A carriage. People. Living people. That’s what he needed now. The return of sanity—hold on, it dropped out of the sky, don’t forget. What’s so normal about that?

‘Never mind,’ he muttered, ‘at least they’re alive.’

Sandalath made it to the bridge before collapsing. Cursing, Withal knelt at her side and lifted her head until it rested on his lap. Blood was streaming from her nose, ears and the corners of her eyes. Her lips glistened as if painted.

The three Nachts—or whatever they were called in this realm—had vanished, fled, he assumed, from whatever was assailing his wife. As for himself, he felt nothing. This world was desolate, lifeless, probably leagues from any decent body of water—but oh how he wished he could take her and just sail out of this madness.

Instead, it looked as though his wife was dying.

Crimson froth bubbled from her mouth as she began mumbling something—he leaned closer—words, yes, a conversation. Withal leaned back, snorting. When she’d thought him asleep, she’d said the same lines over and over again. As if they were a prayer, or the beginning of one.

‘What’s broken cannot be mended. You broke us, but that is not all—see what you have done.’

There was the touch of a lament in her tone, but one so emptied of sentiment it cut like a dagger. A lament, yes, but infused with chill hatred, a knuckled core of ice. Complicated, aye, layered—unless he was just imagining things. The truth could be as silly as a childhood song sung to a broken doll, its head lolling impossibly with those stupid eyes underneath the nose and the mouth looking like a wound to the forehead—

Withal shook himself. The oldest memories might be smells, tastes, or isolated images—but rarely all three at once—at least in so far as he knew from his own experience. Crammed into his skull, a crowded mess with everything at the back so tightly pressed all the furniture was crushed, and to reach in was to come up with a few pieces that made no sense at all—

Gods, he was tired. And here she was, dragging him all this way, only to die in his lap and abandon him at the gates of a dead city.

‘. . . see what you have done.’

Her breathing had deepened. The blood had stopped trickling down—he wiped her mouth with a grimy cuff. She suddenly sighed. He leaned closer. ‘Sand? Can you hear me?’

‘Nice pillow . . . but for the smell.’

‘You’re not going to die?’

‘It’s over now,’ she said, opening her eyes—but only for a moment as she gasped and shut them again. ‘Ow, that hurts.’

‘I can get some water—from the river here—’

‘Yes, do that.’

He shifted her from his lap and settled her down on the road. ‘Glad it’s over, Sand. Oh, by the way, what’s over?’

She sighed. ‘Mother Dark, she has returned to Kharkanas.’

‘Oh, that’s nice.’