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“With unfeeling fingers, I snapped the chain from round my neck and slipped the ring onto my thumb, holding it up. “I have every right.” I glowered at Gilliam. Briefly I glanced at Valka and saw surprise etched on those delicate, hard-edged features. “I told you, Your Reverence. You don’t know everything.”

“Man is a wolf to man and a dragon to the inhuman.”

“Draleid n’aldryr, Valerys. Myia nithír til diar.” My soul to yours.”

Draleid n’aldryr, Rakina nai dauva. Dragonbound by fire, Broken by death.

You have heard, no doubt, that we met as rivals and fought a duel
for the command of our army. It is not so. No, I met the Phoenix at
table one quiet evening in Borosevo. Bassander Lin. My last friend,
my enemy. Hero of the rout at Perfugium, where Hadrian Halfmortal
failed. Veteran of a hundred battles, knight, captain, traitor. He
would be all of those things, but not yet.

“May The Warrior guide your hands. The duty of the strong is to protect the weak.”

“Rakina may mean ‘one who is broken’, but among the elves, it is a
mark of respect. It also means, ‘one who survived’.”

I would fail to capture her, in charcoal and in life. The brazen
declaration of her: the pride in that upturned chin, the pointed nose,
and the tidy carelessness that put her above the opinions of lesser
men. There’s little sign of her wit—so close to cruelty—in any of the
drawings I made of her, and this poor prose cannot contain her
beauty, body or soul. Even holographs fail. They are only echoes, as
is this.

“Words echoed in his head, reverberating down every corridor in his mind.

Draleid n’aldryr. ”

DRAELID

“You never did say: Why did you go to see the Cielcin in the first place?”

That puzzled me for a moment. I had no answer ready, so I chewed my lip, reflecting. “I wanted to know if it was a monster, my lord.” “I wanted to see it.”

The other palatine nodded gravely. “And was it? A monster, I mean.”

“I don’t think so, my lord,” I replied. “It was afraid.”

“I’m sorry,” I said at last. Weakly. However I had suffered—and I had suffered—it didn’t give me a monopoly on suffering”

“We like to imagine it is easy to rise, to stand. The be a hero. It is not. This was not my moment. I was not a hero. Am not, or was not then.”

“Thank you,” I said. Those were the last words I ever spoke to her, and as it always is with last words, they were not enough.”

“I know what it is they say of me. What they call me in your history books. The Sun Eater. The Halfmortal. Demon-tongued, regicidal, genocidal. I have heard it all.”

Death incarnate. Night triumphant

“I always said Dow should’ve made better use of you. Now my wife’s waiting. Go and have some fun.’

‘I just might.’

‘What do you do for fun, anyway?’

There was a glint in Shivers’ eye as he turned away, but then there always was. ‘I sharpen my knives.’

Calder wasn’t quite sure if he was joking or not.

‘Looks like you win,’ said Shivers.

In spite of the very great pain, Calder found it in himself to smirk.
‘Doesn’t it, though?’

‘That old bitch didn’t know when I was going to die at all. If I’d known that I’d surely have worn more armour.’ He made a sound somewhere between a cough and a laugh, then winced, coughed, laughed again, winced again. ‘Fuck, it hurts. I mean, you know it will, but, fuck, it really does hurt.

’It’s the Bloody-Nine!’ someone wailed, though it bloody obviously weren’t the Bloody-Nine at all. He was causing quite a bloody panic all the same.