There were fewer of the beasts, Korlat noted. The crossing had claimed hundreds.

A shrill hiss from Crone recaptured her wandering attention.

The Great Raven had half spread her wings, halting directly in front of the warlord. 'You still do not grasp the gravity of this! Fool! Ox! Where is Anomander Rake? Tell me! I must speak with him — warn him-'

'Of what?' Brood asked. 'That a few hundred condors have chased you away?'

'Unknown sorcery hides within those abominable vultures! We are being deliberately kept away, you brainless thug!'

'From Coral and environs,' Kallor noted drily. 'We've just come in sight of Lest, Crone. One thing at a time.'

'Stupid! Do you think they're just sitting on their hands? They're preparing -'

'Of course they are,' Kallor drawled, sneering down at the Great Raven. 'What of it?'

'What's happened to Moon's Spawn? We know what Rake planned — has it succeeded? I cannot reach it! I cannot reach him! Where is Moon's Spawn? '

No-one spoke.

Crone's head darted down. 'You know less than I! Don't you? All this is bravado! We are lost!' The Great Raven wheeled to pin Korlat with her glittering, black eyes. 'Your Lord has failed, hasn't he? And taken three-quarters of the Tiste Andii with him! Will you be enough, Korlat? Will you-'

'Crone,' Brood rumbled. 'We'd asked for word on the Malazans, not a list of your fears.'

'The Malazans? They march! What else would they do? Endless wagons on the road, dust everywhere. Closing on Setta, which is empty but for a handful of sun-withered corpses!'

Kallor grunted. 'They're making a swift passage of it, then. As if in a hurry. Warlord, there is deceit here.'

Brood scowled, crossed his arms. 'You heard the bird, Kallor. The Malazans march. Faster than we'd expected, true, but that is all.'

'You dissemble,' Kallor grated.

Ignoring him, Brood faced the Great Raven once more. 'Have your kin keep an eye on them. As for what's happening at Coral, we'll worry about that when we reach Maurik and reunite our forces. Finally, regarding your master, Anomander Rake, have faith, Crone.'

'Upon faith you hold to success? Madness! We must prepare for the worst!'

Korlat's attention drifted once more. It had been doing that a lot of late. She'd forgotten what love could do, as it threaded its roots through her entire soul, as it tugged and pulled at her thoughts, obsession ripening like seductive fruit. She felt only its life, thickening within her, claiming all she was.

Fears for her Lord and her kin seemed almost inconsequential. If truly demanded, she could attempt her warren, reach him via the paths of Kurald Galain. But there was no urgency within her to do any such thing. This war would find its own path.

Her wants were held, one and all, in the eyes of a man. A mortal, of angled, edged nobility. A man past his youth, a soul layered in scars — yet he had surrendered it to her.

Almost impossible to believe.

She recalled her first sight of him up close. She had been standing with the Mhybe and Silverfox, the child's hand in her own. He had ridden towards the place of parley at Dujek's side. A soldier whose name she had already known — as a feared enemy, whose tactical prowess had defied Brood time and again, despite the odds against the Malazan's poorly supplied, numerically weakened forces.

Even then, he had been as a lodestone to her eye.

And not just hers alone, she realized. Her Lord had called him friend. The rarity of such a thing still threatened to steal her breath. Anomander Rake, in all the time she had known him, had acknowledged but one friend, and that was Caladan Brood. And between those two men, thousands of years of shared experiences, an alliance never broken. Countless clashes, it was true, but not once a final, irretrievable sundering.

The key to that, Korlat well understood, lay in their maintaining a respectable distance from each other, punctuated by the occasional convergence.

It was, she believed, a relationship that would never be broken. And from it, after centuries, had been born a friendship.

Yet Rake had shared but a few evenings in Whiskeyjack's company. Conversations of an unknown nature had taken place between them. And it had been enough.

Something in each of them has made them kin in spirit. Yet even I cannot see it. Anomander Rake cannot be reached out to, cannot be so much as touched — not his true self. I have never known what lies behind my Lord's eyes. I have but sensed its vast capacity — but not the flavour of all that it contains.

But Whiskeyjack — my dear mortal lover — while I cannot see all that is within him, I can see the cost of containment. The bleeding, but not the wound. And I can see his strength — even the last time, when he was so weary.