“A Veteran,” he murmured. “The same as me.”

They lagged behind the others, passing from broken sunlight to green shadow, arguing over the rush and hiss of the river.

“You cannot stay! This is impossible!”

“Where would you have me go?”

“Go? Go? Where do you think? Back to your mother! Back to the Andiamine Heights where you belong!”

“Never.”

“I know your mother. I know she loves you!”

“Not so much as she hates what she did to me.”

“To save your life!”

“Life … Is that what you call it? Should I tell you the story of my life?

“No.”

“All these men. Trust me, I’ve borne them before. I can bear them again.”

“Not these men.”

“Then I suppose I’m lucky to have you.”

She was nothing like Esmenet, he had come to realize. She tilted her head the same way, as though literally trying to look around your nonsense, and her voice stiffened into the same reedy bundle of disgust, but aside from these echoes …

“Look. You simply cannot stay. This is a journey …” He paused, his breath yanked short by the sheer factuality of what he was about to say. “This is a journey without any return.”

She sneered and laughed. “So is every life.”

There was something snide and infuriating about her, he decided, something that begged to be struck—or dared … He could not tell which.

No. She was nothing like Esmenet. Even the vicious dismissiveness of her snorts—all her own.

“Is that what you’ve told these scalpers?”

“What do you mean, ‘told’?”

“That this journey will see them all killed.”

“No.”

“What did you tell them?”

“That I can show them the Coffers.”

“The Coffers?”

“The legendary treasury of the School of Sohonc, lost when the Library of Sauglish was destroyed in the First Apocalypse.”

“So they know nothing of Ishuäl? They have no idea that you hunt the origins of their Holy Aspect-Emperor? The man who pays the bounty on their scalps!”

“No.”

“Murderer. That makes you a murderer.”

“Yes.”

“Teach me, then … Teach me, or I’ll tell them everything!”

“Extortion, is it?”

“Murder is more wicked by far.”

“What makes you certain I wouldn’t kill you, if I’m a murderer as you say?”

“Because I look too much like my mother.”

“There’s a thought. Maybe I should just tell the Captain who you are. A Princess-Imperial. Think of the ransom you would fetch!”

“Yes … But then why bleed all the way to Sauglish looking for the Coffers?”

Impudent. An almost lunatic selfishness! Was she born this way? No. She wore her scars the way hermits wore their stench: as a mark of all the innumerable sins she had overcome.

“This is not a contest you can win, Wizard.”

“How so?”

“I’m no fool. I know you’ve sworn by whatever it is you hold sacred to never teach anoth—”

“I am cursed! Disaster follows my teaching. Death and betra—”