I will answer in kind, this I swear, upon your corpses. Upon your faces, I will answer in kind. No act is final. Another inevitably awaits. In his mind, he uttered this promise to every face in the crowd. They were asides, too faint to be heard by the judges, but the face of each enemy who heard his promise, why, how it blanched! How the lip quivered!

Now, my friends, which among you will be the first to beg for mercy?

After a time, the tent flap rustled, and then slipped aside to permit the entrance of Sheltatha Lore.

Sagander smiled. ‘Ah, the lantern was noted. Excellent, my child.’

‘Are you in pain again, tutor?’

At times, there was something in her tone that reminded Sagander of Arathan. A hint of… no, he could not quite grasp it. He could see no insolence in her eyes, only respect and deference. And such an eagerness to serve! There was no sound reason for doubt, and yet… ‘Ah, the pain. If it must be the answer to my good deeds, well, whoever said the world was fair, yes?’

She moved further into the tent, and once again Sagander marvelled at the natural grace that came with the young. ‘But things will be made fair, tutor, and soon. And perhaps, among the new practitioners of Denul, you will find an unexpected salvation.’

He eyed her, silent as she settled herself upon a heap of cushions beside his cot, and then he said, ‘In the meantime, dear innocence, I have need of you.’

The smile she offered him looked genuine enough, but something in it – in the eyes, possibly, which seemed to softly fulminate, as if the surface was slowly melting in the heat – troubled Sagander. Too much like Arathan, this child. But unlike my failures with that bastard, I will make this creature pure again. For all the abuses her mother has inflicted upon her, I have her salvation to achieve, and achieve it I shall. ‘Can you sense it, child? This ghost of mine?’

‘I can,’ she replied. ‘Always. And still I wonder, tutor…’

He tilted his head. ‘You wonder what, beloved?’

‘Why its skin remains so black.’

Sagander held his smile, but with difficulty. It was one thing to indulge her wilful imaginings, to invite from her those strange, but hopeless, efforts at comforting his invisible pain, but this! This is the sorcery at work. It seethes through us all, a plague’s breath of unnatural power.

‘Tutor? Is something wrong? Come, lie here upon your cot, and invite again my caress. Your ghost limb desires it still, yes?’