Vastala smiled. ‘We are to perform. Good. Dog-Runners not shy.’

‘Indeed,’ Listar replied, recalling the night just past.

Vastala drew close to him again and peered into his face, and then she nodded. ‘Hataras, you spoke true. Our children will bear the tilt of his eyes. Our children will carry within them the promise of a life beyond the fate of the Dog-Runners. So. It is an even exchange.’

The notion that he had planted the seeds of children in these two women made Listar flinch. He forced his thoughts away, telling himself that such things could not yet be known, and that their words of payment – for the ritual to come – could not be weighed in flesh and blood.

Ahead, soldiers stationed at the pickets had seen them, and while one set off to deliver the news, others began gathering from the camp, drawn out to the defensive line by curiosity, or, perhaps, boredom.

‘I think,’ said Listar, ‘the secret’s out.’

‘No Azathanai hide in yonder camp,’ said Hataras. ‘Good. They are obsessed with secrets.’

Listar frowned at her. ‘You can sense their presence?’

Both women nodded. ‘We have learned this talent,’ said Vastala.

‘By tasting the fires of the hearth, the breath of smoke.’

‘By lapping the valley between Mother’s legs.’

‘Tellanas,’ Hataras said, nodding again. ‘Sorcery is the snake eating its own tail. It looks upon itself and in looking it devours, and in devouring, it grows. So the magic attends an endless feast. Our goddess Mother is trapped in a circle of herself. But we Bonecasters, we dance.’

For all their bluntness, these two women often confounded Listar. He had no understanding of this magic of which they spoke. To him, the Azathanai were half-legendary figures, not quite obscure enough for him to disbelieve in their existence, yet vague enough in details to lend him scepticism regarding their exploits. They straddled a line of veracity, and until tales of the one named T’riss, and her curses uttered in the Citadel of Kharkanas, reached Listar, he had given little thought to the Azathanai. Builders. Gift givers.

And, it now seems, meddlers.

‘If they would be gods,’ he now said, as the guards ahead waved them forward, ‘why not reveal such? Why hide their power?’

‘Worship is vulnerability,’ replied Hataras. ‘See how we dance around Mother? We are her weakness, even as she is ours.’

‘Worse yet,’ added Vastala, ‘they too are children inside. Players of games.’

Listar squinted, seeing Wareth and Rebble now, the two men pushing their way through the small crowd awaiting them. It is strange, to call these two my friends. And yet, they are. The coward and the bully. But I wonder, how much courage does it take to live with your fear? And how vast is Rebble’s heart, to cast so kind an eye upon those of us who are weak? We too readily judge and then dismiss.