‘But why? It was just a dream.’
Noon shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t. And you know it wasn’t, or you wouldn’t be asking me. I saw the Winnowry crumble to bits, and all of us inside suffocating, and it was real.’
‘You realise what you’re saying? That you believe the Jure’lia are coming back?’
She stopped and turned to face him. There was a smudge of soot on her cheek. ‘So?’
‘Don’t you see?’ He stood close, lowering his voice, although he could not have said why. ‘If they come back, then Sarn is – Sarn is fucked.’
She raised her eyebrows at him. ‘The Winnowry sent someone after me to kill me. I don’t give a single tiny shit about Sarn.’
That surprised a laugh out of him. ‘You should, witch. Your feet are planted on it, are they not?’
‘If they come back, then it’s your problem.’
He shook his head, exasperated. ‘Ygseril was the key to defeating them. He was the one who birthed the war-beasts. And he’s dead.’
‘I thought you didn’t care. That you’d left those problems behind you.’
‘Yes, well.’ He took a breath, and then let it out in a sigh. ‘I was rather hoping those problems wouldn’t come and bite me on the arse.’
‘Not until you’ve finished whoring your way around Sarn and drinking Vintage out of wine, at least?’
He looked down at her, ready to be affronted, but to his surprise she was smiling faintly – it looked as fragile as ice on a lake in late spring, but it was the first smile he’d seen her give in some time.
‘You look a little more human when you’re annoyed, Eboran.’
‘Oh, I’m glad my countenance is more pleasing to you when I’m vexed, that bodes well.’ A flock of birds passed overhead, and he looked up. There was more light in the sky than there had been, making it easier for them to find their way, and easier for them to be seen. ‘About what happened at the winnowline . . .’
The smile dropped from her face, and she turned back to the trees. After a moment she lifted her hand to her mouth and briefly gnawed at her thumb. The Wild pressed in all around them, quieter than any morning forest should be. ‘What about it?’
‘Are there likely to be more like her?’ Tormalin scanned the sky for black fluttering shapes, for fiery death on wings. ‘I’m not sure I’d like to see more than one.’
‘Agents usually work alone,’ said Noon. ‘They are pretty rare – the Winnowry doesn’t trust many fell-witches to control themselves – so they’re in demand all over the place. They won’t have many to send after me, and –’ she cleared her throat – ‘she was powerful.’
‘She bent the winnowfire into all sorts of shapes. Can you do that?’
‘No.’
‘When she made rings from the fire and spun them around her arms – I have never seen such a thing. Can you do that?’
‘No. You’ve seen what I can do already. I blow things up. Destroy things.’ Her voice wavered, and Tormalin peered down at her curiously, but Vintage was stamping her way back towards them. If there were any worm-touched monsters around, Tormalin thought, they would be better off keeping out of Vintage’s way.
‘There’s a settlement ahead. I should be able to buy us a roof to hide under for a few hours with what I’ve got left in my pockets.’
‘A settlement, in the Wild?’ Tor looked at the twisted trees ahead of them, trying to imagine living out here. ‘Are they mad?’
‘Vintage—’ Noon started, but the scholar raised a hand, an expression of sheer weariness on her face.
‘I am much too tired to talk about it, my dear, and there’s very little to say as it is. If anything, it’s my own fault. I’m no fool – I should have taken the threat of the Winnowry more seriously.’
‘We lost all of your things,’ said Noon, her voice flat. ‘All of your papers and books, burned. And two people died.’
Vintage sighed heavily, leaning forward with her hands on her hips. ‘It doesn’t surprise me, if I’m honest, that the Winnowry would be so heavy-handed. Noon, those deaths are the fault of the unhinged woman they sent after you. Come along, I’m hoping we can get a stiff drink out of these people. They’ve already spotted us.’
Vintage led them down a slope, and once beyond the line of trees, they stood in front of an enormous thicket of monstrous thorns. It rose above them like a small hill, looking utterly impenetrable. It was a place full of ominous shadows and lethal spikes, but as they drew closer, Tor saw that at the very base of the thicket there was a way through the twisting foliage, and at the entrance stood a small, wizened old man. He was as pale as milk, and had tufts of silky blond hair behind a pair of protruding ears. The old man’s eyes were lost in wrinkles, but he nodded to Vintage, and the two of them had a rapid conversation in a plains dialect Tor was not familiar with. He looked at Noon, and saw her eyebrows raised.
‘Vintage has travelled a lot, even before she paid for my sword arm,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘Also, she tells me she has a trustworthy face, although I’m quite sure I don’t know what one of those looks like.’
‘Why would you?’
He gave her a sharp look, but Vintage was beckoning. They followed her and the ancient man down the shadowy path – Tormalin had to crouch to avoid catching his head on the low-hanging briars – to find a curious little village sheltered within the enormous thicket of thorns. Above them was a circle of sky, pale blue now as the day got into its stride, while all around them rose a wild brown wall of monstrous thorn bushes; it was, Tor thought, rather like sitting at the bottom of a barrel. The space immediately in front of them contained a well and what appeared to be a small market place, while he could see men and women climbing in the thorn wall, looking like especially industrious ants amongst the twisted burs. Now that he looked closer, he could see rope ladders strung here and there like an elaborate web, and scraps of cloth hanging from thorns where people were drying their washing. They had burrows, he realised, tiny buried homes in the depths of the giant thorns. It was so different from the sweeping marble halls of Ebora that he wanted to laugh.
‘What a miserable place,’ he said, cheerily enough. ‘Vintage, I do hope you have rented their very best rooms.’
‘Be quiet, Tormalin, my darling, or I will waste one of my precious quarrels ventilating your beautiful throat. Here we are.’
The old man had led them to a hole in the thicket level with the ground. Inside was what appeared to be a communal resting place; the ground was covered in a pungent mixture of old leaves and grey feathers, and there were blankets everywhere, most of them occupied. Tor could see pale faces and bare feet here and there, could hear the soft sounds of snoring. He straightened up and looked at Vintage.