A trip to the bathhouse, the barber, a fine meal at one of the better harbourside restaurants and we both started to feel a little more human. The conversation between us still ran in uneven and awkward bursts, skirting around talk of her marriage whilst still covering, again and again, her various worries about Barras and any trouble he might encounter on his search for her. Even so, I saw flashes of the old Lisa, drawing a few smiles and blushes as I talked about old times, carefully avoiding mention of her dead brother and father.

In the end Lisa’s terror of yet another boat trip, even by river, saw us making the trip to Vermillion by express carriage, rattling along the various roads that track the Seleen’s path east toward the capital. We passed several days side-by-side, opposite an old priest, and a dark-haired merchant from some distant Araby port. By night we jolted sleepily against each other as the carriage carried on, changing horses at various staging posts along the way. I was pleased to find that, asleep with her head against my shoulder, Lisa smelled as good as I remembered. Almost good enough to erase the memory of how badly she had reeked when staggering off the Santa Maria at Marsail. It occurred to me during one of those long nights as Lisa’s head slipped from my shoulder to my lap, that although all three DeVeer sisters had married in indecent haste after my supposed death, Micha to my brother Darin, Sharal to the murderous Count Isen, and Lisa to my faithless friend Barras Jon—who I would never have let down—that it was really only Lisa I mourned the loss of.

All would be well. Home. Peace. Safety. The key would be secure in the palace. The Dead King might pose a threat to small bands of travellers in the depths of the desert or the wildness of the mountains, but he could hardly march an army through Red March and lay siege to the Red Queen’s capital. And as for stealthier attempts—the Silent Sister’s magics would surely not permit necromancy to function within the halls where she and her siblings dwelt.

Mile after mile vanished beneath our wheels and as my grandmother’s lands rolled past, hypnotizing in their green and patterned familiarity, thoughts rolled through my head. The things I’d seen, people, conversations, all spooling out across the smoothness of my mind. Occasionally I would raise the shade screen and stick my head out through the window to enjoy the breeze. Only then did I feel any hint of worry. The road stretching out ahead, the parallel hedgerows to either side arrowing into the distance, growing closer, closer, never meeting, lost in the future. Only when looking ahead like that did my fears give chase, skittering along behind the carriage. Maeres Allus waited for me, there, in the midst of my city.

I had confided my problem to Jorg Ancrath that drunken night on a Hamadan rooftop. He’d given me some advice, that thorn-scarred killer, and there, in the hot darkness of the desert, it had seemed sound, a solution. Was he not, after all, the King of Renar? But then again he was just a boy . . . Also, whatever he’d said to me had been washed away by a river of whisky and all I could remember of it was the look in his eyes as he told me, and the completeness with which I had believed him to be right.

The carriage rocked and jolted, miles ran beneath our wheels and home grew ever closer. We overtook three long columns of soldiers marching toward the capital. Several times the road grew so crowded we had to edge along past idle baggage-trains, arguing teamsters, soldiers shouting commands down the line. And somehow amid all that rattle and clatter, the heat, the noise, the anticipation . . . I fell asleep.

I dreamed of Cutter John, grown vast and satanic, as if the reality weren’t bad enough. I saw him reaching for me with his remaining arm, pale and hung about with the grisly trophies of his trade, lips he’d taken for Maeres Allus and worn as bracelets. I tried to run but found myself bound to the table once again, back in Allus’s poppy halls. Those great white fingers quested for me, growing closer . . . closer . . . me screaming all the while, and as I screamed the walls and floor fell away, turning to dust on a dry wind, revealing a dead-lit sky, the colour of misery. Cutter’s hand shrank back, and in that moment, knowing myself once more in Hell, I actually shouted for him to grab me and lift me back, not caring what fate awaited me—for the best definition of Hell is perhaps that there is nowhere, no place, no time to which you would not run in order to escape it.

“Something’s wrong.”

I look up and see that Snorri has stopped ahead of me and is eyeing the ridges about us. “Everything’s wrong. We’re in Hell!” Words won’t shape it but even if all you’re doing is walking down a dusty gully following the flow of souls, Hell is worse than everything you’ve known. You hurt, enough to make you weep, you thirst, you ache with hunger, misery weighs on you as if it were chains about your neck, and just standing there feels like watching everything you’ve ever loved die wretchedly before you.