Did he expect to gather spectres as one gathers hounds?

        Caneo hears the call. Resentment grows in cold spines up along his back, prickling and loathsome. And who is Misael? And to whom does Caneo answer? He stands alone upon a farther shore of the lake, water droplets caught like gemstones in his whiskers. Below, his reflection wavers as some of the droplets return to their brethren. And his reflection is a faceless, dust-stained thing shining with near-incorporeal brilliance, a gemstone tucked to all appearances within the sands of an ancestral home. If he had come earlier to the Throat, if he had been softer when he arrived, he might feel happy. But he is already hewn of knives, shaped by loneliness and grown by moonlight, and his ears flatten at this noise, the semblance of shackles about his hooves and around his neck. The serpent on his brow twists, softly hissing. Her opinion is plain; she stares elsewhere, wondering about a smell and also thinking of frogs. She only ever thinks of frogs.

        Caneo sighs. He turns toward the call.

        It may be a sign of age that he at last obeys. It may simply be a symptom of this apathy clinging like cancer to the chambers of his heart. His cloven hooves tread lightly over the desert, carrying him with a leisurely but long stride created solely to devour distance. And he does. And soon the blood tree towers before him, crowning the horned beast before it with gory resplendence. Upon catching the sight, the silver creature laughs - bites back a laugh - grins in mirth and hides the laughter in the long, twitching curve of his tail. Disregarding their companions, they are alone here. What a sorry sight.

        He feigns ignorance.

        "Oh!" says Caneo. He simpers, as always, bright and innocent and too old to play these games but too fond of them to play any others. "Were you calling a meeting? Are we going to do something, finally?" His tone falls to plainly mocking by the end, though it laughs, still. He is tired, tired, of these big ugly creatures and their fighting and the dust on their skin. He is tired of smiling, too, but like the serpent peering around one of his ears, he knows no other way to be. His head cocks; her head cocks. He remembers hearing the striped beast laugh back at the meeting. "Your name's Misael, right? I hope you're gonna be a better sleuth than Ghost."