“I am not sure I do.”

“There is little more to it than this: whatever choices we make – you about your na’kyrim, we Inkallim about the movement of armies – are predestined, their outcome already inscribed upon the pages of the Hooded God’s book. The significance of any decision is not, therefore, in the decision itself, but in the thought that underlies it. The posture, if you like, of the mind that makes it. The correct posture is one that gives primacy to the advancement of the creed, and willingly accepts whatever consequences may flow from adhering to that principle.”

“I understand that,” Wain said, nodding. Goedellin was not looking at her, and could not see the gesture.

“Very well. The Firsts concluded that committing the strength of the Inkalls to this struggle offered at least the possibility of firming the Black Road’s grip upon the world. Whether it does so or not, we will all live – or die – with the consequences of that commitment. We need ask ourselves only one question about this na’kyrim that so unsettles Fiallic, and so offends the noble Eagle. Can he serve the creed? Does he offer the possibility of advancing our cause?”

“Yes,” Wain said, and then, with greater certainty, “Yes.”

Goedellin looked up at her and smiled blackly.

“Well, then,” he said.

“Temegrin will not be happy. He wants Aeglyss dead.”

“So Fiallic told me. No matter. The Eagle is timid. Those whose answer to the Black Road is timidity seldom prosper. You keep the halfbreed at your side. We will do what we can to dissuade Temegrin, and others if needed, from intemperate action.”

Wain nodded. Goedellin coughed and hung his head, so that she could no longer see his eyes, or those stained lips.

“Go,” the Inkallim muttered. “Take yourself back to Glasbridge, and your brother’s side. The army is already starting to move. Our greatest victory in more than a century is mere days away. If fate favours us.”

Wain gathered the few warriors of her Blood who remained in the city on the main square. She had them lay out their weapons and chain mail and shields on the ground. She and her Shield walked up and down the meagre ranks, heads down, eyes searching for any flaw. Wain found a mail shirt with broken links. She struck the man who owned it on the chest, staggering him a little.

“You’re done here,” she said as she walked. “We’re done with this city. The newcomers can have it: Gyre, or the Battle, or the thousands who follow them. The battle’s to the south now, and so is your Thane, so that’s where we’ll take ourselves. To Glasbridge. That’s where your Blood makes its stand.”

She kicked a battered shield with the toe of her boot. It skittered away over the cobbles.

“That’ll split at the first blow. Find another. We’ll stand against whatever marches up from the south. We’ll hold it, and bleed it, and pin it there for this great army to come down upon it. And those of us who die will die in a great cause, and in a great victory.”

The house where Wain and Kanin had taken quarters when they overran Anduran still stood, on the edge of the square. She wandered up its stairs, from room to room, while her warriors outside mounted up. There were memories here that had a warm, tempting texture to them: of their first, triumphant surge into this city, and of the dizzying sense that fate might lay out for them the richest of feasts. Wain knew that it was an indulgence to seek out those memories, and a failing to take comfort in them. In normal times, she would need no such recourse to the past. These were not normal times, though, and she felt almost a stranger in her own skull. She was unsettled. The certainties of life and of the world, usually so clear to her, had lost something of their sharpness. What reassurance her discussion with Goedellin had brought was a fragile thing, already fraying at the edges.

She stared, for a time, into a fireplace. There was only ash there now, and a few fragments of dead, charred wood.

A soft sound had her spinning on her heel, and reaching for her sword. Aeglyss was standing in the doorway, his hands clasped across his midriff.

“You should not be in here,” Wain snapped.

“Why not?” the na’kyrim asked as he drifted into the room. “Is your solitude so precious to you?”

“Precious enough that I don’t want it disturbed by you, halfbreed.” She strove to make her tone dismissive, contemptuous. It did not come easily, though.

Aeglyss smiled, and Wain had the lurching sense of her self splintering. It was as if two different beings, looking out through her eyes, saw two different things. That smile was at once leering and warming; the na’kyrim ’s face was at once sickly and captivating; her throat tightened from both repulsion and anticipation. Was this madness?

Her vision blurred then, and the dim light that suffused the room dipped for an instant into a murky fog. She shook her head, and found Aeglyss close to her, almost touching. She stepped backwards from him, but he murmured “No,” and followed her.

She tried to call for her Shield, but some invisible hand was pressed across her mouth, stilling all sound.

“It is your instincts you fight against, Thane’s sister.” He whispered the words, but they filled Wain’s every sense, they were glowing and ringing and hot against her skin. “What I have become wakes something in you. Don’t you see? You won’t be the only one. When I reach out, when I drift, I can feel hopes and desires and hungers and hatreds all flocking about me. They cluster in my wake. Oh, I wish I could show you.”

His mouth was close to her cheek. She could feel his breath, and smell his sweet, rotten exhalations.

“Let me show you. Open yourself to me.” His hands, like spiders: one on her shoulder, the other cupping her breast, pressing the rings of her mail shirt against her. “Please.”

The strands of her resistance were thinning. They would have parted, she distantly knew, had Aeglyss himself not faltered then. A spasm deformed his face, baring his teeth like a snarl. His hands jerked, perhaps bruising her in the instant before they splayed themselves open and fell away. Trembling, released, she pushed him and he staggered backwards.

“Help me,” he gasped. “They’re coming for me. Can you smell it? The leaves, the forest?”

He reeled sideways, thumping into the wall. Wain edged towards the open door, horrified but still feeling the residue of a shaming desire.

Aeglyss sagged. “No. No.” He sank down on to his haunches, pressed against the wall, like a child making himself small, trying to hide. “You’ll not have me. I’m too…”

Wain turned away. Her head was heavy, resistant to the movement. She took a step, and then another, and her legs were sluggish. She had to force her way out of the room against the reluctance of her own body.

“Wain,” Aeglyss said behind her, and she could not help but look back at him. He was still crouched down there, in the crease between wall and floor, staring up at her. “I have terrible enemies,” he murmured. “The great beasts of the Shared would turn upon me. But you are not my enemy. You know it, in your heart. And I am not yours. Please. I am the greatest friend fate will ever grant you, and your cause.”

Perhaps. She was not certain whether she spoke it aloud, or only thought it deep in the turbulence this na’kyrim spun her mind into. Perhaps. I cannot think clearly. I cannot tell. Not any more. She walked out and descended into the more comprehensible company of her warriors.