'I have no idea what you're talking about.' Kheda didn't know whether to be more appalled or bewildered by the notion.

'Can we discuss barbarian ignorance some other time?' Risala had turned away from the pathetic corpses. 'There's no saying when the savages might come back.'

'See what you can see; I'll see what I can find.' Dev wandered off.

Kheda looked down at the bodies. One was an old man with close-cropped hair and a grizzled beard and a paltry string of turtle shell beads around his neck. The other was a woman, her age-weathered skin sagging and wrinkled, dark eyes glazed in death. Neither showed much visible decay beyond the predation of carrion flies. Steeling himself, he lifted the man's clenched hand from the old woman's stomach. It moved limp and loose, a fisherman's calluses hard on the palm. 'They're not long dead, a day or so.'

'What killed them?' Risala asked softly.

'Hard to say.' Kheda examined the old fisherman's head with gentle hands. 'There's no wound that I can see.'

'There's blood on her neck,' Risala pointed out, swallowing hard.

Catching his lower lip between his teeth, Kheda moved the old woman's grey plait aside. Blood was clotted dark in a thin score around her neck. 'That didn't kill her. Something was ripped off her neck, a cord or necklace.' Kheda sighed, shaking his head as he stood to look down on the bodies with all the detachment he could muster. 'There's some bloating but they're so thin, I think they were starved by their captors. When this happened, whatever happened—' He gestured, baffled, at the wreckage of the prison and the wider destruction beyond. 'The shock, their weakness, I think they just died.'

'Why take prisoners and then treat them so badly?' Risala's puzzlement mirrored Kheda's own.

'Why take prisoners at all? What use is a domain with no one to work it?' Kheda scrubbed a handful of earth through his hands.

'Do you suppose they'll take the land for themselves?' Risala looked around uneasily.

'There's no sign of it, is there? If you're not interested in slaves, why not give them a clean death?' Kheda sighed. 'This is what threatens my own people, if we cannot find a way to stop it.'

'Or worse.' Risala's eyes were dark with apprehension. 'We still don't know what they want their prisoners for, if it's not to make them slaves.'

'Come, see what I've found.' Dev's shout rang with cruel satisfaction.

Kheda and Risala exchanged a glance before walking over to join the mage, who was crouching among the ruins of another hut.

'I told you there was a mage camped here.' Dev glanced up before looking back to something pinned beneath a fallen beam. 'Mind yourselves.'

Risala and Kheda stepped back hastily as the heavy beam, taller than Kheda and as thick as his thigh, flipped up and toppled away at Dev's negligent gesture.

'Was that him?' Risala gasped, appalled.

Dev chuckled. 'Not so pretty now, is he?'

Kheda stared at what had once been a man. 'Was he racked?'

'Not the way you mean.' Dev kicked at one of the corpse's mangled, contorted arms. Every joint had been pulled apart, knobbly ends of bones clearly separate beneath stretched yet unbroken skin. His legs had been similarly wrenched out of their sockets, thighs at an impossible angle beneath his hips. 'No signs of binding, no bruises.'

'Magic did this?' Kheda looked at the dead man's face, jaw hanging dislocated, teeth startlingly white in the clotted mess of blood choking his mouth. His head was misshapen, skull plates separated beneath the mud-caked bristly hair, eyes ruptured into oozing ruins surrounded by crude sweeps of reddish paint.

'I'd say so.' Dev nodded with satisfaction. 'You remember me saying he looked like the lowest in the pecking order?'

'I remember you saying you needed to see these wizards working their magic, to devise a means for us to work against them,' challenged Kheda. 'What does this tell you?'

'That this weakling has been picked off by one of his rivals. I saw him having some sort of parley with another of his kind a while ago. He ended up handing over loot and prisoners. Someone must have decided to take the rest. The wild men who'd been following him will all have gone along with the new top dog.' Dev kicked contemptuously at the body before glancing at Risala. 'I don't think that fight we saw between those two mages was anything out of the ordinary. I think you get to wear a fancy cloak by killing your way up the ladder.' He grinned at Kheda. 'More than one warlord's seized power that way.'

Kheda ignored the taunt. 'Can you tell what happened here?'

Faint blue light glittered momentarily over every ruined house and hut. Dev laughed as Kheda shivered and Risala recoiled from the tumble of splintered wood beside her.

'Someone knew how to work powerful magic with the air.' He kicked the body again. 'I don't know what element this fool had an affinity for but he didn't get a chance to use it. His enemy's magic ripped him apart, then did the same for his petty little holding. Whoever was responsible has another notch on his staff, or whatever these people use for a symbol of their power.'

'This is how it's done among your kind?' demanded Kheda.

Dev looked up angrily. 'My kind do nothing like this. This is crude, brutal magic, strongest wins and subtlety be cursed. We of the north, we prefer refinement in our enchantments, working to an understanding of the nature of magic, exploring every nuance of its potential.' He gestured at the dead mage with frustrated contempt. 'This is smashing an oyster with a building hammer and not caring if you crush the shell, the flesh and any pearl within it all into powder. My magic is sliding in a careful knife, winning yourself nacre, pearl and something to eat all at the same time.'

Kheda was unimpressed. 'Does this tell you how we may fight them?'

'No,' Dev said slowly. 'Though I think I know who'll be next on the list, if someone is rolling up the weaker mages hereabouts. I wouldn't mind seeing that fight. If I can see how these people use their magic, I can think of ways to work against them.'

'Do you mean you'll scry to see them fight?' Kheda looked dubiously at the wizard.

'Oh, no, I need to be there,' Dev assured him cheerfully. 'You can't tell who's winning a cockfight if you're standing outside the pit.'

Risala had been delving cautiously in the wreckage of a hut. 'They left the turtle shell and the pearls again.' She stood up, brushing her hands against her ragged trousers.

'If they scorn such wealth in favour of jewels, they're bound to go north sooner or later.' Kheda looked grim. 'That's where the Archipelago's gems are to be found.'

Dev nodded to Risala. 'Gather that lot up and get it aboard.'

'What gives you the right to rob these people?' Kheda challenged him immediately.

'Who's left to rob?' protested Dev. 'Anyway, you said I'd be well paid. We can call this something on account.'

'You go looting on your own,' Kheda said coldly. 'Once you've worked your spying magic to be sure no one's sneaking up on us. We'll bury the dead before we leave here.' He turned his back on the wizard and Risala dutifully followed him back to the lifeless couple.

'At least they died in their rightful place.' She looked around helplessly. 'Is there anything to dig with?'

'Go and look.' Kheda knelt to score a line in the damp turf with the dagger he'd taken from Dev and kept for himself, even if it was an undistinguished Viselis blade. He began levering the grass up. 'Otherwise it'll have to be our hands.'

'No sign of anyone around here at all.' Dev waved cheerfully, throwing aside a scoop of sea water in a broken pot.

'Keep looking. We don't want to be taken unawares.' Kheda concentrated on peeling back the stubborn turf.

'I don't want to be caught any more than you do.' The wizard waved a negligent hand. 'Though anyone with a pennyweight of sense will be sleeping out the heat of the day under a tree.'