“How can you not know?” he repeated.

“How can you not know what eleven times twelve is?”

“A hundred and thirty-two.”

Damn. “I’m just more interested in the finer things in life, Snorri. If you can’t ride it—one way or another—and it doesn’t play dice, or cards, or pour from a wine bottle, then I’m really not that bothered. Especially if it’s foreign. Or heathen. Or both. But this . . . thing . . . said something that worried me.”

“Quarry.” Snorri nodded. “It was sent after us.”

“By? The other day you said it might be the Dead King, but couldn’t it be someone else?” I wanted it to be someone else. “Some necromancer or—”

“The Dead King is the only one who can send the unborn anywhere. They laugh at necromancers.”

“So. This Dead King. I’ve heard of him.”

Snorri spread his hands, inviting more of my wisdom on the subject.

“A Brettan lord. Some godless island-hopper from the Drowned Lands.” I sipped my wine. A Rhonish red. Vile stuff, like vinegar and pepper. Other countries wouldn’t be so bad if they weren’t crammed with foreigners and all their stuff. This Dead King was a case in point.

“That’s it? That’s what you know about the Dead King? ‘He’s from the Drowned Isles.’” It seemed to me that the steam was coming off Snorri rather more rapidly now.

I shrugged. “So why would some Brettan send a monster after us? How would he even know? I bet Maeres Allus put him up to it. Six will get you ten. Maeres Allus!”

“Ha!” Snorri drained his ale, wiped the foam from his moustache, and made to order another before remembering our poverty. “That, Jal, would be like a minnow ordering a whale. This Allus of yours is nothing. Get ten miles from the walls of your city and nobody knows the man.”

Prince Jalan, damn it! Ten miles outside my city and nobody knows I’m a prince. “So why send the monster?”

“The Dead King and this Silent Sister, they’re hidden hands, they play a game across the empire, them and others, pushing kings and lords across their board. Who knows what it is they want in the end? Perhaps to remake the empire and give it an emperor with strings by which he can be made to dance, or perhaps to wipe the board clear and start the game anew. In any event the unborn said we carried the Red Queen’s purpose, and then it said we carried magic. Which we do.” He jabbed a finger at my shoulder and that unpleasant crackling energy built immediately, remaining until he withdrew the offending digit.

“But that was some kind of accident! We’re not on anyone’s purpose! Certainly not my grandmother’s.” Not unless the Silent Sister’s blind eye saw into the future and selected an unlikely chance. An unsettling thought. She was, after all, battling the dead, and Snorri was dragging both me and the witch’s magic north to where his foes worked alongside corpse-men brought in on the black ships of the Drowned Isles. “It’s just coincidence!”