‘None wi’out Dresh’s command, ma’am.’
‘But your curse drives them mad, every one of them. Don’t make me ask the question again.’
‘Ma’am, be well twenty and one. Once their bearin’ days are done. Mostly.’
‘And you have been working hard at keeping the Tiste Edur away.’
‘No business a theirs, ma’am.’
Nor mine. Yet… not entirely true, is it? ‘End the curse, Pully. You’ve done enough.’
‘Boaral killed more Shake than any other Dresh, ma’am. You know that.’
‘End it,’ Twilight said, opening her eyes and facing the two women, ‘or your heads will be in sacks and buried deep in Noose Bog before this night is out.’
Pully and her companion grinned at each other.
‘I am of the shore,’ Yan Tovis said in a hard voice. ‘My Shake name is Twilight.’
The hags suddenly backed away, then sank down onto their knees, heads bowed.
‘End the curse,’ Twilight said again. ‘Will you defy princess of the Last Blood?’
‘Princess no longer,’ Pully said to the floor.
Yan Tovis felt the blood drain from her face-if not for the wall she leaned against she would have staggered.
‘Your mother died be well a year past,’ Pully said in a soft, sad voice.
The other witch added, ‘Crossin’ from the Isle, the boat overturning. They say it was some demon o’ the deep, pushed too close by dark magic out at sea-the same magic, my Queen, as could be well squirted Master at Arms west as they say. A demon, up unner the boat, an’ all drowned. Whisperin’ from the waters, my Queen, dark and well nigh black.’
Yan Tovis drew a deep breath. To be Shake was to know grief. Her mother was dead, now a face emptied of life. Well, she had not seen the woman in over a decade, had she? So, why this pain? Because there is something else. ‘What is the name of the Master at Arms, Pully?’
‘Yedan Derryg, Highness. The Watch.’
The half-brother I have never met. The one who ran-from his blood, from everything. Ran nearly as far as I did. And yet, was that old tale even true? The Watch was here, after all, a mere bell’s ride from the shore. She understood now why he had ridden out on this night. Something else, and this is it.