‘The veterans, yes. Their emblem was a wheatear. Do you remember how they kept fighting, years after the fight was done? They were loyal to the Throne, Gregor, utterly loyal, but their war had traumatised them so, they saw enemies everywhere. They fought against the notion of the dark, against every shadow, beyond all bounds of sense or reason.’

‘I remember,’ he said. ‘One of the saddest things I ever witnessed. One of the hardest tasks of my life. To stop men and women from being loyal.’

‘Imagine how I feel,’ she said.

‘You mean me?’ he asked.

‘I do,’ she said. Her smile was everything he remembered.

‘There,’ she said, ‘that’s the only time I’ll ever get to say those words to you.’

‘I do too,’ he whispered.

‘You’ve done enough big things in your life,’ she said. She faced him and brushed the soot and grit from his old coat. ‘Forget them. Do a small thing.’

‘Don’t go,’ he said.

‘I’m not the one going,’ she said. ‘This is where I stop. You go on. You always have. One last walk.’

‘I have to finish this first,’ he said. ‘Sark. Gobleka. Keshtre.’

‘You don’t,’ she replied.

‘To reach Sancour, I must be alive,’ he said. ‘To find this girl, this daughter of yours. I need to end Keshtre and get out so I can make my way to Sancour.’

‘You don’t,’ she repeated.

The rustle of the leaves had become the stirring of insects, and the stirring of insects had become a fizzling noise. The chuckle of an electrocorporeal storm. He hadn’t heard its eerie sound since Ignix, long ago.

‘The Cackle,’ he said.

‘You know what that means,’ she said.

The regia occulta had opened before them. Lightning writhed and fluoresced around its mouth. Corposant crackled. The wind rose.

Eisenhorn couldn’t look at it. He glanced around.

‘I know this place,’ he said.

‘Of course you do,’ she said. ‘I’ve never been here myself, but you have. The high fells above Antieth. DeKere’s world. You used to tell me about it.’

‘Where I was born,’ he said.

‘Exactly,’ she said. ‘Where you were born the first time. It felt like the right place to bring you so you could be born all over again.’

She raised her hand to his chin, and he flinched, afraid he would burn her. But she was simply, gently, turning his head, making him look at the gleaming, spitting gateway of the regia occulta.

‘This can take you there,’ she said. ‘One step. Forget the rest, forget it all. Go on now. Before it closes again.’

She kissed him on the cheek.

‘Take the pathway,’ she said. ‘It is straight and true, and the only one you need.’

He turned, but she was gone.

He stepped into the light.