Night of Knives

CHAPTER THREE

The single tiny vessel struggled lost on an ocean of storm. Above, lightning lashed through a solid roof of cloud. The brazier at the boat’s mid-thwart glowed, a single beacon of orange against the night. The fisherman rowed, driving the skiff’s prow into the heaving waves. All around hail and driven rain tore the slate-grey waters, yet no spray touched the boat to hiss in the brazier or flatten the fisherman’s blowing hair. Bronze tores gleamed at his tanned wrists and the bulk of his wool sweater hid the strength of his arms. Overhead, the roiling clouds seemed to shudder with each sweep of his oars, and every flex of his broad back. He chanted louder now, teeth clamped onto the stem of his pipe, keening into the raging wind:

‘Was summer I went a rowin’ with my glowing bride

We laughed and tarried ‘mid the silken pools.

Prettier than the lily blossom is my love,

She moves with grace upon the sheen.

Her eyes are deeper than the sea,

Her heart is warmer than all the cold, cold, sea.’

Out amid the waves, riders broached the surface. Their opalescent armour shone silver and sapphire. They leant back then heaved jagged ice-lances. The gleaming weapons darted across the waves. As they entered the eye of calm surrounding the skiff, they burst into mist.

From the distant south, parting a curtain of driving sleet as it came, reared a crag of deepest aquamarine and hoarfrost silver. It advanced upon the skiff with the irresistible majesty of a glacier, but the fisherman heaved upon his oars. In front of him the brazier glowed like a crimson sun. Pennants of vapour shot from the iceberg’s leading face. Shards calved away, throwing up clouds of spray.

At the iceberg’s skirts the waves churned into a boiling froth as it drove on towards the skiff. But before it came close it sank down, sucked into the depths. The remaining emerald slick of sizzling water disappeared under a slurried web of ice.

New figures now broached the ice-mulched sea. Deepest indigo, their scaled helms revealed only darkness within. Instead of a long lance of barbed ice, each bore short blunt wands of amethyst and olivine. These they levelled at the distant skiff. From their tips cyan lightning leaped, splitting the air, only to dissipate into nothing before the skiff’s prow. One by one the figures dived, wands held high.

For a time the skiff was alone on the waves, rising and falling like a piece of flotsam as the fisherman rowed on. But soon more shapes appeared, pale, opalescent, diving in circles around the skiff. Then, from out of the fog, came another ice mountain. Driving sleet tore into the waves all around, but still the fisherman heaved on the oars, back hunched, pipe jutting from between his teeth. He chanted…

‘Her heart is warmer than all the cold, cold sea.’

Kiska jogged down Riverwalk. To one side the Malaz River flowed dark and gelid within its stone banks. Her leather slippers padded silently on the wet cobbles. She’d seen nothing of her target since leaving the Lightings. A low swirling ground-fog obscured the distance and brushed cold fingers across her face and shoulders. Black clouds rushed overhead; it was as if the stars themselves were snuffed out. Only the moon, low on the horizon, cast a tattered pallid glow over the glistening streets. Kiska hoped to check on her quarry closer to the centre of town, yet she’d seen nothing of him thus far. Had he and his bodyguards come this way? Perhaps some errand had taken him elsewhere. But where else could he have gone?

She felt as if she were the last living soul on the island and she shuddered at the thought. On Stone Bridge she paused to glance up and down the river front. Thin rain, more like hanging vapour, softened the distances. Nothing moved — yet things seemed to be moving. She glanced back, squinted. Shadows. Shadows that flickered like soot-fouled flames.

As she watched, the wave of shadows came sweeping down the hillside. It engulfed the riverfront shacks on their stilts and swept on, swallowing the water like a wash of treacle. In a few heartbeats it would pass right over where she stood. Too late, she urged her legs to move. She was still on the bridge when it enveloped her. She ran blind, wiping at her eyes. As the cobbles of the bridge fell from under her feet she yelled and stumbled into ice-cold water.

At first she thought she had fallen into the river, then realized it was only a surface flow — a thin sheen over wet sand. She straightened, gasping for air, her heart hammering. Now that the shadows had dissolved the night brightened. Kiska saw that she stood among tall sand dunes, silver in the moonlight.

She was no longer in Malaz — she knew that — though she had a suspicion of where she might be. The sky was an angry pewter, streaked by high clouds that rippled as she watched. Steep dunes surrounded her like tall waves. She climbed one and turned to marvel at her new surroundings. Smooth, almost sensual, curved hills of sand stretched in every direction. The region resembled the place Oleg had just taken her — the Warren of Shadow.

One detail was jarring, however: the source of the silver-green glow that dominated one horizon. A glacier. Kiska had never seen one with her own eyes, but it resembled the descriptions she’d heard from travellers — a mountain of glowing ice, they’d called it. She’d discounted the stories herself, thought them exaggerated by booze-addled memories. But here was proof. Kiska reflected sourly on just how small her island was, just how bounded her own experience must be. She tried to imagine the crushing weight of all that ice, its dimensions. Just how far away was it? The rolling landscape gave no clue. She brushed the wet sand from her clothes and shivered in the cold wind.

A breathless voice spoke behind her: ‘I’d forgotten just how impressive it is at first sight.’

She spun, knives out, only to jump back and yelp her surprise.

Whatever it was, it was dead. Or rather, it was a corpse. Desiccated flesh, empty eye sockets, grinning yellowed teeth. Rags of clothing hung from its angular frame — what was once a thick layered cloak over age-worn leather and bronze armour. The hilt of a sword in a corroded scabbard jutted behind one shoulder. Cold horror stole over Kiska.

‘You’re from Malaz?’ the corpse asked in archaic Talian.

‘Yes,’ she stammered, ‘Malaz. Malaz Island.’

Its head, seemingly welded to its helm of corroded bronze, nodded slowly. ‘An island now, is it? I have walked that land many times.’

‘Who are you? Where am I?’

‘I am called Edgewalker. I walk the borders of Kurald Emurlahn. What you call Shadow. And this is part of that realm.’

Kiska pointed a knife to the far mountain of ice. ‘Then what is that?’

‘Something that belongs here no more than you.’

‘Oh.’ Kiska lowered her arm, shivered. ‘Well, I didn’t ask to come here.’

‘You were swept up by a Changing, a shadow storm. They will be frequent. I suggest you stay indoors.’

‘Indoors?’ Kiska barked a laugh. ’Where?’ Then she clamped her mouth shut. ‘You mean… you will send me back?’

‘Yes. I will. You do not belong here.’

‘Then I suppose I should give you my thanks.’ Kiska pushed back her hair, eyed the dunes. Was this really Malaz? Then she remembered. ‘Do you know a man named Oleg?’

‘No. I know of no one by that name.’

‘What of a ruler? If this is Shadow then does it have a throne?’

Edgewalker remained silent for a time, long enough for Kiska to lean closer. Had he died?

But at last he asked, ‘What of it?’

‘I was told someone would attempt to take it this night.’

‘Countless have tried. All have failed. Even those who succeeded for a time. Myself included, after a fashion. Now I walk its boundaries forever. And I fared better than most.’

Bizarrely, Kiska felt disappointed by the acknowledgement. She’d half-suspected, half-hoped, that Oleg had been insane. Now she tried to recall more of his babbling.

A low moaning raised the hairs at her neck. The creature raised one sinewy arm like the twisted branch of an oak and pointed back across the stream. Gold rings glinted on his withered fingers. ‘A Hound has found your scent. Run while you can, child.’

She needed no more convincing, yet she suddenly remembered. ‘What is entombment? What is that?’

‘The price of failure. Eternal enslavement to Shadow House.’

The baying returned, closer now, echoing from the distant wall of glittering ice. ‘You haven’t much time,’ said the being, its voice no more than the scratching of leaves. ‘Go to Obo’s tower. Beg his protection.’

‘Obo’s tower? But that’s an empty ruin. Obo’s just a myth.’

‘No doubt so were certain Hounds a mere hour ago.’

Kiska blinked her surprise. ‘But what of you? Will you be safe?’

The brittle flesh of the being’s neck creaked as it cocked its head to regard her through empty sockets. ‘The Hounds and I are akin. Slaves to Shadow in our own ways. But I thank you for your concern. Now you must go.’

The creature raised a clawed hand in farewell and at that the world darkened. All around shadows writhed like black wings. For an instant she thought she heard a chorus of whispers in a confusing multitude of languages. Then the shadows whipped away, and she recognized where she stood: Riverwalk, south of Malaz River.

Immediately, a howl tore through the night so loud that Kiska jumped as if the Hound was beside her, ready to close its jaws. She took off at a run, not daring to glance behind. Ahead, a mere few blocks, the jagged top of Obo’s ruined tower thrust into the clouds like a broken dagger. Another bellow, loud as a thunderclap, and she stumbled. Screams rose around her, torn from the throats of terrified citizens locked in their houses. She raced around a corner and over an open square, then dived the low stone wall of the tower grounds. Amongst the leaves and tossed garbage of the abandoned yard she lay trembling, straining to listen.

But she heard nothing, only the surf, strangely distant, and the rush of wind. Slowly, she brought her breath under control, stilled her pulse. Something kicked through the fallen branches and she suppressed a yelp. She raised her head a fraction: a thin foot in leather sandals. She looked up. An old man in tattered brown woollen robes, hefting a tree limb as a staff. He was bald but for strands of long wild white hair in a fringe over his ears.

He glowered down the length of a long hooked nose. ‘What’s this?’ he muttered, as if he’d stepped on a cow turd.

Kiska blinked up at him. Who was this doddering oldster? Surely not Obo, the malevolent ogre of legend. ‘Who in the Queen’s wisdom are you?’ she asked warily, and climbed to her feet, watching the man all the while.

‘Who am I?’ the fellow squawked. ‘Who am I? Some guttersnipe invades my home and questions me?’

‘’Your home?’

‘Yes, my home.’ The old man swept his staff up at the tower and Kiska saw that it now rose massive and undamaged into a night sky gleaming with stars but free of any moon. She peered around — the familiar hillsides ran down to the sea while to the north the cliffs rose like a wall — yet no city surrounded them. Not one building marred a field of wind-swept marsh grasses and nodding cattails.

‘Where are we?’

The old man jabbed her arm with the staff. ‘Are you dense? My tower.’

‘You’re Obo?’

The old man screwed up his mouth in anger and raised his staff.

Kiska snatched it from his hands and threw it to one side.

The old man gaped at her. ‘Why you…! That was my stick!’

Kiska tensed, waiting for a blast of magery or a flesh-rotting curse. Instead, the old man turned sharply around and marched up the stone steps to the tower’s only door.

‘Wait! Hey you — wait!’

The door slammed. Kiska ran up the stairs and beat her fists on the wood. ‘Open up. What am I to do?’

A slit no larger than the palm of a hand opened. ‘You can go away.’

‘But there’s a hound out here! You can’t leave me outside…’

One watery eye squinted past her. ‘It’s gone away. Now you go away.’

Kiska waved one hand to the marsh. ‘Go where? There’s nothing out there!’

The old man — Kiska couldn’t bring herself to identify him as the Obo — a legendary name of dread as a sorcerer from ages past. Another favourite of the blood-splashed stories her mother used to tell. He snarled his exasperation. ‘Not here. You don’t belong here. You go back to where you came from.’

She nodded. ‘Good. Yes. That’s what I want.’

‘Then go away and stop bothering me.’ The portal slammed shut.

She backed down the stairs. ‘Okay. I will!’ she shouted, ‘No thanks to you.’

At the low wall she paused and listened. For what, she wasn’t certain. A hound’s call, she supposed. But there was only the wind hissing through the tall grass and the churning of the surf. Lights caught her eye and she turned, staring to the far southern sky. Blue-green flashes played like banners painted in the night. Kiska shivered, remembering legends that the lights were reflections of the Stormriders, rising to drag ships down into their icy sunken realm. Tales she used to laugh at. But now… now she didn’t know what to think. She wiped her hands at the thighs of her sodden pants and blew on them. What had the old man meant, ’go back to where you came frond How? What was she to do?

In the gloom she could make out slabs of standing stones, a structure of some sort surrounded by a copse of stunted trees and low mounds. It appeared to stand right on the spot where, in Malaz City… Kiska’s breath caught and she backed away. Burn preserve my soul. It stood right where the Deadhouse would stand, or had stood. Only now it was a tomb.

She hugged herself as she shuddered. It wasn’t so much the cold as the shock of recognition. This really was her home, or would be. She felt suddenly very insignificant, even foolish. All her life she’d been so sure things never changed here. She wondered whether she could trust what this fellow hinted — that she would somehow return to the city. But then, what choice did she have?

If she did succeed in returning, Kiska vowed she would head straight to Agayla’s. If anyone knew what was going on — and what to do — it would be her. Never mind all this insane mumbling of the Return, the Deadhouse, and Shadow. What a tale she had for her aunt!

She took a deep steadying breath, stepped over the wall, and immediately lost her balance. The stars wheeled overhead until clouds like dark cloths flew across her vision, blotting them out. Now the moon glowed behind the clouds like the eye of giants from long ago. Ribbons of fog drifted over her. Wincing, she stood, rubbed at a bruised elbow. Turning, she glanced up to the shattered walls of Obo’s tower: a ruin once more. She was back in Malaz — the Malaz she knew. He’d done it; or perhaps he’d done nothing and simply walking out of the Tower’s grounds had returned her. Who knew how any of this worked? Perhaps Agayla could explain. In any case, she was back and had to get to her aunt’s as quickly as possible. That meant braving the streets again. She automatically slipped into the cover of a nearby wall.

Yet, she glanced back to Obo’s shattered tower. Maybe she could hide in the grounds till dawn. After all, who was she kidding? She now knew she was outclassed. Who would blame her? Kiska almost growled her frustration. Agayla must know what was going on. She had to talk to her.

A bellow erupted from the distance. Kiska flinched-Gods below! — and bolted from the shelter of the wall and down the narrow street.

The night’s second bell rang out tonelessly as Kiska reached Agayla’s rooms. Her aunt lived alone behind her shop on Reach Lane, a street so narrow its second-storey balconies butted each other overhead and occulted the moonlight.

Kiska leaned her weight onto the door and hammered her fist on its solid timbers: planks from a shipwreck, Agayla once told her. Kiska’s blows hardly raised a quiver. She stepped back, rain-sodden and exhausted. Woven garlands of ivy and twists of herbs hung over the lintel and down both jambs. When had that been done? Under its small gable, the door’s panels had been washed in dark tarry swathes as if a handful of leaves had been ground over them. She caught a sharp peppery scent. Too tired to wonder, she pressed herself to the wood. She whispered, ‘Auntie? It’s me. Open up. Please open. Please.’

‘Hello? Who’s there begging and scratching at my door? What lost soul?’

‘It’s me! Open up.’

‘Me? Oho! Any shade will have to do better than that to cross my threshold. Go and pester someone else.’

‘Auntie! Please! There are things out here! Let me in!’

With a rattle, the door swung inward. Agayla stood at the narrow threshold, a candle in one hand that cast her sharp features into stark shadow and light. ‘I know there are, dear. That’s why you shouldn’t be out.’

Kiska stumbled in, slammed the door. Panting, chilled to the bone, she pressed her back to it, threw home the bolt.

Agayla shook her head as if Kiska had been out playing in the mud.

Still breathless, Kiska pointed to the door. ‘Don’t just stand there! There are monsters out there. Ghosts! Demons! I saw them. I was almost killed.’

Agayla’s lips tightened. ‘Everyone knows that, dear. And everyone else has the sense to stay indoors.’ Her long skirts rustling, she retreated into her shop, adding over her shoulder, ‘Everyone except you it seems. Now come on, we might as well get you cleaned up.’

Kiska could only gape at her back. How do you like that? All she’d been through and not even one word of what? Sympathy? Curiosity? Not even a How nice to see you?

While Agayla wrapped her in blankets and rubbed her hair dry, Kiska poured out everything she’d encountered — the men from the message cutter, the meeting, Oleg’s murder, the Shadow Realm, and the hound. Or almost everything. She held back her meeting with the ancient Shadow creature, Edgewalker. And Obo; no sense in making things sound even more unbelievable than they were.

Throughout, Agayla said nothing. Letting her talk herself quiet, Kiska guessed. After she stammered to a halt, Agayla put a hand under her chin and raised her face. She winced.

‘Is that all?’ she asked, pushing damp strands of Kiska’s hair back behind her ear.

All? But Kiska nodded.

Lips pursed, Agayla shook out her skirts and stood. ‘I’ll get some medicine for that neck wound.’ She went to the front, disappearing among the rows of standing shelves, each studded by tiny drawers containing a seemingly infinite variety of herbs.

Kiska drowsed in the heat of the thick blanket and the blaze of the fire that burned in a small hearth in the rear wall. Shadows flickered over her as Agayla moved about the shop front. Kiska heard the shush of drawers opening and the clatter of glass jars. Above her head wire baskets hung from the rafters in clusters as thick as fruit. Dried roots, leaves, and entire plants reached down like catching hands. Banks of wall cabinets rose to the ceiling, holding hundreds of slim drawers labelled by slips of yellow vellum. Over the years, Kiska had peeked into almost every cubby-hole, sniffing and studying the dried peppers, powdered blossoms, roots, bulbs, leaves and stems pickled in vinegar and spirits — all manner of bizarre fluids — in bottles, casks, decanters, vials, wax-sealed ivory tusks and even horns, the size of some which made her wonder what sort of animal they could have come from.

Now the melange of scents seeped over her, stronger then ever. For the first time since stepping onto the docks, Kiska eased the pent-up tension from her limbs and allowed herself to relax.

Agayla returned carrying a tray loaded with a large bowl and folded cloths. Her skirts brushed the floor. She’d pushed up the sleeves of her blouse over her forearms and tied back her long black hair. Setting down the tray, she lifted a kettle from the fire and poured steaming water into the bowl. Petals floated on the surface and powders swirled in its basin.

Imperious, Agayla pushed back Kiska’s forehead and began cleaning her neck as if she were a mud-spattered toddler. Kiska winced again.

‘Now,’ began Agayla, ‘what you’ve been babbling on about is very confused, but I think I can summarize: it looks like you’ve stuck your nose where it doesn’t belong and nearly had it bitten off. And rightfully so.’

‘Auntie!’

‘Shush, dear. Listen to me. That assassin was right. None of what’s going on concerns you. As for Oleg, he should never have spoken to you. Frankly, I am very disappointed by his lack of judgement.’

Kiska pushed Agayla’s hand away. ‘You know who he is — was?’

Agayla raised Kiska’s chin. ‘Yes. I know who he was, long ago.’

Kiska struggled to stand but Agayla pressed her back. ‘Then what about-’

‘Sit down!’ she commanded, then, more softly, ‘Please, sit.’

Startled into silence, Kiska eased herself back down. Agayla had always possessed a high-handed manner, but rarely had Kiska experienced it raised against her.

Agayla sighed and wiped her own brow. ‘I’m sorry. This is a trying night for all of us. I-’ She silenced herself, listening. Slowly, she turned to the front.

Kiska listened too. The scratch and scrabble of claws on stone, unnaturally loud. Then bull-like panting, snuffling, right at the door. A moment of silence, shattered by blood-freezing baying. Kiska clapped her hands to her ears. Agayla shot to her feet, both hands raised. Then the call diminished as the beast loped off into the distance.

Kiska tried to swallow. Burn the Preserver, had that been the one that had followed her? Had it been after her scent? She looked to Agayla. Her face had gone pale. Her raised hands shook. Kiska couldn’t believe her eyes; this woman, who seemed to fear nothing, was terrified.

Kiska reached out to a surprisingly chill forearm, whispered, ‘Tell me, Agayla. What’s going on?’

Blinking, as if returning from somewhere far off, Agayla pursed her lips. She studied Kiska, then managed a tight smile. ‘Very well. I will tell you a story — but only if you promise to follow my advice. Promise?’

Kiska hesitated. She wouldn’t try to hold her to something she couldn’t possibly keep, would she? Agayla had always been stern, but never unreasonable. And she always seemed so well informed about everything. To discover such secrets… Kiska nodded.

‘Good.’ Agayla pushed Kiska’s head back, resumed dabbing at the wound. Now it stung and she flinched. ‘You know the legends about the Emperor: Dancer, his partner and bodyguard; Surly, creator of the Claws and now Imperial Regent; Dassem, the Sword of the Empire; Tayschrenn and all the others. Well, now I’m going to give you a version that should never be repeated.’ Agayla pinched Kiska’s chin between thumb and forefinger and gave her a warning look. Kiska nodded again.

‘Good. The Sword of the Empire was broken just this year far to the north at Seven Cities. You heard?’

‘Rumours came with the army.’

‘Well, the breaking of the Sword leaves Surly next in line for succession. Dassem, and the two others of the Sword who survived the battle, died that night. Some say Surly had a hand — or a Claw — in that breaking and in those deaths, but that is neither here nor there.

‘Perhaps you didn’t know that lately Kellanved and Dancer have been seen less and less. I’ve heard they’ve become engrossed in their own arcane research. The Imperial generals, governors and Fists have been complaining to Surly that Kellanved neglects his duties. No doubt her Claws fan the flames of discontent while eliminating their competition, the Talons. Many say that Kellanved and Dancer are dead, consumed in an experiment into the nature of the Warrens that went awry. Oleg believed he knew the truth of that. In any event, a prophecy arose that Kellanved would return here to Malaz Island where everything began so long ago. And behold, a few years later comes a Shadow Moon to Malaz. So, various parties and interests have gathered together in the rather tight confines of this small island, gambling that the future of the Imperium will take a radical turn this very night. As if things weren’t dangerous enough with a Shadow Moon… and all the rest.’

Agayla squeezed the cloth over the basin. Kiska straightened. ‘That’s pretty much what Oleg said, that he was coming.’ But she remembered more — Oleg snarling that he would claim the Realm. But what did the Deadhouse have to do with Shadow? What on earth did the old man mean?

It all sounded so foolish now. Transubstantiation, entombment — though Edgewalker had recognized it. And who and what was he anyway? And that riddle of Oleg’s. Pure foolishness: ‘His victory would be sealed by his defeat.’

Kiska glanced sharply at her aunt: ‘And all the rest?’

‘Oleg Vikat,’ Agayla continued, preparing a white cloth dressing. ‘A one-time acolyte of Hood and a theurgical scholar. Claims to have discovered a foundational understanding of the Warrens, and even beyond.’ She sighed. ‘Mad, perhaps. But the Imperial High Mage himself, Tayschrenn, acknowledged a certain bizarre logic haunting the thicket of his theories. The man has been in hiding these past decades.’ She shook her head again. ‘To think he feared death from the knives of the Claws.’

‘The man in grey. Wasn’t he a Claw, sent to silence Oleg?’

Agayla got to her feet to wrap the dressing around Kiska’s neck. She folded it tight from behind. ‘No, dear. That was a cultist. A worshipper of the Warren of Shadow. Assassins all. They are here as well, gathered for their worship and blood rites under the Shadow Moon.’

Kiska touched at the rough cloth of the dressing. When she swallowed it felt almost too tight. ‘Yes… he said he’d send me to his Master. But what of the other things? The shadows shifting, the other sights?’

Her aunt’s shrug told her that she considered the full explanation beyond even her knowledge. ‘You saw these things simply because on this one night of all nights every portal, every gateway, every fault between Warrens, all open a crack. Every ghost, revenant or god can touch the world, however tenuously. So far you have been unusually lucky in your encounters, given what you may have run into, which is why-’ She stopped herself, dried her hands. ‘Well, we can talk of that later.’ She sat at Kiska’s side, took her hands in a surprisingly strong grip. ‘You see? There is too much here for any one person to get hold of. This is a night for long-awaited vengeance and desperate throws. A rare chance for the settling of old scores when the walls between this world and others weaken… when shadows slip through. Dawn will come — and it will — no matter what occurs tonight. It will, no matter who lives or dies. Tomorrow there will still be a need for spices and herbs, and for nosey non-commissioned intelligence agents who know the town. Even fat old Sub-Fist Pell will probably still command the garrison. Life goes on, you see?’

Kiska pulled her hands free. ‘I know what you’re getting at. But I can’t just sit here. Not again. Not after the riots.’

Agayla’s mouth thinned. ‘I probably saved your life, child.’

‘I’m not a child. I won’t stay locked up tonight — or forever. I can’t. I’d go insane. In any case, I’m involved. I have a message to deliver.’

Snorting lightly, Agayla waved that aside. ‘The insane predictions of a selfish, power-hungry fool.’

It did sound ridiculous — but that ancient creature, Edge-walker, accepted it. She regarded Agayla narrowly. How much did she really know of her? She called her Auntie yet no blood tie lay between them. Sometimes it seemed that half the people on the island called her that. During the enforcement of the Regent’s edict against magery, Agayla had done her best to keep her indoors, though she’d managed to be out for most of the unrest. Only for the worst, the wholesale rounding up of anyone suspected of Talent, had she kept her locked upstairs.

What a night that had been! Crying, pleading with the woman, trying to force the windows but finding them somehow impervious to her hammering. Having to content herself with merely watching and listening from the small upper window. Who could’ve guessed that fires could be so loud? The roar of the flames, the crackling and tornado of burning winds. The reek of scorched flesh; the screams. Men and women charging back and forth in the darkened streets. And the blasts — magery! Later that night she had spied from the top of the stairs, while at the door Agayla faced down a mob of rioting soldiery. Its leader had barked at her, ‘You’re under arrest, you damned witch.’ His grey surcoat and cloak appeared dark, so fresh were they from their dyeing. An Imperial Marine recruit.

Agayla had merely crossed her arms. Kiska had imagined her hard reproving stare. A look that seemed able to melt stone. The soldier had hurriedly raised a hand against the evil-eye and drawn his sword.

‘Curse me, will you-’ he snarled.

Another soldier pushed this one aside. He too wore marine greys, though these hung loose, frayed and discoloured. Kiska caught the flash of silver regimental and campaign bars at his breast. An Imperial veteran.

‘There are plenty of wax-witches and sellers of love potions elsewhere,’ Agayla told this one. ‘You aren’t going to harass me, are you, sergeant?’

This soldier drew off his gauntlets and slapped them against his cloak. Rust-red dust puffed from the cloth. Ochre dust! The very sands of Seven Cities still caked to the man’s cloak? The veteran and Agayla eyed one another. After a moment he spat to one side, muttered, ‘We’ve five cadre mages with us if push comes to shove, you know.’

‘Go ahead and summon them. But think of your mission here, sergeant. Is it to train these men, or to lose them?’

The solder snorted at that, said under his breath, ‘Train my ass.’ He inclined his helmeted head to Agayla, waved to the troop of soldiers. ‘Get a move on, you worthless camel shits.’

The one who’d been shoved aside raised his sword. ‘But Aragan, this is one of ‘em. And they say she’s-’ He eased up close to the sergeant, whispered something.

Kiska thought she heard the word rich. The veteran snatched the man’s sword from his grip and hit the flat of the blade across his shoulder. The man yelped and ducked from sight.

The sergeant shouted after him, ‘I said get a move on! Damn your worthless hides.’ He turned on Agayla, pointing. ‘You,’ the fellow ordered, ‘keep that damned door shut or I’ll come back here and drag you out by the hair.’

Agayla inclined her head in kind. ‘Yes, sergeant. I shall.’

When Agayla came back upstairs, Kiska told her that she would never forgive her for locking her inside during the most exciting day she’d ever known. Agayla had merely cocked one brow. ’Exciting?’

Now, here she was, once more in Agayla’s chambers, on another similar night. Yet again she had delivered herself into the protection — and judgement — of this woman.

Kiska cleared her throat. ‘This is what I’ve been wishing for all my life. Please. Let me do something.’ She stared to one side, not daring to catch Agayla’s eye, afraid she sounded like a spoiled child. In the air above the basin of water she saw vapour curling. Vapour?

Agayla remained silent.

‘Auntie… what is that?’

Agayla peered down. She went still, then whispered, ‘Dear Gods.’

What moments before had been a basin of hot water was now a frozen hemisphere of ice steaming next to the fire. Kiska said softly, ‘What’s going on?’

Her face rigid, Agayla rose. The fabric of her skirts whispered as she crossed to an old desk piled with scrolled correspondence. ‘Very well,’ she said brusquely. ‘I have to admit that I would prefer to keep you here against your will.’ She glanced over her shoulder. ‘But then you would never forgive me, would you?’

Kiska merely nodded, fighting a smile and the urge to throw herself at the woman’s feet.

Agayla sniffed, plucked a scroll from a cubby-hole. ‘Yes. All these years wishing for action, marooned in this forgotten corner of the Empire, and now you have it, and more than you or I expected, I should think.’ She scratched a message on a yellow sheet. ‘If you must do something or never forgive yourself — or me — then I will give you something to do.’ She rolled the parchment, sealed it with a drop from a candle, and pressed a ring into the wax.

‘Well?’ She waved Kiska over. ‘Come here. Now, take this to the man you call your target. Do what he says after he’s read it. Hmmm?’

Kiska tucked the scroll inside her shirts. ‘Yes, Auntie. Thank you so much. But who is he? Where will he be?’

Agayla waved the questions aside. ‘He wouldn’t appreciate me telling you. But if anyone can take care of you this night, he can. You’ll find him somewhere between here and Mock’s Hold. And girl, if he gets to the Hold before you reach him, don’t go in there. Promise!’

‘Yes, Auntie. I promise.’ She hugged Agayla round the neck, inhaled her scent of spices.

‘Now, child,’ she warned, pulling away, ‘you might not thank me later. I’d rather you stayed. But somehow you’ve become entangled in all this, so I must not interfere.’

Kiska nodded, adjusted her shirt, pocketed vest and cloak. She touched gingerly at the dressing over her neck and found that the pain had gone.

Agayla took one of her hands. Kiska glanced up and was surprised by how the woman studied her, her eyes warm, but with a touch of hardness. ‘There are things out there that would crush you without a thought. If you should meet one of those beasts, just stand still as if it were any normal wild animal.’ Agayla took a slow breath. ‘It should ignore you.’

Now that she was free to head out under that moon, Kiska paused. That bellowing. The scouring of those claws on cobblestones. Fear crept back. She ventured, her voice faint, ‘Yes, Auntie.’

‘Good. Now, before you go, I’ll prepare some things for you to take,’ and she led the way to the front.

Temper shouldered Coop on his back while Coop’s boots dragged behind, scoring twin trails through the mud. One of the brewer’s beefy arms was slung stiffly across one side of Temper’s neck. The other Temper trapped in his left hand, one of Salli’s largest cooking knives gripped in his right. Coop was a heavy man but Temper ignored the weight, concentrating instead on watching Back Street, and stepping carefully through the trash-littered alley. Moonlight shone down, rippling and shifting as the clouds roiled above. The way ahead appeared empty.

Knees bent, he shuffled farther down the alley. Coop’s wide body brushed against the walls to either side until he stepped into the street. He stopped at the first door on his right: Seal’s residence.

‘Seal,’ he called, trying to sound hushed. ‘Seal. Open-’

A howl thundered through the town, seeming to erupt from every alley mouth and street. Temper lost his footing and nearly dropped Coop.

‘To Hood with this.’

Grunting with effort, Temper cocked one foot and kicked. The door crashed open, the jamb splintering. He threw himself in, dropped Coop, then stood the door back up against the frame. Embers glowed in a stone hearth along one wall, but other than this the only source of illumination was moonlight streaming in through the broken doorway. He saw a chair and kicked it over to wedge against the door.

‘Don’t move!’ a voice ordered from behind and above.

Facing the door he froze, raised his arms to either side. ‘It’s me, Seal, Temper.’

‘Turn around!’

Temper turned, squinting. In the dark, he could just make out Seal standing at the top of the stairs, wearing a nightshirt. He was holding something — a huge arbalest that was balanced on the second-storey railing.

‘It’s me, dammit!’ Temper growled.

Seal didn’t move. ‘Yes, I can see that. You’ve got a knife. Cut yourself.’

‘What?’

‘Cut yourself. On your hand where I can see it.’

‘I don’t have time-’

Seal levelled the crossbow. ‘Do it.’

Coop groaned from where lay, stirred sluggishly.

Temper clenched his teeth then pressed the kitchen knife’s keen edge into the flesh at the base of his thumb. Blood welled, running down his hand and forearm. He held up his lacerated thumb. ‘See?’

Seal grunted, took a few steps down the stairs, the crossbow still aimed. Closer, Temper saw that the weapon was an ancient cranequin-loading siege arbalest. One of the Empire’s heaviest, ugliest, one-man missile weapons. Seal could barely hold it upright and steadied himself against the banister. Temper fought an urge to jump aside in case it triggered accidentally. If it did, he and the door would have damned big holes in them.

‘Careful…’ he breathed, his stomach clenched.

Seal appeared surprised, then glanced down at the weapon and lowered it. ‘Sorry.’

It wasn’t even loaded. Temper let out a breath, shook his head. He should’ve noticed that.

Seal dropped the arbalest on a table and knelt beside Coop. ‘Hurt?’

‘No,’ Temper laughed. ‘Just scared into a dead faint.’

Crossing to the hearth, Seal touched a sliver of wood to the embers and lit a lamp. ‘What happened?’

Temper surveyed the street through the propped door. ‘Let him tell you when he comes around; I don’t have the time.’ He turned. ‘You still have my gear?’

Seal nodded. The long and loose kinked curls of his black hair spilled forward over his face. He motioned to the rear. ‘In the storeroom.’

‘Right.’ Temper stepped over Coop.

‘Wait, dammit.’ Seal waved helplessly to Coop. ‘Help me get him onto a bench.’ With a sigh, Temper pulled aside a table. He grabbed the unconscious man under the shoulders while Seal took his feet. Together they swung him up onto one of several benches that lined the walls of the room. Waving Temper aside, Seal began unknotting Coop’s apron.

Temper lit another oil lamp. ‘Why the cut?’

Seal was bent over Coop’s head, examining his eyes. ‘What?’

Temper held up his blood-smeared thumb. ‘My hand. Why’d you make me cut my hand?’

Seal raised his head, smiled. ‘Ghosts don’t bleed, Temper.’

‘That damned arbalest wouldn’t be much use against a shade.’

Seal shrugged his thin shoulders. ‘Well, I couldn’t load it anyway.’

‘Fener’s tusks, Seal. You’ve got to get yourself squared away.’ As he reached the storeroom door Temper thought he heard a woman’s voice call down to Seal, and the medicer’s soothing reply.

In the storeroom, behind a travel-chest, he found the bundle of possessions he dared not keep in his room. It was wrapped in canvas, as long as his length of reach. He set it onto a chest and began unbuckling the two leather belts holding it together. Tossing back the oiled hide, he pulled out two belted and sheathed swords. These went over each shoulder, the blades hanging at his back. Short, blunt fighting daggers went beside each hip.

He groped behind the travel chest again and pulled out another bundle, head-sized. Holding it up in one hand, he peeled aside the soft leather. A helmet stared back at him. It was of blackened steel with a mail coif hanging like tattered lace all around, and an articulated lobster-tail neck guard. The T-shaped vision slit and closing cheek guards fixed on him like a ghost from the past: the severed head of his alter-ego. His breath caught; for so long he’d dared not even look at it. He found his armoured gauntlets still stuffed into the padded space within. The stink of sweat, oil, and, he supposed, blood, was prominent. He could almost hear the clash and wails of battle. He shook his head free of the clinging wisps of memory and tucked the helm under an arm. Picking up the oil-lamp, he snorted at the quilted muslin shirt and leather vest he wore. He’d look like a blundering fool strutting around in his bare padded shirt, armed to the teeth and crowned with a helmet!

Downstairs Coop lay moaning, a wet cloth covering his face. Seal crouched at the hearth of mortared stone, feeding a growing fire. A black pot steeped over the flames.

‘What kind of poison you boiling up?’ Temper dropped the helmet onto the table.

Seal turned. His gaze shifted from Temper’s weapons to the helmet on the table. His answer died on his lips. Still eyeing it, he shook himself. ‘Just some barley soup. I’m hungry.’

Temper felt his own eyes drawn the same direction. The helmet looked like a grisly trophy. He cleared his throat. ‘Ah, Seal, you wouldn’t happen to have any armour around, would you?’

Poking the embers, Seal snorted. ‘You’re not actually heading out there again, are you?’

Temper bristled. ‘Yes.’

‘Whatever it is, it can’t be that important, Temp.’

’I don’t even know if it is. But I’ve got to find out.’

Seal raised an arm, pointed to an iron-bound chest against the far wall… ‘My great-uncle’s. From the Grist-Khemst border wars. Long time ago. All I’ve got.’

Temper unlatched and opened the chest. Togg’s teeth,’ he breathed. Inside was a jumble of bundles, sacks, bits and remnants of armour: swatches of mail, grieves, boiled-leather vambraces set with steel rings. From amongst this tangle he lifted a cuirass and skirtings that looked long enough to hang to his knees. It consisted of a front and back with shoulder and side strapping, and coarse scaled sleeves. A leather underpad, almost as thick as his thumb and softened by years of use, supported a layered and patched hodgepodge of mail, bone swathing, studs and horizontal steel, ribbed down the front and back. Interlocking iron rings were sewn from the waist down and over the slit leather skirting. He hefted it, whistling. Whoever humped this over a battlefield must’ve been a bull of a man.

Temper examined the straps. ‘Hadn’t they heard of using the point up there?’

‘It was all hack-and-slash in the north back then.’

He nodded, thinking back to all he’d heard of the generations of internecine warfare between the Gristan minor nobles and their confusion of principates, protectorates, baronies, and freeholds. He’d joined up long after the Emperor had pocketed them like so many paltry coins.

He caught Seal’s eye. ‘Can I use this?’

He waved a help-yourself.

Temper pulled off his weapon belts and began readying the cuirass. While he worked, Coop groaned, then pulled the wet cloth from his face and raised his head. He blinked at Temper. ‘What happened? What’re you doing?’

‘I’m going after those thieves, Coop.’ Temper raised the undershirting, began wriggling into it.

’Thieves? But, Trenech… he, and then he…’ Coop groaned again, shut his eyes. ‘Burn preserve us.’

Seal cocked a brow, mouthed, ’Thieves?’

Temper shrugged. He was struggling with the side-buckles, and for a minute Seal just watched. Then he crossed the room, pushed Temper’s hands away and began expertly fitting the leather straps. Temper watched his deft fingers.

‘You’ve done this before,’ he joked.

Seal glanced up, his mouth tight, then returned to his work. The anger in his eyes startled Temper. ‘Usually I undo the armour. And usually the soldier is lying down, spitting blood and absent a limb or two.’

Temper swallowed at the bitter tone, but said nothing while Seal sized the cuirass as best he could. Finished, Seal slapped him on the back and said acidly, ‘There you are. Fit for the Iron Legion now.’

‘Thanks,’ Temper said, not caring if Seal took offence because he meant it. Yet, in his peculiar way, Seal had both praised and damned: for while the Iron Legion had been an elite heavy infantry regiment, it had been annihilated during Kellanved’s invasion of the once independent kingdom of Unta.

Whatever Seal had seen or been through during his career as medicer for the Malazan Army, it must’ve been soul-destroying to have left such scorn in one still so young. When Temper had first arrived, he’d met the young scholar at the Hanged Man and often they’d talked. But while Seal seemed eager for the company, he also seemed impatient, damning everything Temper had to say. The young man had also picked up an addiction to the stupefying D’bayan poppy during his travels with the army. The habit disgusted Temper. Eventually they’d argued and Seal ceased coming around. Temper had counted on Seal being conscious tonight, but more than half-expected to find him insensate instead, embalmed in a cloud of choking jaundiced smoke, grinning idiotically while the town went to Hood around him.

Seal retreated to the table, but shied away from the helmet. He smiled suddenly and laughed. ‘I suppose tomorrow they’ll be clamouring for my services. Fluttering rich Dowagers with vapours to calm and nervous disorders to diagnose.’ His gaze passed over Temper quickly, rested on Coop. ‘Don’t let anything happen to you because you couldn’t afford me.’ He gave a sour, self-deprecating smile.

Temper tucked the helmet under his arm. ‘Sorry about the door.’

Eyes closed, Seal shrugged. ‘I guess it’ll be open from now on. Come around and show me what’s left of you.’

Temper hefted the door to one side. ‘Will do.’ He gave a salute — the old Imperial fist to chest. ‘Thanks for the armour, and stay off that damned smoke.’

Sighing his distaste, Seal answered the salute.

Temper jogged up Back Street, heading for the Old Stone Bridge close to the swampy mouth of the Malaz River. Three blocks from the Hanged Man he came to a darker pool of wet on the cobbles around a pile of viscera. He stopped, listening. The night was still. The surf moaned, strangely muted, while the wind whispered and gusted. The surrounding streets showed no other sign of violence. Crouched on his haunches, he looked more closely. Human innards, steam rising in the damp air. Was this all that remained of Bell, late guard at the Hanged Man? Was it a hound’s work? It looked more like the attack of a predatory cat such as the catamounts of the Seti Plains, or the snow leopard of the Fenn Ranges of northern Quon Tali. Still, that damned baying sounded as if it reverberated from a beast the size of a bhederin.

He stood, eyed the frowning cliff face and Mock Hold, perched above like a dark thunderhead. No lights shone, no fires burned along its walls. It was as if the fortress was as lifeless as a crypt. Yet Temper felt certain he’d find the answers to tonight’s mysteries concealed within its halls. At least he hoped to; he had no idea where else to look. He jogged on, heading across the centre of town.

On Agayla’s doorstep, Kiska had waited, enclosed in a hug that seemed to go on forever. Letting go, Agayla had eventually stood back, hands still tight on Kiska’s while she stared out into the darkness. For one terrified moment Kiska had thought she would forbid her to leave. She revisited her haunted vision of wasting away on the tiny island, walking in circles round and round its narrow shores. But the instant ‘Burn watch over you’ had passed the old woman’s lips, Kiska’s thoughts were free to fly ahead into the night. She waved goodbye, but her mind already was on Cutter’s Strait — the main north-south concourse dividing the old town from the new.

Now, crouched deep in the shadow of a chimney, her toes curled around the edges of wet roof tiles and her back to the warm brick, she looked out over the deserted streets. From here the town seemed dead — every window shuttered, cloth hung to disguise any sign of life. The moon leered down like a mocking eye.

She gripped the crossbow across her knees, trying to squeeze reassurance from its weight and resilience. Tonight, just a mere few turnings into the streets, and she no longer knew where she was. The experience had shaken her to her very core. It was as if she had suddenly found herself in another town. She had no idea which direction to take or how to get back. Yet the streets possessed an eerie familiarity. This looked to be near where she’d run during the riots that erupted in response to the Regent’s ban against sorcery.

It had been the first night of the protest, before simple crowd dispersal had degenerated into outright looting, arson and extortion; before Agayla locked her away. She’d watched from the rooftops while unseasoned soldiers ran wild, drunk with their newfound power, behaving like wharf-front thugs. The few veterans seemed unable — or unwilling — to contain them.

She’d turned away, sickened, carefully tracking a rooftop path from the worst of the crash of shop-fronts and roaring fires, when a shout pulled her attention down into the confines of a dark alleyway. Three soldiers baited an old man, grey-haired, whip-lean. A fisherman by the look of his thread-bare shirt and oiled trousers. Laughing, they punched and kicked him while he retreated up the alley. The sight enraged her, and without thinking she’d pried loose the largest roof tile she could find and heaved it down amid the soldiers.

One man fell immediately, dropped by the heavy ceramic. His friends shouted their astonishment and ran from the alley. The old man staggered back. Kiska ran to a roof corner over a grated window and let herself down. From there, holding fast to the window bars, she set her feet atop a fence, then lowered herself to the garbage-strewn pavement.

The soldier lay stunned, perhaps even dead. His friends had vanished. She searched for the old man but found no sign of him. He must have stumbled off while she was climbing down. Shaking her head she turned to go, but discovered that the other two soldiers had not fled as far as she’d expected. They now blocked the only way out — unless she attempted to climb again. And she didn’t believe they’d give her time for that.

A step scraped the stones behind her and she spun to put her back to the wall. It was the fallen soldier, now standing. Blood smeared one side of his face, his leather helmet askew. Fury glistened in his dark staring eyes.

Kiska’s hands flew to her knives but the soldier clamped her arms to her sides in a crushing bear hug.

‘C’mon boys!’ he yelled, laughing. He pushed his blood-slick face against hers, searching for her mouth. He whispered huskily, ‘What a great trade we’ve made.’ He wrenched her wrists together and clasped them in one hand. His other hand squeezed at her chest, tore at the lacing of her shirt beneath her vest. His friends shouted encouragement, while from all around came the roar of the mobs on the streets.

Kiska froze as the full horror of her position suddenly struck home. How could she have done this to herself? She almost opened her mouth to plead, then remembered Agayla’s training. Her arms pinned, she lifted her head back as far as she could, then head-butted the soldier with all her strength. He bellowed, released her and staggered away. She blinked back tears. Stars dazzled her sight.

‘Bitch,’ he snarled, from somewhere close. His voice was barely audible over the surrounding shouts and screams of fighting. Kiska caught the grating of steel clearing a scabbard. She shook her head, blinked back tears and lashed out backhanded with the pommel of one dagger. She caught the man across the wounded side of his head and he fell without a sound.

From the mouth of the alley one of his friends shouted, ‘Goddamned whore!’ Moving fast, he closed on her, arms wide to stop her should she try to run past.

She watched his approach, marvelling. Did he really think she’d just try to run away? Couldn’t the fool see how things had turned? That it was he and his friend who ought to run? She shrank away as if terrified and the fellow immediately stepped in close. She kicked him in the groin. He doubled over while his breath exploded from him in a whoosh. She reversed her dagger and smacked him across the temple and he toppled.

Kiska raised her eyes to the remaining soldier. He stood still, silhouetted from behind at the alley mouth by the glow of torches. Exhilarated, panting, Kiska invited him in with a wave. Come and get some. He ran off like a startled rabbit.

She sat down heavily in the filth of the alley. The noise of the riot seemed to recede, along with its orange and yellow glow. Her limbs shook and she bent over, heaving up her stomach. She wiped her arm across her mouth. Burn’s consuming embrace! That had been far too close to be worth it — and worth what, anyway? Saving an old man from a kicking? She sat for a time, sick and angry with herself, then stood. She sheathed her daggers and pulled herself up the fence. She vowed then that would be the last time she ever stuck her neck out for anyone.

Yet here she was, out in the night while her flesh crawled with dread. The town seemed to be changing before her eyes. Shadows moved. Unfamiliar streets and buildings shimmered into view only to waver, dissipate and reappear elsewhere. Even the night sounds seemed distorted. Where was the surf? Kiska had grown up in this port and couldn’t think of a single day empty of the sea’s steady pulse. Now it had vanished. On any other day or night she knew exactly where she stood just by smelling the air and listening to the voice of the waves. But everything was all twisted around and backwards. She couldn’t even be sure in which direction lay Mock’s Hold. Like that night just months ago, this was more than she’d bargained on. That night it had been an attack on her body; tonight she felt much more than mere flesh was at stake. She hated herself for it, but felt she ought to hide here like a rain-damp stray till dawn. Not even the possibility of a hound sniffing at her trail would impel her to move on.

Blinking, wiping away the icy mist on her face, she watched thin clouds flit and roil over the town like angry harrying birds. One roof-hugging tatter of vapour, opalescent silver, darted suddenly between buildings just to her right. As it arced down it took on a semblance of a giant lunging hound, its forepaws outstretched. An instant later an ear-splitting howl shook the walls and sent her jumping as sharply as if a dagger had plunged into her back.

She screamed, her voice melding with those of people locked into their homes beneath her, and she scrambled away, running from roof to roof, oblivious of the rain-slick tiles.

She leapt down onto second-floor balconies, balancing on their rickety stick railings, and threw herself across lanes to ledges and gables opposite. She scampered up clay tiles, the sound of their fall clattering below, over shake-roofed breeze-ways above alleys, and across flat brick and stone-roofed government buildings. From a featureless gable of one building, she jumped over the gap of a lane to land onto a temple dedicated to Fener. Her gloved hand caught a boar’s head gutter funnel. Grunting, she pulled herself up onto the walkway behind and knelt, hands on knees, drawing air deep into her burning lungs.

Surely it couldn’t follow her here. Not into sacred precincts. Certainly now she must be safe. She raised her head to peer over the stone lip. Shadows swirled like wind-swept veils. She looked away, dizzy, pushed back her hair. Probably nothing had been after her, but who would wait to find out?

A man stepped out from an open archway. A priest of Fener, complete with boar’s tusk tattoos curling across his cheeks. He smiled as he saw her. ‘So this is our fearsome invader.’

Kiska backed away around the walkway.

‘Wait! Stay!’

She heard him coming after her and stepped up and out onto another boar’s head finial, where the wind tugged at her wet clothes.

‘Fener’s blood, child. Don’t!’

She pushed off with her legs as strongly as she could. Her outstretched hands slapped against the ledge of the building opposite. One knee cracked into the stone facings and she almost lost her grip at the shooting pain. She heaved herself up, thanked the gods for the crammed cheek-by-jowl housing of the city, as well as the cheapness of her fellow Malazans, too tight-pursed to pull it all down and start over again.

Prostrate on the rain-slick roof, Kiska saw that the priest still watched her, his face wrinkled with concern. She dragged herself to her feet, then waved.

The old man cupped his hands at his mouth, yelled through the gusting wind: ‘I’ll send a prayer after you!’

She waved one hand in thanks, and limped on despite the burning of her knee.

The final expanse of roof to cross stopped her. Sucking in gulps of cold night air, she stood at the very lip of a third-storey gable, overlooking the stretch of copses and hilly meadow littered by the ruins everyone called Mossy Tors.

She studied the rooftops behind her. What a fool she’d been! To imagine she’d be safe anywhere out of doors! Gods above. Here was high sorcery such as she’d never dreamed to see. It was like stories of great Imperial engagements, when the Malazan mage cadre smashed the Protectress of Heng; the breaking of the legendary island defences of Kartool; the siege of the Holy Cities; or the massed battles far overseas on the Genabakan continent.

As the fear gradually drained away and her heart slowed, she brought her respiration back under control. Dread eased into excitement, a rush such as she’d never known. Her limbs tingled and clenched for action; she felt potent, competent. She could smell the power out there, and she wanted it for herself.

Kiska studied the thinly forested commons. Perhaps her flight hadn’t been as blind as she’d thought. Something was out there, among the trees. She lay down on her stomach alongside the gable. She watched for a time, motionless. Ragged moonlight shone down through the wood; aruscus trunks glowed in the monochrome light as if aflame.

Then movement… what she’d thought to be shadows of branches shifting in the uneven wind resolved themselves into shapes flitting from cover to cover. Grey-clad figures, ghostlike, crawled and darted as they closed on the largest of the moss-covered stone mounds. Through the branches of twin tall cedars a flash glimmered then disappeared — what might have been the faintest reflection of moonlight on polished metal.

Well, these cultists had been following her target earlier, so why not now? After all, how many others could be stupid enough to be out on a night like this, other than herself? Kiska turned to find a route down.

After running across a lane and pushing through thick brush, Kiska edged from tree to tree. Near the middle of the green she stumbled across a body. Whoever this grey — Shadow cultist, she corrected herself — had been, she couldn’t have been much older than herself. Her body slumped to one side, propped up at the base of a lone leafless oak. Kiska knelt to inspect the corpse. The robes were fine-spun linen and from their disarray she guessed the body had been searched. She’d been killed quickly, professionally, by the single thrust of a large weapon from the front. Blood pooled on the girl’s lap, blackening the knotted tree roots beneath her.

Gloves on, Kiska took a handful of the long sandy hair and lifted the head. No one she recognized. But that didn’t mean much if the society was as secret as Agayla claimed. For all Kiska knew, the woman could’ve come all the way from the Free Confederacies said to lie far to the south of Genabackis.

Letting the head loll forward, Kiska glimpsed a discolouration on the woman’s chest. The thin tunic beneath the robes had been torn open. She carefully peeled back the fold of cloth. A tattoo rode high on the woman’s chest: the likeness of a severed bird’s foot. A bird of prey, perhaps a falcon or a hawk. Kiska studied the mark, wondering about its significance. Agayla had mentioned Talons, old rivals to the Claws, but it was the first she’d heard of them. A pocket of wind-driven rain pattered down and droplets fell from her hair. They struck the tattoo and its colours blurred. Fascinated, Kiska rubbed two fingers across the sigil. It smeared into a mess of pigments.

She sat back on her haunches. Well, well. Some sort of recognition sign? A pass? Why a bird’s foot? The Claws came to mind, but she knew the sign of the Claws and this wasn’t it. Yet another mystery in a night virtually raining mysteries. She’d file this one away for later investigation; it had delayed her long enough.

The oak the body lay under rose from a hollow between two low stone walls, so buried in damp blankets of moss as to appear no more than twin and parallel lumps. The cultist might have been guarding this route because it led to a hillock of blocks that, if memory served, should lie along one side of the main formation. Studying the woods, Kiska realized that the unnerving shadow-shifting had ceased. The night was still now. Either the phenomena came and went, or this area was somehow unaffected. Alternately crouching and crawling, she reached a wall that she thought ought to offer a view of the main ruins. She leaned against it, gathered herself, checked her crossbow, then peeked over the top.

She spotted the one she sought almost instantly. He sat against a stone, legs straight out before him, arms crossed, his hood pulled back. His queue of long black hair hung forward over one shoulder. Raising a dark and lean face towards the night sky, he scowled, not liking what he saw. His four bodyguards occupied positions around him: two hunched behind blocks, two standing edge-on against pillars of vine and moss-encrusted stone. Further out, encircling the ancient mound, waited cloaked shapes as motionless as the rocks. Fifty at least. They’d harried her target here, that much was plain. And now they waited — but for what?

Though she wore gloves, Kiska rubbed a hand on her thigh as if to wipe sweat from her palm. No doubt they meant to send the man to their master, just as they’d tried with her. Yet they appeared to be waiting for someone or something… some sign. She damned her luck. Here she was in sight of her quarry, yet he remained as unreachable as if she’d never found him. Damn Fate and the feckless Twins — they played havoc tonight!

The bodyguard with the long tribesman’s moustache and fur cap approached her man, gestured to the north — Mock’s Hold? He nodded, stood, brushed at his loose pants. He pulled his cloak tightly about himself. The guards fell in about him.

Some of the cultists stirred, closing on the outcrop. Kiska counted fifteen. She wanted to hail a warning, but surely the man must know. Then she glanced back over the encirclement and froze. Three extraordinarily tall and thin cultists in ash-pale robes now stood to one side. Where in the Queen’s Mysteries had they come from? It was as if they’d stepped out of the night.

One raised a gloved hand in a negligent gesture and the cultists charged in.

Kiska dashed to new cover to keep her quarry in sight. He and his guards maintained a steady and tight retreat. Cultists darted in, knives flashed, robes twisted and flew, and the man and his companions kept backing off, leaving dead behind. The three commanders, or priests, followed at a distance, observing. Kiska moved parallel to the fight, catching glimpses through the trees: the guards duelling, disengaging, ever edging backwards around her target. Their skill amazed her.

A larger knot of cultists coordinated an attack from all sides. Each guard was engaged by more than one man and Kiska’s heart went to her throat. This was the man Agayla had sent her to find! This was the man Oleg said must act tonight! Here he was, about to be butchered by these assassins and there was nothing she could do about it. She was too late! Kiska fairly screamed her frustration.

While she watched, two of the guards fell and the cultists streamed in on her man. He snapped a hand-gesture and a brilliant flash blinded Kiska. Thunder rolled over her as she blinked and rubbed her eyes. She glanced back. Where a struggling knot of some ten figures had writhed and fought, now only three stood: the man and his two remaining bodyguards. He now faced the three tall cultists. They halted.

The one at the centre raised a hand like a man parting cobwebs blocking his path.

The lesser cultists waited, weapons bared.

Though not a talent, Kiska knew herself to have a feel for such things, and though she stood some hundred yards off, she could feel the forces gathering between the two men. It was like being deep within a ship’s hull, knowing that dark incomprehensible forces churned scarce inches from you, forces that could smash you into non-existence in an instant. She held her breath, waiting for the slightest motion to release the power building between them.

Then a hand in a rough leather gauntlet clamped itself over her mouth, and an arm wrapped around her waist and lifted her away from the stones.

Kiska dropped the crossbow, flailed and kicked her legs. All the while she slowly drew her slimmest knife with her right hand. As the dagger cleared its sheath her head was given a savage wrench. Sparks burst upon her vision and searing currents lanced down her spine.

‘Drop it, lass,’ a low voice growled, ‘or I’ll snap your neck like a twig.’

Numb, Kiska let the dagger drop to the ground.

The man slung her over his shoulder, limp, her heart fluttering, hiked back down between the parallel ridges, past the dead cultist that Kiska concluded he must have killed. She damned herself for not suspecting the murderer might still be hanging about. And now she was being carried farther and farther from the ruins. She strained to listen for sounds of battle but heard nothing. Once her captor entered thicker woods, two other men rose and joined him. They were either soldiers or plain ruffians. It was hard to tell, though they did carry themselves with the discipline of veterans. One faced her, pulled a black cloth from his belt, while the one holding her removed his hand from her mouth.

‘Quiet,’ he warned.

A gag was snapped over her mouth before she could recover and the cloth, a bag, was tossed over her head. She did try to yell then, stupidly late, and fought while they tied her wrists in front, followed by her ankles.

She was again hefted over a shoulder and hauled like a sack while the man jogged through the woods. She stopped struggling then and burned instead at the indignity of it.

She’d been wrong about one thing. Someone else was stupid enough to be out this night. And she’d become so engrossed in watching the battle she’d completely dropped her guard.

Disgusted, she decided she deserved whatever was to come.

After a fair march she was carried into a room and dumped into a chair, which left her hip smarting. People — men — moved about, muttering. Hands patted her down, found her throwing spikes and daggers. But the search was rushed, missing one throwing knife secreted in a flap of her cloak’s collar. Impatient hands prodded up her sleeves, turned her arms this way then that, pulled open her jerkin, her padded vest, and tore the string ties at the neck of her linen undershirt. Had she not been gagged, Kiska would’ve laughed as she knew exactly what they searched for: tattoos — the real article or fake — of either the severed bird’s foot or a claw.

Finding neither, the hands pushed her clothing closed again. She heard a male voice, close: ‘Damned fools.’ The hood was yanked off, then the gag. Kiska blinked, shook her hair from her eyes. She scowled up at a sinewy, broad-shouldered man whose weathered face bore a startling pattern of burn scars from lye or boiling oil.

He stepped back, glanced to a table where the man who’d first grabbed her sat with his feet up on a chair. Kiska recognized him by his leather hauberk with its iron lozenges riveted in rows and his plain blackened iron helmet. A thin moustache hung down past his chin and scar tissue made a knob of his nose. The man shrugged. ‘Nab someone, you said. I had one of them grey-robes but she was too much trouble. Grabbed this one after that. She was eyeing the fight.’

They were at an inn. Kiska recognized it: the Southern Crescent. Men stood about, either watching her indifferently or scanning the street from windows and the door. She counted about forty.

The scarred man turned to her. ‘All right. What’s your story? Who do you work for?’

‘Who do you work for?’

The man slapped her. It felt as if a slab of iron had been smacked across her chin. She blinked back tears, shook her head, stunned more by the casual brutality of the act than the pain.

His eyes remained chillingly flat, merely judging the effectiveness of his blow. Then something caught his attention behind her and he grunted, turning away. A woman walked out from behind Kiska. Short, dark, a thread-fine tattooing of lines and spirals running from her hair line to the tip of her nose, she raised Kiska’s chin in a gesture eerily similar to that of Agayla’s. Kiska had seen the woman around. Carla? Catin?

Studying her, the woman pursed her full lips, nodded as if identifying her in turn. Kiska was shaken to see regret follow the recognition — she wouldn’t live through this; she’d been sentenced the moment the hood left her head.

The woman was turning away when her gaze stopped at Kiska’s chest. She extended a hand and Kiska felt her fingertips tap Agayla’s flattened scrolled letter. Kiska stared into the woman’s eyes, silently pleading. The woman met her stare, sympathetic but pitying too, as if Kiska was already dead. She approached the scarred man at the table.

‘She’s local talent,’ she said, her voice low. ‘Independent. Reports to Pell only’

The man shrugged as if he no longer cared. With one finger he traced a curve on a parchment spread across the table. ‘We’ll just go around. Ignore that crowd.’

‘What if we run into them again?’

The man looked up, stared in his bland manner. ‘Your job is to see that we don’t.’

The bindings cut into Kiska’s wrists. She ached to speak in her defence, to beg, stall… anything… but the words bunched in her throat, constricted by the intuition that if she spoke they’d just kill her to be done with it. So she remained silent, listening instead. What was this gang of brigands up to? Looting under cover of tonight’s chaos? If so, what did the cultists have to do with it? Had they clashed?

The woman glanced at her again, took a breath, and leaned close to whisper something to the scarred man. He smiled in reply, his lips merely tightening over his teeth, utterly empty of humour. ‘You going soft on us?’ he answered, without looking up.

Adjusting her vest, the woman offered Kiska a slight shrug to convey she’d done all she could. Though it was her life the man had just dispensed with, Kiska forced herself to respond in kind — a small nod. Fear no longer clenched her throat. She wanted to cry. Grotesquely enough, what stopped her was something she’d never have suspected: pride.

The parchment crackled crisply as the man rolled it up. Handing it to one of his followers, he beckoned the others to him. Kiska tensed, her breath shallowing; they were readying to leave and she wouldn’t be going with them.

The scarred man spoke to four of his men, one of whom was the man who’d snatched her. They were all older, more hardened and at more ease than the others. Kiska knew she wasn’t being discussed; her fate had been decided.

A young man at a front window yelped, then jumped away from the wall. ‘A Hood-spawned ghost! A shade! At the door!’

The scarred commander and his squad broke into motion without orders or comment, confirming to Kiska that they were a team of veterans, perhaps part of a unit of Imperial marines.

The one with the lozenge armour drew two curved swords and went to the door. With a sharp blow of his elbow he shoved aside the young hiresword who had been standing guard. Just back from the door two veterans knelt, crossbows levelled. The remaining soldier, along with the commander and the woman, positioned themselves behind. All of them waited, tense, focused upon the door. In her chair far to the back near stairs down to a lower room, Kiska watched as well. Oddly, she too had felt something at the door: a nagging pull like faint scratching.

One of the others, a hiresword Kiska supposed, crept away from the side door he’d been guarding, past Kiska, until he was close to the commander. ‘What is it?’ he whispered.

Glaring savagely, the commander waved him back to his post.

The veteran by the door crouched, looked back to the woman who nodded. Grinning like a fool, he yanked the door open.

It swung inward, revealing an empty street of gleaming rain-slick cobbles and, barely visible through the mist and shadows, Mossy Tors Commons across the way. The man poked his head out only to suddenly flinch back and scramble away.

Light flickered over the door’s solid recessed panels in a restless curving design of shadow and phosphorescence. The woman pushed forward, studied the restless glow. After a few seconds she backed away.

’Well?’ demanded the commander.

The woman clenched and unclenched her hands as if she wished to do something with them but dared not. ‘It’s a Hood-damned invitation. A summons. We’ve got to go. Now!’

‘That’s fine with me.’ He motioned his men away from the door, flashed a hand signal.

‘We’re movin’ out!’ bellowed the soldier in lozenge armour. Those covering the windows and at the tables blinked at him. Their gazes shifted to the street front. ‘That’s right my pretties,’ he said, as cheerily as if facing a summer’s day. ‘Back into the teeth of it!’

Kiska stared at him. Was he mad?

The sergeant — Kiska decided he must be — set his fists at his belted hips and regarded the room as if he smelled something distasteful. ‘Get your-’

A howl as brassy as the largest temple bell tore through the night. The timbers of the wall and floor vibrated, so loud and close did it sound. Kiska flinched violently, causing her chair to jump and almost canter over with her. The men froze, eyes round. Only the commander and the woman seemed unaffected. ‘Shut the blasted door!’ he snarled.

The sergeant moved to obey, but gripped the door only to stare out, immobile. ‘Hood’s own demons,’ he gasped in awe.

From where she sat, Kiska couldn’t see the street. Instead, all she saw was one young hiresword at a window as he screamed and gagged, vomiting while the commander drew his blade. With all his strength the sergeant hurled the door shut then leapt aside. ‘Ready crossbows!’ he yelled, and the men scrambled to raise their weapons.

At that instant the door burst inward in splinters that flew apart like shards of glass. A hound thrust its head and shoulders through the doorway. It was larger than Kiska had ever imagined: the size of a mule, its shaggy coat dappled light tan and grey. It swung its massive head from side to side as if to study everyone, first through one brown eye, then a pale-grey eye. A fusillade of quarrels met it only to slam into the jambs or skitter from its flesh. It shoved forward, its muscular shoulders bunching. The jambs to either side shattered.

The room erupted in cries. Furniture crashed, the hound’s snarls and coughs burst like explosions. Its hot moist breath filled the room. Men slashed at the creature, but to no effect Kiska could discern. Most just tried to flee out of the windows or hide under the tables. Tipping her chair, she threw herself to the floor just in time to see the commander running upstairs. The woman had vanished already. A few feet away the sergeant grabbed one screaming hiresword by his hauberk and threw him fully at the hound, then leapt through a shuttered window. Kiska reached up and back and snatched the knife from behind her neck. She sawed furiously at the rope around her ankles and thanked the twin gods of chance that her hands had merely been bound at the wrists.

Rolling under a table at a booth, she watched while the beast barged about the room, slashing left and right, knocking men spinning as it lunged and snapped. Catching one man by his waist, it tossed him away like a bone. Blood spattered the plaster walls, the tarred timbers, splashed up its massive paws as they thudded across the straw-covered floorboards. Growling like a fall of gravelled stones it stalked the room, stepping over toppled tables, ducking its bloodied muzzle into booths. The hot rank blast of its breath reached Kiska as it neared her.

From where she lay frozen, Kiska could see that three men remained upright. One was hunched inside an opposite booth, his breath coming in short, rasping gasps. He stared at the beast the way someone might watch on-rushing doom. By the door the second wept uncontrollably, fumbling with his crossbow. The last was a veteran, jammed into one corner, a short sword levelled before him.

The growling stopped and the room became silent. Flat and motionless, Kiska watched while one blood-soaked paw stopped before her booth. Its claws tore splinters from the hardwood floor. She found she couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe to scream even had she wanted to. A spicy desert odour seemed to fill the air. Kiska pictured its huge muzzle above her, lowering. She squeezed her eyes shut and wrapped her arms about her head.

Close by someone coughed and the beast swung away. Wood crashed, snapping, then Kiska heard the wet crunch of bones. Peeking out, Kiska saw the hound raise its glistening wet muzzle from one body to regard the man fumbling to cock his crossbow. Sensing its attention, he stilled. Looking up his eyes became huge. The hound lunged forward, took one arm in its jaws and shook the man savagely. With a dull, wet tear his body flung free, whirling in the air for a moment before smacking hard against a pillar.

The second man — a youth — wept in terror. With a sudden dash he threw himself to the floorboards where he knelt, head down, as the hound snarled. Then opening his arms wide he screamed, ‘Kellanved! Protect me! I invoke your name!’

Now Kiska remembered her bindings and sawed frantically. Her ankles came free. Hardly knowing what she was doing, she reversed the blade to hack feverishly at the rope between her wrists.

Across the room came the scraping of claws as the hound leapt forward like a sprung catapult. It closed its jaws over the man’s head and clamped down. Bone crunched. Blood and mulched flesh flew from the hound’s maw. Tossing its head, the hound flicked the man’s headless torso away. It rolled to a stop close to Kiska’s booth, blood jetting across the floor. Kiska fought down the surge of bile at her throat.

Into the silence following, the veteran drawled, ‘Well, I guess the old man wasn’t listening.’ He tossed aside his sword to stand empty-handed.

The hound turned to regard him. Kiska also stared, fascinated by the man’s calm. From a pouch at his side he drew a round object about the size of a large fruit, dark green and shiny. His gaze caught Kiska’s and he nodded her to the rear stairwell.

He held up the object to the hound and pointed. ‘It’s just you and me now, boy.’

Kiska’s breath caught. She’d heard stories… she dived down the short stairs to the lower room, rolled, came up running. In the dark she slammed against a table, stood gagging for air. Barely able to straighten up, she glanced around and caught a shaft of moonlight near one wall illuminating a servant’s staircase.

From the room above pounded a man’s scream of pure rage and hate. Kiska staggered to the stairs, kicked open the bolted door at the end of a dry-goods larder, and ran straight out only to trip and smash down onto a gravel drive, wrenching her shoulder and cracking one knee. As she lay half conscious an explosion of light and heat punched a gasp of pain from her gut. A burst of flame blinded her, shards of wood tearing overhead, larger flaming pieces crashing down all around. She heard a long bray of pain that faded as the hound fled. Headed for the water perhaps.

Dead to any injury now, as if her nerves had burst beneath their strain, Kiska pushed herself upright and limped down the alley. Even had she broken her back, she knew she’d have dragged herself away from the horror of that slaughterhouse. Behind her what was left of the inn flared brightly into the night, lighting her path down the alley through burning timber and debris.

A wordless cry stopped Temper. It echoed from among a maze of alleyways to his right. A young woman, shrieking as if her soul itself were at stake. He froze, scanning among the dark openings. From the shadows ran a girl in dark clothing, her long black hair blowing about her face.

She saw him and hesitated, then called, ‘Please, help me. Please.’

He waved her forwards. ‘Damn, child, are you wounded? Where’s your home? Is it near?’

She threw herself onto him, a mere bundle of bones in his arms. She sobbed something, terrified.

He squinted past her into the darkness. ‘What is it?’ One of her hands clasped his arm while she buried her face at his shoulder. He pulled at her. ‘Child? What?’

Stinging pain pierced his neck. The girl’s arm writhed around it like a vice. Her legs twisted and kicked, crossing themselves behind his back. Temper staggered from side to side in the lane, pushed at her shoulders to force her head from his neck. ‘What in cursed Rikkter’s name?’

The girl threw back her head. Eyes as black as night regarded him. She smiled slyly, revealing needle-sharp teeth. Temper snapped a hand to her neck just under her jaw and held her there.

She smiled even more widely at him over his hand. ‘You’re not going to turn me out into the night alone, are you, good sir?’

With his free hand Temper drew his gauche and thrust at her. She snatched his wrist and twisted. He howled, struggled, fought, but the hand numbed and the blade dropped from his grip.

He fell, tried to roll, but she remained on top of him, wrapped as tightly as a winding sheet. Glancing down, Temper saw, horrified, that it was no longer two legs that squeezed the breath from him, but rather a single snake-like limb that encircled his chest down to his knees. Already his ribs felt crushed from the pressure. Moonlight shone from glistening scales. He would’ve shrieked had he breath for it. Holding her head away from his neck, his arm and hand burned as if aflame. Fraction by fraction the face inched inward, lips pulled back from tiny serrated fangs, her eyes mocking all his strength.

Gasping, panting, he spared one short breath to shout, ’Help me!’

She let out a girlish giggle. ‘None will help you this night. Tonight belongs to the hunters of Shadow. Can’t you hear them call their hunger?’ Forcing herself close, she cupped one hand behind his neck. ‘Now, let me show you my hunger. You will enjoy it much more than theirs. I promise you.’

Temper poured every ounce of strength into his arm but now her greasy hair brushed at his face. His own blood dripped from her mouth onto his cheek and burned there as if turned to acid. A hiss gurgled from the creature’s throat. Temper wrenched his face away as far as humanly possible.

The thing snarled and whipped over him suddenly. Its hair was yanked from his face. Temper glanced back: a fist had gathered up a handhold of the creature’s hair and was pulling back its head. The thing hissed, writhed and spat wordlessly. Its neck was bent backwards to an impossible angle. Its eyes glared blackest fury. A long blade came down in front of the neck, rusted, its edges uneven, more like an ancient iron bar than a sword. It sawed into the pale flesh inches from Temper’s face. The neck parted with a wet, ragged scission like a rotten fruit split from its stem, and hot fetid blood gushed out onto Temper. The thing spasmed, pulled away, its arms beating at him, its snake limb lashing the stones.

Temper threw himself aside, slapped at his cheeks and eyes where the corrupt blood stung as if poison. ‘Gods! Aw, gods!’ On his knees he vomited, groaned, wiped his mouth and lay dragging in great lungfuls of welcome air.

Whoever had rescued him stood over the butchered corpse. Headless, the body still twitched. Like a leech, Temper thought, and almost heaved again. Slowly he got to his feet and spat to clear his mouth. ‘My thanks, stranger.’

The man said nothing. In the shifting moonlight Temper now saw that perhaps things had got worse. Who or whatever his saviour was, it wasn’t alive. It was a walking cadaver, desiccated, wearing shredded armour, its dried flesh curled back from yellowed teeth, its eye sockets empty and dark. In one hand it held the head, blood dripping, black hair matted.

‘Disgusting parasites,’ the thing said in a voice as dry as sifting sand. It tossed the head aside where it rolled under an empty vendor’s cart.

Temper pulled his gaze from where the head had vanished. ‘Yeah. Damned disgusting all right.’

‘Please do not think they belong to Shadow. They are trespassers. Like you.’

‘Like me?’ Temper eyed the thing. It resembled an Imass warrior, though taller and slimmer. He wondered why it had stepped in. ‘Who do I thank for my life?’

The being inclined its head a fraction. Temper heard dry flesh creaking like leather. ‘Edgewalker.’

‘Temper. So, what now?’

Edgewalker gestured a skeletal hand to the shops and houses lining the way. ‘You’d best remain inside. The dwellings will be respected, mostly’

‘Sorry, but I can’t do that.’

Edgewalker shrugged ever so slightly. ‘Then I wish you better luck.’

‘Many thanks.’ Temper backed away. The being, who or whatever it was, remained where it stood. At the end of the street Temper paused to peer back but he, or it, was gone. He gave his own shrug and started on, heading for a public well he knew to be nearby. He had to wash this filth from himself.

At the broken fountain dedicated to Poliel, Temper rinsed bucketful after bucketful of freezing cold water over his head. He then jogged onto Toe Way, but before long he slowed and looked about. Shouldn’t Stone Lane be right ahead? He squinted into denser patches of night. The rows of houses and shop fronts did not look familiar. Something tonight seemed to be tricking his sense of direction, causing him to even doubt where he’d just been.

He drew off his helmet again, pushed back his wet hair, and wiped the remaining cold water from his face. Had he somehow turned around? But where? The way twisted between the uninterrupted rear walls of shops and houses. A shockingly brisk breeze gusted at him and he heard the rasp and creak of numerous branches lashing in the wind. Yet the island was practically deforested. The surge of the surf… where had it disappeared? These last months he had worked, eaten, and slept to its reassuring beat. Was the heavy mist obscuring it? Yet the winds were fierce tonight; contrary.

He started up a cobbled rise. No matter the twists and turnings, up led to Mock’s Hold, and that had to be the mercenaries’ target. There couldn’t be anything else to interest them on the island.

After a number of turns the ground levelled and Temper lost his way in a maze of narrow lanes he’d never before come across. Scarf-thin wisps of cloud scudded overhead and the full moon, a pool of suspended mercury, dazzled his vision. Only Mock’s Hold squatting high upon its cliff, silver and black in the monochrome glare, reassured him that he was indeed still on Malaz. Otherwise he would have sworn he’d wandered into another town, another country.

Dry hot air tickled the nape of his neck and he rubbed at it; his hand came away gritty with sand. Sand? Where in the world had that come from? He stood still, rubbing the grains between thumb and forefinger as he looked about. Hadn’t the moon just been to the left of the cliffs a moment earlier?

A deep bull-like snort reverberated up the narrow lane behind him — the distant cough of an animal scenting spoor. Then came a grinding of claws over stone. Temper swallowed, backed against a wall. Automatically his hands moved to check his weapons. A door stood to his right and he hammered at it. No answer. He pounded the sturdy planks again. A voice spoke, but in no language Temper had ever heard before.

‘Open up,’ he growled.

The voice croaked again and this time Temper recognized a word: hrin. Hrin? Hadn’t someone once told him that was an ancient word for revenant?

His mouth dried from a new sort of fear — the dread of one’s senses corroding. This was his worst fear of the Warrens: the way they could twist the mind. A physical enemy he could face, but insanity? How do you fight that? Old Rengel’s warning echoed: ’The bloodshed summoned it. Fiends and worse rule this night!’

He turned and ran. Flint cobbles jarred under his feet. Boarded shop fronts passed, blind and forbidding. From far away a bell rang mutely, as if from a ship at sea. He stopped, listening. The third bell of evening. To the left a lane curved steeply downwards, the roofs of warehouses just visible beyond — the waterfront, Temper realized, but shrouded in fog. While he watched, the dense bank rose like an unnatural tide, clearing the warehouses and crawling up the lane.

He backed away, turned, and sprinted uphill. Up, just keep going up. That’s where he’ll find them. But then what? What could he-

An explosion of sound, a blood-freezing howl that made him stumble and clasp his hands to his ears. The agonizing call rose and fell like the inconsolable keening of the dead. Temper pulled his weapons though he could see nothing of the beast — nor hope to accomplish anything against such a monster.

Togg protect him. Had it scented him? Did it smell at all? Perhaps it followed some other kind of less mundane spoor. He saw the fog still rising and ran on.

The rutted lane he followed crossed a narrow stairway. He started up then stopped. Noise carried from below: something shuffling through the mist obscuring the lane. His first urge was to make a stand at the crossing; put an end to this unmanning fear and anticipation, one way or another. Yet his experience, the accumulated wisdom of decades amidst the smoky tumult of battle, warned against it. What reason had he to believe that whatever was down there knew of him, or even sought him? Why force a confrontation by blocking this narrow passage? Snarling under his breath, he backed up the stairs, weapons held ready.

The worn steps ended at a shoulder-width cleft between buildings facing Jakani Square. Temper felt his way along the walls and out onto the square. It was a shifting sea of mist, the cobbles treacherous beneath his feet. Echoes of his steps returned distorted and hollow. A gust cooled his face and through the mist he glimpsed house fronts looming dark, shadows flitting past so fast he couldn’t follow them.

From the gloom came a mewling. He adjusted his grips and tried to steady his breath. A scrape and scuffle there, from the alley, a hunched shape advancing with agonizing slowness.

He readied himself, one blade held high, the other low. Yet he hesitated to attack; something wasn’t right. The figure came forward unsteadily, weaved side to side, shuffling. Temper had heard enough of the animal sounds of injured men to know it well. The man — for it was a man — hugged himself as he limped. His arms were crossed tight around his stomach as if he carried a precious gift. Temper lowered his weapons. What was this? Some sort of damn fool trick?

Closer now, the man kept coming and Temper gave ground to him, shouting, ‘Stay!’

The man halted. The head tilted to one side. His mouth worked, a soundless black void in the night. One arm rose, stretched out to him. Temper heard the viscous suck of half-dried blood tearing, and then a braided mass slopped from the man’s stomach to the pavement — the coils and glistening viscera of his entrails. The man collapsed.

Temper tried to moisten his mouth but couldn’t untrap his tongue. He advanced, prodded the corpse with the point of his weapon. Dead. Long dead, or so it seemed to him.

‘Listen to me,’ the corpse whispered.

Temper snapped his swords to guard.

One hand, slick with gore, urged him closer.

‘The hound,’ it moaned. Temper leaned forward. He detected no air escaping the mouth. ‘It killed me. Killed us all.’ This man, he realized, was one of the gang of mercenaries that had captured him. ‘And it… it…’ The hand urged Temper even closer. He lowered his head and the hand snatched at his sleeve. He tried to brush it off but the fingers clung like hooks.

The dead face leered a carious grin. ‘And… it’s following me.’

‘What?’

‘Now… you’re dead, too.’

Temper looked up to where a wet red trail of blood led away from the corpse. A track that wove and pooled back to the stairs he’d just climbed. ‘Bastard!’

The corpse gave a mocking laugh.

Temper tried to rise but the hand still gripped him. ‘Scum.’ Temper hacked the hand from its limb. It spun away, poised for a moment mid-air, then slapped down onto the stones.

Low panting tolled up the narrow stairway. Temper backed away, scanned what he could of the square. It boasted some seven main lanes radiating out. Before even thinking he was sprinting for the nearest exit.

Up constricted lane after lane he fled in panic. His lungs flared and his throat was rasped raw. Slowing, gasping for air, he admitted his mistake. Fool! You can’t evade the damned thing. Stand and fight. He turned and pressed his back to a wall of chiselled stone boulders. It chilled the steel lobster-tail guard at the nape of his neck. Gulping down great mouthfuls of air, he tried to calm himself. Don’t wind yourself before a fight; conserve energy. Ha! Too late for that. He was acting like a pimply conscript facing his first engagement.

Beams of moonlight now split in half shuttered buildings across the way. From a nearby house an old woman wailed prayers to Burn the Preserver. A distant scream sounded and was cut off. Temper wiped at his face and pushed himself from the wall. Not the best spot for what he had in mind; he needed more room to manoeuvre.

Two turnings brought him to a wide length of esplanade that served as a morning market. Temper now knew where he’d ended up: close to the concourse that led to Reacher’s Way. Rats scampered from him as he chose a spot close to the middle gutter and kicked the rotten litter from underfoot. Crouched low, he swung his arms and rolled his shoulders.

He could hear it out there past the gusting wind, chuffing and snorting. Gods! It sounded as big as a horse! An urge was on him to kick down a door and get behind solid walls. Yet what could he do in one of these tiny shops? Hide under a table? The beast would trap him like a cornered rat.

A brassy call rolled in with the wind, rising and falling like a wolf’s plaintive cry. Temper tilted his head and listened. Had it run off? No, from up the lane he’d taken came the grating of claws over stone. Hood’s teeth! More than one of the beasts!

He watched as the shadows swirled beneath the driving cloud cover and prayed that iron could harm the demons. Often it could when backed by enough strength. Like the time Urko, a commander famed for his brawn, dismembered an enk’aral during the campaigns in north Falar. But he was no Urko. He could only hope for one good shot. A shame, really. He’d always thought to fall fighting, but he would have wished for a more even match.

Now all was silent. He’d lost track of the thing in the shadows — assuming the noise he’d heard had been the beast. He listened, arms tensed, waiting for it.

Claws scoured stone, rear and left. Temper risked a glance but saw nothing.

Then he caught the sharp snick of talons and hurled himself to the side, swinging his blade only to dash sparks from the cobbles. As he fell he saw a hound bigger than a Fenn mountain lion snapping shut jaws where he’d stood but a moment before. The brute loped on, its nails furrowing stones. Temper caught one glimpse of a shaggy brown pelt and a scarred rear limb before it leapt again, dissolving into shadow.

Crawling to his feet, he gazed into the patch of darkness where the hound had disappeared. Not fair. Not bloody fair, my friend. He swore then to hurt the thing before it tore him limb from limb, never mind the hopelessness of ever achieving that.

From all around now came the sound of bestial claws. A cold wind brushed the square of clinging mist, but he still couldn’t spy it. Then, across the way, he caught a deeper shadow in the gloom. Eyes the colour of heated amber flashed open, and a growl that the shook windows in their frames rolled over him. It raised the hairs on his neck, but now at least he knew: the full frontal assault.

It surged towards him, astounding speed in the stretch of its stride. It was on him before he could decide whether it was real or an illusion.

He managed to ram his hand and weapon, hilt-first, into the beast’s maw but its onrush snatched him from his feet and dragged him clattering and bouncing beneath its massive chest. The iron scales of his armour gouged through his shoulder. The monster’s fangs closed on his forearm, grating against the bones. Temper roared at the searing pain.

The beast hauled him to a wall and shook him as a terrier might a rat. It would rip his arm off in a moment. Channelling all his pain into one ferocious effort, he swung his free hand up and smashed the iron pommel of his weapon down on the fiend’s skull. It rang like a bell, and the beast jerked and snorted as if it would release its grip. But then it merely coughed, sending a blast of hot fetid air into Temper’s face. It heaved forward, dragging him over the cobbles, smashing him into walls and battering his body against timbers as it loped through the labyrinth of alleys. Stone steps gouged his back and cracked against his knees. He threw up a gout of froth and blood. Screams followed him and as his mouth filled with his own bloodied vomit, Temper knew the cries weren’t just his.

Eventually the beast wearied of the game and let him roll away. Crippled, his arm broken and mangled, he was past pain and long past fear. He was in a place he hadn’t known since his last battle nearly a year ago, and it was like a strange reunion. He was floating, euphoric. It was the place he retreated to during the worst of his engagements. Where all his strength and resilience flowed unbound. Where his body moved like some remote automaton of flesh and bone; where no injury could reach. Lying broken and dirt-smeared, he bared his teeth at the hound.

It towered over him, heaving great bellows of hot air, its coat a mangy reddish brown, grown tangled over the scars of countless battles, its eyes blazing.

With his good hand, Temper edged a dirk from its sheath at his hip. End it! he urged the lantern eyes. Do it now!

The head lunged toward his chest. Temper thrust the dirk up point-first into the open maw. The beast recoiled, hacking and snarling. It shook its muzzle; sprayed blood and saliva.

Temper tried to laugh but could only gag. He held the blade up. Got you! Hurt you, you Hood-spawned bastard!

Pawing at its mouth and chuffing, it ran in circles, shook its enormous skull, then smashed into a wall of whitewashed plaster that crumpled. The beast turned back to glare at him. A mere wasp’s sting, Temper admitted sadly. His arm fell and the weapon clattered to the stones. Dizziness and a black onrushing wind smothered his senses. From a vast distance, he watched as the beast coiled for another spring.

He must have lost consciousness, as the visage he avoided through every battle and duel now gazed down at him. The Hooded One himself, come at last to collect his spirit. Temper wished he had the strength to spit at him. A cowl of darkness descended over him, and he felt himself falling, on and on until he was smothered in night and knew nothing more.

You can’t find me. You won’t find me. You’ll never find me. Arms wrapped tightly about her knees, Kiska rocked herself back and forth, back and forth. Never find me, never find me. She sat in a tiny hut while a silent rain drifted down around her. She rubbed her chin over her hurt knee.

Who can’t find you? she asked herself.

No one. Not one person ever. None of the kids she played hide and seek with. None of the local thieves she competed against. Not even Auntie when she tried her magic. But she could find anyone. She always did. Auntie said she had a talent for it.

And what else can’t find you?

Kiska rocked for a time. She hummed to herself. No one. No one. A whimper sounded from her side and she glanced down. A dog lay curled against her haunch. A large dog. It peered up at her with sad eyes full of fear.

Kiska sighed, freed one arm from its grip of her knees and stroked the dog. It whimpered again and huddled closer. She nodded in agreement.

I think they could find you, girl, she told herself. If they wanted to.

She sighed again and massaged her knee where her black pants were torn and blood had dried in a rough crust. She flexed the leg and winced at the pain. The dog whined its alarm.

Can’t stay here forever.

She rubbed her eyes. Stay here.

On this island? Forever?

‘A living death,’ Kiska whispered into the dark.

The dog cocked one ear. She peered down at it. Sorry, boy. I just can’t hide any longer.

She pushed herself to her feet. She had staggered into an outhouse, a boarded shack hardly larger than an upright coffin. She looked out over the half-door. Boards covered the rear windows of a house belonging to a young family Kiska knew. They exported dried fish and were quite well-to-do. They even had an outhouse in their vegetable garden.

So here she was. The biggest night of her life and she was hiding in a shitter. Everything she wished for all her life had materialized and what has she done? Run away!

The dog rested its head on one of her muddied slippers and peered up at her. Kiska searched her pockets and sheaths. A length of cord and a scarf, needles, cloths soaked in unguents given to her by Agayla. This was all she had left. She unfolded one cloth and pressed it to her knee. She hissed at the pain. Yet who could’ve guessed at the vast difference between hoping for action, and the sight of a man’s head bursting like a melon in the maw of some monster from another realm? No wonder she’d found herself throwing up in a back alley.

That man from the Imperial cutter… he hadn’t been afraid to walk the streets. He’d faced down an entire nest of cultists. And he must’ve known what he was walking into. She was certain of that. Yet he had come. Oleg said his message had to get to him, a message he believed vitally important. But he was mad. Agayla, though… she’d also sent Kiska after him.

Her hand found the flattened scroll at her chest. This was for him. Had he reached the Hold yet? He must have — but who could be sure on a night like this? And the gatekeeper — Lubben — he would let her know if he had. He might even let her in. If she played it right.

Kiska opened the door. The dog whimpered afresh. Looking back, she saw it still curled on the privy floor, unwilling to even push its nose past the threshold. She bid goodbye and headed for a shortcut she knew to Rampart Way.

The night had turned unearthly still. Even her slippers and the whisper of her breath sounded deafening. Then suddenly, randomly, a hound’s baying shattered the calm, causing her to shrink. But other than these terrifying moments — each of which she was certain would be her last — it was as if the night stood frozen. Only the moon appeared to move, watching her with its silver eye as she made for the waterfront where the shore lapped the cliffs and the oldest wharves ceased at a thatch of rotten piers.

She climbed the slick stones jumbled at the cliff’s base. Salt spray beaded on her shirt and the waves beneath her murmured, unnaturally subdued. Her cord-soled slippers gripped the broken rock, but her hands slid, cut open on its knife-like edges.

Soon she reached the barest lip in the uneven stones — an animal path dating back generations to when wild goats still clambered over the island. The track was long forgotten and invisible to those beneath and above. She fancied it was the mystery behind the phantom departures and arrivals of the island’s pirates.

She carefully edged her way up the slick rock ledges, most no wider than her foot. Thorned brush choked the route, forcing her to ascend behind or over. But she knew the way blindfolded, as she’d often climbed it at night. It led to her favourite spot on the island — after Agayla’s rooms, that is.

The mist closed in like a shroud. The bay, some hundred yards down, lay smothered in low-lying fog. In the southern sky, lights flickered green and pink, reminding Kiska of the legends of the Riders who rose in winter to tow sailors to their doom. She also remembered the tales of ghosts and revenants said to haunt the Hold above. Even these cliffs boasted an entire host of spirits — drowned sailors deceived into drawing too close to the shoals, tricked by her ancestors, wreckers and pirates all. It was said you could still hear their moaning at night, seeking vengeance on their murderers. She’d grown up on such yarns and believed not a one. Including those of a certain demon-haunted Shadow Moon…

When her outthrust hand told Kiska she’d reached a depression in the veined granite, she threw herself into the opening she knew awaited ahead. She gasped for air, and not just from the strain of the climb. Her clothes clung to her, heavy and damp. The air retained the rich fetor of rotting humus and bird droppings. Kiska leant against one inward-canted wall to steady her breath. The crevice she stood in couldn’t really be called a cavern: it was more like a ragged cleft in the living rock of the island, a jagged fissure that shot straight into the cliff. Her heel dislodged chips of stone that shifted and crunched. She’d found places within where there was no floor to speak of at all, just a thinning skim of darkness descending straight down to a finger’s breadth.

She had played here as a child. It was her secret hideaway, though she had the feeling Agayla was aware of its existence. She’d explored every inch of the radiating cracks and the galleries of narrow, vertical faults. And though island legends told of secret caves and hidden troves of gems and gold, she’d found no trace of them. Broken decayed slats and bits of salt-dissolved iron scattered here and there were all she’d kicked up as reward for her efforts.

Overhead passed a portion of Rampart Way; it would be a difficult final climb. She rubbed warmth back into her hands and felt the burn of cuts as circulation flowed into salt-encrusted wounds. Perhaps she should wrap them in lengths of cloth. But what if it should slip or come loose?

Noise clattered from without. Kiska pressed herself against the cliff wall and listened: fabric brushing over stone, falling pebbles. Someone climbing outside. She edged farther into the cavern. As she did so, a shape from within loomed in the narrow stone confines like one of the revenants she’d heard tell of.

An instant of soul-clutching dread slowed her enough for the figure — a flesh and blood man — to grasp her hand. She almost smiled at such a mistaken move and used his resistance to snap a kick to the opposite side of his head.

The man grunted but held on. Kiska lost her grin.

A foot lashed out and cracked against her wounded knee. She bit down a shriek of stabbing pain as the leg gave way. He released her hand as she fell.

‘Don’t struggle,’ he told her.

She stared up at him; here in the dark he was mostly shadow, but there was something familiar about him.

He shook out a slim length of cord and stepped over her. Her every instinct wailed against being bound again, and she lashed out with her good leg, catching him high in the inner thigh.

A loud hiss escaped his lips, yet he bent over her again.

Kiska covered her face, cried, ‘No, please!’ She slipped the knife from the back of her collar. Before she could use it his booted foot came down on her wrist and something hard like a knout of iron smashed against her temple. The cavern’s darkness exploded into a dazzle of red and yellow pinpoints that shimmered and faded slowly.

‘You’ve a few moves,’ he allowed, grudging, ‘but you’re out of your depth here, child. Don’t make me kill you.’

Kiska blinked against the lights befuddling her vision. ‘Who in the Lady’s Pull are you?’

The man ignored her. ‘Turn your back,’ he told her.

She obeyed and he tied her wrists together. Another figure climbed up into the opening and the man moved to his side. They spoke and against the light of the moon Kiska recognized him. The flat, scarred face, cat’s whiskers moustache: the bodyguard of the very man she sought.

She laughed. The men ignored her, continued speaking in low tones she couldn’t catch. The newcomer was sent out again. The Seti tribesman returned to her. He pulled a black cloth from within his cloak. Kiska recognized the cloth and where it would be thrown.

‘I have a message for your master,’ she said as he readied the cloth for her head. The hands hesitated a fraction of a heart beat, continued down.

Darkness enveloped Kiska. ‘The man he met in the garden is dead,’ she said, too quickly and loud for her liking. Her heart hammered.

Silence. The sullen lurch and suck of the surf beneath. Kiska listened: not even the clatter or shift of stone chips underfoot. Nothing. Was he still there? Was anyone? Would they leave her here? Perhaps it was a sort of twisted kindness. After all, she’d be safer tied up here than roaming the streets tonight.

A hand took hold of the hood at its uppermost fold. It gently lifted up and away from her head. Her hair caught at its coarse weave.

A man crouched before her: a long, narrow mahogany-tanned face that appeared oddly seamless, bland even. Sunken, dark, black-ringed eyes. Brown pate shaven but for a long braided queue at his shoulder. A straight slash of mouth. Lips Kiska imagined shattering should they be forced to smile. Her quarry.

‘I’m told you have a message for me.’

He spoke aristocratic Talian with a hint of an accent she couldn’t place. As out of place on this island as gold in a fish’s mouth.

He waited, expressionless. Kiska found her voice. ‘In my shirt.’ She tried to raise her arm but only wrenched her wrist.

He raised one hand. ‘May I?’

‘Yeah — yes.’

He wore black leather gloves, his fingers long and thin.

‘No!’ barked the bodyguard. He yanked her away by the back of her collar then rummaged at her shirt. His hand brushed her small breast. She smiled to unnerve him but his eyes remained empty of emotion.

‘Hattar…’ her target murmured reprovingly.

She peered up at him. ‘Yes. Hattar.’

He found the scroll then shoved her over and pressed one knee down on her shoulder. His weight drove all breath from her. The scroll crackled as he tore at it.

‘Hattar,’ the man sighed, ‘you cannot read.’

Hattar grunted something.

‘Let her up.’

Unwillingly, he eased his weight. She gasped a deep breath, choked on dust and dirt she sucked in. Her side ached, pressed firmly into the uneven stones.

‘I will speak with her.’

‘Hunh?’

‘Raise her up.’

‘My Lord…’

Silence. Kiska waited. A look from the Lord perhaps? A gesture? Hattar knelt within her sight. He held a wicked curved blade to her face. His other hand twisted a grip in her hair. He brought his scarred nut-brown face close to hers.

’You and my master will speak,’ he whispered. ‘But this dagger,’ and he wagged it before her eyes, ‘if you twitch, it will reach your heart through your back before you are even aware of it tickling your pretty soft skin. Do you understand me?’

She nodded, wide-eyed.

Hattar returned her nod. He raised her up and shifted her round. His master held the scroll in one hand and was tapping it against the other. The lips were curved downward ever so slightly. ‘My apologies for Hattar. He takes his duties very seriously.’

Kiska almost nodded, stopped herself. ‘Yes. He does.’

The man sighed, rubbed his fingers over his eyes. ‘What is your aunt’s name?’ he asked suddenly.

‘Agayla.’

‘What does she do at Winter’s Turn — Rider’s Retreat, I understand you sometimes call it here.’

Kiska stared. Had she heard that right? Winter’s Turn? She almost shrugged but felt a prick to one side of her spine and held herself rigid. ‘Ah, she… she consults the Dragons deck for the coming year.’

‘Yes. Many do. And?’

A test. He was challenging her obviously. Why Winter’s Turn? What was so… she remembered then. One eve sneaking down the stairs and watching from the cover of the landing while Agayla sat up all night, from midnight’s bell till dawn’s light. The side to side woosh of the shuttle. The click and rattle of the loom. Weaving. All night. Kiska licked her dry lips. ‘She weaves.’

Her target nodded. ‘And what is your name?’

‘Kiska.’

The brow arched. ‘Your real name?’

‘What? Is it in there?’

He just waited, patient. Kiska could sense Hattar at her back eagerly tensed for the killing blow. ‘Kiskatia Silamon Tenesh.’

He nodded again. ‘Very well, Kiska. You may call me… Artan.’

‘Artan? That’s not your real name.’

‘No. It isn’t.’

‘Ah. I see.’ Kiska stopped herself from asking his real name; he wouldn’t tell her anyway.

Artan opened the scroll. He started ever so slightly, surprised, and Kiska decided that whatever was written there must be startling indeed to have broken through his iron control. He let out a breath in a long hiss while tapping the scroll against his fingertips.

‘Does she say how I saw your meeting?’ she asked.

Artan did not answer. It seemed to Kiska that his gaze stared into the distance while at the same time was turned inward in meditation.

‘Artan?’

He blinked, rubbed again at his ancient, tired-looking eyes. As if struck by a new thought, he studied her. ‘No. That is not its message.’

‘Then what does it say?’

He held it out to her, open. ‘Does this mean anything to you?’

There was no writing on the scroll. Instead, a hasty rectangle was sketched on the parchment. Within the rectangle was drawn a spare stylised figure. Kiska couldn’t quite make it out. A mounted warrior? A swimming man?

Curious, she looked closer: blue, she saw. Gleaming opalescent colours. Plates of armour shining smooth like the insides of shells. And ice, the growing skein of freezing scales. ‘I see ice,’ she breathed, awed.

‘Truly?’ Artan plucked it back. It withered into ash in his gloved hands. He brushed them together. The gesture troubled Kiska; she’d seen poor street conjurers use the same trick.

‘So. Your message?’ he asked.

Kiska stared. ‘Wasn’t that…’

Artan cocked a brow and Kiska saw that she was right: his mouth did little more than remain a straight slash. ‘No. That was her message. Not yours.’

‘You know her?’

‘We’ve met. A few times… long ago.’

‘Really? Well, my message is about Oleg.’

Both thin brows rose. ‘You know his name?’

‘He told me.’

‘I see. Go on.’

‘I, ah, I followed you to your meeting with him.’

Artan sent a look over her shoulder to Hattar. Rueful? Accusatory? A growl sounded behind her.

She hurried on. ‘After you left he was killed by a man in grey robes.’

Artan’s lips almost pursed, the dark eyes narrowed. ‘Then pray, how did he tell you his name?’

‘Ah. Well. You see, I waited, then went into the garden and looked at him.’

‘And he spoke to you?’

‘Yes.’

Artan sighed. ‘The Shadow Moon. Of course. What did he say?’

Kiska frowned. ‘Well, it was strange and rambling. And the words — I don’t know what they mean. Anyway, Oleg said the message was for you.’

Artan jerked, surprised. ‘He named me?’

‘No. He said it was for the man who was just with him. And he — well, he did call you an irresponsible idiot.’

Artan allowed his lips the slimmest cold upturning that could generously be called a smile. He touched his gloved fingers to his lips. ‘Go on.’

‘He said that, ah, that now he was dead he could see that he’d been right all along.’

’A rather unassailable position,’ Artan observed dryly.

Kiska continued: ‘He said that Kellan-’

Something cracked off her skull from behind.

‘Hattar!’

Kiska blinked tears from her eyes.

‘My apologies,’ Artan said, ‘I should have told you. We do not say that name.’

‘Obviously. Well, what I was trying to tell you was that he — that is, Oleg — said only fools think he is returning for the Imperial throne.’

Artan’s gaze rose past her shoulder to Hattar. ‘Then, pray, what is he returning for?’

‘For a different throne. For the throne of Shadow.’

Artan’s jaws tightened — the masked expressions of a lifetime of guarding one’s thoughts. ‘I’m sorry. But this is nothing I haven’t heard from Oleg before.’ He stood, brushed at his pants.

‘It’s true!’

‘I’m sorry, Kiska. But how do you know?’

‘Because someone else confirmed it.’

Artan paused. His face did not change, but Kiska could tell she had caught his interest. ‘Who confirmed it?’

‘While I was in town I was swept up in something — a Changing — and I was in Shadow. I met someone there. An old creature like a walking corpse, or like an Imass, named Edgewalker. He said many people have tried for the Shadow throne.’ She waited expectantly, but the information seemed to signify nothing to Artan.

‘And did he say… the emperor… would?’

‘Well, no. He just wasn’t surprised. He-’ Kiska’s shoulder’s slumped. Damn! She had told him!

‘I’m sorry. I need more evidence than this.’

Artan was right, of course. It was all just the babbling of a man who’d admitted hating Kellanved. She was a fool to have believed him.

’We must be going.’

‘Wait! He said that during this conjunction the paths between realms are accessible.’

Artan nodded. ‘Yes. But that was not our dispute. I acknowledge it, in theory.’

‘Ah, yes. Well, Oleg said that during transubstantiation existed the greatest possibility for… ah… for entombment. That then lay the greatest opportunity to entrap him. That you should act then.’ Kiska frowned. ‘Do you know what that means?’

Artan sighed. ‘It’s all thaumaturgic theory. His own research. I’m not so sure of it myself. Was that all?’

‘No. One other thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘Well, this last bit sounds kind of silly to me.’

‘Just this last part?’

Kiska laughed nervously. ‘Yeah, well. He said don’t be fooled by appearances. That he plans on losing all to gain everything. That defeat would seal his victory.’

Artan rubbed at his sunken eyes with thumb and forefinger. Kiska wondered if the gesture was a habit of which the man was not even aware.

‘Poor old Oleg,’ Artan sighed, ‘Hedging and oracular to the end. Thank you, Kiska. I’ll keep these speculations in mind.’

‘But I’m coming with you, aren’t I?’

‘Great One below, no.’

‘What?’

‘Hattar, tie her up more securely.’

‘At once.’

‘Wait-’

A gag whipped across her mouth and yanked tight. The plainsman tied her elbows to her sides, pushed her down and bound her legs.

From the cavern opening Artan said, ‘Goodbye. Give my regards to your Aunt.’

Kiska cursed him through the gag. Hattar stood over her. He studied his handiwork. They were alone in the cave.

He knelt beside her, took out his fur hat and pulled it down over his long oiled hair. ‘If you are any good, you’ll work your way out of these bindings. If you do, don’t follow us. If I find you pursuing us again, I’ll clip your feathers, little bird. You understand?’

She cursed him to the most distant of Hood’s Paths. He chuckled — at her predicament she supposed — and left. She was alone.

For a few moments she lay still, listening to be sure she was indeed on her own and that he wasn’t watching from the opening. Then she concluded this was foolish, that he wouldn’t hang around here with his master gone, and began wriggling. She twisted and waggled her hands to wedge a thumb at just the right angle against a rock, then pressed. It dislocated with a crack and a familiar jab of pain. Then, using the edges of stones — even the walls themselves — she teased and plucked and coerced the rope coils at her wrist down toward her fingers. After that it was easy to accomplish the rest.

Throwing off the rope at her legs, she was free. And in much less time than that bastard Hattar planned on, she was sure. Not pursue them! She’d follow all right. She’d get ahead of them! She’d show what she could accomplish. No one left her trussed up like a prize pig at a banquet.

She’d climb up to Rampart Way, then sneak into the Hold. Climb the wall itself if she had to. Just as she did years ago to see if she could. Aunt Agayla’s warning then flashed into her thoughts: do not enter the Hold! But Artan would be there. And besides, if there were great things happening, and even greater powers contending, no one would pay her a mind.