‘The fighting. The killing.’

‘I doubt they’d tell you. But even more, I doubt they’d have anything worth saying. Being dead, they failed, right? You’re headed for miserable company, Arathan. Not that they’d welcome you, and not that you’ll ever get close anyway. It seems that you are to be my keeper.’

‘What?’

‘Haut needs to hand me over to someone else. You’re of House Dracons, right? Well, you have to deliver me to your father, but in the meantime, I’m now your hostage.’

‘You can’t be. I won’t accept you.’

‘Are you not your father’s son?’

‘Bastard son.’

‘But he acknowledged you. You are now of House Dracons. You have responsibilities. You can’t be a child any longer, Arathan.’

‘So that’s how you all worked it out, is it? I sense Gothos behind this.’

She shrugged. ‘I’m your hostage. You have to return me to Kurald Galain, to your father’s estate.’

‘He doesn’t want to see me. He brought me here to keep me away.’

‘So take me back and then leave again. What you do after you’ve discharged your responsibility is up to you.’

‘This is… underhanded.’

‘And don’t think we’ll be lingering, either. I want to leave. Soon.’

‘If you’re now my hostage, we’ll leave when I decide it, not you.’ He thought for a moment, and then frowned. ‘I’ve not done the translating yet—’

‘You idiot. You’ll never be done with that, because Gothos won’t ever stop. I would have thought you’d worked that out by now.’

‘But I was just getting to the interesting stuff.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, it’s more or less an autobiography, but his story begins now – or, that is, he began it the day he killed civilization and became the Lord of Hate, and from there it goes back in time, day by day, year by year, decade by decade, century by—’

‘Yes, I get it.’ She paused, and then said, ‘But that’s stupid.’

‘The point is,’ said Arathan, ‘it means that there must be an end to it. When at last he finds his earliest memory.’

‘So how far back have you managed to transcribe?’

‘About six years.’

She stopped, stared at him.

His frown deepened. ‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘How far has he gone back? In his writing?’

‘A couple of centuries, I think.’

‘And how old is Gothos?’

Arathan shrugged. I’m not sure. Two or three, I think.’

‘Centuries?’

‘Millennia.’

She made a fist as if to strike him, and then subsided. Sighing, she shook her head. ‘Gothos’s Folly indeed.’

‘There are dead people I need to see.’

‘See the living ones instead, Arathan. At least they might, on occasion, tell you something worth hearing.’ She set off once more, and Arathan followed.

‘It would be irresponsible of me,’ he said, ‘to take you back to a civil war.’