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Binadas shrugged ‘We have seen the traps you laid out before the Nerek and the Tarthenal Each word is a knot in an invisible net Against it, the Nerek’s swords were too blunt The Tarthenal too slow to anger The Faraed could only smile in their confusion We are not as those tribes’

‘I know,’ Hull said ‘Friend,of coins One atop another, clinifies progress, and progress is the natural proclivity of civilization Progress, Binadas, is the belief froe notions of destiny The Letherii believe in destiny – their own They are deserving of all things, born of their avowed virtues The e’

Binadas was s at Hull’s words, but it was a wry smile He turned suddenly to Seren Pedac ‘Acquitor Join us, please Do old wounds mar Hull Beddict’s view of Lether?’

‘Destiny wounds us all,’ she replied, ‘and we Letherii wear the scars with pride Most of us,’ she added with an apologetic look at Hull

‘One of your virtues?’

‘Yes, if you could call it that We have a talent for disguising greed under the cloak of freedonore those Progress, after all, means to look ever forward, and whatever we have traress, then,’ Binadas said, still sons ever roll down the hill, Hiroth Faster and faster’

‘Until they strike a wall’

‘We crash through ht she detected a look of sadness in the Edur’s eyes before he turned away ‘We live in different worlds’

‘And I would choose yours,’ Hull Beddict said

Binadas shot the lance, his expression quizzical ‘Would you, friend?’

So in the Hiroth’s tone made the hairs rise on the back of Seren Pedac’s neck

Hull frowned, suggesting that he too had detected so awry in that question

No ed then, and Seren Pedac permitted Hull and Binadas to take the lead on the trail, allowing them such distance that their privacy was assured Even so, they see strides, the way they walked And wondered

Hull was so clearly lost Seeking to eance He would drive them to war, if he could But destruction yielded only strife, and his drea peace within his soul in the blood and ashes of slaughter filled her with pity for the er he presented

Seren Pedac held no love for her own people The Letherii’s rapacious hunger and inability to shift to any perspective that did not serve then power they ons will shatter against a wall more solid than any we have seen Will it be the Tiste Edur ? It did not seem likely True, they possessed formidable sorcery, and the Letherii had yet to encounter fiercer fighters But the co Diskanar’s capital alone was home to over a hundred thousand, and there were a half-dozen cities nearly as large in Lether With the protectorates across Dracons Sea and to the east, the hegemony could amass and field six hundred thousand soldiers, ion there would be a master of sorcery, trained by the Ceda, Kuru Qan himself The Edur would be crushed Annihilated

And Hull Beddict…

She turned her thoughts from him with an effort The choices were his to make, after all Nor, she suspected, would he listen to her warnings

Seren Pedac acknowledged her own uncertainty and confusion Would she advocate peace at any price? What were the rewards of capitulation? Letherii access to the resources now claimed by the Edur The harvest from the sea And the Blackwood …

Of course It’s the living wood that we hunger for, the source of ships that can heal thealleys, that resist a Diskanar was not a fool – he was not the one harbouring such aspirations Kuru Qan would have seen to that No, this gambit was the queen’s Such conceit, to believe the Letherii couldwood That the Edur would so easily surrender their secrets, their arcane arts in coaxing the will of the Blackwood, in binding its power to their own

Harvesting the tusked seals was a feint The er sche political dividends, which in turn would recoup the losses a hundredfold And only someone as wealthy as the queen or Chancellor Triban Gnol could absorb such losses Ships crewed by the Indebted, with the provision of clearing those debts upon the event of their deaths Lives given up for the sake of children and grandchildren They would have had no trouble old, then