‘We’re on the trail-we can’t leave it now. Besides, I need an ally. I need someone who can guard my back.’
‘With what, this stupid eat-knife in my belt?’
She made a face. ‘Tell me the truth. Where did you come from?’
‘I was a foundling in the Chain of Dogs. The Imperial Historian Duiker saved me. He picked me up outside Aren’s gate and put me into Keneb’s arms.’
‘Do you actually remember all of that?’
‘Of course.’
Her eyes had sharpened their study. ‘You remember walking in the Chain of Dogs?’
He nodded. ‘Walking, running. Being scared, hungry, thirsty. Seeing so many people die. I even remember seeing Coltaine once, although the only thing I can see in my head now, when I think of him, is crow-feathers. At least,’ he added, ‘I didn’t see him die.’
‘What city did you come from?’
‘That I can’t remember.’ He shrugged. ‘Anything before the Chain… is gone, like it never existed.’
‘It didn’t.’
‘What?’
‘The Chain of Dogs made you, Grub. It built you up out of dirt and sticks and rocks, and then it filled you with everything that happened. The heroes who fought and then died, the people who loved, then lost. The ones that starved and died of thirst. The ones whose hearts burst with terror. The ones that drowned, the ones that swallowed an arrow or a sword. The ones who rode spears. It took all of that and that became your soul.’
‘That’s ridiculous. There were lots of orphans. Some of us made it, some of us didn’t. That’s all.’
‘You were what, three years old? Four? Nobody remembers much from when they were that young. A handful of scenes, maybe. That’s it. But you remember the Chain of Dogs, Grub, because you’re its get.’
‘I had parents. A real father, a real mother!’
‘But you can’t remember them.’
‘Because they died before the Chain even started!’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because what you’re saying makes no sense!’
‘Grub, I know because you’re just like me.’
‘What? You got a real family-you even got a brother!’
‘Who looks at me and doesn’t know who or what he’s looking at. I’ll tell you who made me. An assassin named Kalam. He found me hiding with a bunch of bandits who were pretending to be rebels. He carved things on to my soul, and then he left. And then I was made a second time-I was added on to. At Y’Ghatan, where I found the fire that I took inside me, that now burns on and on like my very own sun. And after, there was Captain Faradan Sort, because she knew that I knew they were still alive-and I knew because the fire never went out-it was under the city, burning and burning. I knew-I could feel it.’ She stopped then, panting to catch her breath, her eyes wild as a wasp-stung cat’s.
Grub stared at her, not knowing whether he wanted to hug her or hit her. ‘You were born to a mother, just like I was.’
‘ Then why are we so different? ’
Moths fled at her shout, and sounds fell away on all sides.
‘I don’t know,’ he replied in a soft voice. ‘Maybe… maybe you did find something in Y’Ghatan. But nothing like that ever happened to me-’
‘Malaz City. You jumped ship. You went to find the Nachts. Why?’
‘I don’t know!’
She leapt away from him, rushed off into the wood. In moments he had lost sight of her. ‘Sinn? What are you doing? Where are you going?’
The gloom vanished. Fifty paces away a seething sphere of flames blossomed. Trees exploded in its path as it rolled straight towards Grub.
He opened his mouth to scream, but no sound emerged.
The blistering ball of fire heaved closer, huge, bristling-
Grub gestured. The ground lifted suddenly into the fire’s path, in a mass of roots, humus and mud, surging upward, toppling trees to the sides. A thousand twisted brown arms snaked out from the churning earth. The writhing wall engulfed the rolling sphere of fire, slapped it down as would a booted heel crush the life from a wayward ember. Thunder shook. The earth subsided, the arms vanishing, leaving nothing more than a slowly settling, chewed-up mound. Clouds of steam billowed and then drifted, thinning as the darkness returned once more.
He saw her walking calmly towards him, stepping over shattered trunks, brushing dirt from her plain tunic.
Sinn halted directly before him. ‘It doesn’t matter, Grub,’ she said. ‘You and me- we’re different .’