She looked up but with eyes empty of understanding. Slowly, awareness awoke within. She blinked, squared her shoulders and pushed herself upright. ‘Good. Very good.’

As the figure drew near, his bald scalp gleaming, Obo mouthed a curse. ‘So. It’s him. I don’t trust this one. The stink of the Worm clings to him.’

‘He is free from all bindings, Obo. I wouldn’t have approached him otherwise.’ She bowed to the newcomer. ‘Greetings, Tayschrenn.’

Tayschrenn answered the courtesy. ‘Obo,’ he offered. Obo turned his back. Tayschrenn gestured to the south. ‘This is incalculably worse than I imagined.’

Agayla nodded. ‘We are masking most from the island. Appalling, isn’t it?’

‘Reminds me of the Emperor at his most brutal.’

Obo barked, ‘He was a fool with a sharp stick compared to this!’ He glared at the two of them. When Tayschrenn returned his look, he jerked away to stare south once again. What he saw there made him flinch.

Tayschrenn took in Agayla’s exhaustion and Obo’s rigid stance; he invited her to sit. ‘You’re losing.’

Agayla merely gave a tired nod, too worn even to pretend. ‘Yes. Before the dawn we shall fail. That is . . . unless you commit yourself.’

‘Yet some force was forestalling this. Where are they?’

‘He has been overcome.’

‘He?’ One against all this? There is no one. Osserc, perhaps—’

Obo snorted again.

Agayla merely massaged her fingers across her brow. ‘Really, Tay. You, above all, should know there are ancient powers, those that see past your and Kellanved’s empire-building as just another pass of season. The paths to Ascendancy are far more varied than you imagine.’ Sighing, Agayla straightened. ‘But now is not the time for that. Surly’s campaign against magery had left him sorely diminished. A fraction of talent remained to draw upon and so he was overwhelmed.’

‘She had no way of foreseeing the deeper consequences of her actions.’

‘You did.’

Obo spun around. 7s that so?’

His face a mask, Tayschrenn clasped his hands at his knees. ‘I did have some presentiment of it, yes. Unease at the alteration of such an age-old balance of power.’ He met Obo’s glare. ‘But I swear upon the Nameless Ones I had no suspicion of anything this profound . . . this . . . perilous.’

Looking at Agayla, Obo spat. ‘And this is the one you would approach.’

The strength of the anger that clutched Tayschrenn’s chest in response to Obo’s scorn surprised him; no one treated him in this manner. He had tolerated Kellanved’s mockery and now ignored Surly’s mistaken rivalry, but no one ever spurned him with contempt. From a pocket in the lining of his cloak he drew out a pair of wet kidskin gloves and struggled to slip them over his hands. Clenching and unclenching his fingers, he reflected that Obo was, after all, Obo. The man would slam a door in the face of Hood himself.

Agayla merely watched, her gaze weighing. Tayschrenn shook the uncomfortable sensation of being judged – and found wanting.