You stupid stubborn fool, she sent to the shore. You have to come. How could you not? But if you refuse – then I will discover what the Queen of Dreams promised awaited us in Assail. Yet … as the one who invoked the vow, what if these things can only be revealed to you?

She sighed and scraped the wooden spoon round the bowl. Surely he must have considered that. Why allow them to depart on a useless errand? Then she castigated herself: rescuing Cal-Brinn and the Fourth would not be useless, girl! Finally, she pushed off from the side and went below to find an open bunk.

Damn the man for leaving it to her to decide!

Two days later they reached Fortress Recluse. They loaded more supplies and equipment, then Blues and his Blade of chosen Avowed boarded. They set sail that eve. Four days later they were nearing their rounding of the cape. Shimmer was asleep in a hammock when a call from the night watch woke her: ‘Fire on the slate shore! Bonfire ashore!’

She lay half awake for a time, still groggy with sleep. Then a sudden suspicion, almost like a breath from one of the Brethren in her ear: what if …?

She swung her legs from the hammock and ran for the companionway, barefoot, wearing only her thin cotton longshirt and trousers. She gained the deck to find it abandoned, empty but for the night watch. ‘Why are we not investigating?’ she demanded.

‘It’s only a fire,’ the sailor said, and he eyed her up and down as the wind pressed the thin fabric to her form. She cursed the man inwardly and went to the pilot on duty: not Havvin now, but a younger apprentice. ‘Turn for shore,’ she told him.

The tall skinny fellow peered down his nose at her. ‘Only the ship’s master can order a change in course.’

‘It just so happens I’m his master,’ she snarled. ‘Now turn for shore.’

But the young fellow only gripped the faded wood of the tiller arm all the tighter. ‘No, ma’am. The slate shore is far too dangerous.’

Oh, for the love of all the dead gods! She drew a deep breath and called in her best battlefield bellow: ‘Master Ghelath! You are required on deck!’

In a few minutes the man himself appeared, puffing, scratching his wide belly, his bare chest a dense thatch of russet hair. ‘What is this?’ he growled, bleary-eyed.

‘She wants us to head for shore,’ the pilot complained.

The Master squinted at the night-hidden coast as if to confirm that it was even there. Then he turned on her. ‘Are you a fool? We’d be stove in. Those are the Cursed Soldiers. No ship can come within a league of them.’

‘Nevertheless,’ she answered through clenched teeth, ‘I wish to investigate that fire.’ She pointed over the stern where the flickering orange and gold glow was already disappearing into the gloom.