Consider your friends, good sir, so few in number, so wary in their regard. Few could match your largesse. Of them all, only Anomander could stand as your equal, and even then, an equal measure quaintly discounting your secrets. Still, I wonder if he suspects…

Herat could almost see them, there upon the ridge overlooking the Valley of Tarns. How, he wondered, would that fateful exchange play out? Terse in the manner of men for whom deeds and gestures mattered more than any words. A meeting of gazes, a recognition of intentions, and then, at the last, the simple nod bespeaking the tragic cost of all to come.

Shall I write of that encounter? Am I not the historian, the caged witness behind the bars, flinching at the mad world beyond?

I see sleet slanting down from a glowering sky, a washed-out winter’s afternoon, with only a hint of the coming storm. I see Lord Anomander turn from his steady contemplation of the distant enemy ranks – or perhaps, in the wake of dread magic, he wheels, his face twisted in grief—

No, let us hook ourselves upon the meat of this battle before the flesh cools. To dangle and spin in wayward regard. See Draconus, dismounting from a blown horse. With Captain Kellaras behind him, colours muted in such a way as to flatten him against the background, our lone witness bound in threads. Few others are present, none with the temerity to draw closer, to hear the two men speak. Only the captain, a face of black threads bleached by the passing centuries. His name will be forgotten, his role beneath mention.

Like the armies about to clash, he and they are but footnotes, reduced to a sentence or two, or some rhythmic oration of set phrases to lay out the battle, the time of fever, stumbling to the knees, vanishing thereafter.

But he watches as the two men greet one another. They are friends, after all, and there is much for each man to recognize when looking upon the other. The future will fail in knowing this. A battle for a woman’s affections, yes, that’s summary simple enough – after all, what value motivations? It is the deed that is important. A lover upon one side, an adopted son upon the other.

And yet, nothing they say speaks of that. Indeed, I know enough to claim that such notions do not occur to them at all. Not at this time, not at any other.

‘Consort.’