She shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’

‘Not ours, though.’

‘Not sure.’

‘Well,’ Moak snapped, ‘what do you know?’

‘He killed fifty raiders. Can I go now? I have to pee.’

They watched her walk away.

‘Standing up, do you think?’ Thorn Tissy asked the others in general.

Moak snorted. ‘Why don’t you go ask her.’

‘Ain’t that eager to get killed. Why don’t you, Moak?’

‘Here come the heavy’s sergeants,’ Balm observed.

Mosel, Sobelone and Tugg could have been siblings. They all hailed from Malaz City, typical of the mixed breed prevalent on the island, and the air of threat around them had less to do with size than attitude. Sobelone was the oldest of the three, a severe-looking woman with streaks of grey in her shoulder-length black hair, her eyes the colour of the sky. Mosel was lean, the epicanthic folds of his eyes marking Kanese blood somewhere in his family line. His hair was braided and cut finger-length in the fashion of Jakatakan pirates. Tugg was the biggest of the three, armed with a short single-bladed axe. The shield strapped on his back was enormous, hardwood, sheathed in tin and rimmed in bronze.

‘Which one of you is Strings?’ Mosel asked.

‘Me. Why?’

The man shrugged. ‘Nothing. I was just wondering. And you’ – he nodded at Gesler – ‘you’re that coastal guard, Gesler.’

‘So I am. What of it?’

‘Nothing.’

There was a moment of awkward silence, then Tugg spoke, his voice thin, emerging from, Strings suspected, a damaged larynx. ‘We heard the Adjunct was going to the wall tomorrow. With that sword. Then what? She stabs it? It’s a storm of sand, there’s nothing to stab. And aren’t we already in Raraku? The Holy Desert? It don’t feel any different, don’t look any different, neither. Why didn’t we just wait for ‘em? Or let ‘em stay and rot here in this damned wasteland? Sha’ik wants an empire of sand, let her have it.’

That fractured voice was excruciating to listen to, and it seemed to Strings that Tugg would never stop. ‘Plenty of questions there,’ he said as soon as the man paused to draw a wheezing breath. ‘This empire of sand can’t be left here, Tugg, because it’s a rot, and it will spread – we’d lose Seven Cities, and far too much blood was spilled conquering it in the first place to just let it go. And, while we’re in Raraku, we’re on its very edge. It may be a Holy Desert, but it looks like any other. If it possesses a power, then that lies in what it does to you, after a while. Maybe not what it does, but what it gives. Not an easy thing to explain.’ He then shrugged, and coughed.