Mottled sword slid down the attacker’s blade and he was already stepping past, his weapon’s point already sliding out from the chest of another Edur.

Another heartbeat, and the last two Tiste Edur warriors were down, their bodies eagerly dispensing blood like payment onto the cobbles.

The stranger looked about, saw Udinaas, nodded, then waved to an alley-mouth, from which a woman emerged.

She took a half-dozen strides before Udinaas recognized her.

Badly used.

But no more of that. Not while this man lives.

Seren Pedac took no notice of him, nor of the dead Edur. The stranger grasped her hand.

Udinaas watched them head off down the street, disappear round a corner.

Somewhere behind him, the shouts of Edur warriors, the sound of running feet.

The slave found he was standing beside Rhulad’s body, staring down at it, the bizarre angle of the head on its twisted neck, the hands closed tight about the sword.

Waiting for the mouth to open with mad laughter.

‘Damned strangest armour I’ve ever seen.’

Seren blinked. ‘What?’

‘But he was good, with that sword. Fast. In another five years he’d have had the experience to have made him deadly. Enough to give anyone trouble. Shimmer, Blues, maybe even Skinner. But that armour! A damned fortune, right there for the taking. If we’d the time.’

‘What?’

‘That Tiste Edur, lass.’

‘Tiste Edur?’

‘Never mind. There they are.’

Ahead, crouched at the dead end of an alley, six figures. Two women, four men. All in crimson surcoats. Weapons out. Blood on the blades. One, more lightly armoured than the others and holding what looked to be some sort of diadem in his left hand, stepped forward.

And said something in a language Seren had never heard before.

Iron Bars replied in an impatient growl. He drew Seren closer as the man who’d spoken began gesturing. The air seemed to shimmer all round them.

‘Corlo’s opening the warren, lass. We’re going through, and if we’re lucky we won’t run into anything in there. No telling how far we can get. Far enough, I hope.’

‘Where?’ she asked. ‘Where are we going?’

A murky wall of blackness yawned where the alley’s blank wall had been.

‘Letheras, Acquitor. We got a ship awaiting us, remember?’

Strangest armour I’ve ever seen.

A damned fortune.

‘Is he dead?’

‘Who?’

‘Is he dead? Did you kill him? That Tiste Edur!’

‘No choice, lass. He was slowing us up and more were coming.’

Oh, no.

Vomit spilling out onto the sand.

At least, Withal mused, the shrieks had stopped. He waited, seated on grass just above the beach, while the young Edur, on his hands and knees, head hanging down, shuddered and convulsed, coughed and spat.

Off to one side, two of the Nachts, Rind and Pule, were fighting over a piece of driftwood that was falling apart with their efforts. Their games of destruction had become obsessive of late, leading the Meckros weaponsmith to wonder if they were in fact miming a truth on his behalf. Or the isolation was driving them insane. Another kind of truth, that one.

He despised religion. Set no gods in his path. Ascendants were worse than rabid beasts. It was enough that mortals were capable of appalling evil; he wanted nothing to do with their immortal, immeasurably more powerful counterparts.

And this broken god in his squalid tent, his eternal pain and the numbing smoke of the seeds he scattered onto the brazier before him, it was all of a piece to Withal. Suffering made manifest, consumed by the desire to spread the misery of its own existence into the world, into all the worlds. Misery and false escape, pain and mindless surrender. All of a piece.

On this small island, amidst this empty sea, Withal was lost. Within himself, among a host of faces that were all his own, he was losing the capacity to recognize any of them. Thought and self was reduced, formless and untethered. Wandering amidst a stranger’s memories, whilst the world beyond unravelled.

Nest building.

Frenzied destruction.

Fanged mouth agape in silent, convulsive laughter.

Three jesters repeating the same performance again and again. What did it mean? What obvious lesson was being shown him that he was too blind, too thick, to understand?

The Edur lad was done, nothing left in his stomach. He lifted his head, eyes stripped naked to the bones of pain and horror. ‘No,’ he whispered.

Withal looked away, squinted along the strand.

‘No more… please.’

‘Never much in the way of sunsets here,’ Withal mused. ‘Or sunrises, for that matter.’

‘You don’t know what it’s like!’

The Edur’s scream trailed away. ‘The nests are getting more elaborate,’ Withal said. ‘I think he’s striving for a particular shape. Sloped walls, a triangular entrance. Then Mape wrecks it. What am I to take from all that?’

‘He can keep his damned sword. I’m not going. Over there. I’m not going over there and don’t try to make me.’

‘I have nothing to do. Nothing.’

Rhulad crawled towards him. ‘You made that sword!’ he said in an accusatory rasp.

‘Fire, hammer, anvil and quenching. I’ve made more swords than I can count. Just iron and sweat. They were broken blades, I think. Those black shards. From some kind of narrow-bladed, overlong knife. Two of them, black and brittle. Just pieces, really. I wonder where he collected them from?’

‘Everything breaks,’ Rhulad said.

Withal glanced over. ‘Aye, lad. Everything breaks.’

‘You could do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘Break that sword.’

‘No. I can’t.’

‘Everything breaks!’

‘Including people, lad.’

‘That’s not good enough.’

Withal shrugged. ‘I don’t remember much of anything any more. I think he’s stealing my mind. He says he’s my god. All I need to do is worship him, he says. And everything will come clear. So tell xn Rhulad Sengar, is it all clear to you?’

‘This evil – it’s of your making!’

‘Is it? Maybe you’re right. I accepted his bargain. But he lied, you see He said he’d set me free, once I made the sword. He lies, Rhulad. That much I know. I know that now. This god lies.’

‘I have power. I am emperor. I’ve taken a wife. We are at war and Lether shall fall.’

Withal gestured inland. ‘And he’s waiting for you.’

‘They’re frightened of me.’

‘Fear breeds its own loyalty, lad. They’ll follow. They’re waiting too right now.’

Rhulad clawed at his face, shuddered. ‘He killed me. That man – not a Letherii, not a Letherii at all. He killed us. Seven of my brothers. And me. He was so… fast. It seemed he barely moved, and my kin were falling, dying.’

‘Next time will be harder. You’ll be harder. It won’t be as easy to find someone to kill you, next time. And the time after that. Do you understand that, lad? It’s the essence of that mangled god who’s waiting for you.’

‘Who is he?’

‘The god? A miserable little shit, Rhulad. Who has your soul in his hands.’

‘Father Shadow has abandoned us.’

‘Father Shadow is dead. Or as good as.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because if he wasn’t, he’d have never let the Crippled God steal you. You and your people. He’d have come marching ashore…’ Withal fell silent.

And that, he realized, was what he was coming to. A blood-soaked truth.

He hated religion, hated the gods. And he was alone.

‘I will kill him. With the sword.’

‘Fool. There’s nothing on this island that he doesn’t hear, doesn’t see, doesn’t know.’

Except, maybe, what’s in my mind now. And, even if he knew, how could he stop me? No, he doesn’t know. I must believe that. After all, if he did, he’d kill me. Right now, he’d kill me.

Rhulad climbed to his feet. ‘I’m ready for him.’

‘Are you?’

‘Yes.’

Withal sighed. He glanced over at the two Nachts. Their contested driftwood was a scattering of splinters lying between them. Both creatures were staring down at it, bemused, poking fingers through the mess. The Meckros rose. ‘All right then, lad, let’s go.