THE BATTLE OF Bladno was supposed to be a turning point in the war.

The army of the Grand Alliance

had fully mustered, meaning that the neighbouring kingdoms of Cherivell and Forinth had finally
stopped fighting each other and united against the Kinslayer, together with a handful of expatriates and
a penal legion from Tzarkand. The Kinslayer, for his part, had finally grown the dragon Vermarod the
Invincible to full size and was cackling with glee, ready to unleash the beast. Bladno—formerly a
prosperous town, but now known just as a battlefield—had been seen by everyone as the make-or-
break of the war.

Which same war had then rumbled on for another six years.

From the Kinslayer’s perspective, the Grand Alliance lost decisively and the armies of Cherivell and
Forinth had effectively been stripped of any ability

Hundred slanting shacks built up against the bones, a handful of real buildings already emerging from
the human wreckage. She saw a smithy and the great covered square of an Oerni-style market, while a
well-known taverner with pretensions of grandeur had set up in Vermarod’s skull and festooned it with
flags and banners. Celestaine felt an unwanted stab of pity for the fallen beast. At least it looks like he’s
having a good time at last.

“Did you see the thing when it was alive?” she asked the companions who loomed at her shoulders.

Nedlam hadn’t and didn’t seem interested. Heno tugged on the silver of his beard. “Not this one. I saw
some of the smaller ones bred.” The deep rumble of his voice buzzed under Celestaine’s chestbone and
she twitched her shoulders. “Your man is here, this pity-creature of yours?”

“Don’t call him that,” she snapped at him immediately, and heard his impatient hiss of breath. Heno
wasn’t good at empathy. It was something she was trying desperately to teach him, something she was
hoping he could actually learn. She had made quite a bet with the world on that score. “But here, yes.
There’s a community of his people nearby, on the Forinth side of the border. This is the biggest
landmark for miles around. Everyone can find their way to Bladno these days, and once you’re in
Bladno, everyone can find their way to the Skull Cup.”

Nedlam, who hadn’t heard the name of the place before, found it hilarious, but then it was probably
pitched at about her level. Celestaine signed and slowed her horse, putting a little pressure on the reins
until the animal consented to turn a little to let her look at her friends.

Friends? Do I call them that in open conversation? What, then? Don’t know. People I can’t in all
conscience get rid of?

Celestaine was, according to the bards, a ‘silver beauty’: skin like milk, blue eyes, hair so pale as to be
white. The bards, most of them, had never actually seen her out of her armour, despite several offers
from the more incautious rhymers. But yes, she was fair and pale, though her hair had been hacked
short to go under her helm, and was now growing out into an uneven mullet and getting in her eyes. Her
face was long and, when not animated by any particular emotion, tended to settle into an expression of
narrow-eyed disdain that some men took as a challenge. Though in her experience only the most
tiresome of them, which was a shame. She was tall, though: long-limbed and broad-shouldered, and
there was a lot of the war left in the way she held herself or sat on a horse. On the road, a quite large
band of brigands had erupted out of the undergrowth around her and her companions and then
immediately thought better of it and gone peaceably about their business. One of them had even
muttered an apology. But perhaps that hadn’t been her; probably it had been the others.

They had shrouded up, this close to Bladno. Once they’d started getting the expected looks from the
other traffic on the road, both of them had put on their cloaks and hoisted up their scarves until only
their small hostile-looking eyes could be seen in a little strip of blue-grey skin between nose and brow. It
was not a disguise. There really was no disguising what they were.

“You’re doing it again,” Nedlam pointed out, tapping her own head through the hood. “Thinking. Always
leads to ruin.”

“Someone’s got to,” Celestaine pointed out. “Look, we’d better get off the road and make a plan.”

“Plans, plans, plans.” Nedlam shrugged. “You want fire? I’ll go get trees.”

“Wood,” Celestaine corrected. “We’ll camp out of sight until it’s getting dark, then I’ll go in and test the
waters. Bladno’s going to be crawling with veterans. Who knows how they’ll take to a couple of Y… you.”

Nedlam ambled off to break branches. Celestaine winced when Heno’s sardonic voice put in, “‘Yoggs.’”

“I said ‘you.’”

He chuckled darkly. “Celest, of all the monsters in creation, you don’t need to tell me about the power
of old habits.”