‘Words win us nothing,’ Cedorpul said. ‘And now Anomander leaves the city, and with him his brothers. The Hust Legion is leagues to the south. The Wardens crouch in Glimmer Fate. The nobleborn do not stir, as if disaster and discord are beneath them all. Upon which threshold do they stand, and which step taken by the enemy is a step too far?’ He no longer held pleading eyes on Emral Lanear as he spoke, and Rise understood that the priest had dismissed her, seeing in the High Priestess an impotency that he was not yet ready to accept. Instead, he glared at the historian during the course of his tirade. ‘Is this our curse?’ he demanded. ‘That we live in a time of indifference? Do you think the wolves will hold back, when all they see before them is weakness?’

‘The wolves are true to their nature,’ Rise said in reply, ‘and indifference plagues every age and every time, priest. Our doom is to be driven to act when it is already too late, and to then give zeal to our amends. And we beat our brows and decry that indifference, which we never own, or loudly proclaim our ignorance, which is ever a lie. And old women drag brooms through the streets and graves are dug in even rows, and we are made solemn before the revealed fragility of our ways.’

Cedorpul’s eyes tightened. ‘Now even you advise surrender? Historian, you mock the value of past lessons, making you worthless in all eyes.’

‘Past lessons deserve mockery, priest, precisely because they are never learned. If you deem that stance worthless, then you miss the point.’

Anger darkened Cedorpul’s round face. ‘We blather on and on – even as poor dwellers in the countryside fall beneath blade and spear! At last I understand what we are – we who hide in this chamber. You know of us, historian, you must! We are the useless ones. It is our task to fritter and moan, to cover our eyes with trembling hands, and bewail the loss of everything we once valued, and when at last there is no one else left, they will crush us like snails under their marching heels!’

Rise said, ‘If the wolves are indeed loose among us, priest, then we surrendered some time ago. Yet you berate my mockery of lessons unheeded. Vigilance is an exhausting necessity, if one would protect what one values. We lose by yielding in increments, here and there, a slip, a nudge. The enemy never tires in this assault and measures true those increments. They win in a thousand small victories, and know long before we do when they stand over our corpses.’

‘Then climb to your tower,’ Cedorpul said in a snarl, ‘and leap from its edge. Better not to witness the dregs of our useless demise.’