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—’

‘Gathering,’ the Tiste Andii repeated, also ignoring the High King. ‘Why? To what end, Silverfox?’

‘That is for me to decide, for I exist to command them. To command them all. My birth proclaimed the Gathering – a demand that every T’lan Imass on this world has heard. And now, those who are able, are coming. They are coming.’

In his mind, Whiskeyjack was reeling. Fissures in Brood’s contingent was alarming enough, but the child’s revelations ... his thoughts spun, spiralled down ... then arose in a new place. The command tent and its confines slipped away, and he found himself in a world of twisted schemes, dark betrayals and their fierce, unexpected consequences – a world he hated with a passion.

Memories rose like spectres. The Enfilade at Pale, the decimation of the Bridgeburners, the assault on Moon’s Spawn. A plague of suspicions, a maelstrom of desperate schemes...