‘Dead. Apparently.’

‘Yet there are living souls in the house. I could feel them.’

Haut shrugged. ‘There are, but not for much longer. Will that be a problem?’

‘How should I know? No, the house will prevail. This time.’

Returning his attention to the two Tiste in the tower window, Haut waited until he was sure that Korya was looking at him. He waved her down. A moment later both figures pulled back from the window, drawing the shutters closed.

Gethol asked, ‘Where is he then?’

‘In the Tower of Hate.’

Gothos’s brother grunted, and then said, ‘Why, it’s as though I never left.’

* * *

‘This fire is dying,’ Cred said, leaning closer to study the hissing pumice stones in the bronze bowl. ‘Not my magic, not my prowess, but the fire itself.’ He straightened and looked around. ‘See how the firelight dims everywhere? Something is stealing the heat.’

Brella scowled across at him. ‘Then we starve.’

‘Or learn to eat things raw, as the Dog-Runners do,’ said Stark.

‘They cook their food like anyone else,’ Brella retorted. She turned her attention to the younger woman. ‘A simple walk through the camp would have shown you that. Instead, you cling to ignorant beliefs as if they could redefine the world. I see belligerence settle in your face, so downturned, the frown and the skittish diffidence in your eyes – so like your mother, may the Sea Hoarder give peace to her soul.’

Cred grunted. ‘Stark’s mother would have defied the very water filling her lungs. Oh, but I admired her for that. In the days before magic, when helplessness haunted us all.’ He gestured at the ebbing glow in the brazier before him. ‘The ghosts of that time return. And all the driftwood gone from the strand, nothing but grasses in the plain inland. I sit here, facing all that I have lost.’

‘I am nothing like my mother,’ Stark said to Brella. ‘Just as you are nothing like your daughter.’

Grinning, Cred glanced over to see Brella’s scowl deepen. ‘Not my daughter any more,’ she said. ‘She casts off the name I gave her. So that she might command us all, and ever from a distance. Captain of a broken army. Captain of beaten refugees, the wreckage of a conquered people. What am I to her? Not her mother.’

‘The High King’s fleet did for our highborn,’ Cred pointed out. ‘You and your daughter come closest to anyone who might resurrect a claim to the royal line.’

Brella snorted.

Cred shook his head. ‘You held the Living Claim, Brella, and then gave it into my keeping. That is the responsibility of the Ilnap bloodline. By this one ritual, you assert your claim to the Lost Throne. Even your daughter does not deny this.’

‘ “Captain.” ’