‘… Maybe she really was… really…’

Hurl soothed him with a hand on his hot brow. ‘Yes – maybe.’ Or maybe she was just a crazy old mage.

The guards came running down the hillside, gesturing, while the column of Seti horsemen overtook them. The riders threw themselves from their mounts, ran to the wounded. Hurl saw among them many who looked like shamans and shamanesses, but none carried any animal totems that she could see. She left them to it as a number came to Sweetgrass and she crossed to Rell.

For some reason she'd come to him last. The moment she realized this she knew why. Something in the way he'd fallen. So limp. So… final. He lay now as he'd struck the earth. She knelt on her knees at his side. He was dead; his throat torn out and scarred face further gashed by the flesh-rending talons of the man-jackal. Oh, Rell. I am so sorry. She smoothed his ragged, newly grown hair. This was not the way it was supposed to happen. Heng had taken you as its new protector. You were to take her place in the city temple. Usher in a long and prosperous future… yet here you lie. You gave your life to end the curse. Perhaps that was what they sensed. That somehow you would end it for them. This was just not the way anyone wanted it to happen.

What will we do? Go on, I suppose. Rebuild. Ha! Build. And only Silk and I are left. We alone survived the curse. If there ever was one. Yet there was, wasn't there? Ryllandaras himself.

She stood, walked the grounds around the dying fire just to be sure but found no sign of Liss. So she succeeded where all others had failed. She'd delivered the Seti of their curse. And hadn't she given her own? What had it been…?

Seti shamanesses came and spoke to her but she ignored them, shaking her head. No, not yet. What had it been? Ah, yes! That they would wander lost until they prayed for her forgiveness! Well, Lissarathel or not, the woman had just assured herself a place in their pantheon, or at least their legends. Certainly their prayers.

She rubbed her face, glanced around, sighing her exhaustion. Hours till dawn. She waved the corporal of the guard detachment to her. He ran up, saluted smartly, his eyes hugely wide. She motioned to Rell. ‘Wrap him up. We'll return him for burial. And bring the swords. They have to be returned. It's time to go home.’

EPILOGUE

ABENT FIGURE DRAPED IN RAGS EMERGED FROM A SAGGING, dilapidated tent of hides and felt blankets. He hobbled down to a broad white sand beach, leaning heavily on a stick of driftwood, pausing occasionally to catch his breath. He came to the surf where a turquoise lagoon washed up weakly in a thin line of spume. An armoured giant of a man lay half-buried in sand at the surf's edge. The bent figure stood looking down for a time then gave the figure a sharp rap with his stick. The man gasped, fumbling awkwardly, pushed himself heavily to his feet. He yanked off his tall helm to let it fall into the wet sand, clutched at his neck just beneath his blond beard. His eyes filled with wonder.

‘Yes, you are healed, Skinner.’

The man, Skinner, towered over the bent figure. ‘You answered…’ he rumbled.

‘Of course. Have I not been nearby for some time now? I know you sensed my aid here and there, yes? I have had my eye on you, Skinner of the Avowed.’ The figure, his shape obscured in the layered hanging rags, gestured to his tent. ‘The question is, what can you do… for me?’

Skinner ignored the invitation, peered up and down the shore. ‘Where are my people?’

Turning away, the figure shuffled haltingly back up the strand. ‘They are being held in abeyance until we have reached an accord, Skinner.’

‘We have an accord, Chained One,’ Skinner growled, straightening and wincing. He still touched at his neck.

The figure glanced back, his rag-wrapped head bent almost to the sands. ‘Oh? We do?’

‘Yes.’ Skinner studied the shore, squinted in the dazzling light reflected from the white sands. ‘Here are my terms – I deliver to you myself and some forty Avowed and in return I claim the title of King.’

Oh? You claim it?’

Skinner drew off his gauntlets, let them fall on to the sands. He nodded, his gaze hooded, almost sleepy, on the bent-double figure. ‘Yes. It is mine.’

‘Good.’ The figure hobbled off. ‘It's about time somebody took it.’

‘My people!’

A negligent wave of a misshapen hand over his shoulder and the figure ducked within the low sagging tent. Skinner turned to examine the surf. In ones and twos men and women appeared washed up in the lazy waves. He went to help pull them up on to the strand.

It was night, and the battlefield of gouged, naked soil and blackened stubble was empty but for sniffing, hopeful jackals and the odd human scavenger searching for loot. A man in a mail coat under laced leathers stood motionless, his head lowered. His long black hair blew about his scarred dark face.

‘Greetings, Dessembrae,’ spoke a nearby gnawed skull, once buried but since dug up by scavengers. ‘And I say Dessembrae for I see you are here now in that aspect.’

The man let go a long breath, rolled his neck to ease its tension. ‘A long time, Hood.’

‘Indeed. Dare I say how just like those old times?’

The man's face twisted in loathing. ‘No, you may not.’

‘Yet here you are – why are you here?’

‘I am bearing witness to a death. A soldier's death.’

‘How… commonplace.’

‘He was no common soldier, though he knew it not. Had the Seti remained he would have out-generalled the Imperial forces, and had his bodyguard been a fraction of an instant faster, would have proven victorious over the Guard as well. He would have made High Fist and risen to become one of the greatest commanders ever thrown up by the Empire. But all that potential died here today, unrealized. Known to none.’

‘I know, Dessembrae. I took him.’

‘Yes. As you take everyone – eventually. And I will not ask what all others ask of you – why? Because what I have come to understand is that there is no why. To ask why is to impose expectations on mute existence – expectations it is in no way obliged to meet or even extend. And so I make no more, ask no more.’

The skull was silent for a time – as skulls are. ‘So that is the course of your thoughts,’ said Hood, and the man believed he detected a note of… surprise.

‘What of it?’

Silence.

We will speak again, I promise you.

Lurin, Amagin and Shurll were out throwing stones at the Deadhouse. That was what everyone in Malaz city called the old abandoned building in its creepy grounds of trees that never grew leaves in any season. They'd always thrown stones at it, and their mothers and fathers before them had tossed their share as well. This night the streets gleamed from a cold rain that had swept in from the south. Lurin, barefoot, felt the chill so he put an extra effort into his arm to warm himself up.

‘Did you see that?’ he called to Amagin and Shurll. ‘Went right in that window – I swear.’

‘Didn't,’ Amagin sniffed.

‘Did too!’ He looked to Shurll for support but the older girl was just hugging herself, staring off down the street where it descended to the waterfront, the wharf and the sea glimmering beyond. She'd been doing that more often these days. ‘It did too, Shurll,’ he called. She shrugged her bony shoulders.

Amagin held out a stone, grinning, his nose wet and running. ‘No way you can hit that window.’

Lurin snatched it from him. ‘You'll see.’

He held the stone out before himself to sight on the window – heavier than he'd have chosen – Amagin always picked poor throwing stones which was why he couldn't hit any target to save his life. Tongue tucked firmly between his teeth, he drew back, raised one foot and threw.