Feren. One day I will come for you. He would weather the scorn of her neighbours, and they would ride away. They would find a world for their child.

A world that did not feed on blood.

* * *

Korya and Haut walked. Low square stone towers studded the landscape, crouched against hillsides, rising from ridges and crowding hilltops. They filled the floodplain to either side of the old river, their bulky shapes shouldering free of the tree-line where the forest had grown back, or hunched low on sunken flats where marsh grasses flowed like waves in the breeze that swept down the length of the valley.

As they passed among them, skirting the high edge of the valley’s north side, Korya saw that most were abandoned, and those few that showed signs of habitation were distant, and it seemed that Haut’s route deeper into the now dead Jaghut city deftly avoided drawing too near any of them.

She saw no evidence of industry, or farming, or manufacture. There were no outbuildings to be seen, either for storing food or stabling animals. For sustenance, these Jaghut must have supped on air.

Her thighs and calves ached from all the walking. The silence from Haut was oppressive and there was a steady pain behind her eyes and blood had soaked through the pad of moss between her legs. She awaited a word from him, something to snap at and so feel better, but he strode ahead without pause, until she felt as if he’d bound an invisible leash round her neck and was simply pulling her along like a reluctant pet. She wanted him to tug on that leash, draw her too close and so come within reach of her claws.

Not that she had any. Nights of cooking over campfires had made scorched and smudged bludgeons of her hands. And for all her vehemence, her strength was gone, withered away by this seemingly endless trek. Her clothes and hair were filthy and stank of smoke.

Another square tower was just ahead, and this one Haut was making no effort to avoid and so she assumed that it too was abandoned. Another monument to failure. How I long for Kurald Galain!

When her master reached it, he halted and turned to Korya. ‘Prepare camp,’ he said. ‘Tonight we will sleep within, since there will be rain.’

She glared up at the cloudless sky, and then at the Jaghut.

‘Will the child doubt the adult in all things?’ he asked.

‘I trust,’ she said as she dropped the pack from her shoulders, ‘that was rhetorical.’

Haut pointed at a stunted tree outside the gaping entrance to the tower. ‘That shrub is called ilbarea.’

‘It’s dead.’

‘It does appear that way, yes. Collect a bag full of its leaves.’

‘Why?’

‘I see that you are in discomfort and ill-humour and so would remedy that. Not as much for your sake as for mine, since I have no desire to dodge barbs all night.’