‘No matter what,’ Anomander said, ‘we will not leave you helpless. That said, I have no notion of the extent of Brood’s own power. He proved adept enough in lifting and moving heavy stones, and has spoken of the earth’s own magic, as would a man familiar with it. Does he possess anything beyond such things? As to that, I am as curious as anyone might be. We will discuss the matter this evening.’

‘I thank you, milord.’

‘In this, Ivis, I am but the bridge. It will be Caladan Brood upon the other side. My modest charge is to invite you across it.’

‘Even so, milord, I am grateful.’

‘The evening draws upon us, friend,’ said Anomander. ‘Shall we quit this tower top?’

‘My chilled bones would indeed welcome some heat, milord.’

* * *

Too much of Lady Sandalath reminded Wreneck of his own mother. Whilst she was being dressed for the dinner, he had slipped out of her chambers and now wandered the corridors of the keep. At intervals he came upon pairs of guards bearing lanterns and gripping shortswords. They eyed him warily, and more than one had admonished him for being unattended.

They saw him as still a child. He might have told them otherwise. He might even have reminded them that it was children they now guarded against, children who so frightened them that they walked through rooms and down passageways with drawn weapons, starting at shadows. The old ways of thinking, the ones that pushed children into childlike things, were now gone. The truth of that was obvious to Wreneck. Whatever was coming in this new world, it would divide people into the ones being hurt and the ones doing the hurting, and he was done with being hurt. Age made no difference. Age had nothing to do with it.

The voices in his head, which spoke most clearly in the moments before sleep, still came to him in his waking moments, but muted, murmuring words he often could not make out. He could not be sure, but they all seemed afraid, and at times he was startled by some internal cry, a warning no one else heard, as if they saw dangers unseen by anyone else.

He found it difficult to believe that they were as they said they were. Dying gods. Such beings, dying or not, had no interest in Wreneck, the stable boy, who had done nothing worth much in his whole life, and who thought of the future as a single moment, a spear’s point jabbing down, punching through skin, sliding into meat and whatever else the skin protected. A spear taking a life away, and in his mind his list of names, each one fading before his eyes with each thrust of the spear, each in turn, one by one, until the list was gone, and all that was left to him was empty.