She eyed K’azz where he sat alone in the bow. ‘Are you going to help?’

‘The path is due north. Follow the coast for a short time then strike upland.’

‘Thank you.’ She nodded to the boat’s master. ‘You have your orders.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He eased back, resigned to his situation, and spat over the side. ‘If you lot would step the mast that would be a big help.’

* * *

The figures came shuffling out of the deeper gloom in the middle of the broad subterranean chamber that was the no-man’s-land separating the feuding Sharr and Sheer families of Exile Keep. Othan Sharr, now the Sharr of Sharr with the death of his elder brother, paused in his gnawing of a roasted rat carcass and narrowed his own rather beady, rat-like eyes upon the strangers.

‘What Sheer trickery is this?’ he growled to his cousin/wife, Amina Sharr, on his right.

She pushed back her nest of frizzy hair, narrowed her eyes, then hissed a grating breath and gripped the battered table with both sinewy hands. ‘Didn’t I say with Geth and Turnan gone they’d try something?’

The rest of the Sharrs lined up along the table facing the no-man’s-land slowly set down their cups and crusts of bread.

‘What foolishness is this?’ Sharr of Sharr called out to the now motionless figures. ‘There can be no parley or truce between us – you know that!’ The slim shadowy shapes remained silent. The Sharr of Sharr squinted his tiny eyes even further. ‘What are they doing? I can’t quite see. Are those … costumes?’

Across the empty chamber, along the far wall, sitting at the table of the Sheer family, Gurat Sheer, the ancient Sheer of Sheers, similarly squinted into the gloom. ‘What are those asinine Sharrs up to now?’ He fumbled at the littered tabletop before him, found a stick, and hit the elderly man next to him. ‘What is this, Jatar?’

Jatar, Gurat’s eldest nephew, wiped the spilled wine from the front of his shirt and glared at his uncle before glancing out across the dusty flagstones of the chamber. His greying brows rose. ‘Looks like a full frontal assault.’

The Sheer of Sheers banged his stick against the table for attention. ‘Haven’t had one of them in generations.’ He pointed out to the chamber, shouted: ‘So desperate now are you, Othan, you dried up rat?’

The figures paced closer. Jatar pushed himself back from the table, frowning. Gurat snorted his contempt. ‘What foolish trick is this?’

Amina Sharr pushed her unruly nest of hair even further from her face to better see. The figures – they looked very thin.

‘Such costumes of bone and rags will not terrorize us!’ the Sharr of Sharr laughed.

Amina touched her cousin/husband’s arm. ‘I do not believe those are costumes, husband dear.’

The Sharr of Sharrs lost his smirk. His beady eyes narrowed to slits as he studied the bizarre skeletal apparitions. ‘Oh dear. They resemble descriptions of the dread army of bone and dust.’