‘Leave me out of this,’ said Rautos. ‘I suffered enough for a lifetime when I was living with my wife and, needless to say, I don’t miss her.’

‘Here goes Rautos again,’ snarled Breath. ‘My wife did this, my wife said that. I’m sick of hearing about your wife. She ain’t here, is she? You probably drowned her, and that’s why you’re on the run. You drowned her in your fancy fountain, just held her down, watching as her eyes went wide, her mouth opened and she screamed through the water. You watched and smiled, that’s what you did. I don’t forget, I can’t forget, it was awful. You’re a murderer, Rautos.’

‘There she goes,’ said Sheb, ‘talking about drowning again.’

‘Might cut out her tongue, too,’ said Nappet, grinning. ‘Rautos’s, too. No more shit about drowning or wives or complainin’—the rest of you are fine. Last, you don’t say nothing and when you do, it don’t rile nobody. Asane, you mostly know when to keep your mouth shut. And Taxilian hardly ever says nothing anyway. Just us, and that’d be—’

‘I see something,’ said Rautos.

He felt their attentions shift, find focus, and he saw with their eyes a vague smudge on the horizon, something thrusting skyward, too narrow to be a mountain, too massive to be a tree. Still leagues away, rising like a tooth.

‘I want to see that,’ announced Taxilian.

‘Shit,’ said Nappet, ‘ain’t nowhere else to go.’

The others silently agreed. They had been walking for what seemed forever, and the arguments about where they should go had long since withered away. None of them had any answers, none of them even knew where they were.

And so they set out for that distant, mysterious edifice.

He was content with that, content to go with them, and he found himself sharing Taxilian’s curiosity, which grew in strength and if challenged would easily overwhelm Asane’s fears and the host of obsessions plaguing the others—Breath’s drowning, Rautos’s miserable marriage, Last’s meaningless life of diffidence, Sheb’s hatred and Nappet’s delight in viciousness. And now the conversations fell away, leaving naught but the crunch and thud of bare feet on the rough ground, and the low moan of the ceaseless wind.

High above, a score of capemoths tracked the lone figure walking across the Wastelands. They had been drawn by the sound of voices, only to find this solitary, gaunt figure. Skin of dusty green, tusks framing its mouth. Carrying a sword but otherwise naked. A lone wanderer, who spoke in seven voices, who knew himself by seven names. He was many, but he was one. They were all lost, and so was he.

The capemoths hungered for his life to end. But it had been weeks. Months. In the meantime, they just hungered.