‘I seem to recall,’ Skintick said, ‘a child’s story about flesh-stealers. Whenever you find clothes lying on the roadside and in glades, it’s because the stealers came and took the person wearing them. I never trusted that story, though, since who would be walking round wearing only a shirt? Or one shoe? No, my alternative theory is far more likely.’
Nimander, ever generous of heart, bit on the hook. ‘Which is?’
‘Why, the evil wind, of course, ever desperate to get dressed in something warm, but nothing ever fits so the wind throws the garments away in a fit of fury.’
‘You were a child,’ Kedeviss said, ‘determined to explain everything, weren’t you? I don’t really recall, since I stopped listening to you long ago.’
‘She stabs deeps, Nimander, this woman.’
Nenanda had drawn up the cart and now climbed down, stretching out the kinks in his back. ‘I’m glad I’m done with that,’ he said.
Moments later Aranatha and Desra joined them.
Nimander looked older, like a man whose youth has been beaten out of him, ‘Well,’ he said with a sigh, ‘we should search these huts and find whatever there is to find.’
At his command the others set out to explore. Kedeviss remained behind, her eyes still on Nimander, until he turned about and regarded her quizzically.
‘He’s hiding something,’ she said.
He did not ask whom she meant, but simply nodded.
‘I’m not sure why he feels the need for us, ’Mander. Did he want worshippers? Servants? Are we to be his cadre in some political struggle to come?’
A faint smile from Nimander. ‘You don’t think, then, he collected us out of fellowship, a sense of responsibility — to take us back. . to our “Black-Winged Lord”?’
‘Do you know,’ she said, ‘he alone among us has never met Anomander Rake. In a sense, he’s not taking us to Anomander Rake. We’re taking
‘Careful, Kedeviss. If he hears you you will have offended his self-importance.’
‘I may end up offending more than that,’ she said.
Nimander’s gaze sharpened on her.
‘I mean to confront him,’ she said. ‘I mean to demand some answers.’
‘Perhaps we should all-’
‘No. Not unless I fail.’ She hoped he wouldn’t ask for her reasons on this, and suspected, as she saw his smile turn wry, that he understood. A challenge by all of them, with Nimander at the forefront, could force into the open the power struggle that had been brewing between Clip and Nimander, one that was now played out in gestures of indifference and even contempt — on Clip’s part, at any rate, since Nimander more or less maintained his pleasant, if slightly morbid, passivity, fending off Clip’s none too subtle attacks as would a man used to being under siege. Salvos could come from any direction, after all.
She wondered if Nimander even knew the strength within him. He could have become a man such as Andarist had been — after all, Andarist had been more of a father to him than Anomander Rake had ever been — and yet Nimander had grown into a true heir to Rake, his only failing being that he didn’t know it. And perhaps that was for the best, at least for the time being.
‘When?’ he asked now.
She shrugged. ‘Soon, I think.’
A thousand paces above the village, Clip settled on one of the low bridging walls and looked down at the quaintly sordid village below. He could see his miserable little army wandering about at the edges of the round, into and out of huts.
They were, he decided, next to useless. If not for concern over them, he would never have challenged the Dying God. Naturally, they were too ignorant to comprehend that detail. They’d even got it into their heads that they’d saved his life. Well, such delusions had their uses, although the endless glances his way — so rank with hopeful expectation — were starting to grate.
He spun the rings.
