Spinnock’s mind was spinning. The High Priestess? ‘No, she doesn’t. Love me, I mean. I didn’t mean, her, anyway.’

‘Gods below, Spinnock Durav, you’re a damned fool.’

‘I know that. I’ve as much as confessed it, for Hood’s sake.’

‘So you’re not interested in making the High Priestess happier than she’s been in a thousand years. Fine. That’s your business. Some other woman, then. Careful, someone might up and murder her. Jealousy is deadly.’

This was too offhand for Seerdomin, too loose, too careless. It had the sound of a man who had surrendered to despair, no longer caring-about anything. Loosing every arrow in his quiver, eager to see it suddenly, fatally empty. This Seerdomin frightened Spinnock. ‘What have you been up to?’ he asked.

‘I have been murdering people.’ He poured another round, then settled back in his chair, ‘Eleven so far. They saw themselves as liberators. Scheming the downfall of their Tiste Andii oppressors. I answered their prayers and liberated every one of them. This is my penance, Spinnock Durav. My singular apology for the madness of humanity. Forgive them, please, because I cannot.’

Spinnock found a tightness in his throat that started tears in his eyes. He could not so much as look at this man, dared not, lest he see all that should never be revealed, never be exposed. Not in his closest friend. Not in anyone. ‘That,’ he said, hating his own words, ‘was not necessary.’’Strictly speaking, you are right, friend. They would have failed-I lack no faith In your efficacy, especially that of your Lord. Understand, I did this out of a desire to prove that, on occasion, we are capable of policing our own. Checks and ha lances. This way the blood stains my hands, not yours. Giving no one else cause for hating you.’

‘Those who hate need little cause, Seerdomin.’

The man nodded-Spinnock caught the motion peripherally.

There was a silence. The tale had been told, Spinnock recalled, more than once. How the Bridgeburner named Whiskeyjack-a man Anomander Rake called friend-had intervened in the slaughter of the Pannion witches, the mad mothers of Children of the Dead Seed. Whiskeyjack, a human, had sought to grant the Son of Darkness a gift, taking away the burden of the act. A gesture that had shaken his Lord to the core. It is not in our nature to permit others to share our burden.

Yet we will, unhesitatingly, take on theirs.

‘I wonder if we blazed his trail.’

‘What?’

Spinnock rubbed at his face, feeling slightly drunk. ‘Itkovian’s.’

‘Of course you didn’t. The Grey Swords-’

‘Possessed a Shield Anvil, yes, but they were not unique in that. It’s an ancient title. Are we the dark mirror to such people?’ Then he shook his head. ‘Probably not. That would be a grand conceit.’

‘I agree,’ Seerdomin said in a slurred growl.

‘I love her.’

‘So you claimed. And presumably she will not have you.’

‘Very true.’

‘So here you sit, getting drunk.’

‘Yes.’

‘Once I myself am drunk enough, Spinnock Durav, I will do what’s needed.’

‘What’s needed?’

‘Why, I will go and tell her she’s a damned fool.’

‘You’d fail.’

‘I would?’

Spinnock nodded. ‘She’s faced you down before. Unflinchingly.’ Another stretch of silence. That stretched on, and on.

He was drunk enough now to finally shift his gaze, to fix his attention on Seer-domin’s face.

It was a death mask, white as dust. ‘Where is she?’ the man asked in a raw, strained voice.

‘On her way back out to the barrow, I should think. Seerdomin, I am sorry. I did not lie when I said I was a fool-’

‘You were,’ and he rose, weaving slightly before, steadying himself with both hands on the back of his chair. ‘But not in the way you think.’

‘She didn’t want my help,’ Spinnock Durav said.

‘And I would not give her mine.’

‘Your choice-’

‘You should not have listened, my friend. To her. You should not have lis-tened to her!’

Spinnock stood as Seerdomin spun round and marched for the door. He was suddenly without words, numbed, stunned into confusion. What have I done? What have I not done!? But his friend was gone.

In her irritation, Samar Dev discovered traits in herself that did not please. There was no reason to resent the manner in which her two companions found so much pleasure in each other’s company. The way they spoke freely, unconstrained by decorum, unaffected even by the fact that they barely knew one another, and the way the subjects flowed in any and every direction, flung on whims of mood, swirling round heady topics like eddies round jagged rocks. Most infuriating of all, they struck on moments of laughter, and she well knew-damn the gods, she was certain-that neither man possessed such ease of humour, that they were so far removed from that characterization that she could only look on in stunned disbelief.