‘I hesitate to say that I look forward to it, lord, lest you mistake my meaning.’

‘Ah,’ said Gothos after sipping, ‘did I not warn you that old leaves hold a most subtle flavour? You have over-sweetened your offering, Arathan, as the young are wont to do.’

Arathan turned at a sound from the doorway, to see Hood standing in the threshold. The cowled Jaghut studied Arathan for a moment, and then stepped inside. ‘I smell that foul tea you so adore, Gothos.’

‘Properly aged as is appropriate,’ Gothos responded. ‘Arathan, fill him a cup, in which he may drown his sorrows, sweetly.’

‘I despaired,’ Hood said, collecting up a chair.

‘This is your story, yes.’

‘Not that, you gas-bloated goat. Day and night I am assailed. The questions alone invite my hunger for death. Imagine, the fools clamour for organization! Pragmatic necessities! Supply equipage, cooks and meals!’

‘Is it not said that an army travels on its stomach?’

‘An army travels on its griping, Gothos, which surely sustains it beyond all fodder.’

‘I too have been besieged, Hood,’ said the Lord of Hate, ‘for which you are to blame. This day, it was your officers who made a mess of my afternoon, as Arathan is my witness. So, as I feared, you are the cause of sorrows not just your own—’

‘That cause for sorrow not my own,’ Hood growled.

‘No,’ Gothos said. ‘But your answer to tragedy surely is. As for me’ – he paused to hold up his cup, as if he could somehow see through the pewter to admire the hue of the tea – ‘I would have set out hunting Azathanai, the ones with blood on their hands. Tragedy sits still as a frozen pond, upon which no firm footing is possible. Vengeance, on the other hand, can silence any army, in that grim, teeth-grinding way we both know all too well.’

Hood grunted. ‘The offence taken by innocent Azathanai will serve what need there may be for vengeance.’

‘Hardly. They’re almost as useless as we are, Hood. Expect nothing concerted, not even a proclamation of… oh, what would it be? Censure? Decided disapproval? Disagreeable frown?’

‘I am scoured of vengeance,’ Hood said. ‘Made hollow as a bronze urn.’

‘And so I shall think of you from now on, Hood. As a bronze urn.’

‘And when I think of you, Gothos, I shall imagine a book without resolution, a tale without end, an endeavour without purpose. I shall think of pointlessness, in a pointed fashion.’

‘Perhaps,’ Gothos said, leaning back. ‘Of course, that all depends on who outlives the other.’

‘Does it?’

‘Possibly. It was a thought, presumably relevant.’

Hood’s cold eyes fixed on Arathan – who sat once more beside the last surviving brazier – and the Jaghut said, ‘This one, Gothos, I will send back to you. Before we cross a threshold where no return is possible.’

‘I thought as much,’ Gothos said, sighing.

‘Unless you’d rather I didn’t.’