After a long moment, the High King grunted.

Brood released him.

Silence filled the tent, no-one moving, all eyes on Kallor’s bleeding face.

Dujek withdrew a cloth from his belt – crusted with dried shaving soap – and tossed it at the High King. ‘Keep it,’ he growled.

The Mhybe moved up behind a pale, wide-eyed Silverfox, and laid her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. ‘No more,’ she whispered. ‘Please.’

Whiskeyjack faced Brood once again, ignoring Kallor as if the man had ceased to exist. ‘Explain please, Warlord,’ he said in a calm voice. ‘What in Hood’s name is this child?’

Shrugging her mother’s hands from her shoulders, Silverfox stood, poised as if about to flee. Then she shook her head, wiped her eyes and drew a shuddering breath. ‘No,’ she said, ‘let none answer but me.’ She looked up at her mother – the briefest meeting of gazes – then surveyed the others once more. ‘In all things,’ she whispered, ‘let none answer but me.’

The Mhybe reached out a hand, but could not touch. ‘You must accept it, daughter,’ she said, hearing the brittle-ness of her own conviction, and knowing – with a renewed surge of shame – that the others heard it as well. You must forgive ... forgive yourself. Oh, spirits below, I dare not speak such words – I have lost that right, I have surely lost it now ...

Silverfox turned to Whiskeyjack. ‘The truth, now, Uncle. I am born of two souls, one of whom you knew very well. The woman Tattersail. The other soul belonged to the discorporate, ravaged remnants of a High Mage named Nightchill – in truth, little more than her charred flesh and bones, though other fragments of her were preserved as a consequence of a sealing spell. Tattersail’s ... death ... occurred within the sphere of the Tellann warren – as projected by a T’lan Imass—’

The Mhybe alone saw the standard-bearer Artanthos flinch. And what, sir, do you know of this? The question flitted briefly through her mind – conjecture and consideration were tasks too demanding to exercise.

‘Within that influence, Uncle,’ Silverfox continued, ‘something happened. Something unexpected. A Bonecaster from the distant past appeared, as did an Elder God, and a mortal soul—’

Cloth held to his face, Kallor’s snort was muffled. ‘ “Nightchill”,’ he murmured. ‘Such a lack of imagination ... Did K’rul even know? Ah, what irony . . .’

Silverfox resumed. ‘It was these three who gathered to help my mother, this Rhivi woman who found herself with an impossible child. I was born in two places at once – among the Rhivi in this world, and into the hands of the Bonecaster in the Tellann warren.’ She hesitated, shuddering as if suddenly spent. ‘My future,’ she whispered after a moment, her arms drawing around herself, ‘belongs to the T’lan Imass.’ She spun suddenly to Korlat. ‘They are gathering, and you will need their power in the war to come.’

‘Unholy conjoining,’ Kallor rasped, hand and cloth falling away, eyes narrowed, his face white as parchment behind the smeared blood. ‘As I had feared – oh, you fools. Every one of you. Fools—’