Marith thought: I’ve always known.

And it did not surprise him. But it felt almost … almost shameful.

He had been injured before. Of course he had. Many times. Had his hand half burned off by a dragon. Torn all the skin off his knees slipping in a rock pool. Put a broken branch through his arm falling out of a tree. That last had almost killed him, the tree had been rotten, the wound had mortified, wept pus. He remembered, dimly, his mother kneeling by his bedside holding his hand, crying, begging Eltheia for aid. Heal him. Heal him. An older woman’s voice in the background, chanting over and over the old rune words. Hel benth, tha: health, safety from disease, hope. The weight of stone charms and wood charms pressing on his arm.

(Not my mother, he thought. She killed my mother. She hoped I would die that day, I expect. Was begging Eltheia for that. Wasn’t she? Closed the thought away.)

But this …

Hard to kill, the Altrersyr. Famous for it. I always knew, he thought. Always.

“I saw you wounded,” Thalia said. “I saw your blood.” She pointed to ruined bedding heaped on the floor of the ruined tent. “There. There is your blood.”

Thalia sat running her hand over and over his shoulder. Where the wound should be. In the morning light flooding in through the rent in the tent’s roof, with bright lamps burning, his skin was perfect as a child’s skin. Creamy white like new milk. Smooth lines of muscle and bone and sinew. His skin tingled deliciously under the touch of her hand.

“Yes. That’s my blood.”

“Amrath conquered the world,” Marith said after a while. Her hand on his shoulder was distracting. He lifted it off. “He fought a lot of battles. Survived them all.” He drank wine. Looked at her. Rain was still coming in through the rent in the tent’s roof, glistening in her hair. But neither of them could bear to leave the tent, step out into the world beyond, now they knew what they had both already known about him.

There were leaves and flowers on the floor of the tent at their feet. Spatter of blood. Flakes of rust.

“You knew that Landra was alive,” he said.

Thalia pulled her hand away from him. “How do you know that?”

“Someone recognized the necklace you gave her.”

“Someone?”

“A servant in the palace.” It came out of his mouth so smoothly. Didn’t know if she could tell he was lying. Didn’t think she could tell he was lying. “I should have your guards flogged,” he said, “for letting you talk to her.”

“They didn’t know who she was,” said Thalia. “I told them she was a beggar. They are my guards. Not yours. She was cold and hungry,” said Thalia. Oh gods, she looked so beautiful. So earnest. “She was alone and broken, and I pitied her.”

Pitied her? “She wanted to kill us!” Marith said. It came out as a shrill shout.

Landra kneeling in his tent, burned … she had looked so much like Carin did in his dreams, with his sword sticking into him. “She wanted to destroy me. She hates me. She hates you.”

Thalia said nothing.

“And Tobias. And that … that thing. You were talking to that thing. You were conspiring with that thing. I know that.”

“The gestmet,” Thalia said. “That is what your people call it, I believe. Did my guards tell you that, too?”

“I needed to know. Don’t you think I needed to know?”

Silence. Her face was unreadable. “I speak with whoever I choose,” said Thalia.

“You were conspiring against me! That thing just tried to kill me. Landra Relast just tried to kill me.”

“I drove the gestmet away,” said Thalia. “I did not speak with it. I did not let it speak to me.” But there was something in her face. Some guilt. “I speak with whoever I choose,” she said again.

Marith thought: that’s it? That’s all you can say?

“I did not know that Tobias was alive,” she said. “I … If I had …”

Marith thought: oh, didn’t you know? Something in her face. Days, he thought, Thalia and Tobias had travelled together, with him Tobias’s prisoner. Days and days and nights.

We called a dragon together, he thought. We saw all the wonder of the world in its eyes and in the beat of its wings. A dragon, dancing! And now this.

Remembered how Tobias had once looked at him, in the lodging house called the Five Corners in Sorlost, after he had stolen the company’s money to buy firewine. Tobias had trusted him, for a little while. Had then realized with disgust what a mistake that had been.

He had feared that he would die, he remembered, in Sorlost. Stared at the walls and been so, so afraid of death. He looked at the ruined bedding on the floor. Laughed.

Thalia’s face was cold, watching him. Angry.

Wedded bliss! He thought: if I had known what you would do …

Felt the blood rush to his face. Sickness and shame. Horror. My father killed my mother, he thought. My father killed his wife. I killed Carin.

“I love you,” he said to Thalia. “I do. I do.” Got down on his knees on the bloody bedsheets. “I love you.”

“Even though you think I am conspiring against you?” It was difficult to hold in his mind, sometimes, what it was that she had been, before he met her. The High Priestess of the death god of the Sekemleth Empire, killer of men and women and children for the glory of her god. And he felt now as her victims must have felt, bound and naked beneath her knife.

“We need to leave,” he said. Change the subject. Everything felt so soiled. The wonder of it, the joy, the melancholy. Get away, block this thing out. Remembered the inn in Reneneth, trying to find anything to say to her, knowing she had seen him drugged out of his mind on hatha, soaked in his own filth.

Days and days and nights, she had spent, travelling with Tobias, while he lay drugged out of his mind in his own filth.

Why do you stay, Thalia? he thought.

He walked out of the tent. The campsite was all chaos: they were supposed to be leaving today anyway and no one seemed to know what to do, whether to pack up. The tents were fuzzy with the rain. The mountain turf was beautiful, in the rain. Heavy raindrops like jewels. A gorse bush, hung with raindrops. A white flowering thorn tree. There was a spider’s web between two of the tents, beaded with rain. The sky was soft pale grey. The clouds had come down, hiding the higher slopes of the mountain.

Different, strange, looking at it now. All this living beauty. A living world. And he was what he was.

“Amrath was a living man,” Carin had once said. “A lucky man with good armour and a chronicler who lied about certain things.” Carin had rolled his eyes. “I seem to remember, it might just be the drink confusing me, but I do seem to remember that Amrath died.”

Thalia came out and stood beside him. Did not touch him. She, too, looked around her at the grass and the gorse and the thorn tree. The spider’s web. The low cloud. She, too, he saw, was thinking of life and death and other things.

“Marith—” she said. He turned away. He felt her walk away.

Alleen Durith came up to him. Knelt. Very formal. Everyone in the camp should be flogged, Marith thought, for letting danger get so close to him.

“Five men dead,” said Alleen. “And Lord Parale. We’ve buried them. There’s a trail, very faint, the scouts say, goes off south over the ridge.” He pointed into the cloud. “Did you want us to pursue?”

“Shouldn’t you already be pursuing them?” Marith asked lightly.

Alleen Durith shifted from foot to foot. “In the … the cloud … The … My Lord King, the men …”

Are terrified and confused and terrified and perfectly well aware of what’s out there. Marith stared at the raindrops on the spider’s web. Tried to think.

Poor Lord Parale. He’d been so excited when Marith let him come along.

“We leave them,” he said. “Pack up, as was arranged. I have done what I came here to do. We will rejoin the army, as was arranged. March for Illyr.” It felt good in his mouth, saying it. Solid. Bronze and iron, he thought. Swords and spears. Solid things. And rejoin Osen Fiolt. The air grew colder. He wondered if the dragon was flying, up above the clouds. Athela! he thought. Athela, Tiameneket! That would cap everything. Calling the dragon down and riding away on its back.

He drank wine and looked at the raindrops on the spider’s web, until the servants had to dismantle the tent. Thalia kept away from him. They rode down the mountain, to rejoin the Army of Amrath marching through the Wastes.