“We hold Conbarma, and it’s ready to receive the ships.” She paused, glanced across at S’Hivez where the old Mage sat slumped forward on his mount. He looked like a mummified corpse, something they would pull out of the glacier on Dana’Man.

“You’re talking to me, not him!” Angel said.

“Sorry, Mistress.”

Angel stared at her, then smiled. “You of all people need not apologize to me, Lenora. We’ve been through so many years together—a few good, a few hundred bad—and now it’s our time again. Do you feel that?” She drew close, her breath musty and filled with secrets of rage and time. “Can you really sense that, Lenora?”

“Yes,” Lenora whispered. And she could. All her memories of the Cataclysmic War and their terrible flight north, refreshed over the past few days, had been instantly wiped away by their first decisive victory. They were back on Noreela . . . and sometime soon, she would go home again. That would be her own personal reward, and not even the Mages need know of that.

“I want you to fly with me, Lieutenant.”

Lenora frowned, confused. Angel walked past her and headed along the harbor wall for land, true land, her hand already reaching out to touch the bones of Noreela laid bare for ages. She followed, glancing back at S’Hivez sitting astride his hawk. He showed no inclination to dismount.

“Don’t worry about him,” Angel said. “He knows we’re leaving soon, and he’s not one for symbolism. I’m the one who wants to touch this place again.”

Lenora followed her mistress, maintaining a respectful distance. They passed one of her men, pressing himself so close to the ground that it seemed he was trying his best to merge with the rock.

“Here we are,” Angel said, her voice soft and filled with a timeless grief. “Here we are.”

The Mage stepped forward into the first dusty street of Conbarma. She stood there for some time, looking down at her feet then up at the buildings before her, left and right at the shops and taverns that fronted the harbor, back down at her feet. Then she sank slowly to her knees, and from where Lenora watched she was nothing more than a sad old woman, her friends and family dead, kneeling in the dust and wishing to be taken back into it. She picked up a handful of sand and brought it to her face, inhaling, letting some slip between her fingers and drift away on the breeze.