Baudin started off without comment. Ignoring Heboric, Felisin fell in behind the thug. ‘Is there a waterhole ahead this night?’ she asked.

The big man grunted. ‘Should’ve asked that before you took more than your ration.’

‘Well, I didn’t. So, is there?’

‘We lost half a night yesterday.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Meaning no water until tomorrow night.’ He looked back at her as he walked. ‘You’ll wish you’d saved that mouthful.’

She made no reply. She had no intention of being honourable when the time came for her next drink. Honour’s for fools. Honour’s a fatal flaw. I’m not going to die on a point of honour, Baudin. Heboric’s probably dying anyway. It’d be wasted on him.

The ex-priest trudged in her wake, the sound of his footfalls dimming as he fell farther back as the hours passed. In the end, she concluded, it would be she and Baudin, just the two of them, standing facing the sea at the western edge of this Queen-forsaken island. The weak always fall to the wayside. It was the first law of Skullcup; indeed, it was the first lesson she’d learned – in the streets of Unta on the march to the slaveships.

Back then, in her naivety, she’d looked upon Baudin’s murder of Lady Gaesen as an act of reprehensible horror. If he were to do the same today – putting Heboric out of his misery – she would not even blink. A long journey, this one. Where will it end? She thought of the river of blood, and the thought warmed her.

True to Baudin’s prediction, there was no waterhole to mark the end of the night’s journey. The man selected as a campsite a sandy bed surrounded by wind-sculpted projections of limestone. Bleached human bones littered the bed, but Baudin simply tossed them aside when laying out the tents.

Felisin sat down with her back to rock and watched for Heboric’s eventual appearance at the far end of the flat plain they had just crossed. He had never lagged behind this distance before – the plain was over a third of a league across – and as the dawn’s blush lightened the skyline before her, she began to wonder if his lifeless body wasn’t lying out there somewhere.

Baudin crouched beside her. ‘I told you to carry the food pack,’ he said, squinting eastward.

Not out of sympathy for the old man, then. ‘You’ll just have to go find it, won’t you?’

Baudin straightened. Flies buzzed around him in the still-cool air as he stared eastward for a long moment.