‘It kept us all alive, you bastard.’

‘Kept you plump and lazy, you mean. Most of what me and Heboric ate came from the favours I did for the Dosii guards. Beneth gave us dregs to keep you sweet. He knew we wouldn’t tell you about it. He used to laugh at your noble cause.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘As you say,’ he said, still grinning.

Heboric coughed, his eyes opening. He blinked in the dawn’s light.

‘You should see yourself,’ Baudin said to him. ‘From five feet away you’re one solid tattoo – as dark as a Dal Honese warlock. Up this close and I can see every line – every hair of the Boar’s fur. It’s covered your stump, too, not the one that’s swollen but the other one. Here, drink some more—’

‘Bastard!’ Felisin snapped. She watched as the last of their water trickled into the old man’s mouth. He left Beneth to die. Now he’s trying to poison the memory of him, too. It won’t work. I did what I did to keep them both alive, and they hate that fact – both of them. It eats them inside, the guilt for the price I paid. And that’s what Baudin’s now trying to deny. He’s cutting his conscience loose, so when he slips one of those knives into me he won’t feel a thing. ]ust another dead noble-born. Another Lady Gaesen.

She spoke loudly, meeting Heboric’s eyes. ‘I dream a river of blood every night. I ride it. And you’re both there, at first, but only at first, because you both drown in that river. Believe anything you like. I’m the one who’s going to live through this. Me. Just me.’

She left the two men to stare at her back as she walked to her tent.

The next night, they found the spring an hour before the moon rose. It revealed itself at the base of a stone depression, fed from below by some unseen fissure. The surface appeared to be grey mud. Baudin went down to its edge, but made no move to scoop out a hole and drink the water that would seep into it. After a moment, her head spinning with weakness, Felisin dropped the food pack from her shoulders and stumbled down to kneel beside him.

The grey was faintly phosphorescent and consisted of drowned capemoths, their wings spread out and overlapping to cover the entire surface. Felisin reached to push the floating carpet aside but Baudin’s hand snapped out, closing on her wrist.

‘It’s fouled,’ he said. ‘Full of capemoth larvae, feeding off the bodies of their parents.’

Hood’s breath, not more larvae. ‘Strain the water through a cloth,’ Felisin said.

He shook his head. ‘The larvae piss poison, fill the water with it. Eliminates any competition. It’ll be a month before the water’s drinkable.’

‘We need it, Baudin.’