She’d finished another circle now, leaving him in the centre of a ring of her snowy footprints, and she looked him in the eye. “You know a lot.”

“Knowledge is the root of power. I could share mine with you.”

Rikke doubted Bayaz became Bayaz by sharing more than he had to. “I see things, too,” she said, turning her left eye towards him and opening it very wide. “Who knows? Maybe even a thing or two you don’t. I know things haven’t gone smoothly for you lately. You left the North in Black Calder’s care and he pissed his trousers. His brother’s dead and his son’s in a cage and now you have to listen to me flap my lips. And then there’s your Union, where I saw you give such a fine address, the countless little people laid out before you like a carpet before an emperor. I doubt you’d be so welcome since their Great Change, eh? Not so many statues of you in the Agriont as there were. And who can blame ’em? Wasn’t long ago you gave them your help, and it laid waste to their proud city and killed them by the cartload. Or did my father tell the story wrong?”

“Talking to you is quite the adventure.” The weather might’ve been bitter, but the edge on Bayaz’s voice was chillier yet. “You wander off in every direction.”

“I’m a constant surprise even to myself!”

One more impatient puff of smoke, this time through gritted teeth, like a shepherd whose flock won’t obey. “Do you see these stones, child?”

“I do.” And she set off wandering again, over towards the cloven one. “They’re hard to miss, old man.”

“This is where Black Dow died. This very spot. He ruled the North, after the Bloody-Nine fell. A mighty warrior. A fearsome leader. He held off the Union here. But he thought he could manage without me.” Bayaz narrowed his eyes towards the flat, white country spread out to the north. “He lies in a pit out there, unmarked and unconsidered.”

“The Great Leveller catches us all,” said Shivers, softly.

“And he has no favourites and makes no exceptions.” Rikke reached up to run her fingertips down the great split in the stone, already a little smoothed, a little weathered in the years since the battle. “Where did the stones come from?” she asked.

The First of the Magi frowned. “The Heroes?”

“Aye. Who put them here? And how? And why?”

“None alive know that.” Bayaz glared over at Corleth, and she swallowed, and blinked down at the ground. “They come from an age before the Old Time. They were ancient even when my master Juvens was born.”

“So old as that? A good thing stones don’t wrinkle, eh, or run to flab, or lose their hair, or have all their little schemes fall apart around ’em? I daresay they mostly look as fine as the day they were raised. Though how did this one get so bruised? Magus Art?”