“Fucking fucking fucking what the fuck?” Tobias kicked the ground. Stamping and swearing trying to keep the fear out of him. His arm hurt like murder. Like it was alive with insects. Like every crow in Ith was pecking him alive. But nothing compared to the fear and anger. Betrayal. Shock. Failure.

Humiliation.

Again.

I had a shit in front of you once, Raeta, he thought. And you turn out to be a … a …

They were hidden in the cave. It was dark in the cave. Dark and damp. Landra sat in the corner. She had her scrap of yellow cloth in her hands, kept looking at it, turning it over.

“Fuck fucking fuck fuck fuck.”

Stone crunched under Tobias’s boot heel. He kicked the wall of the cave and his leg hurt. A shower of dust from the ceiling. Landra glanced briefly up.

“He wasn’t injured,” said Landra. “I stabbed him. I did.”

“Yeah.” Who knew what had happened?

“My knife … It just … It rusted away. The blade. Stabbed him and it just … rusted away. Didn’t harm him.”

“Yeah.” Like you stabbed Grav, he tried to think. Like that.

“Look at it!”

She held out the hilt of something. All kind of ashy at the base, where it should join to a blade. Looked old as mountains. She prodded it. A bit of it fell off.

Amrath returned. Dragon kin. Demon born. All that crap.

Oh, gods. Oh fuck.

She just missed him, he thought desperately. Missed and her knife sort of … sort of … broke …

“He’s just a man,” said Landra. “I stabbed him.” Twisting and twisting the scrap of yellow cloth. “My brother bedded him. I used to sit opposite him at dinner. I was going to marry him.”

“It’s a bloody good thing we didn’t make it into Malth Tyrenae,” said Tobias. “Would have looked pretty dumb, wouldn’t we, rushing him shouting ‘Death to King Ruin!’ and our swords just bouncing off?”

The thing that was pretending to be Raeta came in through the mouth of the cave. Her breath was wheezing out of her. She was bent over like sticks and looked a thousand years old and a thousand leagues tall. She sat down slow as an old man. Rotting smell. Sweet. Dead animals. Old dead wood. All her different faces. She looked like an owl and a skull and a dead horse and a fallen tree. Bones and splinters poking out all wrong. Lots of different bits of her crawling and moving, like she was covered in insects. Bark and leaves and fur and hide and feathers. Old, old god thing. Old power of earth and life. Whole forest of life growing over and around her. If you listened carefully, you could hear birds singing and beetles’ wings. Gestmet. Wood god. Life god.

“He’s gone,” she said. “They broke camp. We’re safe for now.” Turned to Landra. “You named him King Ruin, Landra,” it said.

Landra kept turning the yellow cloth over. Staring at it, not looking anywhere else.

The thing that was pretending to be Raeta got some bread out of her pack, chewed it. Crack of bones shifting as she ate. She ate very slowly, like it hurt her to move her mouth. Stopped, spat a tooth into her hand.

Tobias took a drink from his water bottle. Meltwater from the river Sorrow, cold as stars. Got out some bread and chewed it himself.

Landra kept turning the yellow cloth over. Staring at it, not looking anywhere else.

The thing that was pretending to be Raeta finished the bread, drank water from her own bottle. Winced. Cold pain on the wounds in her mouth. Her breath reminded him of a loom clacking.

He could still almost see her woman face. One eye was sealed up puffy. Oozing. Green-blue-purple-red-black. Her real eye stared through beneath it, furnace hot, huge as the world. Kind of like being a weaver, he kept trying to think. Seeing the pretty cloth with its pretty dancing patterns, flowers and swirls and that, masterpiece of the weaver’s art, that is, got to envy the talent what made that, while also seeing the mess there’d be on the other side too, just a whole lot of jumbled colours, the bloodstains from a child’s fingers for the fine bits, the tears of frustration up at midnight bent frantic over the loom, the slowly going blind eyes. Seeing both things, at once.

Kind of like that. Kind of.

Blood was beginning to seep out again from the bandage round her left shoulder. Black bones shoved out through coarse skin. He’d had to sew it up. Crack the bones back into place. Looked one way and it was nice white lady skin and pinky lady bits. Then blinked, and … Couldn’t see it. Or could, but couldn’t fix it in his mind.

His own arm wasn’t much better. Wouldn’t stop bleeding, no matter how tightly Landra tied it.

“Who’s the bloke in the boat you say is your brother?” he asked. “You really got a dead ma back on the Whites?”

The thing that was pretending to be Raeta spat blood, laughed then caught her hands to her chest. “You’ve got a god sitting beside you and that’s what you want to know? Who’s the bloke in the boat? You really got a dead ma?”

“Gods and demons, Raeta!”

The thing that was pretending to be Raeta laughed again, wheezed her breath. “The bloke on the boat had a sister called Raeta. They had a ma back on Fealene.”

“Had?”

“I told you: she’s dead. I am that Raeta, Tobias. I’m just … this, as well.”

“A gestmet. A wood demon. A failure. A not actually all that powerful god thing.”

“His destruction.” Wheezing breath like a loom clattering. “Basically, yes.”

Best part of two months, he’d had Marith poxy gods’ cursed Altrersyr King Ruin King of Shadows the second coming of Amrath marching around making him tea and digging the fucking latrines.

Best part of six months, he’d had Raeta whatever the fuck she was god thing nagging at him and being whined at back. He’d shat himself in front of her. Very nearly once asked her if she’d be interested in having a feel of his cock.

Still saw it. Every time his eyes closed. Every time he stopped concentrating on not seeing it. Fire blast. Blinding. The two of them fighting.

Death and Life. White light and shadows. Wingbeats. Knife blades. Seeing things it wasn’t possible for a man to see.

Seeing Raeta fail. Seeing Raeta dying. Seeing what Marith really was.

Running in the dark. Lost. Running. Back to the cave, with Grav dead behind a pile of rocks.

Failure.

Again.

Oh, gods.

“So,” said Landra. “What now, then?”

“We die,” said Tobias shortly. “Or I do and you do.”

The thing that was pretending to be called Raeta’s breath came even worse, clacking like loom weights. “I’m not far off dying, Tobias,” she said. “A lot closer to dying than you are. But yes, we go on after him.” She said. “What else is there we can do? Our death and his death.” Bent her head. “I had not realized he was so … so strong,” she said.

Landra looked at the hilt of her knife and laughed.

“We should get out of here,” said Tobias. “There’ll be men out looking, I should think.”

“You’re both wounded,” said Landra.

“Rather wounded than dead.”

Grav’s body fucking stank already. The clouds had come down very low, thick like fog, hiding everything.

Tobias drew his sword. “Come on, then. His death and our death.” Or just our death, more like.

The thought of what would have happened if they’d been a day earlier in Tyrenae again. Really clear image of it: him running at Marith screaming, the sword hitting, the sword bouncing off in little bits of rusty metal, Marith grinning at him. Invulnerable! Gods, yet another reason to hate the poisonous little shit. I risked my fucking neck, he thought, in Sorlost, warding a sword stroke off him.

“Did you magic me?” he said to the thing that was pretending to be Raeta. “Did you maze me, make me follow you to help you kill him? Like he magicked me to fight for him on the White Isles? Is that why I’m here, not safe in a warm bed somewhere? Did you magic me?”

“Did he magic you to fight for him on the White Isles?” said Raeta.

Thought about this. Malth Salene, Marith’s voice screaming “Destroy it,” killing everything.

Landra looked at him. He looked back at her. Met her stare. Held it.

“Go back to Immish, then,” said Raeta. “Find a warm bed.”

“Fuck him. Fuck him.”

Got up, shouldered his pack, began to walk on. Bent over, limping and gasping with pain.