But Balthazar had been a powerful mage, and he had brought something through from the Outer Dark on the last night of the Masque of Death. It had almost cost Kormak his life to banish it.

He regretted that the urgency of his mission did not leave time to pursue the vanished sorcerer. He needed to get on the trail of Vorkhul’s sarcophagus. That Old One who had emerged from it had almost killed the King-Emperor, and Kormak needed to find out if there were more like it.

“You are looking thoughtful,” said Rhiana, smiling at him from the back of the wagon. She lay on a straw-stuffed mattress on top of boxes of supplies, reading a book she had borrowed from the Governor’s library, some tome about first expeditions into the interior in search of gold, written by the conquerers of the new lands.

He smiled back. It was easy to do. She was an exotically lovely woman, almost as tall as he, with cropped ash blonde hair, and eyes green as emeralds. The webs between her fingers were not evident unless you looked closely and the gills in her neck were covered by her high-collared tunic. “I was thinking about Xothak and Balthazar and the Old Ones.”

“Always business with you, isn’t it?”

“I can’t help but feel I am missing something. There’s something going on I don’t understand.”

“Not even your exotic education on Mount Aethelas can cover everything,” she said. “This part of the world was nothing but a legend to the Sunlanders until the Sidereans conquered it. There’s a lot going on here that no one back in the Old Kingdoms could possibly know about.”

She raised the book in her hand. “According to this, the interior and the jungles are full of lost cities filled with gold and Solari and eldrim treasures.”

“I wondered what you found so fascinating in it.” During her time as a captain in the pirate city of Port Blood, Rhiana had been a treasure hunter, spending her time diving amid the sunken cities of the World Ocean looking for just such ancient riches.

“Strange that in almost seventy years since the Conquest of Terra Nova so few of them have been found.”

“As I understand it most of them were discovered in the first twenty years or so. Probably they were stripped bare by adventurers. People have been hoping for new finds ever since.”

“Our friend Anders certainly found something,” Rhiana said. She gestured over to where the tall mercenary stood, eating a skewer of meat bought from a passing vendor. He was slightly stooped, with thinning blond hair. He looked worried, as well he might. Only a few days ago he had been the prisoner of lunar spies and Shadow cultists. He had lost the fortune that the governor had paid him for finding Vorkhul’s sarcophagus.

“I don’t think he is happy he did,” Kormak said.

“He was cheated by the Governor and then he lost even that when Balthazar and company kidnapped him.”

“You think he was cheated?”

“I talked to him about how much he got for the sarcophagus. Professional interest. He would have got ten times that if he had sold it to the artefact vendors in Port Blood.”

“He probably didn’t know that. And to be fair, the Governor probably didn’t either. They both just looked at it and thought it was worth gold.”

“They were both right.”

“Much good it has done them,” Kormak said. “Anders is broke, and the Governor is under suspicion of treason.”

“And we’re going to the mountains to clear up their mess.”

“Only one of us has to do that,” he said. He waited for her response, although he knew what she was likely to say.

“I started this with you, and I’m going to see it through. Besides, if there are more of those coffins, I’ll take them to Port Blood myself.”

“Not if they have the same sort of occupants as the last one.”

“Oh, I’ll wait for you to kill them first.”

“It’s good you have such confidence in me.”

“It’s your sword I have confidence in. You’re just the man who swings it.”

He shrugged and looked away. She had to turn these discussions into a joke. He had to do the same.