Calder tried not to show he’d been thrown by the shift of subject and failed. ‘Who says?’

‘Black Dow.’

No great surprise, but hearing it laid out stark as that didn’t help Calder’s shredded spirits. ‘I reckon he’d know.’

‘I think he’s brought you back out here so he can find an easy way to kill you, or so someone else can in hopes of earning favours from him. I think he thinks you’ll start scheming, and turning men against him, and trying to steal his chair. Then he’ll find out about it, and be able to hang you fair, and no one can complain over much.’

‘He thinks if he hands me the knife I’ll stab myself.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Maybe I’m quicker fingered than he reckons.’

‘I hope y’are. All I’m saying is, if you’re planning on hatching a scheme or two, be aware he’s aware, and he’s waiting for you to miss a step. Providing he don’t tire of tiptoeing around the issue and tell Caul Shivers to sharpen his axe on your brains.’

‘There’d be a few folk unhappy about that.’

‘True, and half the North’s unhappy as it is. Too much war. Too much tax. War’s got a fine tradition round these parts, o’ course, but tax has never been popular. Dow needs to tread careful on folks’ feelings these days, and he knows it. But it’d be a fool presumed too far on Black Dow’s patience. He ain’t a man made for treading carefully.’

‘But I suppose I am?’

‘There’s no shame in a soft footfall, lad. We like big, stupid men in the North, men who wade about in blood and so on. We sing songs about ’em. But those men get nothing done alone, and that’s a fact. We need the other kind. Thinkers. Like you. Like your father. And we don’t make half way enough of ’em. You want my advice?’

Reachey could stick his advice up his arse as far as Calder was concerned. He’d come for men, and swords, and cold hearts ready to do treachery. But he’d long ago learned that most men love nothing better than to be listened to. Especially powerful men. And Reachey was one of Dow’s five War Chiefs, about as powerful as it got these days. So Calder did what he was best at, and lied. ‘It’s your advice I came for.’

‘Then leave things be. ’Stead o’ swimming out against a fierce current, risking it all in the cold deep, sit on the beach awhile, take your ease. Who knows? Maybe in good time the sea’ll just wash up what you want.’

‘You reckon?’ As far as Calder could tell, the sea had been washing up nothing but shit ever since his father died.

Reachey shuffled a little closer, speaking low. ‘Black Dow ain’t sat too firmly in Skarling’s Chair, for all he carts it around with him. He’s the best bet for most, still, but outside o’ that rotten old fuck Tenways he ain’t got much loyalty. Lot less than your father had, and men these days, the likes of Ironhead and Golden? Pah!’ And he snorted his contempt into the fire. ‘They’re fickle as the wind. Folk fear Black Dow, but that only works long as you’re fearsome, and if things keep dragging on, and he don’t fight … folk got better things to do than sit around here going hungry and shitting in holes. I’ve lost as many men wandering off home to the harvest the last month as I’ll pick up at this weapontake here. Dow has to fight, and soon, and if he don’t, or if he loses, well, everything could spin around in an instant.’ And Reachey took a long, self-satisfied suck at his pipe.