‘How did the good colonel die?’

‘You’ve just come to a closed door, Corporal.’

Kalam smiled. ‘That’s all right. Times like these I can see through them well enough.’

‘Then I needn’t say any more.’

‘Looking at Minala, none of this makes sense,’ the assassin said.

‘There’s different kinds of strength, I guess. And defences. She used to be close with Selv, with the children. Now she wraps herself around them like armour, just as cold and just as hard. What she’s having trouble with is you, Kalam. You’ve wrapped yourself in the same way but around her – and the rest of us.’

And she’s feeling redundant? Maybe that’s how it would look to Keneb. ‘Her trouble with me is that she doesn’t trust me, Captain.’

‘Why in Hood’s name not?’

Because I’m holding daggers unseen. And she knows it. Kalam shrugged. ‘From what you’ve told me, I’d expect trust to be something she wouldn’t easily grant to anyone, Captain.’

Keneb mused on this, then he sighed and rose. ‘Well, enough of that. I’ve a shroud to stare up at and snores to count.’

Kalam watched the captain move away and settle down beside Selv. The assassin drew a deep, slow breath. I expect your death was a quick one, Colonel Tras. Be fickle, dear Hood, and spit the bastard back out. I’ll kill him again, and Queen turn away, I’ll not be quick.

On his belly, Fiddler wormed his way down the rock-tumbled slope, heedlessly scraping his knuckles as he held out his cocked crossbow before him. That bastard Servant’s dissolving in a dozen stomachs by now. Either that or his head’s riding a pike minus the ears now dangling from someone’s hip.

All of Icarium’s and Mappo’s skills had been stretched to the limit with the simple effort of keeping everyone alive. The Whirlwind, for all its violence, was no longer an empty storm scouring a dead land. Servant’s trail had led the group into a more focused mayhem.

Another lance flew out from the swirling ochre curtain to his left and landed with a clatter ten paces from where the sapper lay. Your goddess’s wrath leaves you as blind as us, fool!

They were in hills crawling with Sha’ik’s desert warriors. There was both coincidence and something else in this fell convergence. Convergence indeed. The followers seek the woman they’re sworn to follow. Too bad that the other path happens to be here as well.