

‘Moroch Nevath?’

‘And that will be difficult.’

‘It will. The man is singular. In every way imaginable. Incorruptible, with a history to match.’

‘And to whom is the man sworn?’

‘Why, the prince, of course. But the King’s Leave does not include killing royalty.’

‘Yet his history is far less pure.’

Nisall added, ‘Gerun would not be able to act directly against the Prince. He would need to attack obliquely.’

‘First Concubine, I have little understanding of Gerun Eberict’s motivations. I do not comprehend the nature of his cause.’

‘I do,’ the Preda said. ‘I know precisely what he’s up to. And I believe we can see that he adds to his list.’

‘The concern is,’ Nisall said, ‘what role will his old Finadd, Hull Beddict, have during the playing out of all this.’

Brys looked away. He was beginning to feel under siege. If not one brother, then the other. ‘I will give it some thought.’

‘Not too long, Finadd,’ Unnutal Hebaz said.

‘A day or two, perhaps.’

‘Agreed. Until then, Brys.’

‘Goodnight Preda, First Concubine.’

He made his way out of the office.

In the corridor, five paces from the two guards standing vigil at the door through which he had just exited, his steps slowed to a halt. Unmindful of the curious eyes on his back, the King’s Champion stood motionless.

In the minds of the two guards, three titles. Master of the Sword, Finadd and King’s Champion – all were cause for envy and admiration. They might have wondered at him at that moment, however. The way he stood, as if entirely alone in a large, overwhelming world. Eyes clearly fixed on some inner landscape. Weariness in his shoulders. They might have wondered, but if so it was a brief, ephemeral empathy, quickly replaced by those harder sentiments, envy and admiration. And the gruff assertion that supreme ability purchased many things, including isolation. And the man could damn well live with it.

‘There’s no place for sentiment here,’ Tehol said, ‘sad to say. Letheras is unforgiving. We can’t afford to make mistakes. For Errant’s sake, Ublala, relax. You’re turning blue. Anyway, as I was saying, Shand, it’s careless being careless. In other words, we can’t keep meeting like this.’

‘Do you practise?’ Rissarh asked.

‘At what?’

Bugg cleared his throat. ‘I have a meeting tomorrow with the royal architects.’

‘Finally!’ Shand sighed from where she sat at the table, knuckling her eyes before continuing, ‘As far as we could tell nothing was happening about anything.’

‘Well,’ Tehol said, ‘that’s precisely the impression we want.’

‘Fine, but that’s the outside impression. It’s not supposed to apply to us, you idiot. If we aren’t in on the scheme then no-one is.’

‘Preparation, Shand. The groundwork. This can’t be rushed. Now, I’ve got to go.’

‘What?’

‘It’s late. My bed beckons. Fix up a room for Ublala. Get him some clothes. Maybe even a weapon he knows how to use.’

‘Don’t leave me here!’ Ublala moaned.

‘This is all business,’ Tehol assured him. ‘You’re safe here. Isn’t he, Shand?’

‘Of course,’ she murmured.

‘Cut that out. Or I’ll hire a bodyguard for our bodyguard.’

‘Maybe Ublala has a brother.’

Tehol gestured for Bugg to follow as he headed for the door. ‘I suppose meetings like this are useful. Every now and then.’

‘No doubt,’ Bugg replied.

They emerged onto the street. The night crowd was bustling. Shops stayed open late in the summer, to take advantage of the season’s frenzy. Heat made for restlessness, which made for a certain insatiability. Later in the season, when the temperatures became unbearable, there would be enervation, and debt.

Tehol and Bugg left the high street fronting the canal and made their way down various alleys, gradually leaving the spending crowds behind and finding themselves among the destitute. Voices called out from shadows. Dishevelled children followed the two men, a few reaching out grubby hands to pluck at Tehol’s skirt before running away laughing. Before long, they too were gone, and the way ahead was empty.

‘Ah, the welcoming silence of our neighbourhood,’ Tehol said as they walked towards their house. ‘It’s the headlong rush that always troubles me. As if the present is unending.’

‘Is this your contemplative moment?’ Bugg asked.

‘It was. Now over, thankfully.’

They entered and Tehol strode straight for the ladder. ‘Clean the place up tomorrow morning.’

‘Remember, you’ll have a visitor tonight.’

‘Not just in my dreams?’

Tehol clambered onto the roof. He closed the hatch then stood and studied the stars overhead until she emerged from the darkness to one side and spoke. ‘You’re late.’

‘No, I’m not. Midnight. Still a quarter off.’

‘Is it? Oh.’

‘And how’s life, Shurq? Sorry, I couldn’t resist.’

‘And I’ve never heard that particular quip before. It’s a miserable existence. Day after day, night after night. One step in front of the other, on and on to nowhere in particular.’

‘And being dead has changed all that?’

‘Don’t make me laugh, Tehol Beddict. I cough up stuff when I laugh. You want to offer me a contract. To do what?’

‘Well, a retainer, actually.’

‘Ongoing employment. I refused all retainers when I was alive; why should I do anything else now?’

‘Job security, of course. You’re not young any more.’ He walked over to his bed and sat down, facing her. ‘All right. Consider the challenges I offer. I have targets in mind that not a thief alive today would touch. In fact, only a high mage or someone who’s dead could defeat the wards and leave no trail. I don’t trust high mages, leaving only you.’

‘There are others.’

‘Two others, to be precise. And neither one a professional thief.’

‘How did you know there were two others?’

‘I know lots of things, Shurq. One is a woman who cheated on her husband, who in turn spent his life savings on the curse against her. The other is a child, origin of curse unknown, who dwells in the grounds of the old tower behind the palace.’

‘Yes. I visit her on occasion. She doesn’t know who cursed her. In fact, the child has no memory of her life at all.’

‘Probably an addition to the original curse,’ Tehol mused. ‘But that is curious indeed.’

‘It is. Half a peak was the going price. How much for sorcery to steal her memories?’

‘Half as much again, I’d think. That’s a lot to do to a ten-year-old child. Why not just kill her and bury her in some out of the way place, or dump her in the canal?’ He sat forward. ‘Tell you what, Shurq, we’ll include the pursuit of that mystery – I suspect it interests you in spite of yourself.’

‘I would not mind sticking a knife in the eye of whoever cursed the child. But I have no leads.’

‘Ah, so you’ve not been entirely apathetic, then.’

‘Never said I was, Tehol. But, finding no trail at all, I admit to a diminishment in motivation.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

The dead woman cocked her head and regarded him in silence for a moment. ‘You were a genius once.’

‘Very true.’

‘Then you lost everything.’

‘That’s right.’

‘And with that, presumably, a similar loss in confidence.’

‘Oh, hardly, Shurq Elalle.’

‘All part of your diabolical plan.’

‘Every worthwhile plan is diabolical.’

‘Don’t make me laugh.’

‘I’m trying not to, Shurq. Do we have a deal?’

‘The secret of the curse upon the child was not your intended payment for my services, Tehol. What else?’

‘I’m open to suggestions. Do you want the curse undone? Do you long for eternal night? The final stealthy departure of your slinking soul? Do you want to be resurrected in truth? Gifted life once more? Revenge against the one who cursed you?’

‘I already did that.’

‘All right. I admit I’m not surprised. Who was blamed for it?’

‘Gerun Eberict.’

‘Oh, that’s clever. Speaking of him…’

‘Is he one of your targets?’

‘Very much so.’

‘I don’t like assassination, in principle. Besides, he’s killed more than one knave.’

‘I don’t want you to kill him, Shurq. Just steal his fortune.’

‘Gerun Eberict has been getting more brazen, it’s true.’

‘An actual liability.’

‘Assuming maintaining the status quo is a worthwhile endeavour.’

‘Make no assumptions, Shurq. It’s more a matter of who’s controlling the dissolution of said status quo. The Finadd is losing control of his own appetites.’

‘Are you one of his targets, Tehol?’

‘Not that I’m aware of, not yet, anyway. Preferably not at all.’

‘It would be quite a challenge defeating his estate’s defensive measures.’

‘I’m sure it would.’

‘As for my retainer, I’m not interested in living again. Nor in dying with finality. No, what I want is to be granted the semblance of life.’

Tehol’s brows rose.

‘I want my skin glowing with palpable vigour. I want a certain dark allure to my eyes. My hair needs styling. New clothes, a flowery scent lingering in my wake. And I want to feel pleasure again.’

‘Pleasure?’

‘Sexual.’

‘Maybe it’s just the company you’ve been keeping.’

‘Don’t make me laugh.’

‘You’ll cough up stuff.’

‘You don’t want to know, Tehol Beddict. Maybe we can do something about that, too. That river water is three years old.’

‘I’m curious. How do you manage to speak without breath?’

‘I don’t know. I can draw air into my throat. It starts drying out after a while.’

‘I’ve noticed. All right, some of those things can be achieved easily enough, although we’ll have to be circumspect. Others, for example the reawakening of pleasure, will obviously be more problematic. But I’m sure something can be managed-’

‘It won’t be cheap.’

‘I’m sure Gerun Eberict will be happy to pay for it.’

‘What if it takes all he has?’

Tehol shrugged. ‘My dear, the money is not the point of the exercise. I was planning on dumping it in the river.’

She studied him in silence for a moment longer, then said, ‘I could take it with me.’

‘Don’t make me laugh, Shurq. Seriously.’

‘Why?’

‘Because it’s a very infectious laugh.’

‘Ah. Point taken.’

‘And the retainer?’ Tehol asked.

‘Taken, as well. Presumably, you don’t want me hanging around you.’

‘Midnight meetings like this one should suffice. Come by tomorrow night, and we’ll make of you a new woman.’

‘So long as I smell new.’

‘Don’t worry. I know just the people for the task at hand.’

The thief left by climbing down the outside wall of the building. Tehol stood at the roof’s edge and watched her progress, then, when she had reached the alley below, he permitted himself a roll of the eyes. He turned away and approached his bed.

Only to hear voices down below. Surprised tones from Bugg, but not alarm. And loud enough to warn Tehol in case Shurq had lingered.

Tehol sighed. Life had been better – simpler – only a few weeks ago. When he’d been without plans, schemes, goals. Without, in short, purpose. A modest stir, and now everyone wanted to see him.

Creaks from the ladder, then a dark figure climbed into view.

It was a moment before Tehol recognized him, and his brows rose a moment before he stepped forward. ‘Well, this is unexpected.’

‘Your manservant seemed sure that you’d be awake. Why is that?’

‘Dear brother, Bugg’s talents are veritably preternatural.’

Brys walked over to the bed and studied it for a moment. ‘What happens when it rains?’

‘Alas, I am forced to retire to the room below. There to suffer Bugg’s incessant snoring.’

‘Is that what’s driven you to sleeping on the roof?’

Tehol smiled, then realized it was not likely Brys could see that smile in the darkness. Then decided it was all for the best. ‘King’s Champion. I have been remiss in congratulating you. Thus, congratulations.’

Brys was motionless. ‘How often do you visit the crypt? Or do you ever visit?’

Crossing his arms, Tehol swung his gaze to the canal below. A smeared gleam of reflected stars, crawling through the city. ‘It’s been years, Brys.’

‘Since you last visited?’

‘Since they died. We all have different ways of honouring their memory. The family crypt?’ He shrugged. ‘A stone-walled sunken room containing nothing of consequence.’

‘I see. I’m curious, Tehol, how precisely do you honour their memory these days?’

‘You have no idea.’

‘No, I don’t.’

Tehol rubbed at his eyes, only now realizing how tired he was. Thinking was proving a voracious feeder on his energies, leading him to admit he’d been out of practice. Not just thinking, of course. The brain did other things, as well, even more exhausting. The revisiting of siblings, of long-estranged relationships, saw old, burnished armour donned once more, weapons reached for, old stances once believed abandoned proving to have simply been lying dormant. ‘Is this a festive holiday, Brys? Have I missed something? Had we cousins, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, we could gather to walk the familiar ruts. Round and round the empty chairs where our mother and father once sat. And we could make our language unspoken in a manner to mimic another truth – that the dead speak in silences and so never leave us in peace-’

‘I need your help, Tehol.’

He glanced up, but could make nothing of his brother’s expression in the gloom.

‘It’s Hull,’ Brys went on. ‘He’s going to get himself killed.’

‘Tell me,’ Tehol said, ‘have you ever wondered why not one of us has found a wife?’

‘I was talking about-’

‘It’s simple, really. Blame our mother, Brys. She was too smart. Errant take us, what an understatement. It wasn’t Father who managed the investments.’

‘And you are her son, Tehol. More than me and Hull, by far. Every time I look at you, every time I listen to you, struggle to follow your lines of thought. But I don’t see how that-’

‘Our expectations reside in the clouds, Brys. Oh, we try. All of us have tried, haven’t we?’

‘Damn it, Tehol, what’s your point?’

‘Hull, of course. That’s who you came here to talk about, isn’t it? Well. He met a woman. As smart as our mother, in her own way. Or, rather, she found him. Hull’s greatest gift, but he didn’t even recognize it for what it was, when it was right there in his hands.’

Brys stepped closer, hands lifting as if about to grasp his brother by the throat. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion. After a moment his hands fell away. ‘The prince will see him killed. Or, if not the prince, then the First Eunuch – should Hull speak out against the king. But wait!’ He laughed without humour. ‘There’s also Gerun Eberict! Who’ll also be there! Have I left anyone out? I’m not sure. Does it matter? Hull will be at the parley. The only one whose motives are unknown – to anyone. You can’t play your game if a stranger wades in at the last moment, can you?’

‘Calm yourself, brother,’ Tehol said. ‘I was getting to my point.’

‘Well, I can’t see it!’

‘Quietly, please. Hull found her, then lost her. But she’s still there – that much is clear. Seren Pedac, Brys. She’ll protect him-’

Brys snarled and turned away. ‘Like Mother did Father?’

Tehol winced, then sighed. ‘Mitigating circumstances-’

‘And Hull is our father’s son!’

‘You asked, a moment ago, how I honour the memory of our parents. I can tell you this, Brys. When I see you. How you stand. The deadly grace – your skill, taught you by his hand – well, I have no need for memory. He stands before me, right now. More than with Hull. Far more. And, I’d hazard, I am much as you say – like her. Thus,’ he spread his hands helplessly, ‘you ask for help, but will not hear what I tell you. Need there be reminders of the fates of our parents? Need there be memory, Brys? We stand here, you and I, and play out once more the old familial tortures.’

‘You describe, then,’ he said hoarsely, ‘our doom.’

‘She could have saved him, Brys. If not for us. Her fear for us. The whole game of debt, so deftly contrived to snare Father – she would have torn it apart, except that, like me, she could see nothing of the world that would rise from the ashes. And, seeing nothing, she feared.’

‘Without us, then, she would have saved him – kept him from that moment of supreme cowardice?’

Brys was facing him now, his eyes glittering.

‘I think so,’ Tehol answered. ‘And from them, we have drawn our lessons of life. You chose the protection of the King’s Guard, and now the role of Champion. Where debt will never find you. As for Hull, he walked away – from gold, from its deadly traps – and sought honour in saving people. And even when that failed… do you honestly imagine Hull would ever consider killing himself? Our father’s cowardice was betrayal, Brys. Of the worst sort.’

‘And what of you, Tehol? What lesson are you living out right now?’

‘The difference between me and our mother is that I carry no burden. No children. So, brother, I think I will end up achieving the very thing she could not do, despite her love for Father.’

‘By dressing in rags and sleeping on your roof?’

‘Perception enforces expectation, Brys.’ And thought he saw a wry smile from his brother.

‘Even so, Tehol, Gerun Eberict is not as deceived as you might believe. As, I admit, I was.’

‘Until tonight?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Go home, Brys,’ Tehol said. ‘Seren Pedac stands at Hull’s back, and will continue to do so no matter how much she might disagree with whatever he seeks to do. She cannot help herself. Even genius has its flaws.’

Another grin. ‘Even with you, Tehol?’

‘Well, I was generalizing to put you at ease. I never include myself in my own generalizations. I am ever the exception to the rule.’

‘And how do you manage that?’

‘Well, I define the rules, of course. That’s my particular game, brother.’

‘By the Errant, I hate you sometimes, Tehol. Listen. Do not underestimate Gerun Eberict-’

‘I’ll take care of Gerun. Now, presumably you were followed here?’

‘I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, probably I was. Do you think our voices carried?’

‘Not through the wards Bugg raises every night before he goes to sleep.’

‘Bugg?’

Tehol clapped his brother on the shoulder and guided him towards the hatch. ‘He’s only mostly worthless. We ever seek out hidden talents, an exercise assuring endless amusement. For me, at least.’

‘Did he not embalm our parents? The name-’

‘That was Bugg. That’s where I first met him, and saw immediately his lack of potential. The entrance can be viewed in secret from one place and no other, Brys. Normally, you could make no approach without being detected. And then there’d be a chase, which is messy and likely to fail on your part. You will have to kill the man – Gerun’s, I suspect. And not in a duel. Outright execution, Brys. Are you up to it?’

‘Of course. But you said there was no approach that could not-’

‘Ah, well, I forgot to mention our tunnel.’

Brys paused at the hatch. ‘You have a tunnel.’

‘Keeping Bugg busy is an eternal chore.’

Still five paces from the shadowed section of the warehouse wall that offered the only hiding place with a clear line of sight to the doorway of Tehol’s house, Brys Beddict halted. His eyes were well adjusted, and he could see that no-one was there.

But he could smell blood. Metallic and thick.

Sword drawn, he approached.

No man could have survived such a loss. It was a black pool on the cobbles, reluctant to seep into the cracks between the set stones. A throat opened wide, the wound left to drain before the corpse had been dragged away. And the trail was plain, twin heel tracks alongside the warehouse wall, round a corner and out of sight.

The Finadd considered following it.

Then, upon seeing a single footprint, traced in dried dust on the dust, he changed his mind.

The footprint left by a child. Bared. As it dragged the dead man away.

Every city had its darkness, its denizens who prowled only at night in their own game of predator and prey. Brys knew it was not his world, nor did he wish to hunt down its secrets. These hours belonged to the white crow, and it was welcome to them.

He turned the other way, began his walk back to the palace.

His brother’s formidable mind had not been idle, it seemed. His indifference no more than a feint. Which made Tehol a very dangerous man. Thank the Errant he’s on my side…

He is on my side, isn’t he?

The old palace, soon to be entirely abandoned in favour of the Eternal Domicile, sat on a sunken hill, the building proper a hundred paces in from the river’s seasonally uncertain banks. Sections of a high wall indicated that there had been an enclosure once, extending from the palace to the river, in which an assortment of structures had been effectively isolated from the rest of the city.

Not so much in a proprietary claim to ownership, for the structures in question predated even the founding First Empire. Perhaps, for those original builders, there had been a recognition, of sorts, of something verging on the sacred about these grounds, although, of course, not holy to the colonizers. Another possibility was that the first Letherii were possessors of a more complete arcane knowledge – secrets long since lost – that inspired them to do honour to the Jaghut dwellings and the single, oddly different tower in their midst.

The truth had crumbled along with the enclosure walls, and no answers could be found sifting the dust of crumbled mortar and flakes of exfoliated schist. The area, while no longer sealed, was by habit avoided. The land itself was worthless, by virtue of a royal proclamation six centuries old that prohibited demolition of the ancient structures, and subsequent resettlement. Every legal challenge or, indeed, enquiry regarding that proclamation was summarily dismissed without even so much as recourse to the courts.

All very well. Skilled practitioners of the tiles of the Holds well knew the significance of that squat, square, leaning tower with its rumpled, overgrown grounds. And indeed of the Jaghut dwellings, representative as they were of the Ice Hold. Many held that the Azath tower was the very first true structure of the Azath on this world.

From her new perspective, Shurq Elalle was less sceptical than she might have once been. The grounds surrounding the battered grey stone tower exerted an ominous pull on the dead thief. There were kin there, but not of blood. No, this was the family of the undead, of those unable or unwilling to surrender to oblivion. In the case of those interred in the lumpy, clay-shot earth around the tower, their graves were prisons. The Azath did not give up its children.

She sensed as well that there were living creatures buried there, most of them driven mad by centuries upon centuries snared in ancient roots that held them fast. Others remained ominously silent and motionless, as if awaiting eternity’s end.

The thief approached the forbidden grounds behind the palace. She could see the Azath tower, its third and uppermost storey edging above the curved walls of the Jaghut dwellings. Not one of the structures stood fully upright. All were tilted in some fashion, the subsurface clay squeezing out from beneath their immense weight or lenses of sand washed away by underground runoff. Vines had climbed the sides in chaotic webs, although those that had reached out to the Azath died there, withered against the foundation stones amidst yellowed grasses.

She did not need to see the blood trail in order to follow it. The smell was heavy in the sultry night air, invisible streaks riding the currents, and she pursued its wake until she came to the low, crooked wall surrounding the Azath tower.

Just beyond, at the base of a twisted tree, sat the child Kettle. Nine or ten years old… for ever. Naked, her pale skin smeared, her long hair clotted with coagulating blood. The corpse before her was already half under the earth, being dragged down into the darkness.

To feed the Azath? Or some ravenous denizen? Shurq had no idea. Nor did she care. The grounds swallowed bodies, and that was useful.

Kettle looked up, black eyes dully reflecting starlight. There were moulds that, if left unattended, could blind, and the film was thick over the girl’s dead eyes. She slowly rose and walked over.

‘Why won’t you be my mother?’

‘I’ve already told you, Kettle. I am no-one’s mother.’

‘I followed you tonight.’

‘You’re always following me,’ Shurq said.

‘Just after you left that roof, another man came to the house, soldier. And he was followed.’

‘And which of the two did you kill?’

‘Why, the one who followed, of course. I’m a good girl. I take care of you. Just as you take care of me-’

‘I take care of no-one, Kettle. You were dead long before I was. Living here in these grounds. I used to bring you bodies.’

‘Never enough.’

‘I don’t like killing. Only when I have no choice. Besides, I wasn’t the only one employing your services.’

‘Yes you were.’

Shurq stared at the girl for a long moment. ‘I was?’

‘Yes. And you wanted to know my story. Everyone else runs from me, just like they run from you now. Except that man on the roof. Is he another one not like everyone else?’

‘I don’t know, Kettle. But I am working for him now.’

‘I am glad. Grown-ups should work. It helps fill their minds. Empty minds are bad. Dangerous. They fill themselves up. With bad things. Nobody’s happy.’

Shurq cocked her head. ‘Who’s not happy?’

Kettle waved one grubby hand at the rumpled yard. ‘Restless. All of them. I don’t know why. The tower sweats all the time now.’

‘I will bring you some salt water,’ Shurq said, ‘for your eyes. You need to wash them out.’

‘I can see easily enough. With more than my eyes now. My skin sees. And tastes. And dreams of light.’

‘What do you mean?’

Kettle pushed bloody strands of hair from her heart-shaped face. ‘Five of them are trying to get out. I don’t like those five – I don’t like most of them, but especially those five. The roots are dying. I don’t know what to do. They whisper how they’ll tear me to pieces. Soon. I don’t want to be torn to pieces. What should I do?’

Shurq was silent. Then she asked, ‘How much do you sense of the Buried Ones, Kettle?’

‘Most don’t talk to me. They have lost their minds. Others hate me for not helping them. Some beg and plead. They talk through the roots.’

‘Are there any who ask nothing of you?’

‘Some are ever silent.’

‘Talk to them. Find someone else to speak to, Kettle. Someone who might be able to help you.’ Someone else to be your mother… or father. ‘Ask for opinions, on any and all matters. If one remains then who does not seek to please you, who does not attempt to twist your desires so that you free it, and who holds no loyalty to the others, then you will tell me of that one. All that you know. And I will advise you as best I can – not as a mother, but as a comrade.’

‘All right.’

‘Good. Now, I came here for another reason, Kettle. I want to know, how did you kill that spy?’

‘I bit through his throat. It’s the quickest, and I like the blood.’

‘Why do you like the blood?’

‘In my hair, to keep it from my face. And it smells alive, doesn’t it? I like that smell.’

‘How many do you kill?’

‘Lots. The ground needs them.’

‘Why does the ground need them?’

‘Because it’s dying.’

‘Dying? And what would happen if it does die, Kettle?’

‘Everything will get out.’

‘Oh.’

‘I like it here.’

‘Kettle, from now on,’ Shurq said, ‘I will tell you who to kill – don’t worry, there should be plenty.’

‘All right. That’s nice of you.’

Among the hundreds of creatures buried in the grounds of the Azath, only one was capable of listening to the conversation between the two undead on the surface above. The Azath was relinquishing its hold on this denizen, not out of weakness, but out of necessity. The Guardian was anything but ready. Indeed, might never be ready. The choice itself had been flawed, yet another sign of faltering power, of age crawling forward to claim the oldest stone structure in the realm.

The Azath tower was indeed dying. And desperation forced a straying onto unprecedented paths.

Among all the prisoners, a choice had been made. And preparations were under way, slow as the track of roots through stone, but equally inexorable. But there was so little time.

The urgency was a silent scream that squeezed blood from the Azath tower. Five kin creatures, taken and held since the time of the K’Chain Che’Malle, were almost within reach of the surface.

And this was not good, for they were Toblakai.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE SHADOW’S LAUGHTER WAS LOW, A SOUND THAT PROMISED madness to all who heard it. Udinaas let the netting fall away from his fingers and leaned back against the sun-warmed rock. He squinted up at the bright sky. He was alone on the beach, the choppy waves of the bay stretching out before him. Alone, except for the wraith that now haunted him at every waking moment.

Conjured, then forgotten. Wandering, an eternal flight from the sun, but there were always places to hide.

‘Stop that,’ Udinaas said, closing his eyes.

‘Why ever? I smell your blood, slave. Growing colder. I once knew a world of ice. After I was killed, yes, after. Even darkness has flaws, and that’s how they stole me. But I have dreams.’

‘So you’re always saying. Then follow them, wraith, and leave me alone.’

‘I have dreams and you understand nothing, slave. Was I pleased to serve? Never. Never ever never and again, never. I’m following you.’

Udinaas opened his eyes and stared down at the sliver of shadow between two rocks, from which the voice was emerging. Sand fleas scampered and darted on the flanking stone, but of the wraith itself there was no visible sign. ‘Why?’

‘Why ever why? That which you cast beckons me, slave. You promise a worthy journey – do you dream of gardens, slave? I know you do – I can smell it. Half dead and overgrown, why ever not? There is no escape. So, with my dreams, it serves me to serve. Serves to serve. Was I not once a Tiste Andii? I believe I was. Murdered and flung into the mud, until the ice came. Then torn loose, after so long, to serve my slayers. My slavers, whose diligence then wavered. Shall we whisper of betrayers, slave?’

‘You would bargain?’

‘Hither when you call me, call me Wither. I have dreams. Give me that which you cast. Give me your shadow, and I will become yours. Your eyes behind you, whom no-one else can see or hear, unless they guess and have power but why would they guess? You are a slave. Who behaves. Be sure to behave, slave, until the moment you betray.’

‘I thought Tiste Andii were supposed to be dour and miserable. And please, Wither, no more rhymes.’

‘Agreed, once you give me your shadow.’

‘Can other wraiths see you? Hannan Mosag’s-’

‘That oaf? I will hide in your natural casting. Hidden. Never found. See, no rhymes. We were bold in those days, slave. Soldiers in a war, an invasion. Soaked in the cold blood of K’Chain Che’Malle. We followed the youngest child of Mother Dark herself. And we were witness.’

‘To what?’

‘To Bloodeye’s betrayal of our leader. To the dagger driven into our lord’s back. I myself fell to a blade wielded by a Tiste Edur. Unexpected. Sudden slaughter. We stood no chance. No chance at all.’

Udinaas made a face, studied the tossing waves that warred with the river’s outpouring current. ‘The Edur claim it was the other way round, Wither.’

‘Then why am I dead and they alive? If we were the ambushers that day?’

‘How should I know? Now, if you intend to lurk in my shadow, Wither, you must learn to be silent. Unless I speak to you. Silent, and watchful, and nothing more.’

‘First, slave, you must do something for me.’

Udinaas sighed. Most of the noble-born Edur were at the interment ceremony for the murdered fisherman, along with a half-dozen kin from the Beneda, since the Edur’s identity had finally been determined. Fewer than a dozen warriors remained in the compound behind him. Shadow wraiths seemed to grow bolder at such times, emerging to flit across the ground, between longhouses and along the palisade walls.

He had often wondered at that. But now, if Wither was to be believed, he had his answer. Those wraiths are not ancestral kin to the mortal Edur. They are Tiste Andii, the bound souls of the slain. And, I was desperate for allies… ‘Very well, what do you wish me to do Wither?’

‘Before the seas rose in this place, slave, the Hasana Inlet was a lake. To the south and west, the land stretched out to join with the westernmost tip of the Reach. A vast plain, upon which the last of my people were slaughtered. Walk the shoreline before you, slave. South. There is something of mine – we must find it.’

Udinaas rose and brushed the sand from his coarse woollen trousers. He looked about. Three slaves from the Warlock King’s citadel were down by the river mouth, beating clothes against rocks. A lone fisher-boat was out on the water, but distant. ‘How far will I need to walk?’

‘It lies close.’

‘If I am perceived to be straying too far, I will be killed outright.’

‘Not far, slave-’

‘I am named Udinaas, and so you will address me.’

‘You claim the privilege of pride?’

‘I am more than a slave, Wither, as you well know.’

‘But you must behave as if you were not. I call you “slave” to remind you of that. Fail in your deception, and the pain they shall inflict upon you in the search for all you would hide from them shall be without measure-’

‘Enough.’ He walked down to the waterline. The sun threw his shadow into his wake, pulled long and monstrous.

The rollers had built a humped sweep of sand over the stones, on which lay tangled strands of seaweed and a scattering of detritus. A pace inland of this elongated rise was a depression filled with slick pebbles and rocks. ‘Where should I be looking?’

‘Among the stones. A little further. Three, two paces. Yes. Here.’

Udinaas stared down, scanning the area. ‘I see nothing.’

‘Dig. No, to your left – those rocks, move those. That one. Now, deeper. There, pull it free.’

A misshapen lump that sat heavy in his hand. Finger-length and tapered at one end, the metal object within swallowed by thick calcifications. ‘What is it?’

‘An arrowhead, slave. Hundreds of millennia, crawling to this shore. The passage of ages is measured by chance. The deep roll of tides, the succession of wayward storms. This is how the world moves-’

‘Hundreds of millennia? There would be nothing left-’

‘A blade of simple iron without sorcerous investment would indeed have vanished. The arrowhead remains, slave, because it will not surrender. You must chip away at all that surrounds it. You must resurrect it.’

‘Why?’

‘I have my reasons, slave.’

There was nothing pleasing in this, but Udinaas straightened and tucked the lump in his belt pouch. He returned to his nets. ‘I shall not,’ he muttered, ‘be the hand of your vengeance.’

Wither’s laugh followed him in the crunch of stones.

There was smoke hanging above the lowlands, like clouds dragged low and now shredded by the dark treetops.

‘A funeral,’ Binadas said.

Seren Pedac nodded. There had been no storms, and besides, the forest was too wet to sustain a wildfire. The Edur practice of burial involved a tumulus construction, which was then covered to form a pyre. The intense heat baked the coin-sheathed corpse as if it was clay, and stained the barrow stones red. Shadow wraiths danced amidst the flames, twisted skyward with the smoke, and would linger long after the mourners were gone.

Seren drew her knife and bent to scrape mud from her boots. This side of the mountains the weather daily crept in from the sea shedding rain and mist in pernicious waves. Her clothes were soaked through. Three times since morning the heavily burdened wagons had skidded off the trail, once crushing a Nerek to death beneath the solid, iron-rimmed wheels.

Straightening, she cleaned her knife between two gloved fingers, then sheathed it at her side.

Moods were foul. Buruk the Pale had not emerged from his wagon in two days, nor had his three half-blood Nerek concubines. But the descent was finally done, and ahead was a wide, mostly level trail leading to Hannan Mosag’s village.

Binadas stood and watched as the last wagon rocked clear of the slope, and Seren sensed the Edur’s impatience. Someone had died in his village, after all. She glanced over at Hull Beddict, but could sense nothing from him. He had withdrawn deep into himself, as if building reserves in anticipation of what was to come. Or, equally likely, struggling to bolster crumbling resolve. She seemed to have lost her ability to read him. Pain worn without pause and for so long could itself become a mask.

‘Binadas,’ Seren said, ‘the Nerek need to rest. The journey before us is clear. There is no need for you to remain with us as escort. Go to your people.’

His eyes narrowed on her, suspicious of her offer.

She added nothing more. He would believe what he would believe, after all, no matter how genuine her intent.

‘She speaks true,’ Hull said. ‘We would not constrain you, Binadas.’

‘Very well. I shall inform Hannan Mosag of your impending visit.’

They watched the Edur set off down the trail. In moments the trees swallowed him.

‘Do you see?’ Hull asked her.

‘I saw only conflicting desires and obligations,’ Seren replied, turning away.

‘Only, then, what you chose to.’

Seren’s shrug was weary. ‘Oh, Hull, that is the way of us all.’

He stepped close. ‘But it need not be so, Acquitor.’

Surprised, she met his gaze, and wondered at the sudden earnestness there. ‘How am I supposed to respond to that?’ she asked. ‘We are all like soldiers, crouching behind the fortifications we have raised. You will do what you believe you must, Hull.’

‘And you, Seren Pedac? What course awaits you?’

Ever the same course. ‘The Tiste Edur are not yours to use. They may listen, but they are not bound to follow.’

He turned away. ‘I have no expectations, Seren, only fears. We should resume the journey.’

She glanced over at the Nerek. They sat or squatted near the wagons, steam rising from their backs. Their expressions were slack, strangely indifferent to the dead kin they had left behind in his makeshift grave of rutted mud, rocks and roots. How much could be stripped from a people before they began stripping away themselves? The steep slope of dissolution began with a skid, only to become a headlong run.

The Letherii believed in cold-hearted truths. Momentum was an avalanche and no-one was privileged with the choice of stepping aside. The division between life and death was measured in incremental jostling for position amidst all-devouring progress. No-one could afford compassion. Accordingly, none expected it from others either.

We live in an inimical time. But then, they are all inimical times.

It began to rain once more.

Far to the south, beyond the mountains they had just crossed, the downfall of the Tiste Edur was being plotted. And, she suspected, Hull Beddict’s life had been made forfeit. They could not afford the risk he presented, the treason he had as much as promised. The irony existed in their conjoined desires. Both sought war, after all. It was only the face of victory that was different.

But Hull possessed little of the necessary acumen to play this particular game and stay alive.

And she had begun to wonder if she would make any effort to save him.

A shout from Buruk’s wagon. The Nerek climbed wearily to their feet. Seren drew her cloak tighter about her shoulders, eyes narrowed on the path ahead. She sensed Hull coming to her side, but did not look over.

‘What temple was it you were schooled at?’

She snorted, then shook her head. ‘Thurlas, the Shrouded Sisters of the Empty Throne.’

‘Just opposite Small Canal. I remember it. What sort of child were you, Seren?’

‘Clearly, you have an image in your mind.’

She caught his nod in her periphery, and he said, ‘Zealous. Proper to excess. Earnest.’

‘There are ledgers, recording the names of notable students. You will find mine in them, again and again. For example, I hold title to the most punishments inflicted in a year. Two hundred and seventy-one. I was more familiar with the Unlit Cell than my own room. I was also accused of seducing a visiting priest. And before you ask, yes, I was guilty. But the priest swore otherwise, to protect me. He was excommunicated. I later heard he killed himself. Had I still possessed any innocence, I would have lost it then.’

He came round to stand before her, as the first wagon was pulled past by the Nerek. She was forced to look at him. Hesitated, then offered him a wry smile. ‘Have I shocked you, Hull Beddict?’

‘The ice has broken beneath me.’

A flash of anger, then she realized the self-mockery in his confession. ‘We are not born innocent, simply unmeasured.’

‘And, presumably, immeasurable as well.’

‘For a few years at least. Until the outside is inflicted upon the inside, then the brutal war begins. We are not born to compassion either – large wide eyes and sweet demeanour notwithstanding.’

‘And you came to recognize your war early.’

Seren shrugged. ‘My enemy was not authority, although perhaps it seemed so. It was childhood itself. The lowered expectations of adults, the eagerness to forgive. It sickened me-’

‘Because it was unjust.’

‘A child’s sense of injustice is ever self-serving, Hull. I couldn’t fool myself with that indignation. Why are we speaking of this?’

‘Questions I forgot to ask. Back then. I think I was a child myself in those days. All inside, no outside.’

Her brows rose, but she said nothing.

Hull understood anyway. ‘You might be right. In some things, that is. But not when it comes to the Edur.’

The second wagon trundled past. Seren studied the man before her ‘Are you so certain of that?’ she asked. ‘Because I see you driven by your own needs. The Edur are the sword but the hand is your own, Hull. Where is the compassion in that?’

‘You have it wrong, Seren. I intend to be the sword.’

The chill in her bones deepened. ‘In what way?’

But he shook his head. ‘I cannot trust you, Seren. Like everyone else you shall have to wait. One thing, however. Do not stand in my way. Please.’

I cannot trust you. Words that cut to her soul. Then again, the issue of trust stood on both sides of the path, didn’t it?

The third wagon halted beside them. The curtain in the door window was dragged aside and Buruk’s deathly face peered out. ‘And this is guidance? Who blazes the trail? Are we doomed now to wander lost? Don’t tell me you have become lovers once more! Seren, you look positively besieged. Such is the curse of love, oh, my heart weeps for you!’

‘Enough, Buruk,’ Seren said. She wiped the rain from her face and, ignoring Hull, moved past onto the path. Nerek stepped to either side to let her pass.

The forest trail was flanked by Blackwood trees, planted to assert Edur possession of these lands. Rough midnight bark that had been twisted into nightmarish images and arcane script by the shadow wraiths that clung to every groove and fissure in the rugged skin. Wraiths that now rose into view to watch Seren and those following in her wake.

There seemed more than usual. Flowing restless like black mist between the huge boles. Scores, then hundreds, crowding either side of the trail. Seren’s steps slowed.

She could hear the Nerek behind her, low moans, the clack of the wagons slowing, then halting.

Hull came alongside her. ‘They have raised an army,’ he whispered.

There was dark satisfaction in his tone.

‘Are they truly the ancestors of the Edur?’

His gaze snapped to her, feverish. ‘Of course. What else could they be?’

She shook herself. ‘Urge the Nerek onward, Hull. They’ll listen to you. Two days remaining, that’s all-’ And then she fell silent.

For a figure was standing upon the trail. Skin the colour of bleached linen, tall as an Edur, a face obscured by dark streaks, as if bloodstained fingers had drawn down the gaunt cheeks. An apparition, the dull red eyes burning from those deep sockets dead. Mould hung in ragged sheets from rotting armour. Two scabbards, both empty.

Wraiths swarmed at the figure’s feet, as if in worship.

A wagon door clattered and Buruk staggered out, wrapped in a blanket that dragged the ground behind him as he came to Seren’s side.

‘Barrow and Root!’ the merchant hissed. ‘The tiles did not lie!’

Seren took a step forward.

Hull reached out a hand. ‘No-’

‘Would you have us stand here for ever?’ she snapped, pulling herself free. Despite the bravado of her words, she was terrified. Ghosts revealed themselves in childhood tales and legends, and in the occasional fevered rumour in the capital. She had believed in such apparitions in a half-hearted way, an idea made wilfully manifest. A whispery vision of history, risen as harbinger, as silent warning. A notion, then, as much symbolic as actual.

And even then, she had imagined something far more… ephemeral. Lacking distinction, a face comprised of forlorn hints, features blurred by the fading of their relevance. Half seen in currents of darkness, there one moment, gone the next.

But there was a palpability in the tall conjuration standing before her, an assertion of physical insistence. Etched details on the long, pallid face, the flat, filmed eyes watching her approach with fullest comprehension.

As if he has just clambered free of one of the barrows in this forest. But he is not… is not Edur.

‘A dragon,’ the apparition said in the language of the Tiste, ‘once dragged itself down this trail. No forest back then. Naught but devastation. Blood in the broken earth. The dragon, mortal, made this trail. Do you feel this? Beneath you, the scattering of memory that pushes the roots away, that bows the trees to either side. A dragon.’ The figure then turned, looked down the path behind it. ‘The Edur – he ran unseeing, unmindful. Kin of my betrayer. Yet… an innocent.’ He faced her once more. ‘But you, mortal, are not nearly so innocent, are you?’

Taken aback, Seren said nothing.

Behind her, Hull Beddict spoke, ‘Of what do you accuse her, ghost?’

‘A thousand. A thousand upon a thousand misdeeds. Her. You. Your kind. The gods are as nothing. Demons less than children. Every Ascendant an awkward mummer. Compared to you. Is it ever the way, I wonder? That depravity thrives in the folds of the flower, when its season has come. The secret seeds of decay hidden beneath the burgeoning glory. All of us, here in your wake, we are as nothing.’

‘What do you want?’ Hull demanded.

The wraiths had slipped away, back among the trees. But a new tide had come to swarm about the ghost’s tattered boots. Mice, a seething mass pouring up the trail. Ankle deep, the first reached Seren’s feet, scampered round them. A grey and brown tide, mindless motion. A multitude of tiny selves, seized by some unknown and unknowable imperative. From here… to there.

There was something terrible, horrifying, about them. Thousands, tens of thousands – the trail ahead, for as far as she could see, was covered with mice.

‘The land was shattered,’ the apparition said. ‘Not a tree left standing. Naught but corpses. And the tiny creatures that fed on them. Hood’s own legion. Death’s sordid tide, mortals, fur-backed and rising. It seems so… facile.’ The undead seemed to shake himself. ‘I want nothing from you. The journeys are all begun. Do you imagine that your path has never before known footfalls?’

‘We are not so blind as to believe that,’ Seren Pedac said. She struggled against kicking away the mice swarming around her ankles, fearing the descent into hysteria. ‘If you will not – or cannot – clear this trail, then we’ve little choice-’

The apparition’s head tilted. ‘You would deliver countless small deaths? In the name of what? Convenience?’

‘I see no end to these creatures of yours, ghost.’

‘Mine? They are not mine, mortal. They simply belong to my time. To the age of their squalid supremacy on this land. A multitude of tyrants to rule over the ash and dust we left in our wake. They see in my spirit a promise.’

‘And,’ Hull growled, ‘are we meant to see the same?’

The apparition had begun fading, colours bleeding away. ‘If it pleases you,’ came the faint, derisive reply. ‘Of course, it may be that the spirit they see is yours, not mine.’

Then the ghost was gone.

The mice began flowing out to the forest on either side of the trail, as if suddenly confused, blinded once more to whatever greater force had claimed them. They bled away into the mulch, the shadows and the rotted wood of fallen trees. One moment there, the next, gone.

Seren swung to Buruk the Pale. ‘What did you mean when you said the tiles didn’t lie? Barrow and Root, those are tiles in the Hold of the Azath, are they not? You witnessed a casting before you began this journey. In Trate. Do you deny it?’

He would not meet her eyes. His face was pale. ‘The Holds are awakening, Acquitor. All of them.’

‘Who was he, then?’ Hull Beddict asked.

‘I do not know.’ Abruptly Buruk scowled and turned away. ‘Does it matter? The mud stirs and things clamber free, that is all. The Seventh Closure draws near – but I fear it will be nothing like what all of us have been taught. The birth of empire, oh yes, but who shall rule it? The prophecy is perniciously vague. The trail has cleared – let us proceed.’

He clambered back into his wagon.

‘Are we to make sense of that?’ Hull asked.

Seren shrugged. ‘Prophecies are like the tiles themselves, Hull. See in them what you will.’ The aftermath of her terror was sour in her throat, and her limbs felt loose and weak. Suddenly weary, she unstrapped her helm and lifted it off. The fine rain was like ice on her brow. She closed her eyes.

I can’t save him. I can’t save any of us.

Hull Beddict spoke to the Nerek.

Blinking her eyes open, Seren shook herself. She tied her helm to her pack.

The journey resumed. Clattering, groaning wagons, the harsh breathing of the Nerek. Motionless air and the mist falling through it like the breath of an exhausted god.

Two days. Then it is done.

Thirty paces ahead, unseen by any of them, an owl sailed across the path, silent on its broad, dark wings. There was blood on its talons, blood around its beak.

Sudden bounties were unquestioned. Extravagance unworthy of celebration. The hunter knew only hunting, and was indifferent to the fear of the prey. Indifferent, as well, to the white crow that sailed in its wake.

A random twist of the wind drew the remnants of the pyre’s smoke into the village. It had burned for a day and a night, and Trull Sengar emerged from his father’s longhouse the following morning to find the mist drifting across the compound bitter with its taint.

He regretted the new world he had found. Revelations could not be undone. And now he shared secrets and the truth was, he would rather have done without them. Once familiar faces had changed. What did they know? How vast and insidious this deceit? How many warriors had Hannan Mosag drawn into his ambitions? To what extent had the women organised against the Warlock King?

No words on the subject had been exchanged among the brothers, not since that conversation in the pit, the stove-in dragon skull the only witness to what most would call treason. The preparations for the impending journey were under way. There would be no slaves accompanying them, after all. Hannan Mosag had sent wraiths ahead to the villages lying between here and the ice-fields, and so provisions would await them, mitigating the need for burdensome supplies, at least until the very end.

A wagon drawn by a half-dozen slaves had trundled across the bridge, in its bed newly forged weapons. Iron-tipped spears stood upright in bound bundles. Copper sheathing protected the shafts for fully half their length. Cross-hilted swords were also visible, hand-and-a-half grips and boiled leather scabbards. Billhooks for unseating riders, sheaves of long arrows with leather fletching. Throwing axes, as favoured by the Arapay. Broad cutlasses in the Merude style.

The forges hammered the din of war once more.

Trull saw Fear and Rhulad stride up to the wagon, more slaves trailing them, and Fear began directing the storage of the weapons.

Rhulad glanced over as Trull approached. ‘Have you need of more spears, brother?’ he asked.

‘No, Rhulad. I see Arapay and Merude weapons here – and Beneda and Den-Ratha-’

‘Every tribe, yes. So it is now among all the forges, in every village. A sharing of skills.’

Trull glanced over at Fear. ‘Your thoughts on this, brother? Will you now be training the Hiroth warriors in new weapons?’

‘I have taught how to defend against them, Trull. It is the Warlock King’s intention to create a true army, such as those of the Letherii. This will involve specialist units.’ Fear studied Trull for a moment, before adding, ‘I am Weapons Master for the Hiroth, and now, at the Warlock King’s command, for all of the tribes.’

‘You are to lead this army?’

‘If war should come, yes, I will lead it into battle.’

‘Thus are the Sengar honoured,’ Rhulad said, his face expressionless, the tone without inflection.

Thus are we rewarded.

‘Binadas returned at dawn,’ Fear said. ‘He will take this day in rest. Then we shall depart.’

Trull nodded.

‘A Letherii trader caravan is coming,’ Rhulad said. ‘Binadas met them on the trail. The Acquitor is Seren Pedac. And Hull Beddict is with them.’

Hull Beddict, the Sentinel who betrayed the Nerek, the Tarthenal and the Faraed. What did he want? Not all Letherii were the same, Trull knew. Opposing views sang with the clash of swords. Betrayals abounded among the rapacious multitude in the vast cities and indeed, if rumours were true, in the palace of the king himself. The merchant was charged to deliver the words of whoever had bought him. Whilst Seren Pedac, in the profession of Acquitor, would neither speak her mind nor interfere with the aims of the others. He had not been in the village during her other visits, and so could judge no more than that. But Hull, the once Sentinel – it was said he was immune to corruption, such as only a man once betrayed could be.

Trull was silent as he watched the slaves drag the weapon bundles from the cart bed and carry them off to the armoury.

Even his brothers seemed… different somehow. As if shadows stretched taut between them, unseen by anyone else, and could make the wind drone with weighted trepidation. Darkness, then, in the blood of brothers. None of this served the journey about to begin. None of it.

I was ever the worrier. I do not see too much, I see only the wrong things. And so the fault is mine, within me. I need to remain mindful of that. Such as with my assumptions about Rhulad and Mayen. Wrong things, wrong thoughts, they are the ones that seem to be… tireless…

‘Binadas says Buruk carries Letherii iron,’ Rhulad said, breaking Trull’s reverie. ‘That will prove useful. Dapple knows, the Letherii are truly fools-’

‘They are not,’ Fear said. ‘They are indifferent. They see no contradiction in selling us iron at one moment and waging war with us the next.’

‘Nor the harvesting of tusked seals,’ Trull added, nodding. ‘They are a nation of ten thousand grasping hands, and none can tell which ones are true, which ones belong to those in power.’

‘King Ezgara Diskanar is not like Hannan Mosag,’ Fear said. ‘He does not rule his people with absolute…’

Trull glanced over as his brother’s voice trailed off.

Fear swung away. ‘Mayen is guest tonight,’ he said. ‘Mother may request you partake in the supper preparations.’

‘And so we shall,’ Rhulad said, meeting Trull’s eyes a moment before fixing his attention once more on the slaves.

Absolute power… no, we have undone that, haven’t we? And indeed, perhaps it never existed at all. The women, after all…

The other slaves were busy in the longhouse, scurrying back and forth across the trusses as Udinaas entered and made his way to his sleeping pallet. He was to serve this night, and so was permitted a short period of rest beforehand. He saw Uruth standing near the central hearth but was able to slip past unnoticed in the confusion, just another slave in the gloom.

Feather Witch’s assertions remained with him, tightening his every breath. Should the Edur discover the truth that coursed through his veins, they would kill him. He knew he must hide, only he did not know how.

He settled onto his mat. The sounds and smells of the chambers beyond drifted over him. Lying back, he closed his eyes.

This night he would be working alongside Feather Witch. She had visited him that one time, in his dream. Apart from that, he had had no occasion to speak with her. Nor, he suspected, was she likely to invite an exchange of words. Beyond the mundane impropriety established by their respective class, she had seen in him the blood of the Wyval – so she had claimed in the dream. Unless that was not her at all. Nothing more than a conjuration from my own mind, a reshaping of dust. He would, if possible, speak to her, whether invited or not.

Rugs had been dragged outside and laid across trestles. The thump of the clubs the slaves used to beat the dust from them was like distant hollow thunder.

A flitting thought, vague wondering where the shadow wraith had gone, then sleep took him.

He was without form, an insubstantial binding of senses. In ice. A blue, murky world, smeared with streaks of green, the grit of dirt and sand, the smell of cold. Distant groaning sounds, solid rivers sliding against each other. Lenses of sunlight delivering heat into the depths, where it built until a thundering snap shook the world.

Udinaas flowed through this frozen landscape, which to all eyes in the world beyond was locked motionless, timeless. And nothing of the pressures, the heaved weights and disparate forces, was revealed, until that final explosive moment when things broke.

There were shapes in the ice. Bodies lifted from the ground far below and held in awkward poses. Fleshed, eyes half open. Blossoms of blood suspended in motionless clouds around wounds. Flows of bile and waste. Udinaas found himself travelling through scenes of slaughter. Tiste Edur and darker-skinned kin. Enormous reptilian beasts, some with naught but blades for hands. In multitudes beyond counting.

He came to a place where the reptilian bodies formed a near-solid mass. Flowing among them, he suddenly recoiled. A vertical stream of melt water rose through the ice before him, threading up and out from the heaped corpses. The water was pink, mud-streaked, pulsing as it climbed upward, as if driven by some deep, subterranean heart. And that water was poison.

Udinaas found himself fleeing through the ice, clashing with corpses, rock-hard flesh. Then past, into fissure-twisted sweeps devoid of bodies. Down solid channels. Racing, ever faster, the gloom swallowing him.

Massive brown-furred creatures, trapped standing upright, green plants in their mouths. Herds held suspended above black earth. Ivory tusks and glittering eyes. Tufts of uprooted grasses. Long shapes – wolves, steep-shouldered and grey – caught in the act of leaping, running alongside an enormous horned beast. This was yet another scene of slaughter, lives stolen in an instant of catastrophic alteration – the world flung onto its side, the rush of seas, breathless cold that cut through flesh down to bone.

The world… the world itself betrays. Errant take us, how can this be?

Udinaas had known many for whom certainty was a god, the only god, no matter the cast of its features. And he had seen the manner in which such belief made the world simple, where all was divisible by the sharp cleaving of cold judgement, after which no mending was possible. He had seen such certainty, yet had never shared it.

But he had always believed the world itself was… unquestionable. Not static – never static – but capable of being understood. It was undoubtedly cruel at times, and deadly… but you could almost always see it coming. Creatures frozen in mid-leap. Frozen whilst standing, grasses hanging from their mouths. This was beyond comprehension. Sorcery. It must have been. Even then, the power seemed unimaginable, for it was a tenet that the world and all that lived on it possessed a natural resistance to magic. Self-evident, else mages and gods would have reshaped and probably destroyed the balance of all things long ago. Thus, the land would resist. The beasts that dwelt upon it would resist. The flow of air, the seep of water, the growing plants and the droning insects – all would resist.

Yet they failed.

Then, in the depths, a shape. Squatting on bedrock, a stone tower. A tall narrow slash suggested a doorway, and Udinaas found himself approaching it through solid ice.

Into that black portal.

Something shattered, and, suddenly corporeal, he stumbled onto his knees. The stone was cold enough to tear the skin from his knees and the palms of his hands. He staggered upright, and his shoulder struck something that tottered with the impact.

The cold made the air brutal, blinding him, shocking his lungs. Through freezing tears he saw, amidst a faint blue glow, a tall figure. Skin like bleached vellum, limbs too long and angular with too many joints. Black, frosted eyes, an expression of faint surprise on its narrow, arched features. The clothes it wore consisted of a harness of leather straps and nothing more. It was unarmed. A man, but anything but a man.

And then Udinaas saw, scattered on the floor around the figure, corpses twisted in death. Dark, greenish skin, tusked. A man, a woman, two children. Their bodies had been broken, the ends of shattered bone jutting out from flesh. The way they lay suggested that the white-skinned man had been their killer.

Udinaas was shivering uncontrollably. His hands and feet we numb. ‘Wither? Shadow wraith? Are you with me?’

Silence.

His heart began hammering hard in his chest. This did not feel like dream. It was too real. He felt no dislocation, no whispering assurance of a body lying on its sleeping pallet in an Edur longhouse.

He was here, and he was freezing to death.

Here. In the depths of ice, this world of secrets where time has ceased.

He turned and studied the doorway.

And only then noticed the footprints impressed upon the frost-laden flagstones. Leading out. Bared feet, human, a child’s.

There was no ice visible beyond the portal. Naught but opaque silver as if a curtain had fallen across the entrance.

Feeling ebbing from his limbs, Udinaas backtracked the footprints. To behind the standing figure. Where he saw, after a numbed moment, that the back of the man’s head had been stove in. Hair and skin still attached to the shattered plates of the skull that hung down on the neck. Something like a fist had reached into the figure’s head, tearing through the grey flesh of the brain.

The break looked unaccountably recent.

Tiny tracks indicated that the child had stood behind the figure – no, had appeared behind it, for there were no others to be found. Had appeared … to do what? Reach into a dead man’s skull? Yet the figure was as tall as an Edur. The child would have had to climb.

His thoughts were slowing. There was a pleasurable languor to his contemplation of this horrid mystery. And he was growing sleepy. Which amused him. A dream that made him sleepy. A dream that will kill me. Would they find a frozen corpse on the sleeping pallet? Would it be taken as an omen?

Oh well, follow the prints… into that silver world. What else could he do?

With a final glance back at the immobile scene of past murder and recent desecration, Udinaas staggered slowly towards the doorway.

The silver enveloped him, and sounds rushed in from all sides. Battle. Screams, the ringing hammering of weapons. But he could see nothing. Heat rolled over him from the left, carrying with it a cacophony of inhuman shrieks.

Contact with the ground beneath vanished, and the sounds dropped, swiftly dwindled to far below. Winds howled, and Udinaas realized he was flying, held aloft on leathery wings. Others of his kind sailed the tortured currents – he could see them now, emerging from the cloud. Grey-scaled bodies the size of oxen, muscle-bunched necks, taloned hands and feet. Long, sloping heads, the jaws revealing rows of dagger-like teeth and the pale gums that held them. Eyes the colour of clay, the pupils vertical slits.

Locqui Wyval. That is our name. Spawn of Starvald Demelain, the squalid children whom none would claim as their own. We are as flies spreading across a rotting feast, one realm after another. D’isthal Wyvalla, Enkar’al, Trol, we are a plague of demons in a thousand pantheons.

Savage exultation. There were things other than love upon which to thrive.

A tide of air pushed – drove him and his kind to one side. Bestial screams from his kin as something loomed into view.

Eleint! Soletaken but oh so much draconic blood. Tiam’s own.

Bone-white scales, the red of wounds smeared like misty paint, monstrously huge, the dragon the Wyval had chosen to follow loomed alongside them.

And Udinaas knew its name.

Silchas Ruin. Tiste Andii, who fed in the wake of his brother – fed on Tiam’s blood, and drank deep. Deeper than Anomander Rake by far. Darkness and chaos. He would have accepted the burden of godhood… had he been given the chance.

Udinaas knew now what he was about to witness. The sembling on the hilltop far below. The betrayal. Shadow’s murder of honour in the breaking of vows. A knife in the back and the screams of the Wyval here in the roiling skies above the battlefield. The shadow wraith had not lied. The legacy of the deed remained in the Edur’s brutal enslavement of Tiste Andii spirits. Faith was proved a lie, and in ignorance was found weakness. The righteousness of the Edur stood on shifting sands.

Silchas Ruin. The weapons of those days possessed terrifying power, but his had been shattered. By a K’Chain Che’Malle matron’s death-cry.

The silver light flickered. A physical wrenching, and he found himself lying on his sleeping pallet in the Sengar longhouse.

The skin had been torn from his palms, his knees. His clothes were sodden with melted frost.

A voice murmured from the shadows. ‘I sought to follow, but could not. You travelled far.’

Wither. Udinaas rolled onto his side. ‘Your place of slaughter,’ he whispered. ‘I was there. What do you want of me?’

‘What does anyone want, slave? Escape. From the past, from their past. I will lead you onto the path. The blood of the Wyval shall protect you-’

‘Against the Edur?’

‘Leave the threat of the Edur to me. Now, ready yourself. You have tasks before you this night.’

A sleep that had left him exhausted and battered. Grimacing, he climbed to his feet.

With two of her chosen slaves, Mayen walked across the threshold then paused two strides into the main chamber. She was willow thin, the shade of her skin darker than most. Green eyes framed by long, umber hair in which glittered beads of onyx. A traditional tunic of silver sealskin and a wide belt of pearlescent shells. Bracelets and anklets of whale ivory.

Trull Sengar could see in her eyes a supreme awareness of her own beauty, and there was darkness within that heavy-lidded regard, as if she was not averse to wielding that beauty, to achieving dominance, and with it a potentially unpleasant freedom in which to indulge her desires.

There were all kinds of pleasure, and hungers which spoke naught of virtues, only depravity. Once again, however, Trull was struck by self-doubt as he watched his mother stride to stand before Mayen to voice the household’s welcome. Perhaps he once more saw through shadows of his own casting.

Leaning until his back was to the wall, he glanced over at Fear. Uncertain pride. There was also unease in his brother’s expression, but it could have been born of anything – the journey they would undertake on the morrow, the very future of his people. Just beyond him, Rhulad, whose eyes devoured Mayen as if her mere presence answered his cruellest appetites.

Mayen herself held Uruth in her gaze.

She absorbs. These tumbling waves of attention, drawn in and fed upon. Dusk shield me, am I mad, to find such thoughts spilling from the dark places in my own soul?

The formal greeting was complete. Uruth stepped to one side and Mayen glided forward, towards the Blackwood table on which the first course had already been arrayed. She would take her place at the nearest end, with Tomad opposite her at the table’s head. On her left, Fear, on her right, Uruth. Binadas beside Uruth and Trull beside Fear. Rhulad was to Binadas’s right.

‘Mayen,’ Tomad said once she had seated herself, ‘welcome to the hearth of the Sengar. It grieves me that this night also marks, for the next while, the last in which all my sons are present. They undertake a journey for the Warlock King, and I pray for their safe return.’

‘I am led to believe the ice-fields pose no great risks for warriors of the Edur,’ Mayen replied. ‘Yet I see gravity and concern in your eyes, Tomad Sengar.’

‘An aged father’s fretting,’ Tomad said with a faint smile. ‘Nothing more.’

Rhulad spoke, ‘The Arapay rarely venture onto the ice-fields, for fear of hauntings. More, ice can blind, and the cold can steal life like the bleeding of an unseen wound. It is said there are beasts as well-’

Fear cut in, ‘My brother seeks resounding glory in the unknown, Mayen, so that you may look upon us all with awe and wonder.’

‘I am afraid he has left me with naught but dread,’ she said. ‘And now I must worry for your fates.’

‘We are equal to all that might assail us,’ Rhulad said quickly. Barring the babbling tongue of an unblooded fool. Wine goblets were refilled, and a few moments passed, then Uruth spoke. ‘When one does not know what one seeks, caution is the surest armour.’ She faced Binadas. ‘Among us, you alone have ventured beyond the eastern borders of Arapay land. What dangers do the icefields pose?’

Binadas frowned. ‘Old sorcery, Mother. But it seems inclined to slumber.’ He paused, thinking. ‘A tribe of hunters who live on the ice – I have seen naught but tracks. The Arapay say they hunt at night.’

‘Hunt what?’ Trull asked.

His brother shrugged.

‘There will be six of us,’ Rhulad said. ‘Theradas and Midik Buhn, and all can speak to Theradas’s skills. Although unblooded,’ he added, ‘Midik is nearly my equal with the sword. Hannan Mosag chose well in choosing the warrior sons of Tomad Sengar.’

This last statement hung strange in the air, as if rife with possible meanings, each one tumbling in a different direction. Such was the poison of suspicion. The women had their beliefs, Trull well knew, and now probably looked upon the six warriors in question, wondering at Hannan Mosag’s motivations, his reasons for choosing these particular men. And Fear, as well, would hold to his own thoughts, knowing what he knew – as we Sengar all know, now.

Trull sensed the uncertainty and began wondering for himself. Fear, after all, was Weapons Master for all the tribes, and indeed had been tasked with reshaping the Edur military structure. From Weapons Master to War Master, then. It seemed capricious to so risk Fear Sengar. And Binadas was considered by most to be among the united tribes’ more formidable sorcerors. Together, Fear and Binadas had been crucial during the campaigns of conquest, whilst Theradas Buhn was unequalled in leading raids from the sea. The only expendable members of this expedition are myself, Rhulad and Midik. Was the issue therefore, one of trust?

What precisely was this gift they were to recover?

‘There have been untoward events of late,’ Mayen said, with a glance at Uruth.

Trull caught his father’s scowl, but Mayen must have seen acquiescence in Uruth’s expression, for she continued, ‘Spirits walked the darkness the night of the vigil. Unwelcome of aspect, intruders upon our holy sites – the wraiths fled at their approach.’

‘This is the first I have heard of such things,’ Tomad said.

Uruth reached for her wine cup and held it out to be refilled by a slave. ‘They are known none the less, husband. Hannan Mosag and his K’risnan have stirred deep shadows. The tide of change rises – and soon, I fear, it will sweep us away.’

‘But it is we who are rising on that tide,’ Tomad said, his face darkening. ‘It is one thing to question defeat, but now you question victory, wife.’

‘I speak only of the Great Meeting to come. Did not our own sons tell of the summoning from the depths that stole the souls of the Letherii seal-hunters? When those ships sail into the harbour at Trate, how think you the Letherii will react? We have begun the dance of war.’

‘If that were so,’ Tomad retorted, ‘then there would be little point to treat with them.’

‘Except,’ Trull cut in, recalling his father’s own words when he first returned from the Calach beds, ‘to take their measure.’

‘It was taken long ago,’ Fear said. ‘The Letherii will seek to do to us as they have done to the Nerek and the Tarthenal. Most among them see no error or moral flaw in their past deeds. Those who do are unable or unwilling to question the methods, only the execution, and so they are doomed to repeat the horrors, and see the result – no matter its nature – as yet one more test of firmly held principles. And even should the blood run in a river around them, they will obsess on the details. One cannot challenge the fundamental beliefs of such people, for they will not hear you.’

‘Then there will be war,’ Trull whispered.

‘There is always war, brother,’ Fear replied. ‘Faiths, words and swords: history resounds with their interminable clash.’

‘That, and the breaking of bones,’ Rhulad said, with the smile of a man with a secret.

Foolish conceit, for Tomad could not miss it and he leaned forward. ‘Rhulad Sengar, you speak like a blind elder with a sack full of wraiths. I am tempted to drag you across this table and choke the gloat from your face.’

Trull felt sweat prickle beneath his clothes. He saw the blood leave his brother’s face. Oh, Father, you deliver a wound deeper than you could ever have imagined. He glanced over at Mayen and was startled to see something avid in her eyes, a malice, a barely constrained delight.

‘I am not so young, Father,’ Rhulad said in a rasp, ‘nor you so old, to let such words pass-’

Tomad’s fist thumped the tabletop, sending cups and plates clattering. ‘Then speak like a man, Rhulad! Tell us all this dread knowledge that coils your every strut and has for the past week! Or do you seek to part tender thighs with your womanish ways? Do you imagine you are the first young warrior who seeks to walk in step with women? Sympathy, son, is a poor path to lust-’

Rhulad was on his feet, his face twisting with rage. ‘And which bitch would you have me bed, Father? To whom am I promised? And in whose name? You have leashed me here in this village and then you mock when I strain.’ He glared at the others, fixing at last on Trull. ‘When the war begins, Hannan Mosag will announce a sacrifice. He must. A throat will be opened to spill down the bow of the lead ship. He will choose me, won’t he?’

‘Rhulad,’ Trull said, ‘I have heard no such thing-’

‘He will! I am to bed three daughters! Sheltatha Lore, Sukul Ankhadu and Menandore!’

A plate skittered out from the hands of a slave and cracked onto the tabletop, spilling the shellfish it held. As the slave reached forward to contain the accident, Uruth’s hands snapped out and grasped the Letherii by the wrists. A savage twist to reveal the palms.

The skin had been torn from them, raw, red, glittering wet and cracked.

‘What is this, Udinaas?’ Uruth demanded. She rose and yanked him close.

‘I fell-’ the Letherii gasped.

‘To weep your wounds onto our food? Have you lost your mind?’

‘Mistress!’ another slave ventured, edging forward. ‘I saw him come in earlier – he bore no such wounds then, I swear it!’

‘He is the one who fought the Wyval!’ another cried, backing away in sudden terror.

‘Udinaas is possessed!’ the other slave shrieked.

‘Quiet!’ Uruth set a hand against Udinaas’s forehead and pushed back hard. He grunted in pain.

Sorcery swirled out to surround the slave. He spasmed, then went limp, collapsing at Uruth’s feet.

‘There is nothing within him,’ she said, withdrawing a trembling hand.

Mayen spoke. ‘Feather Witch, attend to Uruth’s slave.’

The young Letherii woman darted forward. Another slave appeared to help her drag the unconscious man away.

‘I saw no insult in the slave’s actions,’ Mayen continued. ‘The wounds were indeed raw, but he held cloth against them.’ She reached out and lifted the plate to reveal the bleached linen that Udinaas had used to cover his hands.

Uruth grunted and slowly sat. ‘None the less, he should have informed me. And for that oversight he must be punished.’

‘You just raped his mind,’ Mayen replied. ‘Is that not sufficient?’

Silence.

Daughters take us, the coming year should prove interesting. One year, as demanded by tradition, and then Fear and Mayen would take up residence in a house of their own.

Uruth simply glared at the younger woman, then, to Trull’s surprise, she nodded. ‘Very well, Mayen. You are guest this night, and so I will abide by your wishes.’

Through all of this Rhulad had remained standing, but now he slowly sat once more.

Tomad said, ‘Rhulad, I know of no plans to resurrect the ancient blood sacrifice to announce a war. Hannan Mosag is not careless with the lives of his warriors, even those as yet unblooded. I cannot fathom how you came to believe such a fate awaited you. Perhaps,’ he added, ‘this journey you are about to undertake will provide you with the opportunity to become a blooded warrior, and so stand with pride alongside your brothers. So I shall pray.’

It was a clear overture, this wish for glory, and Rhulad displayed uncharacteristic wisdom in accepting it with a simple nod.

Neither Feather Witch nor Udinaas returned, but the remaining slaves proved sufficient in serving the rest of the meal.

And for all this, Trull still could not claim any understanding of Mayen, Fear’s betrothed.

A stinging slap and he opened his eyes.

To see Feather Witch’s face hovering above his own, a face filled with rage. ‘You damned fool!’ she hissed.

Blinking, Udinaas looked around. They were huddled in his sleeping niche. Beyond the cloth hanging, the low sounds of eating and soft conversation.

Udinaas smiled.

Feather Witch scowled. ‘She-’

‘I know,’ he cut in. ‘And she found nothing.’

He watched her beautiful eyes widen. ‘It is true, then?’

‘It must be.’

‘You are lying, Udinaas. The Wyval hid. Somehow, somewhere, it hid itself from Uruth.’

‘Why are you so certain of that, Feather Witch?’

She sat back suddenly. ‘It doesn’t matter-’

‘You have had dreams, haven’t you?’

She started, then looked away. ‘You are a Debtor’s son. You are nothing to me.’

‘And you are everything to me, Feather Witch.’

‘Don’t be an idiot, Udinaas! I might as well wed a hold rat! Now, be quiet, I need to think.’

He slowly sat up, drawing their faces close once again. ‘There is no need,’ he said. ‘I trust you, and so I will explain. She looked deep indeed, but the Wyval was gone. It would have been different, had Uruth sought out my shadow.’

She blinked in sudden comprehension, then: ‘That cannot be,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘You are Letherii. The wraiths serve only the Edur-’

‘The wraiths bend a knee because they must. They are as much slaves to the Edur as we are, Feather Witch. I have found an ally…’

‘To what end, Udinaas?’

He smiled again, and this time it was a much darker smile. ‘Something I well understand. The repaying of debts, Feather Witch. In full.’