Caladan had regarded him. ‘Understand this, Son of Darkness, I build with my hands. I am a maker of monuments to lost causes. If you travel west of here, you will find my works. They adorn ruins and other forgotten places. They stand, as eternal as I could make them, to reveal the virtues to which every age aspires. They are lost now but will be rediscovered. In the days of a wounded, dying people, these monuments are raised again. And again. Not to worship, not to idolize – only the cynics find pleasure in that, to justify the suicide of their own faith. No, they raise them in hope. They raise them to plead for sanity. They raise them to fight against futility.’

Anomander had gestured back to the hearthstone. ‘Is that now another one of your monuments?’

‘Intentions precede our deeds, and then are left lying in the wake of those deeds. I am not the voice of posterity, Anomander Rake. Nor are you.’

‘Rake?’

‘Purake is an Azathanai word,’ Brood said. ‘You did not know? It was an honorific granted to your family, to your father in his youth.’

‘Why? How did he earn it?’

The Azathanai shrugged. ‘K’rul gave it. He did not share his reasons. Or, rather, “she”, as K’rul is wont to change his mind’s way of thinking, and so assumes a woman’s guise every few centuries. He is now a man, but back then he was a woman.’

‘Do you know its meaning, Caladan?’

‘Pur Rakess Calas ne A’nom. Roughly, Strength in Standing Still.’

‘A’nom,’ said the Son of Darkness, frowning.

‘Perhaps,’ the Azathanai said, ‘as a babe, you were quick to stand.’

‘And Rakess? Or Rake, as you would call me?’

‘Only what I see in you, and what all others see in you. Strength.’

‘I feel no such thing.’

‘No one who is strong does.’

They had conversed as if Endest was not there, as if he was deaf to their words. The two men, Tiste and Azathanai, had begun forging something between them, and whatever it was, it was unafraid of truths.

‘My father died because he would not retreat from battle.’

‘Your father was bound in the chains of his family name.’

‘As I will be, Caladan? You give me hope.’

‘Forgive me, Rake, but strength is not always a virtue. I will raise no monument to you.’

The Son of Darkness had smiled, then. ‘At last, you say something that wholly pleases me.’

‘Yet still you are worshipped. Many by nature would hide in strength’s shadow.’

‘I will defy them.’

‘Such principles are rarely appreciated,’ Caladan said. ‘Expect excoriation. Condemnation. Those who are not your equals will claim for their own that equality, and yet will meet your eyes with expectation, with profound presumption. Every kindness you yield they will take as deserved, but such appetites are unending, and your denial is the crime they but await. Commit it and witness their subsequent vilification.’