They cooked the crabs in a bed of coals, needing sticks to push the creatures back into the searing heat until their struggles ceased. The white flesh was delicious, but salty. A bounteous feast and an endless supply that could prove fatal.

Baudin then collected more driftwood, intending to build a beacon fire for the night to come. In the meantime, as the sun broke the eastern skyline, he piled damp seaweed on the fire and studied with a satisfied expression the column of smoke that rose into the air.

‘You planning to do that all day?’ Felisin asked. What about sleep? I need you sleeping, Baudin.

‘Every now and then,’ he replied.

‘Don’t see the point if those clouds roll in.’

‘They ain’t rolled in yet, have they? If anything, they’re rolling out – back to the mainland.’

She watched him working the fire. He’d lost the economy of his movements, she realized; there was now a sloppiness there that betrayed the extremity of his exhaustion, a weakness that probably came with finally reaching the coast. They’d lost any control over their fates. Baudin believed in Baudin and no-one else. Now just like us he’s depending on someone else. And maybe it was all for nothing. Maybe we should’ve taken our chances going to Dosin Pali.

The crab meat began taking its toll. Waves of desperate thirst assailed Felisin, followed by sharp cramps as her stomach rebelled at being full.

Heboric disappeared inside his tent, clearly suffering the same symptoms.

Felisin did little over the next twenty minutes, simply clawing through the pain and watching Baudin, willing on him the same affliction. If he was similarly assailed he showed no sign. Her fear of him deepened.

The cramps faded, although the thirst remained. The clouds over the straits retreated, the sun’s heat rose.

Baudin dumped a last pile of seaweed on the fire, then made ready to retire to the tent.

‘Take mine,’ Felisin said.

His head jerked around, his eyes narrowing.

‘I’ll join you in a moment.’

He still stared.

‘Why not?’ she snapped. ‘What other escape is there? Unless you’ve taken vows—’

He flinched almost imperceptibly.

Felisin went on, ‘- sworn to some sex-hating Ascendant. Who would that be? Hood? Wouldn’t that be a surprise! But there’s always a little death in lovemaking—’

‘That what you call it?’ Baudin muttered. ‘Lovemaking?’

She shrugged.

‘I’m sworn to no god.’

‘So you’ve said before. Yet you’ve never made use of me, Baudin. Do you prefer men? Boys? Throw me on my stomach and you won’t know the difference.’

He straightened, still staring, his expression unreadable. Then he walked to the tent. Felisin’s tent.

She smiled to herself, waited a hundred heartbeats, then joined him.