With everyone’s attention elsewhere, the Mhybe edged away from the clearing, between two rows of peaked Tiste Andii tents, then she spun and tried to run. Bone and muscle protested, even as her veins burned with panic and terror.

She hobbled on, half blinded by tears, her breath harsh, rattling gasps broken by soft whimpers. Oh . . . dear spirits . . . look upon me. Show me mercy, I beg you. Look at me stumble and totter – look! Pity me, spirits below! I demand it! Take my soul, you cruel ancestors, I beg you!

The copper on her wrists and ankles – minor tribal wards against the aches in her bones – felt cold as ice against her withered skin, cold as a rapist’s touch, disdainful of her frailty, contemptuous of her labouring heart.

The Rhivi spirits refused her, mocking, laughing.

The old woman cried out, staggered, fell hard to her knees. The jolt of the impact drove the air from her lungs. Twisting, she sagged to the ground, bedraggled, alone in an alley of dirt.

‘ “Flesh,”‘ a voice murmured above her, ‘ “which is the life within.” These, cherished friend, are the words of birth, given in so many forms, in countless languages. They are joy and pain, loss and sacrifice, they give voice to the binds of motherhood ... and more, they are the binds of life itself.’

Grey hair dangling, the Mhybe raised her head.

Crone sat atop a tent’s ridgepole, wings hunched, eyes glittering wet. ‘I am not immune to grief, you see, my dear – tell no-one you have seen me so weakened by love. How can I comfort you?’

The Mhybe shook her head, croaked, ‘You cannot.’

‘She is you more than the others – more than the woman Tattersail, and Nightchill, more than the T’lan Imass—’

‘Do you see me, Crone? Do you truly see me?’ The Mhybe pushed herself to her hands and knees, then sat back and glared up at the Great Raven. ‘I am naught but bones and leather skin, I am naught but endless aches. Dried brittle – spirits below, each moment of this life, this terrible existence, and I edge closer to ... to ...’ her head drooped, ‘to hatred,’ she finished in a ragged whisper. A sob racked her.

‘And so you would die now,’ Crone said. ‘Yes, I understand. A mother must not be led to hate the child she has birthed ... yet you demand too much of yourself.’

‘She has stolen my life!’ the Mhybe screamed, gnarled hands closing to fists from which the blood within them fled. The Rhivi woman stared at those fists, eyes wide as if they were seeing a stranger’s hands, skeletal and dead, there at the end of her thin arms. ‘Oh, Crone,’ she cried softly. ‘She has stolen my life . . .’

The Great Raven spread her wings, tilted forward on the pole, then dropped in a smooth curve to thud on the ground before the Mhybe. ‘You must speak with her.’

‘I cannot!’