Shivers nodded at her, his shield pecked and scored in the fighting and his hair unbound again and hanging across his face. “All good?”

“All good.” No need for more between the two of them.

Black Calder was at the top. Beside a flat rock half-buried in the turf where his standard lay fallen. The man who shaped the North for twenty years, on his knees, with Jonas Clover’s sword at his throat. You had to admire his calmness, in defeat. Rikke wondered if she’d have taken it so cool, or if she’d have schemed and blubbed and begged for her life. But then who cares a shit what the losers do? It’s the winners that change things.

Clover gave her a nod. “I got him, Chief.”

“That a fact?” Rikke nudged a big corpse lying in a slick of blood with her foot. “And did you get him, too?”

“My man Downside. He always did suffer from too much fight and not enough judgement.”

“So you’ve chosen a side, finally?”

“I’ve always been on the same one,” said Clover. “Whichever wins.”

All the while, Calder was frowning up at her. “You found my spy.”

“Isern-i-Phail had her picked the moment she arrived.”

“I can smell a lie,” said Isern, spear across her shoulders with her blue hand and her pale dangling over the haft. “And that bitch reeked.”

“I thought it all felt too easy,” mused Calder, frowning off towards Carleon, across the corpse-scattered fields where even now the last of his army were being driven off or taken prisoner.

“Aye, well,” said Rikke, “we’re all prone to believe what we want to. It was Shivers handed me the notion, to begin with.”

Shivers gave a modest shrug. “No strength like looking weak.”

“All I did was…” Rikke fluttered her fingers. “Sprinkle some glitter on it.”

“It was well done.” Calder narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at her. “Tell me one thing, between us… does it really work? The Long Eye? Did you know how it would turn out all along?”

She looked down at him, thumb inside the chain of emeralds she wore. “I know how it’ll turn out now. Years ago, my father swore to kill you if you crossed the Cusk again.”

“I remember.” Calder nodded slowly, his eyes fixed far off. “It all has to be paid for, in the end.”

“Took a while for me to keep his word,” said Rikke. “But we got there. Shivers?”

“Aye,” he said, and drew his sword.

Calder looked up as its shadow fell across him. “Been a long time.”

“Aye,” said Shivers.

“I remember when you saved my life. In the Circle at the Heroes.”

“Aye.”

“Quite the irony. That it should be you who ends it.”

“Aye.”

“Well. I can hardly say I don’t deserve it.”

“Seems your father’s dream came true after all,” said Rikke. “The North united.” She put her hands behind her head and stretched up tall. “It just won’t be his blood that leads it. Scale’s back to the mud. Stour’s back to the mud. Bethod’s line ends with you.”