Kyle could not help but close his fist on the grip of the white blade. All eyes, he noted, now rested upon him. He felt his breath whisper away in an unmanning clutch of dread.

Jethiss frowned then, studying his face in puzzlement, then his brows rose and for an instant a strange expression crossed his face. What to Kyle appeared almost to be hurt. He waved a hand. ‘Do not worry, friend Kyle, I would never – that is, your weapon is safe.’

‘Then where,’ the bard asked into the lengthening silence, ‘do you believe you will find this weapon?’

The Andii’s alien night-black eyes released Kyle to shift to Fisher. ‘In the north.’

Kyle found himself blinking and weaving slightly as he dropped his sweat-slick hand from the sword. Only now did he note how both Stalker and Badlands flanked him, while Cal-Brinn had eased away, closer to the Avowed now quiet and watchful across the copse of woods.

‘A desperate option,’ Fisher remarked, rather dryly. ‘Do you think it wise?’

‘I think it necessary.’ And the Andii walked off into the woods, heading upland.

Kyle and the remaining three exchanged silent looks. We are of the blood, he realized. As Stalker said, I, too, have a stake here.

‘So what do we do?’ Badlands growled, and adjusted the blood-soaked cloth round his upper arm.

‘I do not know,’ Fisher answered. ‘I’m not even sure we could stop him if we wished.’

‘Is he – you know … him?’

The bard shook his head in frustration. ‘I do not believe so. He appears different. But then …’

‘Yes? What?’ Stalker prompted, irritated by the bard’s habit of withholding his thoughts.

Fisher raised his shoulders in a helpless shrug. ‘He was a shapeshifter.’

‘Oh, wonderful,’ Badlands snarled, and he let out a breath like a fart. ‘That’s a big help.’ He waved Cal-Brinn over, calling, ‘Let’s put more room between us ’n’ them Letherii bastards, shall we?’

* * *

Reuth started up from his bunk in a panic. It was dark and all he could see were Storval’s hands reaching for his throat from the night. He blinked away the ghost-memory from his nightmares. He remembered that he was safe now, on board the Silver Dawn, in the care of a blind Falaran pilot and her husband, the ship’s captain. He had a sudden sense of the solid presence of his uncle, Tulan, wrapped in his bear-hide cloak, smelling of grease, and tears came to his eyes. He was gone, and the crew that betrayed him was now part of the invader army camped outside the walls of Mantle, high on its cliff-side perch.