The query elicited a scowl. ‘I even argued with Hunn Raal, before he departed here. Silchas, I tell you this: I want none of this. I see how this persecution of the Deniers is but an excuse to recall Urusander’s Legion. The cause is unworthy.’

‘The Deniers are not the cause being sought, Scara.’

‘I well know that, friend. And I will not lie in saying to you that there are rightful grievances at work here. But such matters cannot be addressed by the sword, and I believe that Lord Urusander agrees with me.’

‘Be most cautious, then,’ Silchas said, his hand once more upon Scara’s back. ‘I fear Urusander is like a blind man led upon an unknown path, and the one who leads has ill ambition in his heart.’

‘They’ll not follow Hunn Raal,’ Scara said.

‘Not knowingly, no.’

The captain shot him a quizzical look then, and a moment later his eyes narrowed. ‘I had best write that letter. Mayhap we shall meet on the north road beyond the gates.’

‘That would delight me, friend.’

Two of the pups fell into a scrap just then, teeth flashing and fur flying.

* * *

Lady Hish Tulla sat in the study of her Kharkanas residence, contemplating the missive in her hands. She thought back to the last time she had met the three brothers, and the unease surrounding her imposition upon their grief at their father’s tomb. There had been rain that day and she had sheltered beneath a tree until the clouds had passed. She recalled Anomander’s face, a hardened visage when compared to the one she had known when sharing his bed. Youth was pliable and skin smooth and angles soft as befitted a memory of happier times, but on that day, with the rain still upon his unguarded features, he had seemed older than her.

She was not one for self-regard. Her own reflection always struck her to strange superstition and she was wont to avoid instances when she might catch herself in a mirror or blurred upon contemplative waters: a ghostly shadow of someone just like her, the image seemed, living a life in parallel wherein secrets played out unseen, and all the scenes of her imagination found fruition. Her fear was to discover in herself an unworthy envy for that other life. Most disturbing of all, to her mind, was to meet the gaze of that mysterious woman, and see in those ageing, haunted eyes, her private host of losses.

The missive trembled in her hands. Men such as Anomander deserved to be unchanging, or so she had always believed, and she would hold to that belief as if it could protect the past they had shared. His rumoured transformation within the influence of Mother Dark’s mystical power frightened her. Was there not darkness enough within the body? But it was only the memory that did not change, of the time before the wars, and if these days were spent assailing it, she knew enough to blame none other than herself.