Hold on.

There was something stirring down below again, now. Sore, but definitely stiffening. The one advantage of having a long time without—the bucket fills up again quick. Logen licked his lips. It would be a shame to let the chance pass, just for a lack of nerve. He slid down beside her, shuffled up close, and cleared his throat.

“What?” Her voice was sharp, but not quite sharp enough to warn him off.

“Well, you know, give me a minute, and maybe…” He lifted the coat up and ran his hand up her side, skin hissing quietly against skin, nice and slow, so she had plenty of time to shove him off. It wouldn’t have surprised him any if she’d turned over and kneed him in the fruits. But she didn’t.

She shifted back against him, her bare arse pressing into his stomach, lifting one knee up. “Why should I be giving you another chance?”

“I don’t know…” he muttered, starting to grin. He slid his hand gently over her chest, across her belly, down between her legs. “Same reason you gave me the first one?”

Ferro woke with a sudden jolt, not knowing where she was, only that she was trapped. She snarled and thrashed and flailed out with her elbow, fought her way free and scrambled away, teeth gritted, fists clenched to fight. But there were no enemies. Only bare dirt and bleak rock in the pale grey morning.

That and the big pink.

Ninefingers stumbled up, grunting and spitting, staring wildly around. When he saw no Flatheads poised to kill him he turned slowly to look at Ferro, eyes blinking bleary with sleep. “Ah…” He winced and touched his fingertips to his bloody mouth. They glared at each other for a moment, both stark naked and silent in the cold shell of the ruined mill, the coat they had been lying under crumpled on the damp earth between them.

And that was when Ferro realised that she had made three serious mistakes.

She had let herself fall asleep, and nothing good ever happened when she did that. Then she had elbowed Ninefingers in the face. And what was much, much worse, so stupid she almost grimaced to think of it: she had fucked him the night before. Staring at him now in the harsh light of day, hair plastered against one side of his scarred and bloody face, a great smear of dirt down his pale side where he had been lying in the mud, she was not sure why. For some reason, cold and tired in the dark, she had wanted to touch someone, and be warm for just a moment, and she had let herself think—who would be worse off for it?

Madness.

They both were worse off, that was clear enough. Where things had been simple, now they were sure to be complicated. Where they had been getting an understanding, now there would be only confusion. She was confused already, and he was starting to look hurt, and angry, and what was the surprise? No one enjoys an elbow in the face while they sleep. She opened her mouth to say sorry, and it was then she realised. She did not even know the word. All she could do was say it in Kantic, but she was so angry with herself she growled it at him like an insult.

He certainly took it as one. His eyes narrowed and he snapped something at her in his own tongue, snatched his trousers up and shoved one leg in, muttering angrily under his breath.

“Fucking pink,” she hissed back, fists bunched with a surge of fury. She snatched up her torn shirt and turned her back on him. She must have left it in a wet patch. The ragged cloth stuck tight to her crawling skin like a layer of cold mud as she yanked it on.

Damn shirt. Damn pink.

She ground her teeth with frustration as she dragged her belt closed. Damn belt. If only she could have kept it closed. It was always the same. Nothing was easy with people, but she could always count on herself to make things more difficult than they had to be. She paused for a moment, with her head down, then she half turned towards him.

She was about to try and explain that she had not meant to smash his mouth, but that nothing good ever happened when she slept. She was about to try and tell him that she had made a mistake, that she had only wanted to be warm. She was about to ask him to wait.

But he was already stomping out of the broken doorway with the rest of his clothes clutched in one hand.

“Fuck him then,” she hissed as she sat down to pull her boots on.

But then that was the whole problem.

Jezal sat on the broken steps of the temple, picking sadly at the frayed stitches on the torn-off shoulder of his coat, and staring out across the limitless expanse of mud towards the ruins of Aulcus. Looking for nothing.

Bayaz lay propped up in the back of the cart, face bony and corpse-pale with veins bulging round his sunken eyes, a hard frown chiselled into his colourless lips. “How long do we wait?” asked Jezal, once again.

“As long as it takes,” snapped the Magus, without even looking at him. “We need them.”

Jezal saw Brother Longfoot, standing higher up on the steps with his arms folded, give him a worried glance. “You are, of course, my employer, and it is scarcely my place to disagree—”

“Don’t then,” growled Bayaz.

“But Ninefingers and the woman Maljinn,” persisted the Navigator, “are most decidedly dead. Master Luthar quite specifically saw them slide into a chasm. A chasm of very great depth. My grief is immeasurable, and I am a patient man, few more, it is one among my many admirable qualities but… well… were we to wait until the end of time, I fear that it would make no—”

“As long…” snarled the First of the Magi, “as it takes.”

Jezal took a deep breath and frowned into the wind, looking down from the hill towards the city, eyes scanning over the expanse of flat nothing, pocked with tiny creases where streams ran, the grey stripe of a ruined road creeping out towards them from the far-off walls, between the streaky outlines of ruined buildings: inns, farms, villages, all long fallen.

“They’re down there,” came Quai’s emotionless voice.

Jezal stood up, weight on his good leg, shading his hand and staring at where the apprentice was pointing. He saw them suddenly, two tiny brown figures in a brown wasteland, down near the base of the rock.

“What did I tell you?” croaked Bayaz.

Longfoot shook his head in amazement. “How in God’s name could they have survived?”

“They’re a resourceful pair, alright.” Jezal was already starting to grin. A month before he could not have dreamed that he would ever be glad to see Logen again, let alone Ferro, but here he was, smiling from ear to ear almost to see them still alive. Somehow, a bond was formed out here in the wilderness, facing death and adversity together. A bond that strengthened quickly, regardless of all the great differences between them. A bond that left his old friendships weak, and pale, and passionless by comparison.

Jezal watched the figures come closer, trudging along the crumbling track that led up through the steep rocks to the temple, a great deal of space between the two of them, almost as if they were walking separately. Closer still, and they began to look like two prisoners that had escaped from hell. Their clothes were ripped, and torn, and utterly filthy, their dirty faces were hard as a pair of stones. Ferro had a scabbed-over gash across her forehead. Logen’s jaw was a mass of grazes, the skin round his eyes stained with dark bruising.

Jezal took a hopping step towards them. “What happened? How did—”

“Nothing happened,” barked Ferro.

“Nothing at all,” growled Ninefingers, and the two of them scowled angrily at each other. Plainly, they had both gone through some awful ordeal that neither one wished to discuss. Ferro stalked straight to the cart without the slightest greeting and started rooting through the back. Logen stood, hands on his hips, frowning grimly after her.