“I challenged him. It was at the Cliff of Souls, just as Pargan's body was dropped from Mancoseria into the sea below. I . . . lost control. The tears of loss had come and gone, and now I cried with rage. I saw my friend wrapped in black-grass and tipped into the sea, and he was younger than me, and both socially and physically he had yet to become a man. And now he was dead, and I blamed his family for it first and foremost. So I did something that I believed would define our friendship and honor him. I challenged his father, struck him down with my fist. And when he rose again, he had a knife in his hand.

“We fought, but it was quick. On his first strike, he hit my eye and I felt it pop. He laughed. The rest of Pargan's family, the others gathered there, were shocked at the violence—this was Pargan's funeral, after all. But what better place for a fight to the death than above the Cliff of Souls? He came for a second strike. I deflected it, broke his arm, took his knife and slit his throat. Before anyone could stop me I sent his body over the cliff after his son's, and that was that.”

Lulah fell silent again, almost as if the story had ended. But for Ramus it had just begun. Surely there was so much more to tell?

“And you escaped justice, after killing him in front of so many?”

“Justice?” Lulah asked, and she was so close to tears that Ramus looked ahead, not wishing to see her cry.

Lulah's story was told. Whatever had happened between her killing of Pargan's father and her arrival on Noreela seemed moot, because she was here now and she wore her patch with pride.

“So I understand betrayal,” she said a long time later. “And I understand being wronged. And that's why I came with you.”

“You see the betrayal I've suffered?” Ramus asked.

“Nomi's killed you.”

And in that bald statement Ramus tried to discern the truth of things. Nomi and I should have been lovers, he thought. He wondered how lovemaking with one's executioner would feel.

THAT NIGHT THEY made no campfire, and Ramus had to study the parchments by the light of the moons. Perhaps it was a strange property of the material, or a trick of his eye, but the blank third of the page seemed to glow with life-moonlight, and the other two-thirds—where words were written and images printed—shone yellow. The death moon touched the Sleeping God and gave its image shape.

Lulah had prepared them a meal consisting of dried meat from the day before, stuffed with soft herbs and a variety of crushed root. It tasted cool and foul, but she insisted that it would give them strength. Ramus had eaten it whilst holding the round stone charm in his other hand, and he felt effects from neither.