‘Come with me.’ Qen spun on his heel and raced back across the stones, this time keeping low.

Hui felt that knot of apprehension inside him grow tighter. Qen was taller than he was, and thin as a needle, with hollow cheeks that made him look as if he hadn’t eaten a good meal in days. But when he grinned, his face lit up and everyone around him felt bathed in joy. They had the same father, but different mothers. Khawy had taken Qen’s mother Isetnofret first, an arrangement for political reasons, and she had also provided him with a daughter, Ipwet. Hui loved her dearly. But Khawy had fallen in love with Kiya, Hui’s mother, who had died giving birth to him. That explained why the two brothers looked so unalike. But they were different in character too. Qen was as hard as the jutting rocks on that hillside, unyielding when he desired something. And his slim frame hid a powerful strength. When they were younger, Hui had witnessed him beat two bullies, smashing one of the youths’ heads repeatedly into the wall of their father’s house until the nose was broken, the lips turned to pulp and half the teeth were knocked out. Qen had courage too. Whatever troubled him, it would be wise to take heed.

Hui and Kyky set off after Qen, the three of them running together as they had done since they were boys. These were the ones Hui trusted more than any in the world, the only men he’d been prepared to tell about this great adventure. They’d barely spent a day apart all their lives. Once they’d raced through the streets of the Upper City with their whip-tops and bickered over skittles. Now they were would-be thieves and heroes. How right it felt that they were here together this night.

Ahead, Qen slowed his pace and came to a halt at the beginning of a track along a gully between two towering rocks. His brother looked up.

Hui followed Qen’s gaze. Silhouetted against that starry sky, shapes hovered, six of them, seemingly floating above the ground. They fluttered in the wind blasting across the high land.

At first Hui struggled to understand what he was seeing. Kyky, though, released another strangled moan. He glanced up at that sight as if praying he had been mistaken before wrenching his head away in horror.

Hui edged forward beside his brother. Bonded in silence, they stared.

Six bodies hung on a rope strung between the two rocks. The buzzards and kites had already feasted on the soft flesh of the faces. Picked clean, the cheekbones and jaws gleamed in the moonlight, and rows of yellowing teeth grimaced. But it was those hollow sockets, deep and black as the pits of Duat, looking down upon them, judging them unworthy, that filled them with dread.

Kyky slumped to his knees and wrung his hands.

‘The Shrikes have little regard for the souls of their victims,’ Qen muttered. He was staring into the shadowed sockets of the nearest vision of torment.