‘I am not frightened, Udinaas,’ the woman replied.

That name, yes. Feather Witch. The fellow slave, the Caster of the Tiles. Oh, there is history between them beyond what any of us might have imagined.

‘But you are,’ Udinaas insisted. ‘Because you expected to find me alone.’

She stiffened, then attempted a shrug. ‘Menandore feels nothing for you, my love. You must realize that. You are naught but a weapon in her hands.’

‘Hardly. Too blunted, too pitted, too fragile by far.’

Feather Witch’s laugh was high and sharp. ‘Fragile? Errant take me, Udinaas, you have never been that.’

Seren Pedac certainly agreed with her assessment. What reason this false modesty?

‘I asked what you wanted. Why are you here?’

‘I have changed since you last saw me,’ Feather Witch replied. ‘I am now Destra Irant to the Errant, to the last Elder God of the Letherii. Who stands behind the Empty Throne-’

‘It’s not empty.’

‘It will be.’

‘Now there’s your new-found faith getting in the way again. All that hopeful insistence that you are once more at the centre of things. Where is your flesh hiding right now, Feather Witch? In Letheras, no doubt. Some airless, stinking hovel that you have proclaimed a temple-yes, that stings you, telling me I am not in error. About you. Changed, Feather Witch? Well, fool yourself if you like. But don’t think I’m deceived. Don’t think I will now fall into your arms gasping with lust and devotion.’

‘You once loved me.’

‘I once pressed red-hot coins into Rhulad’s dead eyes, too. But they weren’t dead, alas. The past is a sea of regrets, but I have crawled a way up the shore now, Feather Witch. Quite a way, in fact.’

‘We belong together, Udinaas. Destra Irant and T’orrud Segul, and we will have, at our disposal, a Mortal Sword. Letherii, all of us. As it should be, and through us the Errant rises once more. Into power, into domination-it is what our people need, what we have needed for a long time.’

‘The Tiste Edur-’

‘Are on their way out. Rhulad’s Grey Empire-it was doomed from the start. Even you saw that. It’s tottering, crumbling, falling to pieces. But we Letherii will survive. We always do, and now, with the rebirth of the faith in the Errant, our empire will make the world tremble. Destra Irant, T’orrud Segul and Mortal Sword, we shall be the three behind the Empty Throne. Rich, free to do as we please. We shall have Edur for slaves. Broken, pathetic Edur. Chained, beaten, we shall use them up, as they once did to us. Love me or not, Udinaas. Taste my kiss or turn away, it does not matter. You are T’orrud Segul. The Errant has chosen you-’

‘He tried, you mean. I sent the fool away.’

She was clearly stunned into silence.

Udinaas half turned with a dismissive wave of one hand. ‘I sent Menandore away, too. They tried using me like a coin, something to be passed back and forth. But I know all about coins. I’ve smelled the burning stench of their touch.’ He glanced back at her again. ‘And if I am a coin, then I belong to no-one. Borrowed, occasionally. Wagered, often. Possessed? Never for long.’

‘T’orrud Segul-’

‘Find someone else.’

‘You have been chosen, you damned fool!’ She started forward suddenly, tearing at her own threadbare slave’s tunic. Cloth ripped, fluttered on the hot wind like the tattered fragments of some imperial flag. She was naked, reaching out to drag Udinaas round, arms encircling his neck-

His push sent her sprawling onto the hard, stony ground. ‘I’m done with rapes,’ he said in a low, grating voice. ‘Besides, I told you we have company. You clearly didn’t completely understand me-’ And he walked past her, walked straight towards the serpent that was Seren Pedac.

She woke with a calloused hand closed about her throat. Stared up into glittering eyes in the gloom.

She could feel him trembling above her, his weight pinning her down, and he lowered his face to hers, then, wiry beard bristling along her cheek, brought his mouth to her right ear, and began whispering.

‘I have been expecting something like that, Seren Pedac, lor some time. Thus, you had my admiration… of your restraint. Too bad, then, it didn’t last.’

She was having trouble breathing; the hand wrapping her throat was an iron band.

‘I meant what I said about rapes, Acquitor. If you ever do that again, I will kill you. Do you understand me?’

She managed a nod, and she could see now, in his face, the full measure of the betrayal he was feeling, the appalling hurt. That she would so abuse him.

‘Think nothing of me,’ Udinaas continued, ‘if that suits the miserable little hole you live in, Seren Pedac. It’s what wiped away your restraint in the first place, after all. But I have had goddesses use me. And gods try to. And now a scrawny witch I once lusted after, who dreams her version of tyranny is preferable to everyone else’s. I was a slave-I am used to being used, remember? But-and listen carefully, woman-1 am a slave no longer-’

Fear Sengar’s voice came down from above them. ‘Release her throat, Udinaas. That which you feel at the back of your own neck is the tip of my sword-and yes, that trickle of blood belongs to you. The Acquitor is Betrothed to Trull Sengar. She is under my protection. Release her now, or die.’

The hand gripping her throat loosened, lifted clear-

And Fear Sengar had one hand in the slave’s hair, was tearing him back, flinging him onto the ground, the sword hissing in a lurid blur-

‘NO!’ Seren Pedac shrieked, clawing across to throw herself down onto Udinaas. ‘No, Fear! Do not touch him!’

‘Acquitor-’

Others awake now, rising on all sides-

‘Do not hurt him!’ I have done enough of that this night, ‘Fear Sengar-Udinaas, he had that right-‘Oh, Errant save me-‘He had that right,’ she repeated, her throat feeling torn on the inside from that first shriek. ‘I-listen, don’t, Fear, you don’t understand. I… I did something. Something terrible. Please…’ she was sitting up now, speaking to everyone, ‘please, this is my fault.’

Udinaas pushed her weight to one side, and she scraped an elbow raw as he clambered free. ‘Make it day again, Silchas Ruin,’ he said.

‘The night-’

‘Make it day again, damn you! Enough sleep-let’s move on. Now!’

To Seren Pedac’s astonishment, the sky began to lighten once more. What? How?

Udinaas was at his bedroll, fighting to draw it together, stuff it into his pack. She saw tears glittering on his weathered cheeks.

Oh, what have 1 done. Udinaas-

‘You understand too much,’ Clip said in that lilting, offhand tone of his. ‘Did you hear me, Udinaas?’

‘Go fuck yourself,’ the slave muttered.

Silchas Ruin said, ‘Leave him, Clip. He is but a child among us. And he will play his childish games.’

Ashes drifting down to bury her soul, Seren Pedac turned away from all of them. No, the child is me. Still. Always.

Udinaas…

Twelve paces away, Kettle sat, legs drawn under her, and held hands with Wither, ghost of an Andii, and there was neither warmth nor chill in that grip. She stared at the others as the light slowly burgeoned to begin a new day.

‘What they do to each other,’ she whispered.

Wither’s hand tightened around hers. ‘It is what it is to live, child.’

She thought about that, then. The ghost’s words, the weariness in the tone, and, after a long time, she finally nodded.

Yes, this is what it is to live.

It made all that she knew was coming a little easier to bear.

In the litter-scattered streets of Drene, the smell of old smoke was bitter in the air. Black smears adorned building walls. Crockery, smashing down from toppled carts, had flung pieces everywhere, as if the sky the night before had rained glazed sherds. Bloodstained cloth, shredded and torn remnants of tunics and shirts, were blackening under the hot sun. Just beyond the lone table where sat Venitt Sathad, the chaos of the riot that had ignited the previous day’s dusk was visible on all sides.