She halted, looked up to see a white-skinned figure perched atop one of the mounds. Gold hair hanging long, loose, hinting of deep shades of crimson. A white-bladed two-handed sword leaned against one side of his chest, the multifaceted crystal pommel flashing in the brightness. He took many forms, this creature. Some pleasant, others—like this one—like a spit of acid in her eyes.

‘This is your work, isn’t it?’

One of his hands stroked the sword’s enamel blade, the sensuality of the gesture making her shiver. He said, ‘I deplore your messiness, Kilmandaros.’

‘While you make death seem so . . . tidy.’

He shrugged. ‘Tell me, if on your very last day—day or night, it makes no difference—you find yourself in a room, on a bed, even. Too weak to move, but able to look around—that’s all. Tell me, Kilmandaros, will you not be comforted by the orderliness of all that you see? By the knowledge that it will persist beyond you, unchanged, bound to its own slow, so slow measure of decay?’

‘You ask if I will be what, Osserc? Nostalgic about a room I’m still in?’

‘Is that not the final gift of dying?’

She held up her hands and showed him her fists. ‘Come down here and receive just such a gift, Osserc. I know this body—this face that you show me now. I know the seducer and know him too well. Come down—do you not miss my embrace?’

And in the dread truths of dreams, Osserc then chuckled. The kind of laugh that cut into its victim, that shocked tight the throat. Dismissive, devoid of empathy. A laugh that said: You no longer matter to me. I see your hurt and it amuses me. I see how you cannot let go of the very thing I have so easily flung away: the conceit that we still matter to each other.

So much, yes, in a dream’s laugh.

‘Emurlahn is in pieces,’ he said. ‘And most of them are now as dead as this one. Would you blame me? Anomander? Scabandari?’

‘I’m not interested in your stupid finger-pointing. The one who accuses has nothing to lose and everything to hide.’

‘Yet you joined with Anomander—’

‘He too was not interested in blame. We joined together, yes, to save what we could.’

‘Too bad, then,’ Osserc said, ‘that I got here first.’

‘Where have the people gone, Osserc? Now that you’ve destroyed their city.’

His brows lifted. ‘Why, nowhere.’ He gestured, a broad sweep of one hand, encompassing the rows of mounds around them. ‘I denied them their moment of . . . nostalgia.’

She found herself trembling. ‘Come down here,’ she said in a rasp, ‘your death is long overdue.’

‘Others concur,’ he admitted. ‘In fact, it’s why I’m, uh, lingering here. Only one portal survives. No, not the one you came through—that one has since crumbled.’

‘And who waits for you there, Osserc?’

‘Edgewalker.’