‘You Jaghut are obsessed with this, aren’t you? Yet you threw it all away!’

‘We were convinced of the inherent madness of codified inequity. All cooperation involves some measure of surrender. And coercion. But the alternative, being anarchy, is itself no worthy virtue. It is but an excuse for selfish aggression, and all that seeks justification from taking that stance is, each and every time, cold-hearted. Anarchists live in fear and long for death, because they despair of seeing in others the very virtues they lack in themselves. In this manner, they take pleasure in sowing destruction, if only to match their inner landscape of ruin.’ He moved out to stand beside her, huge and almost formless in the close gloom of the downpour. ‘We rejected civilization, but so too we rejected anarchy for its petty belligerence and the weakness of thought it announced. By these decisions, we made ourselves lost and bereft of purpose.’

‘I would think,’ she said, ‘that despair must stalk every Jaghut.’

‘It should have,’ Varandas said. ‘It would have, if not for the Lord of Hate.’

‘It seems that he was the cause of it all!’

‘He was, and so in return he took upon himself our despair, and called it his penance. He bears our hate for him and our self-hate, too. He holds fast to our despair, and laughs in our faces, and so we hate him all the more.’

‘I do not understand you Jaghut,’ Korya said.

‘Because you seek complexity where none exists.’

‘Where has Haut gone?’

‘He is upon the roof of my tower.’

‘Why?’

‘He watches the battle in the valley below.’

‘Battle? What battle? Who is fighting?’

‘We’re not sure. It is difficult to see in this rain. But come tomorrow, he will take you to the Lord of Hate.’

‘What for? Another lesson in humility?’

‘Oh, an interesting thought. Do you think it is possible?’

Korya frowned.

Lightning flashed again, and this time the sound of thunder rumbled through the ground beneath her feet, and she heard things rattling in the tower behind her. She was soaked through, and she still needed to pee. ‘Do you think he can see anything from up there?’

‘Of course not. I am afraid I am to blame, as I bored him witless talking about my new series of dolls. They please me immensely, you see, and soon I will set them free to find their own way in the world.’

‘I locked mine in a box,’ she told him.

‘To what end?’

Korya shrugged. ‘Perhaps to keep guard over my childhood.’

Varandas grunted. ‘That is a worthy post, I think. Well done. But not too long, I hope? We must all earn our freedom eventually, after all.’

She wondered if the Jaghut standing beside her, this maker of dolls, was perhaps mad. ‘So,’ she asked, ‘when will you set your new creations free?’

‘Well,’ he replied, ‘they need to wake up first.’

I was right. He’s mad. Completely mad.