“No, I’m not ready to do that at all,” Hope said. “I just admit that we don’t have a chance. It’s hopeless. How can we fight them? You have a sword, Trey has a disc-sword, I have a few false charms in my pockets that would barely hurt a street urchin, let alone one of them!”

“What do you know about them?”

“Enough to know we don’t stand a chance.”

“You know nothing,” Kosar said softly. “You know nothing because no one knows anything. They’ve been gone for so long that every story about them has been twisted and turned. They could just as easily be sad, pathetic, weak old things that will drop dead at the flick of a knife.”

“They got here quickly enough,” Trey said. “They have their spies that told them what was happening, and they’ve flown from wherever it is they fled to claim back what they think is theirs.”

Kosar looked between the two of them, shook his head and realized that there was no point in arguing. When none of them knew the truth, what was the purpose of further discussion? They could only discuss supposition.

“But we have to fight,” Kosar said, and his words sounded so weak that he sat down and said no more.

“Fight,” Alishia said. “Yes, fight.”

“What do you know?” Kosar asked her.

Alishia smiled and closed her eyes.

TREY CHEWED ON a chunk of fledge—his final thumb of the drug, stale now, bitter-tasting and rank—and he tried to let his mind float out and away.

In Alishia and Rafe he encountered two areas of utter darkness, and he was repelled. There was so much in there and nothing at all, and the sense of threat told him that either could be the case. So much could be things he was not meant to see, ideas that were never supposed to be dreamed; and nothing could only be the Black.

He edged out into space and soared, his flight weakened by the bad fledge, the balance of his mind dangerously uneven. But he was free for a time, and he could see, and if he moved out in concentric circles he may yet be of use to the others. His disc-sword had aided Kosar back there against the Monk, but he felt no sense of victory in meting out death, however repellent the thing he had killed. Rafe was a stranger and what the boy appeared to carry was stranger still, so try as he might Trey could find no real nobility in their cause. He supposed he was fighting for the good, but that was something of which none of them seemed to know. They ran and fought blind. Rafe seemed honest, but did that make what he carried decent as well? Or merely deceitful?