Her gaze shifted to Maquin; his face was all hard lines and shifting shadows in the moonlight, his eyes dark wells. She had seen him kill in the arena, both in single combat and against many. She was no stranger to death, had witnessed combat first-hand, seen life-blood spilt, heard death cries, had seen warriors in battle, straddling that line between life and death. None had seemed as ruthless, as devoid of emotion as the man before her. She had watched him with a mixture of revulsion and fascination, in all her years never having seen someone deal out death so efficiently. Old Wolf, they called him in the arena. The name fits him. Lean, explosively violent, patient in combat, unrelenting.

Maybe he sensed her watching him, for his head turned. She could not tell if he returned her gaze, his eyes in shadow. Nevertheless she looked away.

‘I know you,’ the Vin Thalun said to Fidele, breaking into her thoughts. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be enjoying your wedding night round about now?’

‘Shut up,’ Fidele snapped, instantly annoyed with herself at the emotion in her voice.

‘Got a long walk on the morrow,’ the Vin Thalun said. ‘Starve me and I’ll be too weak to show you the way to Lykos’ pets.’

‘Huh,’ snorted Maquin.

Fidele regarded the Vin Thalun silently. He is younger than he looks – twenty summers, maybe, not much more. And he is someone’s son. At that thought an image of Nathair filled her mind. My son. Where is he? Halfway across the Banished Lands? Alive or dead? Someone’s prisoner? If he is, I hope that he will at least be fed, given water. She focused back on the Vin Thalun before her and felt a flush of shame at her earlier willingness to starve him. I will not become that which I hate. ‘Here,’ Fidele said, cutting a slice of cheese for the warrior.

‘Don’t know how long that has to last us,’ Maquin commented, looking at the cheese.

‘We are human beings, not animals,’ Fidele said, the words aimed at herself as much as anyone else.

‘Don’t think you’d get the same treatment if things were the other way around.’

‘I know I wouldn’t. I have a very good idea how I would have been treated. But I will not make myself . . . less.’

Maquin said no more, just watched as Fidele offered the cheese to the Vin Thalun.

Their prisoner glanced at his bound arms, then opened his mouth. Fidele hesitated.

‘I won’t bite. Think your hound might have his knife out quick if I did. I’ve seen him in the pit and arena. Seen what he can do.’

Maquin’s gaze snapped onto him at that, something predatory in the movement, threatening.

‘No offence meant by that,’ the Vin Thalun continued, ‘made a lot of money out of you, Old Wolf. Seen you come through some pretty thin odds.’

‘They were lives. Other men’s lives. Not odds,’ Fidele said.

Maquin’s eyes shifted to Fidele.