“What do you want, Sergeant?” The company’s passage had left an aura of dust in the air, and Achamian could feel it fur the insides of his mouth. His chest wanted to cough the words.

“The Captain asked me to speak to you.” Sarl looked even more wrinkled in the gloom. His face was grey and grimace-marked, like a corpse exhumed from black peat. The Wizard breathed against the bristle of bodily alarm, fought the urge to ball his hands into fists. He almost always felt this whenever Sarl strayed too near, ever since the man had smashed his wine-bowl in the Cocked Leg.

“Did he now.”

“Yes,” Sarl said in a breathy rasp, smiling like an uncle fishing for a nephew’s love. That was the thing about the man’s ceaseless posturing: Even when the passions were appropriate, the underlying intensities were all wrong. “You see, he thinks you’re … too honest, let us say.”

“Honest.”

“And arrogant.”

“Arrogant,” Achamian repeated. There was something deadening about the discourse of fools. It was as if his patience were a pool that was only so deep, and Sarl’s every word were a rock …

“Look,” Sarl said. “We are learned men, you and I—”

“I assure you, Sergeant, there’s very little that you and I share.”

“Oho! The grief old Sarl gets for his diplomacy!”

“Diplomacy.”

“Yes, diplomacy!” he cried in sudden savagery. “Fine fucking words spoken to fine fucking fools!”

Mimara had drawn far ahead of them by now, so that they walked in the least glimmer of light, more the rims of men than possessing human substance, stepping by memory of grounds glimpsed ahead. Sarl was a threat, both to him and his quest—if Achamian had suspected as much before, he knew now. All he need do was speak to the madman in his true voice, right here, right now, and that threat would vanish, become more ash to powder this dead Mansion’s floor.

“What?” the fool continued. “Did you not think the Captain knew we walked through a vast tomb? Did you not think he would have commanded Cleric to illuminate it? And what do you do? You decide to show the bones to all! To let simple men know they walked beneath inhuman tombs. Darkness shields as much as it threatens, Schoolman! And you must remember the first rule!”

There was reason in what he was saying. But then that was the problem with reason: It was as much a whore as Fate. Like rope, you could use it to truss or snare any atrocity …

Another lesson learned at Kellhus’s knee.

“Another Rule of the Slog, is it?”

“Oh yes … The rules that have made this company a legend in the Wilds. Do you hear me? A legend!”

“So what is the first rule, Sergeant?”

“The Captain always knows. Do you hear me? The Captain always knows!”