Onlookers rumbled approval. Josiri’s gut twisted. The gathering was slipping away from him. It would have been easier if the Wolf King had been wrong, or self-aggrandising. But for all his front, that wasn’t Drakos Crovan’s way. They wanted the same thing, only one of them wasn’t prepared to meet the cost.

“And what value is a life lived under Hadari rule?” demanded Josiri. “Or one lost in the exodus scows, or worked to exhaustion in the Outer Isles? Without freedom, life is nothing. That is what my mother believed, more than anything. And I will die in its pursuit, if that is the price to be paid.”

Murmuring broke out in the crowd, this time almost friendly of Josiri’s words. Revekah shot him a look of sly approval. Gavamor nodded.

Crovan sighed. “Josiri, the Hadari have promised us that freedom.”

The onlookers fell silent. Revekah’s surprise was a mirror to Josiri’s own, and for that of many others. So Crovan hadn’t stopped dreaming of an alliance with the Empire.

“You’ve spoken with the shadowthorns?” snarled Revekah. “You treacherous piece of . . .”

Crovan held up a hand. “Captain Halvor, please. I was approached by Kai Saran’s daughter. She offered generous terms. Prince Kai merely needs a victory to cement his claim to the throne. One victory against the northwealders. Then he’ll leave us to govern ourselves.”

Anliss spat. “Princes are all promises ’till they get what they want.”

Josiri kept his eyes on Crovan. “Have you accepted?”

“Josiri, please. I don’t want to . . .”

“Answer the damn question,” snapped Revekah.

Crovan shrugged. “Yes.”

And with that word, the work of Josiri’s adult life blazed bright and fell away into ash. “Revekah called it true. You are a traitor.”

Crovan stepped onto the remains of the robed statue at the circle’s heart and spoke with a deep, earnest conviction that might even have been genuine. “I’m a man trying to save lives, not throw them away out of soured pride.”

A cloud passed over the moon and lent Crovan’s fire-lit expression a hunger that hadn’t been there before. A sudden shudder raised goose-flesh on Josiri’s skin.

“Walk away, Josiri. For the good of everyone.” There was reason in the words, but none in his tone.

“I can’t do that.”

“Then perhaps tell us why you’re wearing a ward-brooch, and how you came by it?”

Josiri put a hand to his chest and realised too late how guilty the action looked. Crovan knew Branghall was not the cage it appeared, as did Korsov and one or two others. But to everyone else . . .

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “You and I both know that.”

“Do we?”

Framed by billowing soot and shafts of moon-shadow, Crovan seemed taller and grander than before – a handsome, dark-eyed presence more foreboding than flesh and blood.