He had sent a single message to Alyosha: Have food ready, wetnurse, something. With a twist of a dial, he had let the compass turn his words to text so she couldn't hear how exhaustion thinned out his voice. Then he had put it away and focused his attention on the children, without the energy to concentrate on anything more.

Shamash and Ishtar were swaddled now in fresh linens, fed with dabs of sugar water (administered with utmost caution, near terror, on the advice of a medic in Redgate) in the absence of milk, both sniffling intermittently with hunger still. He replaced the cold, slit-visored helm. Staggered under the weight of the world. Dorchadas crackled around him, all purple and blue, a thousand different colours of darkness.

He held the children tight, and took the single step which would bring him crashing before Alyosha's door in a burst of flame cold and bright enough to singe the earth around them. Knees nearly buckling even in the black-shell casing of his borrowed armour.

The weight of all this knowing was exhausting. He might as well have stuck his head into a hornet's nest for the painful whine which invaded his ears. If there was space between his brow and the helm's visor—and he wasn't sure there was—it was slicked with blood.