Inwardly, he frowned.

“When did I become so simple?” he asked the air around him.

“Be content,” Ash said at his elbow. The entity was cloaked in flesh—he appeared as a man, a very old man, in a body taut with use and muscle. His skin was jet black—not the black of Ifriquy’a or Dar as Salaam, but a colour like lamp black. He wore the simple clothes of a peasant, but all in dirty grey. He had a scythe in his hand, and an hourglass.

Thorn watched the night. “You have a new guise,” he said with distaste.

Ash snorted. “A very old guise.”

“Are you like some rich girl of Harndon, with a different dress for every suitor?” Thorn asked.

Ash seemed to think for a moment. At least, his face did not move. The silence lengthened and Thorn began to feel he was not going to be answered. This had happened frequently—it was one of the ways Thorn had arrived at the realization that he was a tool and not an ally.

Ash hissed. “It might appear that way,” he admitted.

An old teacher—back in the mists of time before Thorn, when he had been a boy and a human and a scholar—a teacher had told him never to ask a question to which he did not want to know the answer.

Where did that come from? Thorn asked himself.

But he asked anyway.

“Or is the way in which we perceive you shaped by our own—beings?” Thorn asked.

Ash laughed. It was not, for once, derisive or contemptuous. It was rich, and flavoured with humour and delight. “You are an apt pupil, sorcerer. In truth, to my eye, I am always the same. It is you—the sentients—who try to force me to the moulds of your minds.”

Thorn was not afraid of the night or the abyss. He looked into Ash’s eyes. “With people, and animals—if enough people call a dog cur, he’ll learn to bite.”

Ash inclined his head. The movement seemed genuine. “An eternity of striving, and I have one convert,” Ash said. “Well… perhaps two or three. Yes—even I am manipulated by the beliefs of those around me. As are you and every other sentient.”

Thorn looked at the stars. He pointed at them. “And those? Are they, as astrologers maintain, the pinpricks of light from other spheres—an infinity of spheres?”

Ash sighed. “Thorn, if I told you all I know, you would whip me with thongs of fire.”

Thorn nodded. “You quote scripture.”

Ash laughed—and this time it was derisive. “Everyone quotes scripture, Thorn. Or writes it to suit themselves.”

“Will we take Ticondaga?” he asked.

Ash frowned. “Yes. Your plan—which is far too complex, too devious, and too bent on your ideas of vengeance—is a delight, and it will succeed. There is no mind in all this sphere—except mine—that can comprehend what you plan.”

“You flatter me,” Thorn said.

“Of course,” Ash answered. “If you insist on treating me as a mentor, eventually I will behave like one.”