'You are descended from demons.' And one corner of the apprentice's mouth curled up in a knowing smile. 'Far back into the Old Time and beyond, perhaps, but still, you are not entirely human. You are a relic. A last weak trace of the blood of the Other Side.'

Ferro opened her mouth to snarl an insult back at him but Bayaz cut her off.

'There can be no denying it, Ferro. I would not have brought you if there were any doubt. But you should not seek to deny it. You should embrace it. It is a rare gift. You can touch the Seed. Perhaps only you in all the wide Circle of the World. Only you can touch it, and only you can carry it to war.' He leaned close and whispered to her. 'But only I can make it burn. Hot enough to turn all Gurkhul to a desert. Hot enough to make bitter ashes of Khalul and all his servants. Hot enough to make such vengeance that even you will have your fill of it, and more. Are you coming now?' And he clicked his tongue, pulling his horse away and back onto the bridge.

Ferro frowned at the old pink's back as she rode after him, chewing hard at her lip. When she licked it, she tasted blood. Blood, but no pain. She did not like to believe anything the Magus said, but there was no denying that she was not as others were. She remembered she had bitten Aruf once, and he had told her that she must have had a snake for a mother. Why not a demon? She watched the water thundering by far below, through the slots in the metal, frowning, and thinking on vengeance.

'Don't hardly matter whose blood you've got.' Ninefingers was riding beside her. Riding badly, as usual, and looking across, voice gentle. 'Man makes his own choices, my father used to tell me. Reckon that goes for women just as much.'

Ferro did not answer. She dragged on her reins and let the others pull ahead. Woman, or demon, or snake, it made no difference. Her concern was hurting the Gurkish. Her hatred was strong, and deep-rooted, warm and familiar. Her oldest friend.

She could trust nothing else.

Ferro was the last one off the bridge. She took a look back over her shoulder as they moved off into the crumbling city, towards the ruins they had come from, half hidden on the far bank by the grey shroud of drizzle.

'Ssss!' She jerked on her reins, glaring over the surging water, eyes flicking over the hundreds of empty windows, the hundreds of empty doorways, the hundreds of cracks and gaps and spaces in the crumbling walls.

'What did you see?' came Ninefingers' worried voice.

'Something.' But she saw nothing now. Along the crumbling embankment the endless shells of buildings squatted, empty and lifeless.