‘Milady,’ said Surgeon Prok, tilting his head. ‘I must attend to you, I’m afraid. To you both, in fact.’

She halted before the surgeon, and said, ‘If you insist.’

He stepped closer. ‘May I see the child, milady?’

‘A girl,’ she said.

‘I’d wager… four, perhaps five weeks old, but that—’

‘She is mine,’ cut in Sandalath, her tone oddly without inflection. ‘The one that lived. Her name,’ she added, ‘is Korlat.’

‘Milady—’

‘She is filled with love,’ Sandalath continued, ‘but not mine.’ She then pulled the babe away from her breast and held it out to Prok.

Only then did the surgeon falter, and the look upon his face, as he turned to meet Ivis’s gaze, was a crumpled ruin of grief.

As no one moved, as no one spoke, as all stared at Sandalath who offered the babe with outstretched arms, a small figure moved past Ivis and edged around Surgeon Prok.

‘Can I hold her, milady?’ Wreneck asked, and without awaiting a reply he accepted the babe, drawing his own blanket up around the naked child. ‘Orfantal has a sister,’ he said, ‘and she’s big!’ He reached down with one finger, which the babe suddenly grasped.

Smiling, Wreneck turned to Ivis. ‘Master, she’s a strong one.’

Wretched, anguished beyond words, Ivis found himself staring at them both, through a veil of sorrow.

BOOK THREE

The Gratitude of Chains

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CAPTAIN HALLYD BAHANN COULD WELL RECALL HIS SEASON OF terror as a child, when a pack of wild dogs, driven out of the forest by wolves, had invaded the village. The creatures knew no fear. Three villagers, two women and an old man, had been pulled down, torn apart outside their own homes. When a dozen adults gathered weapons and set out to kill the beasts, the dogs vanished into the hills. A hunt was organized, but though the well-armed, mounted party scoured the broken crags, ravines and draws, they found few signs and spent three fruitless days of searching before returning home.

A week later, two children vanished while playing in a yard, leaving behind tatters of gory clothing and blood-splashed wooden toys.

The village was young, the homes new and the ground of the farms surrounding it only recently broken. The pocket forest skirting the shallow river that curled round the raised oxbow upon which the village had been built still held enough trees to be considered wild. Hallyd Bahann’s father had set out the morning after the children had disappeared, riding north. That night, alone with his cloying mother, who’d made fear a way of life, Hallyd had shivered with dread, unwittingly drinking in his mother’s terror. He could still remember that night, mapped like a brand on his soul.