She could follow the knife into the stream, but she knew she’d be tugged and pulled, spun and rolled onward, because no one was a knife, no one could stay in one place, no matter how hard they tried.

Lately, she had been thinking about the Red Blades, the faces and the life she had once known. It was clear to her now that what was past had stopped moving, but the sense of distance ever growing behind her was proving an illusion. Eddies drew her back, and all those mired memories waited to catch her like hidden snags.

A knife in hand, then, was sound wisdom. Best not surrender it to these troubled waters.

The Red Blades. She wondered if that elite company of fanatics still served the Empress. Who would have taken command? Well, there were plenty, enough of them to make the accession a bloody one. Had she been there, she too would have made a try. A knife in hand, then, was an answer to many things. The Adjunct’s irritation with it bordered on obsession, but she didn’t understand. A weapon needs to be maintained, after all. Honed, oiled, sliding quickly from the sheath. With that knife, Lostara could cut herself loose whenever she liked.

A little earlier, she had sat at the evening meal with Tavore, a ritual of theirs since leaving Letheras. Food and wine and not much in the way of conversation. Every effort Lostara made to draw the Adjunct out, to come to know her better-on a more personal level-had failed. For a long time, Lostara had concluded that the woman in command of the Bonehunters was simply incapable of revealing her vulnerable side. A flaw in her personality, as impossible to reject or change as the colour of one’s eyes. But Lostara was coming to believe that Tavore was afflicted with something else. She behaved as would a widow, the kind that then made mourning a way of life, a ritualized assembly of habits. The light of day had become a thing to turn away from. A gesture of invitation was answered with muttered regrets. And the sorrowing mask never left her face.

A widow should not be commanding an army, and the thought of Adjunct Tavore leading that army into a war left Lostara both disturbed and frightened. To wear the mask of the widow was to reject life itself, scattering ashes into one’s own path ahead, making the future as grey as the past. It was as if a pyre awaited them all, and at the moment of standing on the threshold of those murderous flames, she saw Tavore Paran stride forward, bold and resolute. And the army at her back would simply follow.

Two people seated across from one another, silent and trapped inside the world of their unspoken, private thoughts. The waters never blended, and the currents of the other were for ever strange and forbidding. There was no comfort in these suppers. They were, in fact, excruciating.

She quickly made her escape. Each night, retreating to the silk-walled chamber that was her bedroom. Where she sharpened and oiled her knife to drive away the red stain. Solitude could be an unwelcome place, but even the unwelcome could become habit.

Lostara had heard Banaschar’s footsteps as he headed for his temple of maps. They were steady this night, those footsteps, which meant he was more or less sober. Not often the case, alas, which was too bad-or perhaps not. Sometimes-his clear, sober times-the bleak horror in his eyes could overwhelm. What had it been like, worshipping the Worm of Autumn, that pale bitch of decay? It would take a particular person to be drawn to such a thing. One for whom abject terror meant facing the nightmare. Or, conversely, one who hungered for what could not be avoided, the breaking down of flesh and dreams, the knowledge of the multitude of carrion eaters that waited for him at life’s end.

But the Worm had cast him out. She had embraced all her other lovers, but not Banaschar. What did that mean to the man? The eaters would have to wait. The nightmare was not yet ready to meet his eyes. Obeisance to the inevitable was denied. Go away.

So, he would begin the rotting from the inside out. Spilling libations to drown the altar of his own soul. It was not desecration, it was worship.

The knife-edge went snick against the whetstone, steady as a heartbeat, each side in counter-beat as she flipped the blade in perfect rhythm. Snick snick snick…

Here in this cloth house, the others had their rituals. While she-she had her tasks of maintenance and preparedness. As befitted a soldier.

Stormy sat, back against the stepped rail that served as the barge’s gunwale, positioned just so. Opposite, the jade slashes loomed in the south sky, fierce and ominous, and to his eyes it seemed the heavens were coming for him, a personal and most private vendetta. He tried to think of a guilt worthy of the magnitude. That pouch of coins he’d once lifted from a drunk noble in Falar? He’d been able to buy a decent knife with that. How old had he been? Ten? Twelve?

Maybe that passed-out woman he’d groped? That friend of his aunt’s, easily twice his age-her tits had felt huge in his hands, heavy and wayward, and she’d moaned when he pinched her nipples, legs shifting and opening up-and what would a fifteen-year-old boy do with that? Well, the obvious, he supposed. In went his finger, and then a few more.

At some point she’d opened her eyes, frowned up at him, as if trying to place him. And then she’d sighed, the way a mother sighed when a wide-eyed son pressed her with awkward questions. And she took hold of that hand with all its probing fingers-he’d expected her to pull him out. Instead, she pushed the whole hand inside. He didn’t even think that was possible.

Drunk women still held a certain fascination for Stormy, but he never went after them, in case he heard that sigh again, the one that could turn him back into a nervous, lip-licking fifteen-year-old. Guilt, aye, it was a terrible thing. The world tilted, came back, eager to crush him flat. Because doing something wrong pushed it the other way, didn’t it? Keep pushing until you lose your footing and then wait for the sudden shadow, the huge thing blotting out the sky. Splat was another word for justice, as far as he was concerned. When it all comes back, aye.

He’d thrown his sister into a pond, once. But then, she’d been doing that to him for years, until that day when he realized he was bigger and stronger than she was. She’d hissed and spat her way back out, a look of outrage on her face. Recalling that, Stormy smiled. Justice by his own hand-no reason for feeling guilty about that one.

He’d killed plenty of people, of course, but only because they’d been trying to kill him and would have done just that if he’d let them. So that didn’t count. It was the soldier’s pact, after all, and for all the right decisions that kept one alive, a thousand things one could do nothing about could take a fool down. The enemy wasn’t just the one in front of you-it was the uncertain ground underfoot, the stray arrow, the flash of blinding sunlight, the gust of grit in the eye, the sudden muscle cramp or the snapped blade. A soldier fought against a world of enemies each and every time, and walking free of that was a glory to make the gods jealous. Maybe the guilt showed up, but that was later, like an aftertaste when you can’t even remember the taste itself. It was thin, not quite real, and to chew on it too long was just self-indulgence, as bad as probing a loose tooth.

He glared at the southern night sky. This celestial arbiter was indifferent to everything but the punishment it would deliver. Cut sharp as a gem, five jade swords were swinging down.

Of course they weren’t all aiming at him. It just felt that way, on this steamy night with the river full of glinting eyes from those damned crocodiles-and they wanted him too. He’d heard from the barge hands about how they’d tip a boat if they could and then swarm the hapless victims, tearing them to pieces. He shivered.