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‘I am nothing like my mother,’ Stark said to Brella. ‘Just as you are nothing like your daughter.’
Grinning, Cred glanced over to see Brella’s scowl deepen. ‘Not my daughter any more,’ she said. ‘She casts off the name I gave her. So that she might command us all, and ever from a distance. Captain of a broken army. Captain of beaten refugees, the wreckage of a conquered people. What am I to her? Not her mother.’
‘The High King’s fleet did for our highborn,’ Cred pointed out. ‘You and your daughter come closest to anyone who might resurrect a claim to the royal line.’
Brella snorted.
Cred shook his head. ‘You held the Living Claim, Brella, and then gave it into my keeping. That is the responsibility of the Ilnap bloodline. By this one ritual, you assert your claim to the Lost Throne. Even your daughter does not deny this.’
‘“Captain.”’
‘She chooses that title because she sees no future awaiting us. This is why we’re here, Brella, vowing to march on death itself. The First Betrayal is the Last Betrayal. So it was prophesied.’
Hissing under her breath, Brella rose. ‘I am done with these pointless words. Defeat has become the nectar that sustains us, as would the vile smoke of d’bayang. She leads us on to the path of no return. So be it. But let there be no illusions. We do not lead, only follow. And where this will end, the Living Claim lives no longer.’
‘Curse the High King—’ began Stark, but Brella turned on her.
‘Curse him? Why? We did nothing but raid his coast, loot his merchants and send their ships to the deep. Year after year, season upon season, we grew indolent in our feeding upon the labour of others. Curse him not, Stark. The retribution was just.’
With that, she walked away.
Cred returned his attention to the dying fire. ‘The sorcery within me is no weaker for this loss. How is such a thing possible?’
Shrugging, Stark unrolled her bedding and prepared for sleep, even though the day was barely half done. ‘Perhaps something feeds on what you offer.’
Cred frowned at the woman, and then nodded. ‘Yes, as I said earlier.’
‘No, not your magic, Cred. Just the fire, nothing else. Each day we lose more heat – where is the season of thaw? I see the sea flocks flying into the north. Crabs march the shallows, awaiting the next full moon. All around us, the world prepares its time of breeding and renewal. But not here, not in this camp.’
She settled down, drawing up the heavy furs until they covered her entirely.
Fixing his attention once more on the dying fire, Cred considered Stark’s words. If indeed the season was turning around them, then they had drifted inward. Stark had the truth of that. Curling down a spoke to settle on the hub, and at the very heart of that hub … Hood. He straightened. It has begun.
* * *
Varandas squatted opposite Hood. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I am ending time.’
‘No wonder it’s taking so long.’ Varandas glanced away, seeing the approach of the lone Azathanai who had elected to join this hoary legion. ‘One comes,’ he said to Hood. ‘She has circled for days. Only now are her perambulations revealed as a spiral. Mayhap she will challenge you.’
‘I am proof against challenges,’ Hood replied.
‘Most dullards are. Let reason bludgeon you about the head and then, like a dazed fly, retreat in wobbling flight. The witless are known to defy, with piggy eyes and pressed lips. Making a knuckled fist of their face, they proclaim the stars no more than studs of quartz upon the night sky’s velvet cloak, or the beasts of the wild as simple fodder serving our appetites. They carve every asinine opinion in the stone of their obstinacy and take pride in their own stupidity. Why is it that there comes a time in every civilization when the idiots rise to dominate all discourse, with beetled brows and reams of spite? Who are such fools, and how long did they lurk mostly unseen, simply awaiting their day in the benighted light?’
‘Are you done, Varandas?’ Hood asked.
‘The witless have no comprehension of the rhetorical. They misapprehend unanswerable questions, since in their puny worlds of comprehension they possess none. Only answers, solid as lumps of shit, and just as foul.’ Varandas looked up then, at the arrival of the Azathanai. He nodded, but her attention was on Hood.
She spoke. ‘The dead are marching, Hood. Clever, I suppose. When all wondered how we would march into that realm, instead you bring that realm to us.’
‘Spingalle, I did not think you fled too far.’
‘I never fled at all,’ the Azathanai replied.
‘Where, then?’
‘The Tower of Hate. Penance.’
