Temegrin glanced up as she drew near. He looked to be in poor humour.

“Greetings, lady,” he rumbled.

She gave him a curt nod, then straightened her back and lifted her chin a fraction. She was almost as tall as Temegrin, and did not intend to appear anything other than his equal. In the last few weeks she had, she suspected, seen more fighting than he had in his whole life.

Fiallic the Inkallim faced her with a more welcoming expression. He had surprisingly gentle eyes. They gave a misleading impression of his nature, she was certain.

“Banner-captain,” she said. “We never thought to see the Battle field such strength. I am pleased to find you here.”

“I imagine you are,” Fiallic said with a faint smile. “Shraeve tells me your own strength is all but spent.”

“It is.” Wain saw no point in denying it. “But we hold Glasbridge still. Much remains possible, if fate smiles upon us.”

“Yes. Shraeve told me that as well.”

“We’ll save talk of what’s possible for later,” muttered Temegrin irritably. “We’ve enough to worry about in the now without turning to the hereafter. The High Thane’s command was to raze Tanwrye, and that’s done. I’ll not consent to any discussion of further adventures until I know more of what we face.”

“I doubt our enemies will grant us much time for discussion,” said Fiallic in a soft voice.

“We expect an assault on Glasbridge at any time…” Wain began, but Temegrin cut her short, chopping the air with his hand.

“Enough. We’ll not discuss this out in a courtyard for every ear to listen. And why is your brother not here, anyway? I’d thought he would be the one to deal with these matters.”

Wain ignored the implied insult, shedding it with a twitch of her shoulders. “I share the burden of command with him. You can be assured that I speak with his authority as well as my own. And, as I said, there is likely to be bloodshed in the next few days. One of us had to remain.”

Temegrin grunted, apparently unconvinced.

“I had heard your alliance with the White Owls was a thing of the past,” murmured Fiallic.

Wain glanced at him, and found him looking beyond her. She turned her head, and saw Aeglyss and Hothyn standing there amidst her Shield. Many of the other warriors gathered in the courtyard were watching them, though the na’kyrim and Kyrinin themselves seemed unperturbed by this hostile attention. Aeglyss, Wain saw, had his eyes fixed upon her. She felt a tingle, like the brush of invisible fingertips, run down her neck.

Temegrin followed the line of Fiallic’s gaze and made a thick, deep sound of disapproval.

“That alliance should be a thing of the past,” the Eagle said. “What were you thinking, to bring a woodwight and a halfbreed here?”

Wain set her back to Aeglyss once more. Both Temegrin and Fiallic continued to stare at the silent na’kyrim and his inhuman companion. She wondered what they saw there. Did they, like her, feel Aeglyss’s presence as an almost physical weight bearing down on their senses?

“That’s another matter best discussed elsewhere,” was all she said.

“Now, then,” growled Temegrin. “Come.”

He stamped up into the keep, his feet punishing the steps for his foul mood. Fiallic followed. Wain glanced at Aeglyss, and was caught on the hook of his eyes. Not so much as a tremor disturbed the immobility of his lips, yet she knew what he wanted; what he required of her. She gave a single, sharp nod to summon him and Hothyn after her.

“I didn’t mean for these… these to join us,” protested the Eagle as he, Wain and Fiallic settled into chairs around a fine circular table. The walls were partly panelled with dark wood. It might have been one of Croesan’s private chambers once.

“You question their presence in my company,” Wain muttered. “You can see for yourself. Judge for yourself.” She could not keep a trace of irritation from her voice, though it was directed at herself as much as anyone. She should not have brought Aeglyss in here. It was the act of a fool, no better than jabbing a sleeping bear – or eagle – with a stick. Yet she had done it, and matters would fall out now as fate saw fit.

“I don’t need to judge anything. A woodwight and a halfbreed? They’ve no place in this room, and no place in the company of the faithful.”

“Oh, that’s an old song,” whispered Aeglyss. He was standing behind Wain. She half-turned, meaning to tell him to be silent, but somehow the words stuck in her throat.

“You know…” the na’kyrim cocked his head as he spoke, his interest plainly caught by the thought he meant to express, “everything I see, everyone I meet, it seems to me that I have seen it, met them, before. I do not understand it, but everything, and everyone, tastes… familiar.”

“I will not have our time wasted by some half-wight who-” Temegrin growled menacingly.

“You, for example,” Aeglyss interrupted him. “The Eagle. I know nothing of you, yet I know this: your heart does not burn with hunger for the remade world. You find this world, this life, more to your liking than one true to the creed should, perhaps.”

Wain could clearly see the storm of fury that rose within Temegrin. It blushed his cheeks, knotted his brow, bared his teeth. But before that storm broke, Aeglyss laughed.

“Do you deny it?” he demanded of the Eagle through his laughter, and the words were like corded whips that lashed from him to Temegrin and coiled about the warrior’s throat, his chest. The air quivered at the sound of them and Wain flinched despite herself. Even impassive Fiallic narrowed his eyes and winced.

Temegrin was straining, yearning to pull back from whatever it was that burned in the na’kyrim ’s grey eyes. But he was held. Beads of sweat were on his forehead. Wain could hear his teeth grinding together. Her skin was crawling, her mouth dry. She felt only the side eddies of whatever torrential flow Aeglyss had turned upon Temegrin, yet her head spun, her mind tumbled out of her grasp.

Then Aeglyss grunted and turned away, dropping his gaze to the floor.

“No, you do not,” he murmured.

Temegrin the Eagle slumped in his chair. His chest heaved – a few wild breaths – and then slowed. He regained his composure.

“What… what monstrosity is this you’ve brought into our midst, Wain?” he rasped.

“Wait,” said Fiallic. His tone admitted no possibility of dissent or disobedience. He was watching Aeglyss, though the na’kyrim had drifted away from the table now, and was examining some wooden panelling on the wall. “There will be no more talk, no more discussion of any kind, in this room until the halfbreed has removed himself. Or is removed. The wight, too.”

And there, Wain thought, is the true face of the Banner-captain of the Battle Inkall. There was more threat, more danger, in the Inkallim’s cold, level voice than Temegrin could ever imbue his bluster with.

Yet Aeglyss kept his back to them. It was if he had been struck deaf, or was some open-eyed sleepwalker. He laid his spidery fingers, with their long, clouded nails, on a dark, scratched panel, caressing it. Hothyn was staring at Wain. It was an empty gaze, without threat, without even comprehension as far as she could tell.

“Aeglyss,” Wain said, and he straightened and turned to her. He regarded her with raised, questioning eyebrows, like some willing servant awaiting instruction.

“Leave us,” she said. “Wait outside with my Shield.”

He nodded, and left the room without a word. Hothyn went too: a great, lithe hound at the heels of his master, Wain thought. Only then, as it slowed, did she realise how fast her heart had been beating. Only as she unfolded her hand in her lap did she realise she had made a fist of it. She began to rub and turn the ring on her index finger.

“You will have to explain the company you keep,” said Fiallic to her with an incongruous smile. “My ignorance of his kind is vast in its scale, but your halfbreed is… disturbing.”