‘Perhaps you don’t, though Abyss take me I’ve tried explaining it to you often enough. I know, Setch, and so you’ll just have to trust me. K’rul would simply give power away, freely, to any who might want it. By this, he undermines its value. He dislodges the proper order of things. We will best him, Setch. I will best him.’ He pushed himself up against a boulder. ‘We haven’t long. They’re coming, that Jaghut and his Tiste hostage. Listen to me. Mother Dark understands the exclusivity of power, though she reaches too far, revealing outrageous greed. We must draw her into this fray. We must awaken her to the threat these new Warrens pose – to us all. It’s important that she resist him, and so occupy all of K’rul’s attention. So distracted, he will not see us, and most certainly not comprehend our intentions, until it is too late.’ He looked up at Sechul Lath. ‘There, I have explained it yet again. Yet I see disappointment in your eyes – what now?’

‘It felt blunt. Crass, even, the way you said it. It lacked subtlety.’

‘I yield the meaningless secrets, Setch, to better hold hidden the important ones. Think of prod and pull, if you like. Explore the concepts in your mind, and muse on the pleasures of misdirection.’

Sechul Lath studied Errastas, lying there propped up against a boulder, beaten half to death. ‘Are you truly as clever as you think you are?’

Errastas laughed. ‘Oh, Setch, it hardly matters. The suspicion is enough, making fecund the soil of imagination. Let others fill the gaps in my cleverness, and make of me in their eyes a genius.’

‘I doubt the veracity of your words.’

‘Well you should. Now, help me up. We must leave here.’

‘Exploiting the very freedom K’rul offers us.’

‘I delight in the irony.’

Sechul Lath turned and looked down at the corpse of the Jaghut, lying so near the edge of the spar. It was a fell thing, to murder someone. Errastas was right: outrage swirled in the air, thick as smoke. It felt heady enough to make his head spin.

‘I never knew,’ said Errastas as Sechul, with only one working arm, awkwardly helped him to stand, ‘that killing could be so much fun.’

Sechul shuddered. ‘Errastas, look at what we have done. Invited her here under false pretences, and then set upon her like wild beasts. We have awakened the wrath of the Jaghut. Nothing good will come of that.’

‘Night comes to the Jaghut, Setch. Their fury is as nothing now.’

‘Too easy your dismissal, Errastas. We have just murdered his wife.’

‘And Hood will weep – what of it? Now, let us go, before they draw close enough to hear us. Besides, it is not Hood who approaches, is it?’

‘No,’ Sechul Lath muttered, ‘only his brother.’

* * *

Haut paused on the trail, squinting upward.