‘Don’t want that? I’ll finish it for you,’ Vald said, eyeing up her plate while mopping up the last of his gravy with a thick slice of black bread. The wooden plate looked so clean, as if it hadn’t been eaten from.

‘Have it,’ Riv said, pushing her unfinished food towards Vald.

‘I’d have had that!’ Jost exclaimed, eyes bulging in his gaunt face. He ate almost as much as Vald, not that you’d know it to look at him, the two of them often arguing over food.

‘Too slow.’ Vald winked at Jost.

How can they joke at a time like this?

She spied her mam sitting in a shadowed corner of the feast-hall and stood.

‘Going to see my mam,’ she said to Jost and Vald, scooping up a skin of wine and two cups, and left them bickering over her half-eaten plate of food.

Riv had felt deeply moved by the judgement upon Adonai and Estel, still did, her feelings swinging from judgemental to pity every few heartbeats.

As her mam looked up at Riv she thought how much she looked like an older version of Aphra, creases around her eyes and mouth, the streaks of grey in her hair spreading – there was more than black, now. It struck her that she herself looked very little like them, her hair fair where theirs was dark, her features finer where her mam’s and Aphra’s were stronger.

Aphra is so like Mam. I must resemble our father, instead. I wish he were here, that I had known him. Is my temper his legacy, as well? Because I see none of it in Aphra or Mam.

Dalmae gave Riv a wan smile that shifted partway through into resolute, but couldn’t quite conceal the worry that lurked behind her eyes.

‘What is it, Mam? Upset about Adonai and Estel?’ Riv said as she sat, pulling the stopper from the wine skin with her teeth and pouring wine glugging into the two cups.

‘Aye,’ her mam said, ‘a terrible thing.’ She sighed. ‘And I am worried about Aphra,’ she added.

‘Worried about Aphra?’ Her sister was always so capable, the perfect disciple of Elyon’s Lore. Disciplined, calm, a consummate warrior and leader, and devout, embodying Riv’s idea of what Faith, Strength and Purity were in reality. And yet now she agreed with her mam. Aphra had been acting out of character, ever since the night Riv had seen her with Fia. ‘I was going to ask you about her. She’s been . . . strange, lately.’

‘You think so, too?’ Dalmae asked. ‘How so?’

‘Bad-tempered, not interested in anything I have to say to her.’

‘Leading is hard, sometimes,’ her mam said, squeezing Riv’s hand. ‘All the time,’ she corrected herself. ‘And these are dark days – the beacons, rumours of the Kadoshim moving. Estel.’

‘Aye,’ Riv said as she took a long sip from her cup.