Cutter would walk her path.

Aye, the Emperor had Dancer, yes? A companion, for a companion was what was needed. Is needed. Now, she has Cutter. Cutter of the Knives, who dances in his chains as if they were weightless threads. Cutter, who, unlike poor Crokus, knows his place, knows his singular task – to guard her back, to match her cold precision in the deadly arts.

And therein resided the final truth. Anyone could become a killer. Anyone at all.

She stepped out of the shack, wan but dry-eyed.

He sheathed his knives in a single, fluid motion, rose to his feet and faced her.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What now?’

Broken pillars of mortared stone jutted from the undulating vista. Among the half-dozen or so within sight, only two rose as tall as a man, and none stood straight. The plain’s strange, colourless grasses gathered in tufts around their bases, snarled and oily in the grey, grainy air.

As Kalam rode into their midst, the muted thunder of his horse’s hoofs seemed to bounce back across his path, the echoes multiplying until he felt as if he was riding at the head of a mounted army. He slowed his charger’s canter, finally reining in beside one of the battered columns.

These silent sentinels felt like an intrusion on the solitude he had been seeking. He leaned in his saddle to study the one nearest him. It looked old, old in the way of so many things within the Warren of Shadow, forlorn with an air of abandonment, defying any chance he might have of discerning its function. There were no intervening ruins, no foundation walls, no cellar pits or other angular pocks in the ground. Each pillar stood alone, unaligned.

His examination settled on a rusted ring set into the stone near the base, from which depended a chain of seized links vanishing into the tufts of grass. After a moment, Kalam dismounted. He crouched down, reaching out to close his hand on the chain. A slight upward tug. The desiccated hand and forearm of some hapless creature lifted from the grasses. Dagger-length talons, four fingers and two thumbs.

The rest of the prisoner had succumbed to the roots, was half buried beneath dun-coloured, sandy soil. Pallid yellow hair was entwined among the grass blades.

The hand suddenly twitched.

Disgusted, Kalam released the chain. The arm dropped back to the ground. A faint, subterranean keening sound rose from the base of the pillar.

Straightening, the assassin returned to his horse.

Pillars, columns, tree stumps, platforms, staircases leading nowhere, and for every dozen there was one among them holding a prisoner. None of whom seemed capable of dying. Not entirely. Oh, their minds had died – most of them – long ago. Raving in tongues, murmuring senseless incantations, begging forgiveness, offering bargains, though not one had yet – within Kalam’s hearing – proclaimed its own innocence.