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barbarians fought each other like packs of wild dogs. If it was an Archipelagan ship, did it carry better swordsmen than their own?
    If it did, Corrain could hope that their own galley master, the whip master and his overseers would find themselves captured and burdened with chains, some token of natural justice. But if the rowers were sold on again like brute beasts brought to market, there was no knowing where he and Hosh might end up. Worse, they might be separated.
    Corrain closed his eyes amid the incomprehensible shouting. He was still alive. Hosh was still alive. As long as they were alive, they could hold fast to their oath. They could cling to the hope of one day seeing Minelas punished for his treachery.
    Wherever the wizard had gone, whatever he had done in the meantime, once he got back to the mainland, Corrain promised himself that he would hack the bastard’s head from his shoulders and piss down the bleeding stump of his neck.
    Aye, and he’d tell everyone from the eastern ocean to the western forests, from the southern shore to the northern mountains, why he’d done it. Those wizards of Hadrumal had been so virtuous and upright, swearing on the sanctity of their precious edict.
    Corrain would see them all shamed for the perfidious liars that they were.

 
    C HAPTER T HREE
     
    Lady Zurenne’s Withdrawing Room, Halferan Manor, Caladhria
    18th of Aft-Autumn
    In the 8th Year of Tadriol the Provident of Tormalin
     
     
    ‘L ADY ZURENNE. ’ M INELAS strode through the door to her private chamber without the courtesy of the most perfunctory knock. ‘I have business in Relshaz that may well occupy me to the turn of the season. While I am away, you will obey Master Starrid’s words as my own.’
    His casual gesture indicated the smirking man at his side.
    ‘Of course.’ Zurenne pulled her thread through her embroidery, careful not to let it tangle.
    This was an unlooked for respite. She would cherish every day without Minelas’s loathsome presence. Except that his return would be all the harder to bear. Stabbing the linen, she wished that the fine needle skewered the vile man’s eye.
    ‘Have any letters come for me?’ she asked offhand.
    On the far side of the table, both her daughters looked up hopefully from their own sewing. Zurenne’s sharp glance warned them to stay silent. She hid her relief as they both obediently returned to their needlework.
    ‘No, my lady, alas.’ Minelas’s regret was as insincere as always.
    Zurenne set another methodical stitch in the cloth. Still no letters, not since the end of Aft-Summer and she’d only been given those with their seals already broken, every word doubtless already read.
    No letters and, so, no news of anything beyond the manor house’s enclosing wall. The cities of Trebin and Ferl could have burned to the ground. Kevil could have been washed away by the sea and she would know nothing of it.
    Come to that, the village beyond the brook where the Halferan demesne labourers and the manor’s servants lived could have burned to the ground. She wouldn’t know about it unless she smelled the smoke on somebody’s clothes. Minelas had forbidden her to go beyond the gatehouse, after learning that she’d asked one of her husband’s pensioned-off troopers to carry a letter to her sister. She still didn’t know what the poor man’s fate had been.
    ‘Master Starrid will bring you any correspondence in my absence,’ Minelas continued briskly.
    ‘Indeed.’ Zurenne didn’t believe that for an instant. Minelas wouldn’t risk her writing some reply with an appeal hidden amid her words. He had dictated every syllable from her pen in reply to those Aft-Summer letters.
    She refused to despair. Her wits were sharper than Starrid’s and if Minelas was truly to be gone for twenty days or more, there might be some chance of her sending word to her distant family. Her brothers by marriage would see this usurper justly punished when they knew the truth of what