Hesso tugged at his cloak, throwing it from his shoulders, pulling at his collar. Still not satisfied, he strode out into the rain, walking in small circles in the yard, gabbling and steaming. He marched up to the shack, shouted something at the window, then doubled over, retched and vomited. He stood, swaying, tried to say something else, then bent again, losing another tranche of his dinner. He looked around, dazed, then slowly collapsed into the thickening mud.

Chel counted to ten, but Hesso didn’t move. His unease became panic, and he scampered across the yard, finding the young man lying on his side, a fresh puddle of vomit beside his mouth, diluting in the persistent rain.

‘Fuck, oh fuck, I’m sorry, Hesso, I’m so sorry,’ he whispered, reaching out a hand to the boy’s neck, checking for a pulse.

‘Get over yourself, little man. He’s fine.’

Rennic’s face filled the window, cut into slices by the bars, an incomplete apparition.

‘He’s going to have one skull-fucker of a headache tomorrow, but he’ll live. Puking his guts out was the best thing for him.’

Runnels of rainwater ran down Chel’s brow, dripping from his nose. ‘I can’t leave him here. Not like this.’

‘And you won’t. But he can sit there for a moment longer.’

The shack key was on Hesso’s belt, and a moment later the door was open. Rennic was still sitting by the window, perched on an upturned bucket. Chel wasn’t sure if that was the only bucket in the room.

‘Come on, let’s go.’

The big man nodded, but he was still staring out of the window, pale snatches of moonlight washing over his skin. He looked thin, unkempt, but somehow different. Chel realized that there was a stillness to him, an absence of edge, the eternal restlessness that seemed to animate him through each day. Chel wondered if he’d ever have noticed it, had he not witnessed it gone.

‘You came back, then.’

‘Of course I did. Did you think I wouldn’t?’

Still Rennic hadn’t moved. ‘Got to admit, I wondered. Can’t be a bad life here. Long way from anywhere.’

‘Are you all right? We should leave.’

‘You know,’ Rennic said, his gaze still somewhere in the drizzling night sky, ‘I rode once with a terrible old bastard, a man called Gamarveb Klesien. Ever hear of him? Fought in half a dozen wars, back when it was a ransomer’s game. His lot dropped a bollock in one of those battles, I forget which, Lemon could tell you, and he was captured. Spent nine months in a cell somewhere over the Shenakar border, hoping his lot back home would raise the coin to free him. Eventually, the front shifted, and loyalists overran wherever the hells he was stuck, and he was free.’

‘And? So?’