Serpentine’s he had felt a great sudden pain that had left him helpless, as if the force of some new hatred, pulling suddenly in a new direction, had torn a crack in him, and the urge to move, which was like blood to him, had leaked away like blood.

Lacking the catalyst of his malice, the armies had disengaged, the enemy had withdrawn. Argon Starbridge had escaped with his life and his baggage, but now, in his tent, Aspe regretted winning for the priests of Charn even a partial victory. He thought of riding back to the city and putting it to the torch, but there were reasons, always reasons, and as always, reasons were the bit between his teeth. So instead he refused food and let his mind wander among the corpses by the river. He hummed melodies in all the modes of hatred. And he would put together melodies in his mind, sequences of events either imagined or remembered. Notes and cadences would summon up faces, actions, whole scenes. He added themes of misery and regret, low in the bass register, high in the treble, mixing them together like a symphony of hatred in his mind.

Chrism Demiurge whirled by, crucified and burning, his mouth gaping wide. He disappeared, and in his place Aspe composed, as if upon the xylophone, the bars of his cage in the emperor’s garden, and the light of the setting sun on them night after night, while his body wasted and his hair changed color. In the setting sun, the golden figure of the emperor, as he paused sometimes to talk. And like the rattle of a drum, the lock and chain snapping open on his jail, the emperor releasing him into a larger jail of promises, reasons, services, consequences.

These images mixed with memories of an earlier time, of Rang-river in the snow, when he was king of the biters up above Rang-river. He remembered the day when he had lost his hand. A hateful face, a dancer, a knife fight about . . . something, some piece of music, he had forgotten. But he remembered the scene, his violin where he had left it to get up and fight, his own instrument, so difficult that no one else could ever play it after he had set it down, so perfect that people had been compelled to listen, night after night, while the music poured from him in flashing streams. Was it through musical perfection that he had first sickened of a biting illness, the need to make his mark?

He remembered the circle of hot faces in the firelight, the sudden blow, his hand half-severed, the knife stuck between his bones, his ears ringing like cymbals, the faces around him changing into masks—ah, ah, ah, his enemy receding as if lost in a black mist, only his eyes and his teeth showing as he smiled.

He remembered the stone table in the snow, the statue of dog-faced Angkhdt, the broken foot and that same smiling face, that dancer in the freezing air, dancing his last dance. In his tent Aspe’s memories were deafening. He thought: Other men have turned to biting out of love, or misdirection, or musical ineptitude.