‘Whisht,’ Sig said to him with a scowl.

Byrne raised an eyebrow at him.

Cullen’s smile shrivelled.

Byrne raised her other eyebrow, continued to scold him with her gaze.

‘Sorry, High Captain,’ he mumbled.

Ach, but she looks like her great-grandmother when she pulls that face.

Byrne was descended from Cywen, the sister of Corban, who had founded the healers’ element of Dun Seren, teaching and pioneering new methods of the healing art, of herbs and remedies and medical procedures. All who came to Dun Seren, who dreamed of becoming warriors of the Bright Star, were educated in the art of healing as much as developing skill at arms. It was the same in reverse: any who came with a passion for healing would be taught with just as much rigour how to fight, how to kill. And Byrne had excelled at both, from a bairn Sig had noticed the talent in her. It had fairly glowed.

Sig had once seen Byrne drill a small hole through a fallen comrade’s skull to relieve swelling and pressure upon the man’s brain, the result of a heavy blow from a sword-pommel. A difficult procedure at the best of times, but this had been knee-deep in an ambush, Kadoshim and their servants all about. Sig had stood over her, trying to guard her back while she did it.

It’s no wonder she rose to the position of high captain of the Order.

And she’s a good friend.

‘It’s good to be back,’ Sig said. She threw a leather bag onto a wide desk, where it landed with a heavy thud, its contents spilling out, rolling a half-circle. It was the severed head of the Kadoshim from Ardain, flesh rotting and peeling, stinking, the long fangs in its mouth accentuated by the decomposing lips, pulled tight and slimy with putrefaction.

‘Do you know its name?’

‘Rimmon,’ Sig said.

Byrne nodded, her lips a tight line. She opened a large leather-bound book upon her desk, dipped a quill in ink and wrote upon a page. Sig leaned over, saw Byrne write Rimmon at the bottom of a list, pages long. Above it were the names Charun, Malek, Balam, Dramal, many, many more.

I know. It’s always good to see a dead Kadoshim, a new name on the list. But it would be better if it was Gulla, the self-called New Lord of the Kadoshim.

‘The rumours were true, then,’ Byrne said, bending closer to study the Kadoshim’s features, her expression clinical and detached as only a healer could be.

There was a knock at the chamber door, Cullen rising from the seat he was lounging in to go and open it. Byrne did not have servants.

A giant walked in, taller than Sig, though not as broad, dark-haired as she was fair, his hair wild, poking in all directions, apart from the warrior braid that coiled across one shoulder.