The thumping echo of footsteps from the stairway behind propelled him onwards. A door stood at the curving hallway’s end, closed but for a narrow grille. Dark and bloody footsteps led from the dead guard toward it and Chel followed them, merging them with his own. The door was locked, and stoutly so. Chel gripped at the grille and pulled, first gently, then with greater force, until he was rattling it in its hinges. It wouldn’t budge.

‘Yeah, I tried that too. It’s a solid fucker, that one.’

Chel whipped his hands back from the grille and peered into the gloom of the chamber beyond. The voice did not match what he saw.

Two guards lay slumped in his cone of vision, their weapons loose at their feet, their necks slashed, as if taken by surprise and downed without a fight. The chamber bore signs of a struggle, however. In the pale light from its arched windows, Chel saw smashed furniture, an overturned table, broken crates and spilled food. Splashes of blood marked the walls, smeared in places with evident hand-prints. And at the centre of it all sat Spider. The silvery daylight shone from his polished dome, the glint of his many earrings creeping from the bloodied gloom. He sat with his legs splayed, his head bowed, his back to a splintered crate, in his gore-streaked hand a curved, black-bladed knife.

It took Chel a very long time to realize that he wasn’t moving.

A figure drifted past the grille, white-haired and stooping, leaning heavily on a long staff. The figure shuffled toward the overturned table, righted it with a heavy foot, then leaned against it. Dark eyes stared from beneath the ash-coloured hair, below them an eagle’s beak of a nose.

‘Little man,’ Rennic said, with a slight nod.

‘Pig-fucker.’

‘Only my friends can call me pig-fucker.’

The first drops of rain began to fall, plopping through the arch behind Chel, windblown, dark circles on its pale ledge.

‘What happened here?’

‘He didn’t want to die. Took some convincing.’ Rennic leaned back, unable to conceal his wince. Whatever he’d been through with Spider, he was far from unscathed.

‘What was he doing here?’

‘What do you think? He was going for a pair. A collector, that one. Obsessed with his own legend. I doubt that was the ending he had in mind.’

Chel rattled the door again. ‘You going to open this? We can take a walk downstairs, tell the new king how you’ve saved his life. You can join the parade.’

Rennic was still staring at Spider’s inert form.