Grimacing his disgust, the man eased his stance. ‘As you can see, my limbs are all whole. You're wasting your time.’

A chuckle dry as ashes. ‘Now you are deluding yourself. Or attempting to deceive me. Surely you above all are aware of the unimportance – the plain cultivated artifice – of all outward appearances.’

The man eyed the ridges above for movement. Was he being delayed? Were agents on the way? What lay behind the Chained One's contact, here, now?

‘I assure you we are quite alone. We have all the time in the world to discuss our mutual interests.’

He regarded the cadaver. ‘You can assure that – here?’

A convulsive laugh raised a cloud of dust from the body. ‘Oh, yes. Most surely. Through the influence of one of my representatives. Which brings me to my point. You, sir, are most qualified to join my House. If the positions as currently revealed do not interest you, then perhaps a new one could be forged. A new card called into creation for you and you alone. Imagine that. Is that not a singular achievement?’

‘It's been done.’

Stillness from the corpse, which the man interpreted as icy irritation. ‘Do not be so impetuous. It ill befits you. Come. Be reasonable. Surely you do not imagine you will survive the forces now arraying themselves against the Throne – and more. Do not throw yourself away needlessly.’

‘Tell me more of these forces.’

A gnawed digit reduced to one knuckle rose to shake a negative. ‘Now, now. We have not yet struck a bargain. Nor does it appear we shall.’ The arm fell and the carious grin widened. ‘A pity. For while you refuse to see wisdom, I've no doubt he shall…’ The corpse laughed its desiccated heaving whistle and with a snarl the man kicked it down. It fell clattering into pieces as the presence animating it withdrew.

The figure in rags stood for a time, silent, listening to that anaemic wind. No, he decided. No one would rob him of his satisfaction – not even the Chained One himself. But he would be no more likely to accept either, would he? No, he knew him too well. They were too much alike. Neither would accept any diversion until the final deed was done, the final knife driven home. And the beauty of all this waiting was that eventually, ultimately, the bastard Cowl would have to come to him.

When Traveller and a few villagers went out to search the highlands for a mast tree, Ereko left the hut at mid-morning. He would have preferred going while the man slept but he was reluctant to pursue a reading at night; only a fool would tempt fate so. The house, a sod-roofed fisherman's dwelling, stood near the edge of the strand's modest lip. A sturdy skiff was pulled up at the shore, a man repairing its side. An old woman sat at the hut's door mending a coat. She looked up at him without fear, the first sign he had of what was to come.

‘I was told a Talent lives here.’

The old woman nodded and set aside her mending. She held out a clawed hand. Ereko set a silver piece into her hardened palm.

She showed no surprise, merely tucked the coin into her wide skirt at the waist. This he should have taken as the second sign.

‘Hrath!’ she called, her voice harsh and clipped, like a sea bird's. ‘Hrath!’

A young boy whom he had noticed earlier playing among the black algae-skirted rocks at the headland ran up to them. The old woman took his hand. ‘The cards, Hrath,’ she said, and pushed him inside.

Ereko noticed immediately the marks of a Talent on the smooth face of the boy. He appeared to be about ten, prepubescent for a certainty – another strong sign. He wondered for how long the entwined strings of fate had woven for this encounter. It had been a long time since he had last dared a reading. For him, more than others, they tended to be messy. For Traveller, they would be deadly.

Stooping, Ereko sat cross-legged on the packed dirt floor of the hut. The old woman now tended a fire at the back of the one room while the boy smoothed the bared dirt of the floor. He stretched the cards out for inspection. Ereko noted their damp chill, another strong sign.

The boy held the deck calmly for a moment then began placing them in a cross design that divided the patch of earth into quarters. An old arrangement. Ereko had been told it was a field not popular in the cities. That it favoured the influence of the Houses too much, so the Talents there complained. When the boy began speaking his voice startled Ereko, so full of assurance and experience it was.

‘The Queen of Life is high,’ the boy began, as most true Talents do for him. ‘Protection, I think. You are favoured. I see House of Death; it is also concerned. How they ever dog each other! Shadow is present, growing over time. The Sceptre close to the Knight of Death reversed… Betrayal. By whom? But no, that is the past. It regards another and intrudes. I see multiple convergences and revenge, but all bitter. Obelisk is close – it travels with you, both a blessing and a burden. Kallor, the High King, twisted inversion of all rulership, stands opposite…’

Ereko was startled. How could this boy know that? Then he chided himself. If a true Talent, the boy knew more than he now spoke even if his poor deck had no cards of the new house.

‘I… that is,‘ something struggled on the face of the boy. ‘So many wrestle here, drawn by the one close to you! I see the ancient past threatening to prove a future preordained. I see fear promising blindness to opportunities – as ever, self-interest threatens to prevent natural fulfilment. For you: only one card remains. Tell him, tell the Soldier of Light – fear none but the Chained.’ These last words rushed out, stopping abruptly as the boy drew one last card that he held up before his face, silenced by its appearance. ‘No,’ he breathed. ‘It cannot be…’ He pitched forward, scattering the cards.

The old woman came and picked up the insensate boy and carried him to a pallet. She crooned over him, caressed his gleaming face. Lying face-up on the beaten earth was the last card: King of Night – the most ill-omened of all stations and attributes. Ereko left without a word. It was as he'd suspected, the fates were done with him; scarcely any of the reading regarded him. He was close now – one card could only mean one remaining path for his future. As he walked back to the keel lain on its rollers and set with its ribs, he wondered: who was the Soldier of Light? And King of Night? That card had always carried symbolic meaning only. How could it have become active? What could it mean? Were they related? And what, if anything, had it all to do with him or Traveller?

The clanging of the iron bar suspended over the mine-head roused Ho from his mid-afternoon doze. Wincing at joints stiff and swollen, he swung his feet down from the sleeping ledge and fumbled about for his tunic and leggings. New arrivals. Surprising, that. Shipments of prisoners to the Otataral mines had thinned to a trickle these last few years. Seemed Laseen was at last running out of enemies. He snorted: not too bloody likely.

Though decades had passed since he'd been the Pit's unofficial mayor and inmate spokesman to the Warder – and who was the damned Warder these days anyway? – Ho still felt obliged to put in a showing at the welcoming ceremony.

He nodded to familiar faces as he tramped the twisting narrow tunnels – shafts themselves once – each following a promising vein of Otataral. Most of those he met returned his nod; it was a small world down here among those exiled for life in these poisonous mines. Poison indeed, for Otataral is anathema to Warren manipulation and magery, and they were all of them down here mages. Each condemned by the emperor, or the Empress in her turn. And Ho had been among the first.