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that’s all.’
    ‘I need some clothes,’ she said.
    He nodded distractedly. ‘I noticed.’
    ‘Furs. Skins.’
    ‘You intend to stay, Apsal’ara?’
    ‘At your side, yes.’
    He turned at that, eyes searching her face.
    ‘But,’ she added, ‘I will not be his burden.’
    A wry smile. ‘Mine, then?’
    ‘Name your closest advisers, Lord.’
    He swallowed half the wine, and then set the goblet down on the table. ‘The High Priestess. Chaste now, and I fear that does not serve her well. Skintick, a brother. Desra, a sister. Korlat, Spinnock, my father’s most trusted servants.’
    ‘Tiste Andii.’
    ‘Of course.’
    ‘And the one below?’
    ‘The one?’
    ‘Did he once advise you, Lord? Do you stand at the bars in the door’s window, to watch him mutter and pace? Do you torment him? I wish to know the man I will serve.’
    She saw clear anger in his face. ‘Are you to be my jester now? I have heard of such roles in human courts. Will you cut the sinews of my legs and laugh as I stumble and fall?’ He bared his teeth. ‘If yours is to be my face of conscience, Apsal’ara, should you not be prettier?’
    She cocked her head, made no reply.
    Abruptly his fury collapsed, and his eyes fell away. ‘It is the exile he has chosen. Did you test the lock on that door? It is barred from within. But then, we have no problem forgiving him. Advise me, then. I am a lord and it is in my power to do such things. To pardon the condemned. Yet you have seen the crypts below us. How many prisoners cringe beneath my iron hand?’
    ‘One.’
    ‘And I cannot free him. Surely that is worth a joke or two.’
    ‘Is he mad?’
    ‘Clip? Possibly.’
    ‘Then no, not even you can free him. Your father took scores for the chains of Dragnipur, scores just like this Clip.’
    ‘I dare say he did not call it freedom.’
    ‘Nor mercy,’ she replied. ‘They are beyond a lord’s reach, even that of a god.’
    ‘Then we fail them all. Both lords and gods – we fail them, our broken children.’
    This, she realized, would not be an easy man to serve. ‘He drew others to him – your father. Others who were not Tiste Andii. I remember, in his court, in Moon’s Spawn.’
    Nimander’s eyes narrowed.
    She hesitated, unsure, and then resumed. ‘Your kind are blind to many things. You need others close to you, Lord. Servants who are not Tiste Andii. I am not one of these … jesters you speak of. Nor, it seems, can I be your conscience, ugly as I am to your eyes—’
    He held up a hand. ‘Forgive me for that, I beg you. I sought to wound and so spoke an untruth, just to see it sting.’
    ‘I believe I stung you first, my lord.’
    He reached again for the wine, and then stood looking into the hearth’s flames. ‘Apsal’ara, Mistress of Thieves. Will you now abandon that life, to become an adviser to a Tiste Andii lord? All because my father, at the very end, showed you mercy?’
    ‘I never blamed him for what he did. I gave him no choice. He did not free me out of mercy, Nimander.’
    ‘Then why?’
    She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. But I mean to find out.’
    ‘And this pursuit – for an answer – has brought you here, to Black Coral. To … me.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And how long will you stand at my side, Apsal’ara, whilst I govern a city, sign writs, debate policies? Whilst I slowly rot in the shadow of a father I barely knew and a legacy I cannot hope to fill?’
    Her eyes widened. ‘Lord, that is not your fate.’
    He wheeled to her. ‘Really? Why not? Please, advise me.’
    She cocked her head a second time, studied the tall warrior with the bitter, helpless eyes. ‘For so long you Tiste Andii prayed for Mother Dark’s loving regard. For so long you yearned to be reborn to purpose, to life itself. He gave it all back to you. All of it. He did what he knew had to be done, for your sake. You, Nimander, and all the rest. And now you sit here, in his chair, in his city, among his children. And her holy breath,