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But there was also the other part of what Hector had said. Disciple of the Fury.

Abbas had been thinking about what that meant over and over again.

Particularly that word. The Fury.

It stuck with him because he'd heard it used in that way once before, many years ago. One of his mentors, Dolf Rachman, had uttered it during one of his many barely-coherent rambles near the end of his life.

The very last time that Abbas had seen him, actually.

Dolf had always been half-crazy. It was part of his charm. And his genius. But on that particular occasion, "half-" had not been the word for it. Abbas remembered listening to him and thinking that the mentor he loved so dearly was all but gone.

"The life, the risk, the time, the shift. Displaced and distraught, the mind wanders and breaks. Words too meager, thoughts too thin, souls too fragile. Chaos cools against the Fury, the Fury. Chaos cools, and the Fury burns. It burns. It rages. It builds with anger and genius. Don't you see, Babo? The Fury is us. It's us. And right now, it is me. I am the Fury, Babo. I am the Fury, and the Fury is me."

Babo had been Dolf's nickname for him. Abbas had hated it, but Dolf never stopped using it, and now, looking back on it all, he kind of missed it.

But that was beside the point, of course. As far as Abbas was aware, no one else had ever heard that conversation. Not even Worwal. Only he and Dolf had been there.

So how in the world could Hector have uttered those words? How could he have possibly known to call him a disciple of the Fury? How could even the Candle have known to call him that?