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taken a sort of ancestral dislike to axe-stealing wights. Pismire told him to shut up.
    The oldest wight in the group was the Master. There were twenty-one in this group and Pismire, looking at their cart, pointed out the big varnish-boiler on top of it. Wights specialized in smelting the varnish that was mined at the Varnisholme, the giant pillar of red wood in the north known as achairleg in Dumii. Then they went from village to village, selling it. Varnish could be cast into a spear head, or a knife; or just about anything.
    Snibril wondered how long it would be beforeanyone noticed he had shoved the belt back in his pack? But he wasn’t going to give it up, he told himself. They’d be bound to want it back if they saw it.
    There were seven fires, close together, and three wights around each. They looked identical. How do they tell one another apart, Snibril wondered?
    ‘Oh, there’s something else I forgot to tell you,’ said Pismire, as the wights busied themselves over their cooking pots. ‘They have perfect memories. Um. They remember everything. That’s why they find it so hard to talk to ordinary people.’
    ‘I don’t understand,’ said Snibril
    ‘Don’t be surprised if they give you answers before you’ve asked the question. Sometimes even they get confused,’ Pismire went on.
    ‘Never mind about them. I’m confused.’
    ‘They remember everything, I said. Everything. Everything that’s ever going to happen to them. Their minds . . . work differently. The past and the future are all the same to them. Please try to understand what I’m saying. They remember things that haven’t happened yet.’
    Snibril’s jaw dropped.
    ‘Then we could ask them—’ he began.
    ‘No! We mustn’t! Why, thank you,’ Pismire continued, in a more normal voice, taking a plate from a wight, ‘that looks . . . um . . . delicious.’
    They ate in silence. Snibril thought: do they say nothing because they already know what it was they said? No, that can’t be right – they’d have to speak now to remember having said it . . . or . . .
    ‘I am Noral the kilnmaster,’ said the wight on his left.
    ‘My name—’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘We—’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘There was—’
    ‘I know. ‘
    ‘How? ’
    ‘You’re going to tell me after dinner.’
    ‘Oh.’ Snibril tried to think. Pismire was right. It was almost impossible to hold a conversation with someone who’d already heard it once. ‘You really know everything that’s going to happen?’ was all he could think of.
    There was the trace of a smile in the depths of the hood.
    ‘Not everything. How can anyone know everything? But a number of things I do know, yes.’
    Snibril looked around desperately. Bane and Pismire were deep in conversation with wights, and were not paying him any attention.
    ‘But . . . but . . . supposing you knew when youwere going to die? Supposing a wild animal was going to attack you?’
    ‘Yes?’ said Noral politely.
    ‘You could just make sure you weren’t there?’
    ‘Weren’t there when you died?’ said the wight. ‘That would be a good trick.’
    ‘No! I mean . . . you could avoid—’
    ‘I know what you mean. But we couldn’t. It’s hard to explain. Or easy to explain and hard to understand. We have to follow the Thread. The one Thread. We mustn’t break it.’
    ‘Doesn’t anything ever come as a surprise?’ said Snibril
    ‘I don’t know. What is a surprise?’
    ‘Can you tell me what’s going to happen to me? To all of us? You know what’s been happening already. It would help a lot to know the future.’
    The dark hood turned towards him.
    ‘It wouldn’t. It makes living very hard.’
    ‘We need help,’ said Snibril, in a frantic whisper. ‘What’s Fray? Where can we go to be safe? What should we do? Can’t you tell us?’
    The wight leaned closer.
    ‘Can you keep a secret?’ it said, conspiratorially.
    ‘Yes!’ said Snibril
    ‘Really keep a secret? Even though you’d give anything to tell