Still, out here, so close to the Vitr, so distant from the lands of the Tiste, a voice whispered inside her, rising gleeful and urgent in moments like these: who would know? Finarra Stone had ridden off and would probably not return before dusk. The ground is bare and hard / and will hold all secrets / and the sky cares not / for the games of those beneath it. So many breathtaking truths in Gallan’s poetry, as if he had plied her own mind, and could at will reach into countless others. These were the truths that found their own flavours and made personal the taste, until it seemed that Gallan spoke directly to each and every listener, each and every reader. The sorceries of the delvers into the secrets of Night seemed clumsy compared to the magic of Gallan’s poems.

His words fed her innermost desires, and this made them dangerous. She forced silence upon the whispering in her mind, pushed down delicious but forbidden thoughts.

‘I have heard rumours,’ Spinnock went on, sheathing his sword, ‘that there are Azathanai vessels capable of holding Vitr. Made of strange and rare stone, they must be.’

She had heard the same, and it was details like that which convinced her that the Azathanai understood the nature of this terrible poison. ‘If there are such vessels,’ she now said, ‘one wonders what purpose might be served by collecting Vitr.’

She caught his shrug before he strode back to his horse. ‘Which camp is near, Faror?’

‘The one we call the Cup. You’ve not yet seen it. I will lead.’

His answering smile – so impossibly innocent – brushed her awake between the legs and she looked away, taking up the reins and silently cursing her own weakness. She heard him climb into the saddle of his own mount. Drawing her horse round, she guided the animal forward, back on to the trail leading away from the shoreline.

‘Mother Dark is the answer to this,’ Spinnock said behind her.

So we pray. ‘The poet Gallan has written of that,’ she said.

‘Why is that no surprise?’ Spinnock said, clearly amused. ‘Go on then, oh beautiful cousin, let’s hear it.’

She did not reply at once, struggling to slow the sudden leap of her heart. He had joined the Wardens a year past, yet this was the first time he had included her in his easy flirtations. ‘Very well, since you are so eager. Gallan wrote: In unrelieved darkness waits every answer.’

After a moment, as their horses scrabbled over uneven footing, Spinnock grunted. ‘As I thought.’

‘What thought is that, Spinnock?’

He laughed. ‘Even a bare handful of words from a poet, and I lose all sense of meaning. Such arts are not for me.’

‘One learns subtlety,’ she replied.

‘Indeed?’ She could hear his smile in the word. Then he went on, ‘And now, in your grey-haired wisdom, you will, perchance, pat my hand?’