'Just my thought,' Calot said, wiping his eyes.

'Do you think,' she said, as they took their seats, 'it's a studied pose?'

Calot grinned. 'Absolutely. Laseen's High Mage couldn't read a battle map if his life depended on it.'

'So long as our lives don't depend on it.'

A voice spoke from a chair near them, 'Today we work.'

Tattersail scowled at the preternatural darkness enwreathing the chair. 'You're as bad as Tayschrenn, Hairlock. And be glad I didn't decide to sit in that chair.'

Dully, a row of yellow teeth appeared, then the rest of the mage took shape as Hairlock relinquished the spell. Beads of sweat marked the man's flat, scarred brow and shaved pate – nothing unusual there: Hairlock would sweat in an ice-pit. He held his head at an angle, achieving in his expression something like smug detachment combined with contempt. He fixed his small dark eyes on Tattersail. 'You remember work, don't you?' His smile broadened, further flattening his mashed, misaligned nose. 'It's what you were doing before you started rolling in the sack with dear Calot here. Before you went soft.'

Tattersail drew breath for a retort, but was interrupted by Calot's slow, easy drawl. 'Lonely, Hairlock? Should I tell you that the camp-followers demand double the coin from you?' He waved a hand, as if clearing away unsavoury thoughts. 'The simple fact is, Dujek chose Tattersail to command the cadre after Nedurian's untimely demise at Mott Wood. You may not like it, but that's just too bad. It's the price you pay for ambivalence.'

Hairlock reached down and brushed a speck of dirt from his satin slippers, which had, improbably, escaped unmarred the muddy streets outside. 'Blind faith, dear comrades, is for fools—'

He was interrupted by the tent flap swishing aside. High Fist Dujek Onearm entered, the soap of his morning shave still clotting the hair in his ears, the smell of cinnamon water wafting after him.

Over the years, Tattersail had come to attach much to that aroma. Security, stability, sanity. Dujek Onearm represented all those things, and not just to her but to the army that fought for him. As he stopped now in the centre of the room and surveyed the three mages, she leaned back slightly and, from under heavy lids, studied the High Fist. Three years of enforced passivity in this siege seemed to have acted like a tonic on the ageing man. He looked more like fifty rather than his seventy-nine years. His grey eyes remained sharp and unyielding in his tanned, lean face. He stood straight, which made him seem taller than his five and a half feet, wearing simple, unadorned leathers, stained as much by sweat as by the Imperial magenta dye. The stump of his left arm, just below the shoulder, was wrapped in leather strips. His hairy chalk-white calves were visible between the sharkskin straps of the Napan sandals.

Calot withdrew a handkerchief from his sleeve and tossed it to Dujek.

The High Mage snagged it. 'Again? Damn that barber,' he growled, wiping the soap from his jaw and ears. 'I swear he does it on purpose.' He balled the handkerchief and flung it on to Calot's lap. 'Now, we're all here. Good. Regular business first. Hairlock, you finished jawing with the boys below?'