Only slowly did he come to comprehend his solitude, and the other risks entailed in his stance. He had been fending off the occasional pull, particularly from the side of Legion, but events were progressing at an ever swifter pace, and now he no longer feared being pulled. He feared being pushed.

There were many others like him, he knew. There was, in his mind, no truer measure of stupidity than to imagine that the world could be reduced to two sides, one facing the other with fangs bared, brandishing weapons and hurling hate at the enemy. Things were never so simple. Ilgast disliked the immorality of a Consort to Mother Dark – if indeed she loved Draconus, she should damned well marry him. In the growing power of Mother Dark’s cult, there was a burgeoning strain of sexual excess. He did not lack his own appetites but he sensed a hedonistic undercurrent swirling beneath the extravagant displays, a rot at the core.

If religious ecstasy were no different from a cock in a cunt, then make a temple of every whorehouse and be done with it. If the bliss of salvation were a mindless shudder, well, who was left to clean up the mess? Yet Mother Dark seemed to be inviting this sordid surrender. Any faith that encouraged the mind to set aside its greatest gifts – of reason, of scepticism – in favour of empty platitudes and the glory of an end to thinking … well, he would have none of it. He would not blind himself, would not stop up his ears, would not close his mouth nor cut off his hands. He was not a beast to be yoked to someone else’s idea of truth. He would find his own or die trying.

The Consort needed to go. Mother Dark needed a proper marriage or none at all. The licentiousness of the court had to end. But these statements did not drag him into Urusander’s shadow, just as they did not insist he stand with his nobleborn kin. They were opinions, not fortifications.

He knew Calat Hustain. The man’s loyalty was absolute – to his own House. Hunn Raal would fail, and in failing, carve into his list of enemies the name of Calat Hustain.

Ilgast Rend meant to speak with his old friend. Late in the night, at the Rising of the Watch, long after the fools had drunk themselves into a belligerent stupor down in the main hall. They would discuss the new, deadly currents, and perhaps, before dawn, they would find a way of navigating these savage waters.

Such was his hope.

One night, someone might well slit Hunn Raal’s throat, and he’d not be missed. Leave Urusander to his intellectual masturbations – he did no harm and besides, he had earned his last years of pleasure, no matter how dubious that pleasure might seem. Mother Dark would tire of Draconus eventually. Indeed, she might travel so far inside the sorcery of Endless Night – or whatever it was that the cult worshipped – that such physical desires were left behind. Was it not already said that she was enwreathed in bitter cold darkness day and night now?