“Who—” Egar struggled to master his breathing. “—the fuck. Are you?”

The eyes beneath the hat glinted, another warning in them for him. “That’s complicated.”

“Well, hey, everybody’s fucking dead. We’ve got some time.”

“Not as much as you think. You heard your brother Ergund call upon Kelgris? She is awake and abroad. Poltar the shaman has her favor. All I have done here is hold back the tide a little.”

Egar found his rage still had the better of his fear. He clenched fists on the staff of his lance, drew clamped breath. Grimaced.

“Listen. Don’t think I’m not grateful to you, because I am. You saved my life. By sorcery or not, I still owe you a blood debt for that, and you won’t find me stingy on the payback. But I will have a name for my debt, or it can’t be called honorable.”

It was hard to tell in the poor light, but he thought the figure rolled its eyes. It turned away from him for a moment. It seemed to be staring out across the steppe, or maybe just at the thin plume of smoke rising from Egar’s fire.

“Can’t fucking believe it’s come to this,” it muttered. “Negotiating with a fucking herdsman—you know, sometimes it’s—listen, I was the thief of fire once, you goat-shagging thug. You know that? The fucking doom bringer to kings.” An arm thrown out in exasperation. “Back when the earth was young, back when there was still a moon in the fucking sky, I pulled on whatever flesh was needful and I struck terror into the hearts of the powerful and enthroned all across this mudball world, and another dozen like it. I took the spirit form and strode across measureless . . . ah, fuck it, never mind. All right, a name. You know my name.”

And, abruptly, he did.

It was as if someone had taken a binding from his eyes, as if he’d suddenly shed the blurry fog of a fever. He saw the sea captain’s cloak as if for the first time, remembered tales and associations from a lifetime of Majak myth. A traveler, by land but more often by sea, a master of disguises and stratagems, a murderous, barely discriminate force when unleashed, a wry borrower of the human form. The least predictable, most violently capricious of the Sky Dwellers.

The chill of it blew through him.

“Takavach,” he whispered.

The hat-brim-shadowed visage tipped back toward him. There might have been the glimmer of a cold smile. “Good. Are you happy now, with your name, with your knowing?”

“What?” Egar swallowed. Voice still a whisper. “What do you want with me?”

“That’s better. First and foremost, I want you to shut up and listen. Your brother Ershal has escaped. In a matter of hours he’ll have roused the whole camp and told them that you are possessed by demons.”

“Demons? There’s no fucking way they’ll be—”

“The next time you interrupt me, I’ll sew your fucking lips up with grass. And don’t think I won’t.” The thing that claimed to be Takavach drew a deep breath. “Now listen to me. Ershal will say that he and your other brothers, perhaps drunkenly—which would explain the impropriety of the matter—rode out to greet you at your vigil. That you flew into a fury, summoned demonic forces, and slaughtered Alrag and Ergund; that he barely escaped with his life. Poltar will vouchsafe his story with the usual superstitious horseshit about your southern manners polluting your Majak purity, which is a line he’s been spreading about you for some time now, incidentally. And at dawn, they’ll all ride out here and see for themselves. Would you like to take a closer look at how your brothers died?”

The question appeared to be rhetorical. Takavach was already drifting through the grass to where Alrag had fallen. Egar went after him, mouth pulled tight for what he was about to see. They came upon the occluding bulk of his brother’s murdered horse first, collapsed massively sideways, streaked everywhere with blood and clinging blades of grass. Egar stepped around it at the rump end and saw, mingled with the animal’s spilled entrails, the ruined mess that lay beyond.

Alrag lay in a flattened, blood-drenched patch of grass, and he was roped to the ground. The blades and tendrils had lashed around his limbs and trunk at every juncture and pulled him down so tight that at his wrists and neck they had sunk through the skin and into the flesh beneath. They’d burrowed into his eyes and nose and ears, had turned the eyes themselves to bloodied mush in the process. Had twisted his head and neck sideways, wrenched his mouth down to the ground and so wide that the jaw was dislocated. Had crowded inside and down his throat in a twisted rope of grass as thick around as Egar’s forearm and now slick with blood.

Bandlight turned the image unreal, like an acid etching on metal. Egar made himself stare at it, unblinking until his eyes began to hurt.

Brotherslayer.

He was not sure whom the voice in his head was accusing.

At his side, Takavach shot him a curious glance, then went and crouched by Alrag’s head. His leather cloak pooled around him, made him seem hunched and unhuman. Egar thought of a solitary vulture settling to feast. The Dweller looked back up over his shoulder at the clanmaster.

“Would you like to see Ergund as well?”

“No,” Egar heard himself say thickly. “That won’t be necessary.”

“No, I suppose not.” Takavach took hold of the woven rope emerging from Alrag’s broken mouth and tugged at it experimentally. It didn’t move much. “Well, I think you’d agree that outside of sorcery, this is going to be hard to explain.”

“Explain?” Egar drank in the sight of his eldest brother for one more measured moment, then turned on his heel. He slung his lance across one shoulder, cast a glance at the sky, and gauged a straight line back to camp. “I’ll fucking explain it. I’ll cram that bow down Ershal’s throat the exact same fucking way.”

“And the—where do you think you’re going?” Takavach’s words came hurriedly after him. “And the shaman? Kelgris?”

Egar didn’t look around or stop walking. “I’m going to gut that scrawny motherfucker, the way I should have done months ago, and then stake him out for the buzzards, still living. And if Kelgris shows up in support, I’ll do the same fucking thing to her.”

Faint rumble of thunder walking at the horizon. The clouds there lit briefly from within with a malevolent mauve radiance.

“So.” Takavach was suddenly at his side again. “Now it’s Egar the fucking Godbane, is it? Do you not think you’re biting off a little more than you can chew here, herdsman? Kelgris is a Sky Dweller. You don’t know how to kill her, you wouldn’t know where to start.”

Egar kept walking. “So tell me.”

Brief silence. Takavach kept pace with him. “I’m not at liberty to do that. There are certain . . . protocols that have to be observed. Agreed rules, if you like. Oaths and ties that bind.”

“Fine. Then don’t tell me. You’ve already done enough.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Egar said violently. “It means nothing. Two of my brothers are dead back there, I’m on my way to finish the job. That’s all. Now will you stop fucking following me!”

To his surprise, the Dweller did exactly that. He stood in the grass and watched the clanmaster stride away. The thunder at the horizon came again, and if Egar had looked back then, he might have seen Takavach shiver.

“Fine. Go to your fucking death, then, if that’s the way you want it. Kelgris will put a legion of steppe ghouls between you and the camp, a legion of rabid fucking wolves, maybe even a flapping wraith or three if she’s feeling inventive. And you’re on fucking foot!”

Egar ignored it. The image of Alrag’s death danced behind his eyes.

“So,” the Dweller shouted furiously after him. “This is what it means to be owed thanks and a blood debt by a Skaranak clanmaster, is it?”