‘You’re a fool if you think that,’ Kulp said. ‘The timing is anything but accidental. I’ve a hunch that someone started those shapeshifters on that convergence, and that someone acted precisely because of the uprising. Or it went the other way around – the Whirlwind goddess guided the prophecy to ensure that the Year of Dryjhna was now, when the convergence was under way, in the interest of creating chaos within the warrens.’

‘Interesting notions, Mage,’ Heboric said, slowly nodding. ‘Natural, of course, coming from a practitioner of Meanas, where deceit breeds like runaway weeds and inevitability defines the rules of the game ... but only when useful.’

Felisin stayed silent, watching the two men. One conversation, here on the surface, yet another beneath. The priest and the mage are playing games, the entwining of suspicion with knowledge. Heboric sees a pattern, his plundering of ghostly lives gave him what he needed, and I think he’s telling Kulp that the mage himself is closer to that pattern than he might imagine. ‘Here, wielder of Meanas, take my invisible hand . . .’

Felisin decided she had had enough. ‘What do you know, Heboric?’

The blind man shrugged.

‘Why does it matter to you, lass?’ Kulp growled. ‘You’re suggesting surrender: let the shapeshifters take us – we’re dead anyway.’

‘I asked, why do we struggle on? Why leave here? We haven’t got a chance out in the desert.’

‘Stay, then!’ Kulp snapped, rising. ‘Hood knows you’ve nothing useful to offer.’

‘I’ve heard all it takes is a bite.’

He went still and slowly turned to her. ‘You heard wrong. It’s common enough ignorance, I suppose. A bite can poison you, a cyclical fever of madness, but you do not become a shapeshifter.’

‘Really, then how are they created?’

‘They aren’t. They’re born.’

Heboric clambered to his feet. ‘If we’re to walk through this dead city, let us do so now. The voices have stilled, and I am clear of mind.’

‘What difference does that make?’ Felisin demanded.

‘I can guide us on the swiftest route, lass. Else we wander lost until the ones who hunt us finally arrive.’

They drank one last time from the pool, then gathered as many of the pale fruits as they could carry. Felisin had to admit to herself that she felt healthier – more mended – than she had in a long time, as if memories no longer bled and she was left with naught but scars. Yet the cast of her mind remained fraught. She had run out of hope.