The Nerek people were destroyed, and from that pit there would be no climbing out. Their homeland was an overgrown cemetery, and the Letherii cities promised only debt and dissolution. They were granted no sympathy. The Letherii way of life was hard, but it was the true way, the way of civilization. The proof was found in its thriving where other ways stumbled or remained weak and stilted.

The bitter wind could not reach Seren Pedac now. The stone’s warmth flowed through her. Eyes closed, she leaned her forehead against its welcoming surface.

Who walks in there? Are they the ancestral Edur, as the Hiroth claim? If so, then why could they see no more clearly than Seren herself? Vague shapes, passing to and fro, as lost as those Nerek children in their dying villages.

She had her own beliefs, and, though unpleasant, she held to them. They are the sentinels of futility. Acquitors of the absurd. Reflections of ourselves forever trapped in aimless repetition. Forever indistinct, for that is all we can manage when we look upon ourselves, upon our lives. Sensations, memories and experiences, the fetid soil in which thoughts take root. Pale flowers beneath an empty sky.

If she could, she would sink into this wall of stone. To walk for eternity among those formless shapes, looking out, perhaps, every now and then, and seeing not stunted trees, moss, lichen and the occasional passer-by. No, seeing only the wind. The ever howling wind.

She could hear him walking long before he came into the flickering circle of firelight. The sound of his footfalls awakened the Nerek as well, huddled beneath tattered furs in a rough half-circle at the edge of the light, and they swiftly rose and converged towards that steady beat. Seren Pedac kept her gaze fixed on the flames, the riotous waste of wood that kept Buruk the Pale warm while he got steadily drunker on a mix of wine and white nectar, and fought against the tug at one corner of her mouth, that unbidden and unwelcome ironic curl that expressed bitter amusement at this impending conjoining of broken hearts.

Buruk the Pale carried with him secret instructions, a list long enough to fill an entire scroll, from other merchants, speculators and officials, including, she suspected, the Royal Household itself. And whatever those instructions entailed, their content was killing the man. He’d always liked his wine, but not with the seductive destroyer, white nectar, mixed in. That was this journey’s new fuel for the ebbing fires of Buruk’s soul, and it would drown him as surely as would the deep waters of Reach Inlet.

Four more years. Maybe.

The Nerek were mobbing their visitor, scores of voices blending into an eerie murmur, like worshippers beseeching a particularly bemusing god, and though the event was hidden in the darkness beyond the fire, Seren Pedac could see it well enough in her imagination. He was trying, only his eyes revealing his unease at the endless embraces, seeking to answer each one with something – anything – that could not be mistaken for benediction. He was, he would want to say, not a man worthy of such reverence. He was, he would want to say, a sordid culmination of failures – just as they were. All of them lost, here in this cold-hearted world. He would want to say – but no, Hull Beddict never said anything. Not, in any case, things so boldly… vulnerable.

Buruk the Pale had lifted his head at the commotion, blinking blearily. ‘Who comes?’

‘Hull Beddict,’ Seren Pedac answered.

The merchant licked his lips. ‘The old Sentinel?’

‘Yes. Although I advise you not to call him by that title. He returned the King’s Reed long ago.’

‘And so betrayed the Letherii, aye.’ Buruk laughed. ‘Poor, honourable fool. Honour demands dishonour, now that is amusing, isn’t it? Ever seen a mountain of ice in the sea? Calving again and again beneath the endless gnawing teeth of salt water. Just so.’ He tilted his bottle back, and Seren watched his throat bob.

‘Dishonour makes you thirsty, Buruk?’

He pulled the bottle down, glaring. Then a loose smile. ‘Parched, Acquitor. Like a drowning man who swallows air.’

‘Only it’s not air, it’s water.’

He shrugged. ‘A momentary surprise.’

‘Then you get over it.’

‘Aye. And in those last moments, the stars swim unseen currents.’

Hull Beddict had done as much as he could with the Nerek, and he stepped into the firelight. Almost as tall as an Edur. Swathed in the white fur of the north wolf, his long braided hair nearly as pale. The sun and high winds had darkened his visage to the hue of tanned hide. His eyes were bleached grey, and it seemed the man behind them was ever elsewhere. And, Seren Pedac well knew, that place was not home.

No, as lost as his flesh and bones, this body standing before us. ‘Take some warmth, Hull Beddict,’ she said.

He studied her in his distracted way – a seeming contradiction that only he could achieve.

Buruk the Pale laughed. ‘What’s the point? It’ll never reach him through those furs. Hungry, Beddict? Thirsty? I didn’t think so. How about a woman? I could spare you one of my Nerek half-bloods – the darlings wait in my wagon.’ He drank noisily from his bottle and held it out. ‘Some of this? Oh dear, he hides poorly his disgust.’

Eyes on the old Sentinel, Seren asked, ‘Have you come down the pass? Are the snows gone?’

Hull Beddict glanced over at the wagons. When he replied, the words came awkwardly, as if it had been some time since he last spoke. ‘Should do.’

‘Where are you going?’

He glanced at her once more. ‘With you.’

Seren’s brows rose.

Laughing, Buruk the Pale waved expansively with his bottle – which was empty save for a last few scattering drops that hit the fire with a hiss. ‘Oh, welcome company indeed! By all means! The Nerek will be delighted.’ He tottered upright, weaving perilously close to the fire, then, with a final wave, he stumbled towards his wagon.

Seren and Hull watched him leave, and Seren saw that the Nerek had returned to their sleeping places, but all sat awake, their eyes glittering with reflected flames as they watched the old Sentinel, who now stepped closer to the fire and slowly sat down. He held out battered hands to the heat.

They could be softer than they appeared, Seren recalled. The memory did little more than stir long-dead ashes, however, and she tipped another log into the hungry fire before them, watched the sparks leap into the darkness.

‘He intends to remain a guest of the Hiroth until the Great Meeting?’

She shot him a look, then shrugged. ‘I think so. Is that why you’ve decided to accompany us?’

‘It will not be like past treaties, this meeting,’ he said. ‘The Edur are no longer divided. The Warlock King rules unchallenged.’

‘Everything’s changed, yes.’

‘And so Diskanar sends Buruk the Pale.’

She snorted, kicked back into the flames an errant log that had rolled out. ‘A poor choice. I doubt he’ll remain sober enough to manage much spying.’

‘Seven merchant houses and twenty-eight ships have descended upon the Calach beds,’ Hull Beddict said, flexing his fingers.

‘I know.’

‘Diskanar’s delegation will claim the hunting was unsanctioned. They will decry the slaughter. Then use it to argue that the old treaty is flawed, that it needs to be revised. For the lost seals, they will make a magnanimous gesture – by throwing gold at Hannan Mosag’s feet.’

She said nothing. He was right, after all. Hull Beddict knew better than most King Ezgara Diskanar’s mind – or, rather, that of the Royal Household, which wasn’t always the same thing. ‘There is more to it, I suspect,’ she said after a moment.

‘How so?’

‘I imagine you have not heard who will be leading the delegation.’

He grunted sourly. ‘The mountains are silent on such matters.’

She nodded. ‘Representing the king’s interests, Nifadas.’