‘No.’ The denial was blunt and harsh. ‘I see that you still refuse to speak and so we must continue onward – to get the truth of this. We owe it to all who have fallen.’ She thrust an arm to the south. ‘They paid with their lives! And I will collect on it.’ She brushed past him. ‘Either speak up or stand aside.’

He was left standing alone on the shore. For a moment, she saw him as nothing more than a thin ragged figure, haunted and torn, then she hardened her heart and turned to Bars. ‘Push off.’ K’azz stepped on board at the last instant. She faced the boat’s master who held the side-mounted tiller. ‘What lies up the coast?’

‘Scattered camps, ma’am. One big one the gold-hunters established over an old town up there. They call it Wrongway. Past that they say is a fortress named Mantle.’

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?’