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They had captured five Talicians alive. They had been separated and bound, but four had clustered together.

One was a priest. He wore a once-white cloak that had been stained by mud, blood and his own excrement to a dirty brown.

His feet were bare, and his hair hung lank around his neck.

The bells known to grace the Talician theocrats had likely been stolen by his gaolers, smashed or sold, but he had the smudged remnants of make-up on his face.

Arren remembered that they were patterns of fake burns used to emulate the pain they wrought, rarely experiencing it themselves.

Beside him sat three foot soldiers, judging by their poorly dyed sackcloth jackets with patches at the elbows.

They were young, perhaps no more than fifteen or sixteen, and were hunched over and shaking.

They had fought like fiends in Gefyrton, but it was one thing to fight with an army at your back, another to sit in your own filth.

Separate from them, however, sat a man in a neater jacket, newly made and with brassy buttons. A krka, Arren understood. One of their commanders, second only to the priests. He was older than Arren by perhaps a decade, and glared at him like a wolf in a trap.

‘ What are your names ?’ said Arren in Talic, coming to the door.

One foot soldier, a boy, answered ‘Tomek’ before the priest interrupted.

‘What need are names for the godless?’ he snarled in rotten Middric, his accent so thick that Arren could barely parse it. ‘What is it to be? The sword, the pyre or the rack? Torture us how you will, you will gain nothing from it. We would rather die than abandon our god.’

As he spoke, the foot soldiers looked stronger, their faint colours steadying.

‘That can be arranged,’ said Methsme, and Arren cast her a glance to silence her, then stepped into the shelter of the stable. He felt the knights start forward, half-panicked, but Elo came in with him and they settled

‘ Tell me, priest ,’ said Arren in Talic, for the benefit of the foot soldiers, ‘ do you think all leaders as cruel as your own? ’

‘ We have heard of your leadership,’ the priest retorted. ‘Killing gods. Destroying cities. Beating the faithful from west coast to east should they dare worship the true god Hseth. Let alone any of those weak, other deities who turn to shades in her glory .’

Arren felt Hestra grow hot and angry in him, and the fire in his heart lit up the room.

The foot soldiers cowered, twisting with fearful shades, and so did the priest. The shine was different for each of them: the priest felt fear in a shadowy blue, the foot soldiers in bloody red, and orange. Flames.

But the krka. His vision of fear was white. As white as the priest’s robes. Him, said Hestra, and Arren came to stand before him.

‘Do you think your priests are cruel, krka?’ Arren asked.

‘Don’t answer him,’ spat the priest.

‘Fuck you,’ said the krka in Middric, though Arren wasn’t sure if it was to him or the priest. ‘We are Talicians, and we are loyal. We will return with blades and fire and run Middren into dust as your ancestors did with mine.’

Arren looked at Elo, who had a hand on his sword and met his gaze. The krka’s Middric was practised, clean. He had been taught. Teaching suggested wealth. Wealth suggested inheritance.

They say the commanders come from the old Talician kerls, said Hestra. I heard them.

‘My apologies,’ said Arren; he put his hand to his heart and gave a small bow. ‘I did not realise the great raiding families had survived the incursion of Hseth.’ The krka closed his mouth.

‘There are no great families in Talicia,’ snarled the priest. ‘Her priests are chosen. ’

‘The king wasn’t speaking to you,’ said Elo.

‘ What do you wish to gain by tickling the ballsack of a dead line?’

The krka growled and rounded on his leader. ‘The fuck did you say?’

Elo drew his sword warily. Days marched through endless roads by angry Middrenites, eating maggoty bread and left in their own filth had frayed the Talicians’ nerves to snapping, as Arren had hoped.

The krka slipped into cold, clipped Talic, bearing down on his priest. ‘ My ancestors were questing the seas while yours were scraping molluscs from their arses, you nothing man. You loose end. ’

‘Krka, o’thoi alek ,’ said one of the foot soldiers, not Tomek, another young man sitting up on his knees. Please stop.

‘ We live for Hseth, we die for Hseth, ’ the priest snapped at the krka.

‘ And what good did that do at the bridge? ’ came the reply. ‘ She destroyed us! ’

‘ It was a mistake ,’ said the priest, and then turned his ire back on Arren.

‘Torture us,’ he said, ‘kill us, burn us. Through pain and blood these lands will be hers, and you will die screaming in her fire for longer than we live screaming at your hands.’

Arren summoned his patience, and his cunning.

‘My heart is not one of fury,’ he said in Middric, then Talic, to make his point perfectly clear.

Not to the priest, he would take too long to break, but to his people.

‘ It is one of warmth and welcome, home and hearth. That is the land I fight for. I have no desire to hear you scream, priest, but you must be punished for your crimes. ’

The foot soldiers stared at him, and Elogast very carefully did not look his way. Arren could taste his own hypocrisy, bitter-white, coating his tongue. He swallowed it, then turned to the door of the stables.

‘You want an execution, cleric,’ said Arren, Perhaps the priest could be ransomed, but what would that do save put a few more gold coins in their pocket?

What to exchange people for, if their lives were valued only as sacrifices to their holy of holies?

‘Here is the one you will punish, who burns his people for the sake of a god and sends them to their deaths at her hands.’

It was a lie, Arren had sent them to their deaths, but it seemed to have stuck for the krka.

What about the others? At least his own guards’ colours brightened.

Middren had been hurt, badly, and now they all wanted to inflict pain in turn.

Anger and retribution. Lord Yesef and Methsme were much the same. They wanted so much from him.

‘Have him put to the sword’ said Arren, pointedly at Methsme. ‘No burning. Quick, clean and public.’ She inclined her head. ‘Take him away.’

Two guards piled in, grabbing the priest. The boy who defended him threw himself at them but was swiftly kicked aside. The priest began screaming in Talic. ‘ A martyr! ’ he howled as he was dragged away. ‘ Make me a martyr! Tell them nothing, die before you speak.’

‘What of these?’ said Elo in a low voice, nodding at the youths, braced as if for impact. The foot soldiers looked so young, half starved, shaking.

Arren looked to Commander Yesef. ‘Have them fed in the next stable,’ he said. ‘And give them something to wash with. We wish to speak with the krka alone.’

Kyaum nodded, and gave the command to two of the reluctant knights, sending a nearby kitchen boy to go fetch some food. The young Talicians had no fight now the priest was gone: they let themselves be led away.

Elo and Arren were left with the krka. The man’s eyes glittered; they were a pale, pale blue in his olive brown skin, his hair black and cropped short.

‘And what of me?’ he said. ‘Are you another fool with too much power who wishes me to kiss his arse? Or am I the one you will torture?’

Elo looked down at the krka, his expression inscrutable, the glow around him confusingly steady.

Arren wondered for a moment if he also desired pain and retribution.

Torture was a tool, but it took someone practice and time to discern lies from truth; it was also punishment.

If that was the one thing that would heal Elo’s pain, would Arren let him do it?

‘Sometimes,’ said Elo at last, ‘the king prefers sweetness over stick.’

Was that a joke? Or just a statement to unnerve the Talician?

‘We wish to know what Talicia will do to Lesscia should they invade,’ said Arren.

‘Burn it if they have no use for it,’ the krka scowled. ‘Perhaps even if they do.’

‘Why do you not keep the cities you claim?’ said Elo. ‘What purpose is there in such wanton destruction?’

‘We kept Blenraden,’ said the krka, ‘gave it to the Restish so they could turn a profit. But Hseth doesn’t need profit, the priests say. She wishes for domination. She wishes for power. Burn the gods, burn the cities, burn their shrines, burn their king.’

He spat on the floor at Arren’s feet.

‘Talicia only wants your decimation. They will crush Middren into the dust you made of us and raise Hseth’s banner over the Trade Sea. Restish, Irisia, Curliu, Usica … they will all fall, one after the other, and come to their one god.’

It was a familiar idea to Arren, who had so recently dreamed that it would be he who dominated from coast to coast, turning gods into shadows and replacing them with his image. He had wanted to claim power in the Trade Sea and show them all what he was capable of.

This is the story he had told himself. He had convinced himself that no matter what he did, it would be worth it for stability, for peace, for power. Now, he was barely clinging to any of them, and had only one thing on his mind: survival.

‘Then it is not Lesscia itself that they want,’ said Elo. ‘Not its riches, not its port.’ He looked at Arren. ‘They want you. They want us.’

‘If we fall back from Lesscia,’ Arren said, ‘with the full army … they may follow.’

Elo nodded, and Arren thought he saw a glimmer of hope in his eyes. ‘We could draw them into open battle. Save the city.’

Could he do it? Should he? Leaving Lesscia was inviting the Talicians in, if he then could not defeat them …

‘They will destroy you,’ said the krka. ‘We have the numbers. We have the god.’