‘Most dullards are. Let reason bludgeon you about the head and then, like a dazed fly, retreat in wobbling flight. The witless are known to defy, with piggy eyes and pressed lips. Making a knuckled fist of their face, they proclaim the stars no more than studs of quartz upon the night sky’s velvet cloak, or the beasts of the wild as simple fodder serving our appetites. They carve every asinine opinion in the stone of their obstinacy and take pride in their own stupidity. Why is it that there comes a time in every civilization when the idiots rise to dominate all discourse, with beetled brows and reams of spite? Who are such fools, and how long did they lurk mostly unseen, simply awaiting their day in the benighted light?’

‘Are you done, Varandas?’ Hood asked.

‘The witless have no comprehension of the rhetorical. They misapprehend unanswerable questions, since in their puny worlds of comprehension they possess none. Only answers, solid as lumps of shit, and just as foul.’ Varandas looked up then, at the arrival of the Azathanai. He nodded, but her attention was on Hood.

She spoke. ‘The dead are marching, Hood. Clever, I suppose. When all wondered how we would march into that realm, instead you bring that realm to us.’

‘Spingalle, I did not think you fled too far.’

‘I never fled at all,’ the Azathanai replied.

‘Where, then?’

‘The Tower of Hate. Penance.’

Varandas frowned up at her. ‘You know, if you truly sought to hide among us Jaghut, you should not have elected the form of a woman of such beauty as to take our breath away.’

She glanced at him. ‘Unintended, Varandas. But if my appearance still delights you, I can oblige you in kind.’

‘Make me a woman? I think not, and shall remain content with occasional misapprehension. Oh, and if you will indulge me, sidelong admiration of the impostor in our company.’

Jaghut tended towards the lean and bony, but Spingalle had defied that common form, and in the contrast that was her fullness she elicited universal wonder among the Jaghut, men and women both. Varandas studied her for a moment longer, and then with a sigh he returned his attention to Hood. ‘She is right. That was clever.’

‘Even the witless will shed a spark every now and then,’ Hood said. ‘Spingalle, I was under the impression that the Tower of Hate was solid.’

‘No fault of mine if you believe everything Caladan Brood tells you. But then, you were always a credulous lot, prone to the literal, inured to the figurative. But this molestation of time, Hood, it seems… unwise.’

‘Wisdom is overrated,’ Hood said. ‘Now then, Spingalle, will you indeed join us when the day comes?’