He had been that boy once. But even questions had a way of going away, eventually, when no answers were possible. He thought of the gift he would bring to the Lord of Hate, and knew it to be paltry, useless enough to be an insult. But he had nothing else to give.

Raskan believed that Olar Ethil was Arathan’s mother, but he knew that she was not. He had no reason for his certainty; still he did not question it. If anything, the witch reminded him of Malice, when she was younger and fatter – in the days when the girl first walked and was in the habit of wandering everywhere, smiling and singing since she did not yet know the meaning of the name she had been given. Something in their faces, young and old, seemed to be the same.

Bootsteps sounded and he tilted his head to find his father standing over him. After a moment Draconus sank into a crouch. He was holding in his hands a clay figurine, a thing that seemed to cry out sex, in an excess of sensuality that struck Arathan as grotesque. One of the witch’s gifts.

‘For you,’ Draconus said.

Arathan wanted to refuse it. Instead he sat up and took it from his father’s hands.

‘It will be light soon,’ Draconus went on. ‘Today I send back Rint, Feren and Raskan.’

‘Back?’

‘You and I shall ride on, Arathan.’

‘We leave them behind?’

‘They are no longer needed.’

And somewhere ahead, you will leave me behind, too. No longer needed. ‘Father,’ he said, hands clutching the figurine, ‘don’t hurt her.’

‘Hurt who?’

‘Feren,’ he whispered. And the child she carries. My child.

He could see his father’s frown, and how it slowly twisted into a scowl. It was, he realized, never too dark to see such things. ‘Don’t be foolish, Arathan.’

‘Just leave them alone, please.’

‘I would do no other,’ Draconus said in a growl. He quickly straightened. ‘Go back to sleep if you can,’ he said. ‘We have far to ride today.’

Arathan settled back on to the hard ground once more. He held the figurine like a baby against his chest. He had stood up to his father. He had made a demand even if it had sounded like a plea. A true son knew to draw lines in the sand and claim what he would for himself, for his own life and all that he deemed important in it. This was what growing up meant. Places to claim, things owned and things defended. It was a time of jostling, because the space was never big enough for the both of them, for both father and son. There was pushing and there was pulling, and comfort went away if it had ever existed; but maybe someday it would come back. If the father permitted it. If the son wanted it. If neither feared the other.