‘Where did you come from?’ muttered Craw as he scrambled up, hopping a little on account of his stiff knee.

‘South,’ she said, though that much was clear enough from her skin. ‘Or do you mean, why did I come?’

‘I’ll take why.’

‘To do the right thing.’ There was a faint smile on her face, at that. ‘To fight against evil. To strike mighty blows for righteousness. Or … do you mean who sent me?’

‘All right, who sent you?’

‘God.’ Her eyes rolled to the sky, framed by jutting weeds and saplings. ‘And how could it be otherwise? God puts us all where he wants us.’

Craw rubbed at his knee. ‘Got a shitty sense o’ humour, don’t he?’

‘You do not know the half of it. I came to fight against the Union, is that enough?’

‘It’s enough for me,’ said Dow.

Ishri’s black eyes flicked away to him, and Craw felt greatly relieved. ‘They are moving onto the hill in numbers.’

‘Jalenhorm’s lot?’

‘I believe so.’ She stretched up tall, wriggling all over the place like she had no bones in her. Reminded Craw of the eels they used to catch from the lake near his workshop, spilling from the net, squirming in the children’s hands and making them squeal. ‘You fat pink men all look the same to me.’

‘What about Mitterick?’ asked Dow.

Her bony shoulders drifted up and down. ‘Some way behind, chomping at the bit, furious that Jalenhorm is in his way.’

‘Meed?’

‘Where is the fun in knowing everything?’ She pranced past Craw, up on her toes, almost brushing against him so he had to nervously step back and nearly trip again. ‘God must be so bored.’ She wedged one foot into a crack in the wall too narrow for a cat to squeeze through, twisting her leg, somehow working it in up to the hip. ‘To it, then, my heroes!’ She writhed like a worm cut in half, wriggling into the ruined masonry, her coat dragging up the mossy stonework behind her. ‘Do you not have a battle to fight?’ Her skull somehow slid into the gap, then her arms, she clapped her bandaged hands once and just a finger was left sticking from the crack. Dow walked over to it, reached out, and snapped it off. It wasn’t a finger at all, just a dead bit of twig.

‘Magic,’ muttered Craw. ‘Can’t say I care for the stuff.’ In his experience it did more harm than good. ‘I daresay a sorcerer’s got their uses and all but, I mean, do they always have to act so bloody strange?’

Dow flicked the twig away with a wrinkled lip. ‘It’s a war. I care for whatever gets the job done. Best not mention my black-skinned friend to anyone else though, eh? Folks might get the wrong idea.’

‘What’s the right idea?’

‘Whatever I fucking say it is!’ snarled Dow, and he didn’t look like he was faking the anger this time.