Toll the Hounds

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Many children, early on, acquire a love of places they have never been. Often, such wonder is summarily crushed on the crawl through the sludge of murky, confused adolescence on to the flat, cracked pan of adulthood with its airless vistas ever lurking beyond the horizon. Oh, well, sometimes such gifts of curiosity, delight and adventure do indeed survive the stationary trek, said victims ending up as artists, scholars, inventors and other criminals bent on confounding the commonplace and the platitudes of peaceful living. But never mind them for now, since, for all their flailing subversions, nothing really ever changes unless in service to convenience.

Bainisk was still, in the sheltered core of his being, a child. Ungainly with growth, yes, awkward in a body in which he had not yet caught up, but he had yet to surrender his love of the unknown. And so it should be wholly understandable that he and young Harllo should have shared a spark of delight and wonder, the kind that wove tight between them so that not even the occasional snarl could truly sever the binding.

In the week following that fateful tear in the trust between them, Harllo had come to believe that he was once more truly alone in the world. Wounds scabbed over and scabs fell away to reveal faint scars that soon faded almost out of exis shy;tence, and the boy worked on, crawling into fissures, scratching his way along fetid, gritty cracks in the deep rock. Choking at times on bad air, stung by blind centipedes and nipped by translucent spiders. Bruised by shifting stones, his eyes wide in the darkness as he searched out the glitter of ore on canted, close walls.

At week’s end, however, Bainisk was with him once more, passing him a jug of silty lakewater as he backed out of a fissure and sat down on the warm, dry stone of the tunnel floor, and in this brief shared moment the tear slowly began to heal, reknitted in the evasiveness of their eyes that would not yet lock on to the reality of their sitting side by side — far beneath the world’s surface, two beating hearts that echoed naught but each other — and this was how young boys made amends. Without words, with spare gestures that, in their rarity, acquired all the necessary significance. When Harllo was done drinking he passed back the jug.

‘Venaz is on me all the time now,’ Bainisk said. ‘I tried it, with him again, I mean. But it’s not the same. We’re both too old for what we had, once. All he ever talks about is stuff that bores me.’

‘He just likes hurting people.’

Bainisk nodded. ‘I think he wants to take over my job. He argued over every or shy;der I gave him.’

‘People like him always want to take over,’ Harllo said. ‘And most times when other people see it they back off and let them. That’s what I don’t get, Bainisk. It’s the scariest thing of all.’

That last admission was uncommon between boys. The notion of being fright shy;ened. But theirs was not a normal world, and to pretend that there was nothing to fear was not among the few privileges they entertained. Out here, people didn’t need reasons to hurt someone. They didn’t need reasons for doing anything.

‘Tell me about the city again, Mole.’

There’s a haunted tower. My uncle took me to see it once. He has big hands, so big that when he holds yours it’s like your hand disappears and there’s nothing in the world could pull you apart. Anyway, there’s a ghost in that tower. Named Hinter.’

Bainisk set on him wide eyes. ‘Did you see it? Did you see that ghost?’

‘No, it was daytime. They’re hard to see in daytime.’

‘It’s dark enough down here,’ Bainisk said, looking round. ‘But I ain’t never seen a ghost.’

Harllo thought to tell him, then. It had been his reason for bringing up the story in the first place, but he found himself holding back yet again. He wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was because the skeleton wasn’t a true ghost. ‘Sometimes,’ he said, ‘the dead don’t go away. I mean, sometimes, they die but the soul doesn’t, er, leave the body. It stays where it is, where it always was.’

‘Was this Hinter like that?’

‘No, he was a real ghost. A spirit with no body.’

‘So what makes ghosts of some people but not others?’

Harllo shrugged. ‘Don’t know, Bainisk. Maybe spirits with a reason to stay are the ones that become ghosts. Maybe the Lord of Death doesn’t want them, or lets them be so they can maybe finish doing what they need to do. Maybe they don’t realize they’re dead.’ He shrugged again. ‘That’s what my uncle said. He didn’t know either, and not knowing made him mad — I could tell by the way he held my hand tighter.’

‘He got mad at a ghost?’

‘Could be. That’s what I figure, anyway. I didn’t say nothing to make him mad, so it must have been the ghost. His not knowing what it wanted or something.’

Harllo could well recall that moment. Like Bainisk, he’d asked lots of questions, amazed that such a thing as a ghost could exist, could be hiding, watching them, thinking all its ghost thoughts. And Gruntle had tried to answer him, though it was obviously a struggle. And when Harllo asked him if maybe his father — who was dead — might be a ghost out there somewhere far away, his uncle had said noth shy;ing. And when he asked if maybe his ghost father was still around because he was looking for his son, then Gruntle’s big hand squeezed tight and then tighter for a breath or two, not enough to actually hurt Harllo, but close. And then the grip soft shy;ened once more, and Gruntle took him off to buy sweets.

He’d probably seen Hinter, looking out through one of the gloomy windows of the tower. He’d probably wanted to tell Hinter to go away and never come back. Like bad fathers did. Because maybe Harllo’s father wasn’t dead at all, since one time his real mother had said something about ‘putting the bastard away’, and though Harllo didn’t know the precise meaning of ‘bastard’ he’d heard it often enough to guess it was a word used for people no one liked having around.

But thinking about Gruntle made him sad, so instead he reached for the jug of water again and drank deep.

Bainisk watched him, and then rose. ‘There’s a new chute that’s been cleared. I was thinking maybe you could climb it, if you was rested up enough.’

‘Sure, Bainisk. I’m ready.’

They set out in silence. But this time the silence wasn’t uncomfortable, and Harllo felt such a wave of relief when he realized this that his eyes welled up for a moment. Silly, really, and dangerous besides. When he had a moment when Bainisk wasn’t looking, he quickly wiped his grimy cheeks and then dried the backs of his hands on his tunic.

Even had he been turned towards Harllo, Bainisk probably would not have no shy;ticed. His mind was stepping stealthily on to the worn stones of the path leading to Hinter’s Tower, so that he could see the ghost for himself. What a thing that would be! To see with his own eyes something that he had never seen before!

There in that amazing city so far away. Where all manner of wonders jostled with the crowds on all the bright streets. Where ghosts argued with landlords over rent. Where people had so much food they got fat and had to be carried around. And people didn’t hurt other people for no good reason, and people like Venaz got exactly what they deserved.

Oh yes, he did love that city, that place where he had never been.

Don’t be absurd. The modestly pudgy man in the red waistcoat is not so crass as to fish for weeping multitudes in the rendition of this moment, nor so awkward with purple intent. Give Kruppe some credit, you who are so quick to cast asper shy;sions like hooks into a crowded pool (caught something, did you? No, dear friend, do not crow your prowess, ’twas only this carp desperate to get out).

The water’s reflection is not so smooth; oh, no, not so smooth.

Is Bainisk’s city quaint, possibly even cute and heartwarming, in a softly tragic way? Not the point!

Some of us, you see (or don’t), still dream of that city. Where none of us have ever been.

That, dear ones, is the point.

Second guessing is murder. Or, depending on one’s point of view, suicide. Blend had found plenty of opportunity to consider such matters while lying bleeding on the floor of K’ral’s Bar. It had been close, and without Mallet around the prospects of a thorough healing of her wounds was something she would just have to live without. The Councilman, Coll, had sent over a local cutter with passing skills in common Denul, and he had managed to half knit the ruptured flesh and stem the flow of blood, and then had taken needle and gut to suture the wounds. All of which left Blend propped up on her bed, barely able to move.

K’rul’s Bar remained closed. What had once been a temple was now a crypt. From what Picker had told her, there wasn’t a patch of raw earth in the cellars below that wasn’t soft and queasy underfoot. The Elder God never had it so good.

Bluepearl and Mallet, both dead. The very idea of that left gaping holes that opened out beneath every thought, every feeling that leaked through her grim control. The bastards had survived decades of war, battle after battle, only to get cut down in their retirement by a mob of assassins.

The shock lingered, there in the echoes of empty rooms, the silences from all the wrong places, the bitter arguments that erupted between Antsy and Picker in the office or in the corridors. If Duiker remained resident — if he hadn’t fled — he was silent, witnessing, as any historian would, every opinion strapped down into immobility. And, it seemed, thoroughly uninterested in whether she — or any of them — lived or died.

The sunlight creeping through the shutters told her it was day, possibly late af shy;ternoon, and she was hungry and maybe, just maybe, they’d all forgotten her. She’d heard the occasional thump from the main floor below, a few murmured conversations, and was contemplating finding something to pound on the floor when she heard steps approaching along the corridor. A moment later her door opened and in strode Scillara, bearing a tray.

Something sweet and avid curled up deep in Blend’s gut, then squirmed at a succession of delicious thoughts. ‘Gods, you’re a sight. I was moments from slip shy;ping away, straight into Hood’s hoary arms, but now, all at once-’

‘You have reason to live, yes, all that. It’s tapu — I hope you don’t mind, but the only cuisine I know at all is Seven Cities, and little enough of that.’

‘They’ve got you cooking now?’

‘Pays my room and board. At least,’ she added as she set the tray down on Blend’s lap, ‘no one’s demanded I clear my tab.’

Blend looked down at the skewers of meat and vegetables and fruit. The pun shy;gent aroma of greenspice made her eyes water. ‘Money can go piss itself,’ she said.

Scillara’s eyes widened.

Blend shrugged, reaching for the first skewer. ‘We were never in this to get rich, love. It was just. . something to do, a place to be. Besides, we’re not going to hold our hands out when it comes to you and Barathol, and Chaur. Gods below, you dragging Duiker off on a date kept the old fool alive. And Barathol and Chaur arrived like a mailed fist — from what I hear, just in time, too. We may be idiots, Scillara, but we’re loyal idiots.’

‘I imagine,’ Scillara said, pulling a chair close, ‘the Assassins’ Guild is not thinking of you as idiots at the moment. More like a hornet’s nest they regret kicking. Regret?’ She snorted. ‘That’s too mild a word. If you think you’re reeling, consider the Guild Master right now.’

‘He’ll recover,’ Blend said. ‘Us? I’m not so sure. Not this time.’

Scillara’s heavy-lidded eyes settled on Blend for a long moment, and then she said, ‘Picker was badly shaken. Still is, in fact. Time and again I see the colour drain from her face, I see her knees go weak, and she reaches out to grab hold of something. Middle of the night, she’s up and pacing the hallways — she acts like Hood’s at her shoulder these days-’

‘That’s just it, though, isn’t it? A few years ago and she’d be strapping on the armour and counting quarrels — we’d have to chain her down to keep her from charging off-’

‘You don’t get it, do you, Blend?’

‘What?’

‘Years ago, as you say, she was a soldier — so were you. A soldier lives with certain possibilities. Needs to keep in mind what might happen at any time. But you’re all retired now. Time to put all that away. Time to finally relax.’

‘Fine. It takes a while to get it all back-’

‘Blend, Picker’s the way she is right now because she almost lost you.’

In the silence that followed that statement, Blend’s mind was awhirl. ‘Then. .’

‘She can’t bear to come in here and see you the way you are. So pale. So weak.’

‘And that’s what’s keeping her from hunting the killers down? That’s ridicu shy;lous. Tell her, from me, Scillara, that all this going soft shit is, um, unattractive. Tell her, if she’s not ready to start talking vengeance, then she can forget about me. We’ve never run from anything in our lives, and as soon as I’m back on my feet, I plan on a rat hunt the likes of which the Guild has never seen.’

‘All right.’

‘Is this what all the arguing’s about? Her and Antsy?’

A nod.

‘Find me a High Denul healer, will you? I’ll pay whatever it takes.’

‘Fine. Now eat.’

The corpse still smelled of fermented peaches. Laid out on a long table in one of the back rooms, the Seguleh might have been sleeping one off, and Picker ex shy;pected the ghastly warrior’s serenely closed eyes to flicker open at any moment. The thought sent shivers through her and she glanced over once more at Duiker.

‘So, Historian, you’ve done some thinking on this, some jawing with that bard and that alchemist friend of yours. Tell us, what in Hood’s name are all these pickled Seguleh doing in the cellar?’

Duiker frowned, rubbed at the back of his neck, and would not meet Picker’s hard stare. ‘Baruk didn’t take the news well. He seemed. . upset. How many casks have you examined?’

‘There’s twelve of the bastards, including this one. Three are women.’

Duiker nodded. ‘They can choose. Warriors or not. If not, they cannot be chal shy;lenged. Seems to relate to infant mortality.’

Picker frowned. ‘What does?’

‘Denul and midwifery. If most children generally survive, then mothers don’t need to birth eight or ten of them in the hopes that one or two make it-’

‘Well, that’s the way it is everywhere.’

‘Of course,’ Duiker continued as if he had not heard her statement, ‘some cul shy;tures have an overriding need to increase their population base. And this can im shy;pose strictures on women. There’s a high attrition rate among the Seguleh. A duelling society by its very nature cuts down the survival rate once adulthood is reached. Young warriors in their prime — probably as deadly as a war, only this is a war that never ends. Still, there must be periods — cycles, perhaps — when young women are freed up to choose their own path.’

Picker’s eyes settled on the corpse on the table while Duiker spoke. She tried to imagine such a society, wherein like bhederin cows all the women stood moaning as their tails were pushed to one side almost as soon as the last calf dropped out bleating on to the ground. It was madness. It was unfair. ‘Good thing even Seguleh women wear masks,’ she muttered.

‘Sorry, what?’

She scowled across at the historian. ‘Hides all the rage.’

‘Oh, well, I don’t know that the non-warrior women do — it never occurred to me to ask. But I see your point.’

‘But is that enough?’ she asked. ‘Do so many warriors kill each other that it’s necessary to demand that of the women?’

Duiker glanced at her, then away again.

The bastard’s hiding some suspicions.

‘I don’t know, Picker. Could be. Their savagery is infamous.’

‘How long do you think these ones have been down there? In the cellar, I mean, in those casks?’

‘The seals are templar. Baruk suggests that the cult persisted, in some residual form, long after its presumed extinction.’

‘Decades? Centuries?’

He shrugged.

‘But what are they doing here in Darujhistan anyway? Those islands are right off the south end of the damned continent. Nearly a thousand leagues between them and this city.’

‘I don’t know.’

Yeah, right. Sighing, she turned away. ‘Seen Antsy?’

‘At the bar.’

‘Typical. Depleting our stock.’

‘Your indecision has left him despondent.’

‘Stuff that, Duiker,’ she snapped, walking from the room, leaving him there with that damned corpse. It was a contest which of them was the less forthcom shy;ing, in any case, and she was tired of the duck and dodge. Yet, something in all of that had lodged in her the suspicion that the Guild contract out on them was con shy;nected, somehow, with this old temple and all its grisly secrets. Find the connec shy;tion, and maybe find the piece of shit who put the chop on us. Find him, or her, so I can shove a cusser up inside nice and deep.

Antsy was leaning on the bar, glowering at nothing in particular, at least until he found a perfect victim in Picker as she walked up. ‘Careful, woman,’ he growled, ‘I ain’t in the mood.’

‘Ain’t in the mood for what?’

‘For anything.’

‘Except one thing.’

‘Anything you might try on me, is what I meant. As for the other thing, well, I’ve already decided to go it alone if I have to.’

‘So,’ she leaned on the bar beside him, ‘what are you waiting for, then?’

‘Blend. Once she’s back on her feet, Pick, she’ll be hungry enough to take the light to ’em.’ He tugged on his moustache, then scowled at her, ‘It’s you I can’t figure.’

‘Antsy,’ Picker said, sighing, ‘much as I’d love to murder every damned assas shy;sin in this city, and the Guild Master, too, they’re not the source of the problem. Someone hired them, only we don’t know who, and we don’t know why. We’ve been through this before. We’re back right where we started, in fact, only this time we’re down two.’ She found she was trembling, and was unable to meet Antsy’s stare. ‘You know, I find myself wishing Ganoes Paran was here — if any shy;body could work out what’s going on, it’s the Captain.’

Antsy grunted. ‘Master of the Deck, aye.’ He drank down the last of his drink and straightened. ‘Fine, let’s go to the Finnest House, then — maybe he’s in there, maybe he’s not. Either way, it’s doing something.’

‘And leave Blend here on her own?’

‘She’s not alone. There’s Duiker and Scillara. Not to mention that bard. There ain’t nobody coming back to finish us, not in the daytime at least. We can be back before dusk, Pick.’

Still she hesitated.

Antsy stepped close. ‘Listen, I ain’t so stupid, I know what’s goin’ on in your head. But us just sitting here is us waiting for their next move. You know the ma shy;rine doctrine, Corporal. It ain’t our job to react — it’s our job to hit first and make them do the reacting. Twice now they hit us — they do it again and we’re fin shy;ished.’

Despite the alcoholic fumes drifting off the man, his blue eyes were hard and clear, and Picker knew he was right, and yet. . she was afraid. And she knew he could see it, was struggling with it — badly — since fear was not something he’d ex shy;pect from her. Not ever. Gods, you’ve become an old woman, Pick. Frail and cowering.

They’ve killed your damned friends. They damn near killed your dearest love.

‘I doubt he’s there,’ she said. ‘Else he’d have been by. He’s gone somewhere, Antsy. Might never be back and why would he? Wherever Paran’s gone, he’s prob shy;ably busy — he’s the type. Always in the middle of some damned thing.’

‘All right,’ Antsy allowed. ‘Still, maybe there’s some way we can, um, send him a message.’

Her brows rose. ‘Now that’s an idea, Antsy. Glad one of us is thinking.’

‘Aye. Can we go now, then?’

They set out, making use of a side postern gate. Both wore cloaks, hiding armour and their swords, the weapons loose in their scabbards. Antsy also carried two sharpers, each in its own cloth sack, one knotted to his weapon harness and the other down at his belt. He could tug a grenado loose and fling it in its sack as one might throw a slingstone. It was his own invention, and he’d practised with a stone inside the sack, acquiring passable skill. Hood knew he was no sapper, but he was learning.

Nothing infuriated him more than losing a fight. True, they’d come out the other side, while pretty much all of the assassins had died, so it wasn’t really a defeat, but it felt like one. Since retiring, his handful of Malazan companions had come to feel like family. Not in the way a squad did, since squads existed to fight, to kill, to wage war, and this made the tightness between the soldiers a strange one. Stained with brutality, with the extremes of behaviour that made every mo shy;ment of life feel like a damned miracle. No, this family wasn’t like that. They’d all calmed down some. Loosened up, left the nasty shit far behind. Or so they’d thought.

As he and Picker set out for Coll’s estate and the wretched house behind its grounds, he tried to think back to when he’d had nothing to do with this kind of life, back to when he’d been a scrawny bow-legged runt in Falar. Bizarrely, his own mental image of his ten-year-old face retained the damned moustache and he was pretty sure he’d yet to grow one, but memories were messy things. Unreli shy;able, maybe mostly lies, in fact. A scatter of images stitched together by invented shit, so that what had been in truth a time as chaotic as the present suddenly seemed like a narration, a story.

The mind in the present was ever eager to narrate its own past, each one its own historian, and since when were historians reliable on anything? Aye, look at Duiker. He spun a fine tale, that one about Coltaine and the Chain of Dogs. Heartbreaking, but then those were always the best kind, since they made a per shy;son feel — when so much of living was avoiding feeling anything. But was any of it real? Aye, Coltaine got killed for real. The army got shattered just like he said. But any of the rest? All those details?

No way of ever knowing. And it don’t really matter in the end, does it?

Just like our own tales. Who we were, what we did. The narration going on, until it stops. Sudden, like a caught breath that never again lets out.

End of story.

The child with the moustache was looking at him, there in his head. Scowling, suspicious, maybe disbelieving. ‘You think you know me, old man? Not a chance. You don’t know a thing and what you think you remember ain’t got nothing to do with me. With how I’m thinking. With what I’m feeling. You’re farther away than my own da, that miserable, bitter tyrant neither of us could ever figure out, not you, not me, not even him. Maybe he’s not us, but then he’s not him, either.

‘Old man, you’re as lost as I am and don’t pretend no different. Lost in life. . till death finds you.’

Well, this was why he usually avoided thinking about his own past. Better left untouched, hidden away, locked up in a trunk and dropped over the side to sink down into the depths. Problem was, he was needing to dredge up some things all over again. Thinking like a soldier, for one. Finding that nasty edge again, the hard way of looking at things. The absence of hesitation.

Gallons of ale wasn’t helping. Just fed his despondency, his sense of feeling too old, too old for all of it, now.

‘Gods below, Antsy, I can hear you grinding your teeth from over here. What shy;ever it is, looks like it’s tasting awful.’

He squinted across at her. ‘Expect me to be skippin’ a dance down this damned street? We’re in more trouble than we’ve ever been, Pick.’

‘We’ve faced worse-’

‘No. Because when we faced worse we was ready for it. We was trained to deal with it. Grab it by the throat, choke the life from it.’ He paused, and then spat on to the cobbles before adding, ‘I’m starting to realize what “retirement” really means. Everything we let go of, we’re now scrabbling to get back, only it’s outa reach. It’s fuckin’ out of reach.’

She said nothing, and that told Antsy she knew he was right; that she felt the same.

Scant comfort, this company.

They reached Coll’s estate, went round towards the back wall. The journey from K’rul’s Bar to here was already a blur in Antsy’s mind, so unimportant as to be instantly worthless. He’d not registered a single figure amidst the crowds on the streets. Had they been tracked? Followed? Probably. ‘Hood’s breath, Pick, I wasn’t checkin’ if we picked up a sniffin’ dog. See what I mean?’

‘We did,’ she replied. ’Two of ’em. Lowlifes, not actual assassins, just their dogs, like you say. They’re keeping their distance — probably warned right off us. I doubt they’ll follow us into the wood.’

‘No,’ Antsy agreed. ‘They’d smell ambush.’

‘Right, so never mind them.’

She led the way into the overgrown thicket behind the estate. The uneven for shy;est floor was littered at the edges with rubbish, but this quickly dwindled as they pushed deeper into the shadowy, overgrown copse. Few people, it was obvious, wanted to set eyes on the Finnest House, to feel the chill of it looking right back at them. Attention from something as ghastly as that dark edifice was unwanted attention.

Thirty uneven strides in, they caught sight of the black half-stone half-wood walls, the wrinkled, scarred face of the house, shutters matted like rotted wicker, no light leaking through from anywhere. Vines snaked up the sides, sprawled out over the humped ground in the low-walled yard. The few trees in that yard were twisted and leafless, roots bared like bones.

‘More lumps than last time I was here,’ Picker observed as they made their way towards the gate.

Antsy grunted. ‘No shortage of idiots tryin’ t’get inside. Thinkin’ they’ll find treasure. .’

‘Secret short cuts to power,’ she added. ‘Magical items and crap.’

‘An’ all they got was an early grave.’ He hesitated at the gate and glanced at Picker. ‘Could be we end up the same way.’

‘Stay on the path, that’s the trick. Follow me.’

He fell into step close behind her as she set out along the narrow, winding track of tilted pavestones. Too close, as he trod on her heel and almost made her stumble. She shot him a vicious look over one shoulder before continuing on.

The sheer lack of anything untoward had Antsy’s nerves overwrought by the time they reached the door. He watched as Picker lifted a gloved hand, made a fist, hesitated, then thumped it hard against the black wood. The boom reverber shy;ated as if an abyss waited on the other side.

They waited. From here, all sounds of the city beyond this wood had vanished, as if the normal world had ceased to exist, or, perhaps, the endless rush of life out there held no relevance to what loomed before them now, this grotesque intru shy;sion from another realm.

A dozen heartbeats. Picker made to pound once more on the door.

The clunk of a latch sounded dully through the thick wood, and a moment later the door creaked back.

Paran had spoken of the lich resident in the Finnest House, the blasted creature that had once been a Jaghut, but this was Antsy’s first sight of it. Tall (gods how he hated tall things), gaunt yet large-boned, adorned in a long ragged coat of black chain. Bared head with long colourless hair hanging down from patches — where the scalp was visible there was twisted scarring, and in one place something had punctured through the skull, and within the uneven hole left behind there was only darkness, as if the apparition’s brain had simply withered away. Tusks in a shattered face, the eyes shrunken back into shadows. All in all, Antsy was not in shy;spired with confidence that this fell meeting would proceed in anything like a rea shy;sonable fashion.

‘Lord Raest,’ Picker said, bowing. ‘I am a friend of Ganoes Paran. If you recall, we met-’

‘I know who you are, Corporal Picker,’ the lich replied in a deep, resonant voice.

‘This is Sergeant Antsy-’

‘What do you want?’

‘We need to find Ganoes Paran-’

‘He is not here.’

‘We need to get a message to him.’

‘Why?’

Picker glanced at Antsy, then back up at Raest. ‘Well, it’s a complicated tale — can we come inside?’

Raest’s dead eyes held steady on her for a long moment, and then he asked, ‘Do you expect me to serve refreshments as well?’

‘Er, no, that won’t be necessary, Raest.’

The Jaghut stepped back.

Picker edged round him and halted a few steps in. Antsy pushed in behind her. They stood in a vaulted entryway, raw black stone underfoot. Opposite the front door there were twin doors and a narrow corridor off to the right and left. The air was dry and warm, smelling of freshly turned earth — reminding Antsy of the cel shy;lar beneath K’rul’s Bar.

‘Been digging graves?’ he asked, and then cursed himself, trying to ignore Picker’s wild stare.

Raest shut the door and faced them. ‘What manner of refreshments were you expecting, Sergeant Antsy? I am afraid I have nothing buried within the house. If you like, however-’

‘No that’s fine,’ Picker said hastily.

Antsy could only nod agreement. His mouth had dried up, tongue like a piece of leather gummed against the palate. And he needed to empty his bladder, but the thought of asking directions to the water closet was suddenly akin to de shy;manding that the Jaghut hand over all his money or else.

Raest studied them in silence for a moment longer, and then said, ‘Follow me, if you must.’

The lich’s moccasin-wrapped feet made rasping sounds. Cloth rustled, the mail of the coat crackling, as Raest walked to the double doors and pushed them open.

Within was a main room bearing a stone fireplace directly opposite, wherein flames flickered cosily, and two deep, high-backed chairs to either side, sitting on a thick woven rug bearing arcane, geometric patterns barely visible in the general gloom. Large tapestries covered the walls to either side, one clearly Malazan in origin — probably Untan given the subject matter (some antiquated court event, significance long lost but no doubt relevant to House Paran); the other was local and depicted a scene from the Night of the Moon, when Moon’s Spawn had de shy;scended to brush the highest buildings in the city; when dragons warred in the night sky, and Raest himself had attempted his assault upon Darujhistan. The im shy;age focused on the dragons, one black and silver-maned, the other muted bronze or brown. Jaws and talons were locked upon one another as they fought in midair, with the backdrop the base of Moon’s Spawn and the silhouettes of rooftops and spires, all bordered in an intricate pattern of Great Ravens in flight.

‘That’s not bad,’ Picker muttered, eyeing the work.

Antsy grunted, not one to ponder too much on artwork beyond identifying whatever scene it happened to be recording. Personally, he could not imagine a more useless talent, and thanked the gods he’d never been cursed with such cre shy;ative misery. Most of his own memories of great events he had witnessed em shy;ployed stick figures, and that was good enough for him. It did not occur to him that this was at all unusual.

Raest gestured to the two chairs. ‘Sit down,’ he said, the tone only vaguely re shy;lated to an invitation. When they had done so, both angling their chairs to face the Jaghut, he said, ‘Explain to me, if you will, how precisely you intend to send Ganoes Paran a message.’

‘We have no idea,’ Picker said, with a queasy smile. ‘We were hoping you might have some suggestions.’

‘I have many suggestions,’ Raest replied, ‘none of which are relevant to your request.’

Antsy slowly narrowed his eyes, but said nothing.

Picker opened her mouth a few times, breaking off a succession of possible re shy;sponses, the repeated gaping reminding Antsy of netted fish on the deck of his da’s fisher boat. Unless I just made that up. All a lie, maybe. Maybe I seen a fish on some other deck. How can I be sure? How can-

‘One possibility occurs to me,’ Raest said. ‘It would, I suspect, require that one of you be an adept with the Deck of Dragons. Or possessing the potential thereof.’

‘I see,’ said Picker. ‘Well, I’ve had a few brushes with the Deck.’

‘You are an illustrator of Decks?’

‘What? Oh, not that kind of brush. I mean, I’ve had my hands on ’em a few times.’

‘Did such contact leave you damaged, Sergeant Picker?’

‘Damaged how?’

‘Are you, perhaps, now insane?’

She sat upright. ‘Hang on, how in Hood’s name would I even know if I was in shy;sane or not?’

‘Precisely,’ said Raest, and waited.

Antsy’s gaze fixed once more on the Jaghut. ‘Pick,’ he finally growled.

She twisted to face him in exasperation. ‘What is it now, Antsy?’

‘This bastard’s having us on.’

Her eyes bulged momentarily, and then she looked once more at the Jaghut.

Who shrugged. ‘One needs to amuse oneself on occasion. Company is so very rare these days.’

‘So when it arrives,’ Antsy snapped, ‘you treat it like dirt? Do you think maybe there’s a connection atwixt the two, you hoary lich?’

‘Like dirt? I think not. More like. . with amiable contempt.’

‘You got a few things to learn about people, Jaghut.’

‘Undoubtedly, Sergeant Antsy. Alas, I find myself disinclined to make any ef shy;fort in that direction.’

‘Oh? And what direction do you make your efforts in?’

‘When I discover one I will let you know, if it proves of any interest — to either me or, of course, you. In the meantime, I have no idea if communication is pos shy;sible with Ganoes Paran. Perhaps if you informed me of your present crisis, I might be able to assist you in some way that does not involve precipitous, desperate acts that might ultimately inconvenience me.’

‘Hood forbid we do that,’ snarled Antsy.

‘Hood is not one to forbid much of anything,’ Raest observed.

‘Can’t think he much likes these Azath Houses,’ Picker said, having recovered from her shock and irritation and, perhaps, indignation. ‘All this trapping of souls and things like you, Raest.’

‘I doubt I rate highly on Hood’s wish list,’ the undead Jaghut replied.

Antsy grunted a laugh. ‘All right, I’m finally working out your sense of hu shy;mour. And I thought Malazan marines were dry, Abyss below! Fine, Raest, let’s play this game for real. If you can help us with our problem, we’ll do something for you in return. If it’s within our abilities, that is, so nothing like “get me outa here” or anything like that. But, you know, other stuff.’

‘I do have a modest request. Very well, I accept the reciprocal engagement.’

Antsy grinned across at Picker, and then said to Raest, ‘It’s this. Someone’s taken out a contract on us. We don’t know why. We’re thinking maybe Paran can work out who and what’s got ’em so aggravated.’

The Jaghut stared.

Picker cleared her throat. ‘Possible causes. One, we’re Malazans. Veterans. We’ve made more than a few enemies on this continent. Two, we own K’rul’s Bar, which used to be K’rul’s Belfry, which used to be K’rul’s Temple. In the cellar we just found thirteen pickled Seguleh, maybe centuries old, but looking fresh, Since they’re, er, pickled.’ She paused, drew a breath, and then continued, ‘Three, well, I ain’t got to three yet. The way I figure it, it’s all got to do with K’rul — maybe some cultists want the temple back. Maybe someone put in an order for pickled Seg shy;uleh and wants ’em delivered.’

Antsy stared at her. ‘Someone did what? Pick, that’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard.’

‘I wouldn’t argue with that,’ she said, ‘only I’m desperate, and besides, I got a hunch those Seguleh are part of the problem.’

Antsy looked to Raest. ‘So there it is. Got any suggestions or are you just going to stand there for ever?’

‘Yes I am,’ Raest replied, ‘but that detail is not relevant. As for suggestions, I suggest you kill every assassin in the city.’

‘Then whoever wants us dead just starts hiring thugs,’ Picker said.

‘Kill all thugs.’

Antsy tugged at his moustache. ‘Ain’t practical. There’s only three of us left — it’d take years.’

‘Kidnap the Guild Master and torture him or her to reveal the client. Then kill the client.’

‘Killing the client makes sense to us,’ Picker said, nodding. ‘The kidnapping thing doesn’t sound very feasible — we’d have to carve through a few hundred as shy;sassins to do it. Besides, we don’t know where the Guild Master’s hideout is. We could capture and torture an assassin to find that out, but they probably operate in cells which means whoever we get might not know a thing. The point is, we don’t know who the client is. We need to find out.’

Raest said, ‘Your suspicion that the K’rul Temple is central to this matter is probably accurate. Determining the specifics, however, would best be served by enlisting the assistance of the Master of the Deck.’

‘That’s what we wanted in the first place!’ Antsy shouted.

‘Extraordinary, isn’t it?’

Antsy glared up at the infuriating lich, bit down a few retorts that might prove unwise. He drew a deep breath to calm himself, and then said in a nice, quiet tone, ‘So let’s see if we can send him a message, shall we?’

‘Follow me,’ Raest said.

Back into the corridor, turning right, five strides to a narrow door on the left that led into the squat round tower, up the spiral staircase, arriving into the upper level — a circular room with the walls bearing oversized painted renditions of the cards of the Deck of Dragons. Something twisted the eye in this chamber and Picker almost staggered.

‘Gods below,’ muttered Antsy. ‘This place is magicked — makes me sick to the stomach.’

The images swirled, blurred, shifted in rippling waves that crossed from every conceivable direction, a clash of convergences inviting vertigo no matter where the eye turned. Picker found herself gasping. She squeezed shut her eyes, heard Antsy cursing as he backed out of the room.

Raest’s dry voice drifted faintly into her head. ‘The flux has increased. There appears to be some manner of. . deterioration. Even so, Corporal Picker, if you focus your mind and concentrate on Ganoes Paran, the efficacy of your will may prove sufficient to anchor in place the Master’s own card, which perhaps will awaken his attention. Unless of course he is otherwise engaged. Should your willpower prove unequal to the task, I am afraid that what remains of your sanity will be torn away. Your mind itself will be shredded by the maelstrom, leaving you a drooling wreck.’ After a moment, he added, ‘Such a state of being may not be desirable. Of course, should you achieve it, you will not care one way or the other, which you may consider a blessing.’

‘Well,’ she replied, ‘that’s just great. Give me a moment, will you?’

She tugged from her memory the captain’s not unpleasant face, sought to fix it before her mind’s eye. Ganoes Varan, pay attention. Captain, wherever you are. This is Corporal Picker, in Darujhistan. Ganoes, I need to talk to you.

She saw him now, framed as would a card be framed in the Deck of Dragons. She saw that he was wearing a uniform, that of the Malazan soldier he had once been — was that her memory, conjuring up her last sight of him? But no, he looked older. He looked beaten down, smeared in dust. Spatters of dried blood on his scarred leather jerkin. The scene behind him was one of smoke and ruination, the blasted remnants of rolling farmland, tracts defined by low stone walls, but noth shy;ing green in sight. She thought she could see bodies on that dead earth.

Paran’s gaze seemed to sharpen on her. She saw his mouth move but no sound reached her.

Ganoes! Captain — listen, just concentrate back on me.

‘-not the time, Corporal. We’ve landed in a mess. But listen, if you can get word to them, try. Warn them, Picker. Warn them off.’

Captain — someone’s after the temple — K’rul’s Temple. Someone’s trying to kill us-

‘-jhistan can take care of itself, Pick. Baruk knows what to do — trust him. You need to find out who wants it. Talk to Kruppe. Talk to the Eel. But listen — pass on my warning, please.’

Pass it on to who? Who are you talking about, Captain? And what was that about Kruppe?

The image shredded before her eyes, and she felt something like claws tear into her mind. Screaming, she sought to reel back, pull away. The claws sank deeper, and all at once Picker realized that there was intent, there was malice. Something had arrived, and it wanted her.

Shrieking, she felt herself being dragged forward, into a swirling madness, into the maw of something vast and hungry, something that wanted to feed on her. For a long, long time, until her soul was gone, devoured, until nothing of her was left.

Pressure and darkness on all sides, ripping into her. She could not move.

In the midst of the savage chaos, she felt and heard the arrival of a third presence, a force flowing like a beast to draw up near her — she sensed sudden attention, a cold-eyed regard, and a voice murmured close, ‘Not here. Not now. There were torcs once, that you carried. There was a debt, still unpaid. Not now. Not here.’

The beast pounced.

Whatever had grasped hold of Picker, whatever was now feeding on her, sud shy;denly roared in pain, in fury, and the claws tore free, slashed against its new at shy;tacker.

Snarls, the air trembling to thunder as two leviathans clashed.

Dwarfed, forgotten, small as an ant, Picker crawled away, leaking out her life in a crimson trail. She was weeping, shivering in the aftermath of the thing’s feed shy;ing. It had been so. . intractable, so horribly. . indifferent. To who she was, to her right to her own life. My soul. . my soul was. . food. That’s all. Abyss below-

She needed to find a way out. All round her chaos swarmed and shivered as the great forces battled on, there in her wake. She needed to tell Antsy things, important things. Kruppe. Baruk. And perhaps the most important detail of all. When they’d walked into the House, she had seen that the two bodies that had been lying on the floor on her last visit were gone. Gone. Two assassins, said Paran.

And one of them was Vorcan.

She’s in the city. She’s out there, Antsy-

Concentrate! The room. In the tower — find the room-

Crawling, weeping.

Lost.

Antsy loosed a dozen curses when Raest dragged Picker’s unconscious body on to the landing. ‘What did you do?’

‘Alas,’ the Jaghut said, stepping back as Antsy fell to his knees beside the woman, ‘my warnings of the risk were insufficient.’

As Antsy set his hand upon Picker’s brow he hissed and snatched it back. ‘She’s ice cold!’

‘Yet her heart struggles on,’ Raest said.

‘Will she come back? Raest, you damned lich! Will she come back?’

‘I don’t know. She spoke, for a time, before the situation. . changed. Presum shy;ably, she was speaking to Ganoes Paran.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Questions, for the most part. I was able, however, to glean a single name. Kruppe.’

Antsy bared his teeth. He set his hand again upon her forehead. Slightly warmer? Possibly, or this time he’d been expecting it, making it less of a shock. Hard to tell which. ‘Help me get her back downstairs,’ he said.

‘Of course. And now, in return for my assistance, I will tell you what I seek from you.’

He glared up at the Jaghut. ‘You can’t be serious.’

‘This time, I am, Sergeant Antsy. I wish to have a cat.’

A cat. ‘To eat?’

‘No, as a pet. It will have to be a dead cat, of course. Now, permit me to take her legs, whilst you take her arms. Perhaps some time before the hearth will re shy;vive her.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘No.’

This had all been his idea, and now look at what had happened. ‘Picker,’ he whispered. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

‘A white one,’ said Raest.

‘What?’

‘A white cat. A dead white cat, Sergeant.’

Oh, aye, Raest. One stuffed lumpy with cussers. Here, catch, you damned bastard.

Shit, we’re down to two now. Down to two. .

‘Never bargain with the dead. They want what you have and will give you what they have to get it. Your life for their death. Being dead, of course, whatever life they grab hold of just ends up slipping through their bony fingers. So you both lose.’

‘That is rather generous of you, Hinter,’ said Baruk. ‘In fact, I do not recall you being so loquacious the last time we spoke.’

The apparition stood within the door frame of the tower. ‘The struggle I face is between my desire to close my ghostly fingers about your throat, High Al shy;chemist, and providing whatever service I can to this fair city. It must also be noted, the return of the Tyrant would also mark the end of what limited free shy;dom I possess, for I would be quickly enslaved. And so, self-interest and altru shy;ism prove unlikely allies, yet sufficient to overwhelm my natural murderous urges.’

‘The debate is moot,’ Baruk replied, interlacing his fingers and resting his hands on his stomach, ‘since I have no intention of coming within reach of your deadly grasp. No, I will remain here, in the yard.’

‘Just as well,’ Hinter replied. ‘I haven’t dusted in centuries.’

‘There are forces in the city,’ Baruk said after a moment, ‘formidable, unpre shy;dictable forces. The threat-’

‘Enough of that,’ Hinter cut in. ‘You know very well why most of those enti shy;ties are in the city, since you invited them, High Alchemist. And as for the others on the way, well, few of those will surprise you much. They are. . necessary. So, an end to your dissembling.’

‘Not all of what approaches is my doing,’ Baruk countered. ‘Were you aware that both Lady Envy and Sister Spite are here right now? The daughters of Dra shy;conus were not invited, not by me at any rate. One is bad enough, but both. .’ he shook his head, ‘I fear they will leave the entire city a smouldering heap of ashes, given the chance.’

‘So do something to ensure that does not happen,’ Hinter said airily.

‘Any suggestions on that count?’

‘None whatsoever.’

‘Has either one paid you a visit?’

‘You strain my altruism, High Alchemist. Very well, of course Lady Envy has visited, and more than once.’

‘Does she know her sister is here?’

‘Probably.’

‘What does Envy want, Hinter?’

‘What she has always wanted, High Alchemist.’

Baruk hissed under his breath and glanced away. ‘She can’t have it.’

‘Then I suggest you pay her sister a visit. She resides aboard-’

‘I know where she is, thank you. Now, have you heard of that self-proclaimed High Priest of the Crippled God who’s now squatting in an abandoned Temple of Fener? And leads a congregation growing by the day?’

‘No, I have not. But are you surprised?’

‘The Fallen God is a most unwelcome complication.’

‘The legacy of messing with things not yet fully understood — of course, those precipitous sorcerors all paid with their lives, which prevented everyone else from delivering the kind of punishment they truly deserved. Such things are most frustrating, don’t you think?’

Baruk’s gaze narrowed on the ghost in the doorway.

After a moment Hinter waved an ethereal hand. ‘So many. . legacies.’

‘Point taken, Necromancer. As you can see, however, I am not one to evade re shy;sponsibility.’

‘True, else you would have come within my reach long ago. Or, indeed, chosen a more subtle escape, as did your fellow. . mages in the Cabal, the night Vorcan walked the shadows. .’

Baruk stared, and then sighed. ‘I have always wondered at the sudden in shy;competence displayed by my comrades that night. Granted, Vorcan’s skills were — are — impressive.’ And then he fell silent for a moment. And thought about certain matters. ‘Hinter, has Vorcan visited you?’

‘No. Why would she?’

Baruk was suddenly chilled. ‘She made no effort at. . discussing anything with me that night.’

‘Perhaps she knew how you would respond.’

‘As she would have for Derudan as well.’

‘No doubt.’

‘But the others. .’

Hinter said nothing.

Baruk felt sick inside. Matters had grown far too complicated in this city. Oh, he had known that they were walking a most narrow bridge, with the yawning abyss below whispering soft invitations of surrender. But it seemed the far end was ever dwindling, stretching away, almost lost in the mists. And every step he took seemed more tenuous than the last, as if at any moment the span beneath him might simply crumble into dust.

He could understand those others in the Cabal and the sudden, perfect escape that Vorcan represented. And he recalled that flat promise in her eyes on that night long ago now — it still haunted him, the ease of her betrayal, as if the con shy;tract offered by the Malazan Empire had simply provided her with an excuse for doing something she had always wanted to do: murder every other mage in the Cabal.

He might ask her why, but Vorcan was a woman who kept her own counsel. She owed him nothing and that had not changed.

‘You had better go now,’ Hinter said, cutting into his thoughts.

He blinked. ’Why?’

‘Because your silence is boring me, High Alchemist.’

‘My apologies, Hinter,’ Baruk replied. ‘One last thing, and then I will indeed leave. The risk of your enslavement is very real, and is not dependent on the ac shy;tual return of the Tyrant — after all, there are agents in the city even now working towards that fell resurrection. They might well decide-’

‘And you imagine they might succeed, High Alchemist?’

‘It is a possibility, Hinter.’

The ghost was silent for a time, and then said, ‘Your solution?’

‘I would set one of my watchers on your tower, Hinter. To voice the alarm should an attempt be made on you.’

‘You offer to intercede on my behalf, High Alchemist?’

‘I do.’

‘I accept, on condition that this does not indebt me to you.’

‘Of course.’

‘You would rather I remain. . neutral, and this I understand. Better this than me as an enemy.’

‘You were once a most formidable sorceror-’

‘Rubbish. I was passable, and fatally careless. Still, neither of us would have me serving a most miserable cause. Send your watcher, then, but give me its name, lest I invite in the wrong servant.’

‘Chillbais.’

‘Oh,’ said Hinter, ‘him.’

As he made his way back to his estate, Baruk recalled his lone meeting with Vor shy;can, only a few nights after her awakening. She had entered the chamber with her usual feline grace. The wounds she had borne were long healed and she had found a new set of clothes, loose and elegant, that seemed at complete odds with her chosen profession.

He had stood before the fireplace, and offered her a slight bow to hide a sudden tremble along his nerves. ‘Vorcan.’

‘I will not apologize,’ she said.

‘I did not ask you to.’

‘We have a problem, Baruk,’ she said, walking over to pour herself some wine, then facing him once more. ‘It is not a question of seeking prevention — we can shy;not stop what is coming. The issue is how we will position ourselves for that time.’

‘You mean, to ensure our continued survival.’

A faint smile as she regarded him. ‘Survival is not in question. We three left in the Cabal will be needed. As we were once, as we will be again. I am speaking more of our, shall we say, level of comfort.’

Anger flared within Baruk then. ‘Comfort? What value that when we have ceased to be free?’

She snorted. ‘Freedom is ever the loudest postulation among the indolent. And let’s face it, Baruk, we are indolent. And now, suddenly, we face the end to that. Tragedy!’ Her gaze hardened. ‘I mean to remain in my privileged state-’

‘As Mistress of the Assassins’ Guild? Vorcan, there will be no need for such a Guild, no room for it.’

‘Never mind the Guild. I am not interested in the Guild. It served, a function of the city, a bureaucratic mechanism. Its days are fast dwindling in number.’

‘Is that why you sent your daughter away?’

A flicker of true annoyance in her eyes, and she looked away. ‘My reasons are not of your concern in that matter, High Alchemist.’ Her tone added, And it’s none of your business, old man.

‘What role, then,’ Baruk asked, ‘do you envision for yourself in this new Daru shy;jhistan?’

‘A quiet one,’ she replied.

Yes, quiet as a viper in the grass. ‘Until such time, I imagine, as you see an op shy;portunity.’

She drained her wine and set down the goblet. ‘We are understood, then.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I suppose we are.’

‘Do inform Derudan.’

‘I shall.’

And she left.

The recollection left a sour taste in Baruk’s mouth. Was she aware of the other convergences fast closing on Darujhistan? Did she even care? Well, she wasn’t the only one who could be coy. One thing he had gleaned from that night of mur shy;der years ago: Vorcan had, somehow, guessed what was on its way. Even back then, she had begun her preparations. . all to ensure her level of comfort. Send shy;ing her daughter away, extricating herself from the Guild. And visiting her ver shy;sion of mercy upon the others in the Cabal. And if she’d got her way, she would now be the only one left alive.

Think hard on that, Baruk, in the light of her professed intentions. Her desire to position herself.

Might she try again?

He realized he was no longer sure she wouldn’t.

This is the moment for mirrors, and surely that must be understood by now. Pol shy;ished, with the barest of ripples to twist the reflection, to make what one faces both familiar and subtly altered. Eyes locked, recognition unfolding, quiet horrors flow shy;ering. What looks upon you here, now, does not mock, denies the cogent wink, and would lead you by a dry and cool hand across the cold clay floor of the soul.

People will grieve. For the dead, for the living. For the loss of innocence and for the surrender of innocence, which are two entirely different things. We will grieve, for choices made and not made, for the mistakes of the heart which can never be undone, for the severed nerve-endings of old scars and those to come.

A grey-haired man walks through the Estate District. No more detailed de shy;scription is necessary. The blood on his hands is only a memory, but some mem shy;ories leave stains difficult to wash away. By nature, he observes. The world, its multitude of faces, its tide-tugged swirling sea of emotions. He is a caster of nets, a trailer of hooks. He speaks in the rhythm of poetry, in the lilt of song. He un shy;derstands that there are wounds in the soul that must not be touched; but there are others that warm to the caress. He understands, in other words, the necessity of the tragic theme. The soul, he knows, will, on occasion, offer no resistance to the tale that draws blood.

Prise loose those old scars. They remind one what it is to grieve. They remind one what it is to live.

A moment for mirrors, a moment for masks. The two ever conspire to play out the tale. Again and again, my friends.

Here, take my hand.

He walks to an estate. The afternoon has waned, dusk creeps closer through the day’s settling dust. Each day, there is a moment when the world has just passed by, leaving a sultry wake that hovers, suspended, not yet stirred by the awakening of night. The Tiste Edur worship this instant. The Tiste Andii are still, motionless as they wait for darkness. The Tiste Liosan have bowed their heads and turned away to grieve the sun’s passing. In the homes of humans, hearthfires are stirred awake. People draw into their places of shelter and think of the night to come.

Before one’s eyes, solidity seems poised, moments from crumbling into disso shy;lution. Uncertainty becomes a law, rising supreme above all others. For a bard, this time is a minor key, a stretch of frailty, a pensive interlude. Sadness drifts in the air, and his thoughts are filled with endings.

Arriving at the estate, he is quickly and without comment escorted into the main house, down its central corridor and out into a high-walled garden where night flow shy;ers stream down the walls, drenched blossoms opening to drink in the gathering dusk. The masked bodyguard then leaves him, for the moment alone in the garden, and the bard stands motionless for a time, the air sweet and pungent, the sound of trickling water filling the enclosed space.

He recalls the soft songs he has sung here, unaccompanied by any instrument. Songs drawn from a hundred cultures, a dozen worlds. His voice weaving together the fragments of Shadow’s arrival, drawing together the day just past and the night eager to arrive.

There were secrets in music and poetry. Secrets few knew and even fewer un shy;derstood. Their power often stole into a listener subtle as the memory of scent on a drawn breath, less than a whisper, yet capable of transforming the one so gifted, an instinctual ecstasy that made troubles vanish, that made all manner of grandeur possible — indeed, within reach.

A skilled bard, a wise bard, knew that at certain moments in the course of a cycle of day and night, the path into the soul of a listener was smooth, unob shy;structed, a succession of massive gates that swung open to a feather’s touch. This was the most precious secret of all. Dusk, midnight, and that strange period of sudden wakefulness known as the watch — yes, the night and its stealthy ap shy;proach belonged to the heart.

Hearing a footfall behind him, he turns.

She stands, her long black hair shimmering, her face untouched by sun or wind, her eyes a perfect reflection of the violet blossoms adorning the walls. He can see through the white linen of her dress to the outlines of her body, roundness and curves and sweeps of aesthetic perfection — those forms and lines that mur shy;mured their own secret language to awaken desires in a man’s soul.

Every sense, he knows, is a path into the heart.

Lady Envy watches him, and he is content to let her do so, as he in turn re shy;gards her.

They could discuss the Seguleh — the dead ones in the casks, the living ones serving in this estate. They could ponder all that they sensed fast approaching. He could speak of his anger, its quiet, deadly iron that was so cold it could burn at the touch — and she would see the truth of his words in his eyes. She might drift this way and that in this modest garden, brushing fingertips along trembling petals, and speak of desires so long held that she was almost insensate to the myr shy;iad roots and tendrils they had wrought through her body and soul, and he would perhaps warn her of the dangers they presented, the risk of failure that must be faced and, indeed, accepted — and she would sigh and nod and know well he spoke with wisdom.

Mocking flirtation, the jaw-dropping self-obsession, all the ways in which she amused herself when engaging with the mortals of this world, did not accom shy;pany Lady Envy to this garden. Not with this man awaiting her. Fisher kel Tath was not a young man — and there were times when she wondered if he was mor shy;tal at all, although she would never pry in search of truth — and he was not at all godlike with physical perfection. His gifts, if she could so crassly list them, would include his voice, his genius with the lyre and a dozen other obscure in shy;struments, and the mind behind the eyes that saw all, that understood far too much of what he did see, that understood too the significance of all that re shy;mained and would ever remain hidden — yes, the mind behind the eyes and every faint hint he offered up to reveal something of that mind, its manner of obser shy;vance, its stunning capacity for compassion that only blistering fools would call weakness.

No, this was one man whom she would not mock — could not, in fact.

They could have discussed many things. Instead, they stood, eyes meeting and held, and the dusk closed in with all its scents and secrets.

Storm the abyss and throw down a multitude of astounded gods! The sky cracks open from day into night, and then cracks yet again, revealing the flesh of space and the blood of time — see it rent and see it spray in glistening red droplets of dy shy;ing stars! The seas boil and the earth steams and melts!

Lady Envy has found a lover.

Poetry and desire, fulminations one and the same and oh this is a secret to make thugs and brainless oafs howl at the night.

Has found a lover.

A lover.

‘I dreamt I was pregnant.’

Torvald paused inside the door and hesitated just a little too long before say shy;ing, ‘Why, that’s great!’

Tiserra shot him a quizzical look from where she stood at the table bearing her latest throw of pottery. ‘It is?’

‘Absolutely, darling. You can go through all the misery of that without its be shy;ing real. I can imagine your sigh of relief when you awoke and realized it was nothing but a dream.’

‘Well, I certainly imagined yours, my love.’

He walked in and slumped down into a chair, stretching out his legs. ‘Some shy;thing strange is going on,’ he said.

‘It was just a passing madness,’ she said. ‘No need for you to fret, Tor.’

‘I mean at the estate.’ He rubbed at his face. ‘The castellan spends all his time mixing up concoctions for diseases nobody has, and even if they did, his cures are liable to kill them first. The two compound guards do nothing but toss bones and that’s hardly something you’d think renegade Seguleh would do, is it? And if that’s not weird enough, Scorch and Leff are actually taking their responsibilities seriously.’

At that she snorted.

‘No, really,’ Torvald insisted. ‘And I think I know why. They can smell it, Tiss. The strangeness. The Mistress went to the Council and claimed her place and there wasn’t a whisper of complaint — or so I heard from Coll — and you’d think there’d be visitors now from various power blocs in the Council, everyone trying to buy her alliance. But. . nothing. No one. Does that make sense?’

Tiserra was studying her husband. ‘Ignore it, Tor. All of it. Your task is simple — keep it that way.’

He glanced up at her. ‘I would, believe me. Except that all my instincts are on fire — as if some damned white-hot dagger is hovering at my back. And not just me, but Scorch and Leff, too.’ He rose, began pacing.

‘I haven’t begun supper yet,’ Tisera said, ‘It’ll be awhile — why don’t you go to The Phoenix Inn for a tankard or two? Say hello to Kruppe if you see him.’

‘What? Oh. Good idea.’

She watched him leave, waited for a few dozen heartbeats to ensure that he’d found no reason to change his mind, and then went to one of the small trapdoors hidden in the floor, sprang the release and reached in to draw out her Deck of Dragons. She sat at the table and carefully removed the deerskin cover.

This was something she did rarely these days. She was sensitive enough to know that powerful forces were gathering in Darujhistan, making any field she attempted fraught with risk. Yet Tiserra, for all her advice to Torvald to simply ignore matters, well knew that her husband’s instincts were too sharp to be summarily dismissed.

‘Renegade Seguleh,’ she muttered, then shook her head and collected up the Deck. Her version was Barukan, with a few cards of her own added, including one for The City — in this case, Darujhistan — and another — but no, she would not think of that one. Not unless she had to.

A tremor of fear rushed through her. The wooden cards felt cold in her hands. She decided on a spiral field and was not at all surprised when she set the centre card down and saw that it was The City, a silhouetted, familiar skyline at dusk, with the glow of blue fires rising up from below, each one like a submerged star. She studied it for a time, until those fires seemed to swim before her eyes, until the dusk the card portrayed began to flow into the world around her, one bleeding into the other, back and forth until the moment was fixed, time pinned down as if by a knife stabbed into the table. She was not seeking the future — prophecy was far too dangerous with all the converging powers — but the present. This very instant, each strand’s point of attachment in the vast web that now spanned Darujhistan.

She set down the next card. High House Shadow, The Rope, Patron of Assassins. Well, that was not too surprising, given the latest rumours. Yet she sensed the relationship was more complicated than it at first appeared — yes, the Guild was active, was snarled in something far bloodier than they had anticipated. Too bad for them. Still, The Rope never played one game. There were others, beneath the surface. The obvious was nothing more than a veil.

The third card clattered on to the tabletop, and she found her hand would not rest, flinging out the next card and yet another. Three tightly bound, then. Three cards, forming their own woven nest. Obelisk, Soldier of Death, and Crown. These needed a frame. She set down the sixth card and grunted. Knight of Darkness — a faint rumble of wooden wheels, a chorus of moans drifting like smoke from the sword in the Knight’s hands.

Thus, The Rope on one side, the Knight on the other. She saw that her hands were trembling. Three more cards quickly followed — another nest. King of High House Death, King in Chains, and Dessembrae, Lord of Tragedy. Knight of Darkness as the inside frame. She set down the other end and gasped. The card she wished she had never made. The Tyrant.

Closing the field. The spiral was done. City and Tyrant at beginning and end.

Tiserra had not expected anything like this. She was not seeking prophecy — her thoughts had been centred on her husband and whatever web he had found him shy;self trapped in — no, not prophecy, nothing on such a grand scale as this. .

I see the end of Darujhistan. Spirits save us, I see my city’s end. This, Torvald, is your nest.

‘Oh, husband,’ she murmured, ‘you are in trouble indeed. .’

Her eyes strayed once more to The Rope. Is that you, Cotillion? Or has Vorcan returned? It’s not just the Guild — the Guild means nothing here. No, there are faces behind that veil. There are terrible deaths coming. Terrible deaths. Abruptly, she swept up the cards, as if by that gesture alone she could defy what was coming, could fling apart the strands and so free the world to find a new future. As if things could be so easy. As if choices were indeed free.

Outside, a cart clunked past, its battered wheels crackling and stepping on the uneven cobbles. The hoofs of the ox pulling it beat slow as a dirge, and there came to her the rattle of a heavy chain, slapping leather and wood.

She wrapped the deck once more and returned it to its hiding place. And then went to another, this one made by her husband — perhaps indeed he’d thought to keep it a secret from her, but such things were impossible. She knew the creak of every floorboard, after all, and had found his private pit only days after he’d dug it.

Within, items folded within blue silk — the silk of the Blue Moranth. Tor’s loot — she wondered again how he’d come by it. Even now, as she knelt above the cache, she could feel the sorcery roiling up thick as a stench, reeking of watery decay — the Warren of Ruse, no less, but then, perhaps not. This, I think, is Elder. This magic, it comes from Mael.

But then, what connection would the Blue Moranth have with the Elder God?

She reached down and edged back the silk. A pair of sealskin gloves, glistening as if they had just come up from the depths of some ice-laden sea. Beneath them, a water-etched throwing axe, in a style she had never seen before — not Moranth, for certain. A sea-raider’s weapon, the inset patterns on the blue iron swirling like a host of whirlpools. The handle was an ivory tusk of some sort, appallingly over shy;sized for any beast she could imagine. Carefully tucked in to either side of the weapon were cloth-wrapped grenados, thirteen in all, one of which was — she had discovered — empty of whatever chemical incendiary was trapped inside the others. An odd habit of the Moranth, but it had allowed her a chance to examine more closely the extraordinary skill involved in manufacturing such perfect porcelain globes, without risk of blowing herself and her entire home to pieces. True, she had heard that most Moranth munitions were made of clay, but not these ones, for some reason. Lacquered with a thick, mostly transparent gloss that was nevertheless faintly cerulean, these grenados were — to her eye — works of art, which made the destruction implicit in their proper use strike her as almost criminal.

Now, dear husband, why do you have these? Were they given to you, or did you — as is more likely — steal them?

If she confronted him, she knew, he would tell her the truth. But that was not something she would do. Successful marriages took as sacrosanct the possession of secrets. When so much was shared, certain other things must ever be held back. Small secrets, to be sure, but precious ones none the less.

Tiserra wondered if her husband foresaw a futurel need for such items. Or was this just another instance of his natural inclination to hoard, a quirk both charming and infuriating, sweet and potentially deadly (as all the best ones were).

Magic flowed in endless half-visible patterns about the porcelain globes — another detail she suspected was unusual.

Ensorcelled munitions — what were the Blue Moranth thinking?

Indeed, whatever were they thinking?

Two empty chairs faced Kruppe, a situation most peculiar and not at all pleasing. A short time earlier they had been occupied. Scorch and Leff, downing a fast tankard each before setting out to their place of employment, their nightly vigil at the gates of the mysterious estate and its mysterious lady. Oh, a troubled pair indeed, their fierce frowns denoting an uncharacteristic extreme of concentration. They’d swallowed down the bitter ale like water, the usual exchange of pleasant idiocies sadly muted. Watching them hurry out, Kruppe was reminded of two condemned men on the way to the gallows (or a wedding), proof of the profound unfairness of the world.

But fairness, while a comforting conceit, was an elusive notion, in the habit of swirling loose and wild about the vortex of the self, and should the currents of one collide with those of another, why, fairness ever revealed itself as a one-sided coin. In this fell clash could be found all manner of conflict, from vast continent-spanning wars to neighbours feuding over a crooked fence line.

But what significance these philosophical meanderings? Nary effect upon the trudging ways of life, to be sure. Skip and dance on to this next scene of portentous gravity, and here arriving hooded as a vulture through the narrow portal of the Phoenix Inn, none other than Torvald Nom. Pausing just within the threshold, answering Sulty’s passing greeting with a distracted smile, and then to the bar, where Meese has already poured him a tankard. And in reaching over to collect it, Tor shy;vald’s wrist is grasped, Meese pulling him close for a few murmured words of possible import, to which Torvald grimaces and then reluctantly nods — his response sufficient for Meese to release him.

Thus sprung, Torvald Nom strode over to smiling Kruppe’s table and slumped down into one of the chairs. ‘It’s all bad,’ he said.

‘Kruppe is stunned, dear cousin of Rallick, at such miserable misery, such pessimistic pessimism. Why, scowling Torvald has so stained his world that even his underlings have been infected. Look, even here thy dark cloud crawls darkly Kruppe’s way. Gestures are necessary to ward off sour infusion!’ And he waved his hand, crimson handkerchief fluttering like a tiny flag. ‘Ah, that is much better. Be assured, Torvald, Kruppe’s friend, that “bad” is never as bad as bad might be, even when it’s very bad indeed.’

‘Rallick left a message for me. He wants to see me.’

Kruppe waggled his brows and made an effort at leaning forward, but his belly got in the way so he settled back again, momentarily perturbed at what might be an expanding girth — but then, it was in truth a question of angles, and thus a modest shift in perspective eased his repose once more, thank the gods — ‘Unquestionably Rallick seeks no more than a cheery greeting for his long lost cousin. There is, Kruppe proclaims, no need for worry.’

‘Shows what little you know,’ Torvald replied. ‘I did something terrible once. Horrible, disgusting and evil. I scarred him for life. In fact, if he does track me down, I expect he’ll kill me. Why d’you think I ran away in the first place?’

‘A span of many years,’ said Kruppe, ‘weakens every bridge, until they crumble at a touch, or if not a touch, then a frenzied sledgehammer.’

‘Will you speak to him for me, Kruppe?’

‘Of course, yet, alas, Rallick has done something terrible and horrible and disgusting and evil to poor Kruppe, for which forgiveness is not possible.’

‘What? What did he do?’

‘Kruppe will think of something. Sufficient to wedge firmly the crowbar of persuasion, until he cannot but tilt helpless and desperate for succour in your direction. You need only open wide your arms, dear friend, when said moment arrives.’

‘Thanks, Kruppe, you’re a true friend.’ And Torvald drank deep.

‘No truer, no lie, ’tis true. Kruppe blesses you, alas, with none of the formal panoply accorded you by the Blue Moranth — oh, had Kruppe been there to witness such extraordinary, indeed singular, honorificals! Sulty, sweet lass, is it not time for supper? Kruppe withers with need! Oh, and perhaps another carafe of vintage-’

‘Hold it,’ Torvald Nom cut in, his eyes sharpening. ‘What in Hood’s name do you know about that, Kruppe? And how? Who told you — no one could’ve told you, because it was secret in the first place!’

‘Calmly, please, calmly, Kruppe’s dearest friend.’ Another wave of the handkerchief, concluded by a swift mop as sweat had inexplicably sprung to brow. ‘Why, rumours-’

‘Not a chance.’

‘Then, er, a dying confession-’

‘We’re about to hear one of those, yes.’

Kruppe hastily mopped some more. ‘Source escapes me at the moment, Kruppe swears! Why, are not the Moranth in a flux-’

‘They’re always in a damned flux, Kruppe!’

‘Indeed. Then, yes, perturbations among the Black, upon gleaning hints of said catechism, or was it investiture? Something religious, in any case-’

‘It was a blessing, Kruppe.’

‘Precisely, and who among all humans more deserved such a thing from the Moranth? Why, none, of course, which is what made it singular in the first place, thus arching the exoskeletal eyebrows of the Black, and no doubt the Red and Gold and Silver and Green and Pink — are there Pink Moranth? Kruppe is unsure. So many colours, so few empty slots in Kruppe’s brain! Oh, spin the wheel and let’s see explosive mauve flash into brilliant expostulation and why not? Yes, ’twas the Mauve Moranth so verbose and carelessly so, although not so carelessly as to reveal anything to anyone but Kruppe and Kruppe alone, Kruppe assures you. In fact so precise their purple penchant for verbosity that even Kruppe’s rec shy;ollection of the specific moment is lost — to them and to Kruppe himself. Violate it Violet if you dare, but they’re not telling. Nor is Kruppe!’ And he squeezed out a stream of sweat from his handkerchief, off to one side, of course, which unfor shy;unately coincided with Sulty’s arrival with a plate of supper.

Thus did Kruppe discover the virtue of perspiratory reintegration, although his subsequent observation that the supper was a tad salty was not well received, not well received at all.

Astoundingly, Torvald quickly lost all appetite for his ale, deciding to leave (rudely so) in the midst of Kruppe’s meal.

Proof that manners were not as they once were. But then, they never were, were they?

Hasty departure to echo Torvald Nom’s flight back into the arms of his wife, out into the dusk when all paths are unobstructed, when nothing of reality intrudes with insurmountable obstacles and possibly deadly repercussions. In a merchant house annexe down at the docks, in the second floor loft above a dusty storeroom with sawdust on the floor, a wellborn young woman straddles a once-thief on the lone narrow cot with its thin, straggly mattress, and in her eyes darkness unfolds, is revealed to the man savage and naked — raw enough to startle in him a moment of fear.

Indeed. Fear. At the moment, Cutter could not reach past that ephemeral chill, could not find anything specific — what Challice’s eyes revealed was all-consuming, frighteningly desperate, perhaps depthless and insatiable in its need.

She was unmindful of him — he could see that. In this instant he had become a weapon on which she impaled herself, ecstatic with the forbidden, alive with betrayal. She stabbed herself again and again, transformed into something private, for ever beyond his reach, and, yes, without doubt these were self-inflicted wounds, hinting of an inwardly directed contempt, perhaps even disgust.

He did not know what to think, but there was something alluring in being faceless, in being that weapon — and this truth shivered through him as dark as all that he saw in her eyes.

Apsalar, is this what you feared? If it is, then I understand. I understand why you fled. You did it for both of us.

With this thought he arched, groaning, and spilled into Challice Vidikas. She gasped, lowered herself on to him. Sweat on sweat, waves of heat embracing them.

Neither spoke.

From outside, gulls cried to the dying sun. Shouts and laughter muted by walls, the faint slap of waves on the broken crockery-cluttered shore, the creak of pulleys as ships were loaded and off-loaded. From outside, the world as it always was.

Cutter was now thinking of Scillara, of how this was a kind of betrayal — no different from Challice’s own. True, Scillara had said often enough that theirs was a love of convenience, unbound by expectations. She’d insisted on that distance, and if there had been moments of uncontrolled passion in their lovemaking, it was the selfish kind, quickly plucked apart once they were both spent. He also suspected that he had hurt her — with their landing in his city, some part of him had sought to sever what they had had aboard the ship, as if by closing one chapter every thread was cut and the tale began anew.

But that wasn’t possible. All breaks in the narrative of living had more to do with the limits of what could be sustained at any one time, the reach of temporary exhaustion. Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one’s wake, with all sort of strange things snarled in the knotted strands.

He had behaved unfairly, and that had hurt her and, indeed, hurt their friendship. And now it seemed he had gone too far, too far to ever get back what he now realized was precious, was truer than everything he was feeling now, here beneath this woman.

It’s said joy’s quick crash was weighted in truth. All at once Challice, sprawled prone atop him, felt heavier.

In her own silence, Challice of House Vidikas was thinking back to that morning, to one of those rare breakfasts in the company of her husband. There had been sly amusement in his expression, or at least the tease of that emotion, making his every considerate gesture slightly mocking, as if in sitting facing one another at the table they were but acting out cliched roles of propriety. And finding, it seemed, a kind of comfort in the ease of their mutual falsehoods.

She suspected that some of Gorlas’s satisfaction involved a bleed-over into her private activities, as if it pleased him to take some credit for her fast-receding descent into depravity; that his unperturbed comfort was in fact supportive, something to be relied upon, a solid island she could flail back to when the storm grew too wild, when her swimming in the depths took on the characteristics of drowning.

Making her so-called private activities little more than extensions of his possession. In owning her he was free to see her used and used up elsewhere. In fact, she had sensed a sexual tension between them that had not been there since. . that had never been there before. She was, she realized, making herself more desirable to him.

It seemed a very narrow bridge that he chose to walk. Some part of her, after all, was her own — belonging to no one else no matter what they might believe — and so she would, ultimately, be guided by her own decisions, the choices she made that would serve her and none other. Yes, her husband played a most dangerous game here, as he might well discover.

He had spoken, in casual passing, of the falling out between Shardan Lim and Hanut Orr, something trivial and soon to mend, of course. But moments were strained of late, and neither ally seemed eager to speak to Gorlas about any of it. Hanut Orr had, however, said some strange things, offhand, to Gorlas in the few private conversations they’d had — curious, suggestive things, but no matter. It was clear that something had wounded Hanut Orr’s vaunted ego, and that was ever the danger with possessing such an ego — its constant need to be fed, lest it deflate to the prods of sharp reality.

Sharden Lim’s mood, too, had taken a sudden downward turn. One day veri shy;tably exalted, the next dour and short-tempered.

Worse than adolescents, those two. You’d think there was a woman involved. .

Challice had affected little interest, finding, to her own surprise, that she was rather good at dissembling, at maintaining the necessary pretensions. The Mistress of the House, the pearlescent prize of the Master, ever smooth to the touch, as delicate as a porcelain statue. Indifferent to the outside world and all its decrepit, smudged details. This was the privilege of relative wealth, after all, encouraging the natural inclination to manufacture a comforting cocoon. Keeping out the common indelicacies, the mundane miseries, all those raw necessities, needs, wants, all those crude stresses that so strained the lives of normal folk.

Only to discover, in gradual increments of growing horror, that the world within was little different; that all those grotesque foibles of humanity could not be evaded — they just reared up shinier to the eye, like polished baubles, but no less cheap, no less sordid.

In her silence, Challice thought of the gifts of privilege, and oh wasn’t she privileged indeed? A rich husband getting richer, one lover among his closest allies (and that was a snare she might use again, if the need arose), and now another — one Gor shy;las knew virtually nothing about. At least, she didn’t think he did.

Sudden rapid flutter of her heart. What if he has someone following me? The possibility was very real, but what could she do about it? And what might her husband do when he discovered that her most recent lover was not a player in his game? That he was, in fact, a stranger, someone clearly beyond his reach, his sense of control. Would he then realize that she too was now beyond his control?

Gorlas might panic. He might, in truth, become murderous.

‘Be careful now, Cro- Cutter. What we have begun is very dangerous.’

He said nothing in reply, and after a moment she pushed herself off him, and rose to stand beside the narrow bed. ‘He would kill you,’ she continued, looking down on him, seeing once again how the years had hardened his body, sculpted muscles bearing the scars of past battles. His eyes, fixed on her own, regarded her with thoughts and feelings veiled, unknowable.

‘He’s a duellist, isn’t he?’

She nodded. ‘One of the best in the city.’

‘Duels,’ he said, ‘don’t frighten me.’

‘That would be a mistake, Cutter. In any case, given your. . station, it’s doubtful he’d bother with anything so formal. More like a half-dozen thugs hired to get rid of you. Or even an assassin.’

‘So,’ he asked, ‘what should I do about it?’

She hesitated, and then turned away to find her clothes. ‘I don’t know. I was but warning you, my love.’

‘I would imagine you’d be even more at risk.’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t think so. Although,’ she added, ‘a jealous man is an unpredictable man.’ Turning, she studied him once more. ‘Are you jealous, Cutter?’

‘Of Gorlas Vidikas?’ The question seemed to surprise him and she could see him thinking about it. ‘Title and wealth, yes, that would be nice. Being born into something doesn’t mean it’s deserved, of course, so maybe he hasn’t earned all his privileges, but then, maybe he has — you’d know more of that than I would.’

‘That’s not what I meant. When he takes me, when he makes love to me.’

‘Oh. Does he?’

‘Occasionally.’

‘Make love? Or just make use of you?’

‘That is a rather rude question.’

Years ago, he would have leapt to his feet, apologies tumbling from him in a rush. Now, he remained on the bed, observing her with those calm eyes. Challice felt a shiver of something in her, and thought it might be fear. She had assumed a certain. . control. Over all of this. Over him. And now she wondered. ‘What,’ he now asked, ‘do you want from me, Challice? Years and years of this? Meeting in dusty, abandoned bedrooms. Something you can own that Gorlas does not? It’s not as if you’ll ever leave him, is it?’

‘You once invited me to run away with you.’

‘If I did,’ he said, ‘you clearly said no. What has changed?’

‘I have.’

His gaze sharpened on her. ‘So now. . you would? Leave it all behind? The estate, the wealth?’ He waved languidly at the room around them. ‘For a life of this? Challice, understand: the world of most people is a small world. It has more limitations that you might think-’

‘And you think it’s that different among the nobleborn?’

He laughed.

Fury hissed through her, and to keep from lashing out she quickly began dressing. ‘It’s typical,’ she said, pleased at her calm tone. ‘I shouldn’t have been surprised. The lowborn always think we have it so easy, that we can do anything, go anywhere. That our every whim is answered. They don’t think-’ she spun to face him, and watched his eyes widen as he comprehended her anger, ‘-you don’t think that people like me can suffer.’

‘I never said that-’

‘You laughed.’

‘Where are you going now, Challice? You’re going back to your home. Your estate, where your handmaids will rush to attend to you. Where another change of clothes and jewellery awaits. After a languid bath, of course.’ He sat up, abruptly. ‘The ship’s carpenter who stayed in this room here, well, he did so because he had nowhere else to go. This was his estate. Temporary, dependent on the whim of House Vidikas, and when his reason for being here was done out he went, to find somewhere else to live — if he was lucky.’ He reached for his shirt. ‘And where will I go now? Oh, out on to the streets. Wearing the same clothes I arrived in, and that won’t change any time soon. And tonight? Maybe I can wheedle another night in a room at the Phoenix Inn. And if I help in the kitchen I’ll earn a meal and if Meese is in a good mood then maybe even a bath. Tomorrow, the same challenges of living, the same questions of “what next?”’ He faced her and she saw amused irony in his expression, which slowly faded, ‘Challice, I’m not saying you’re somehow immune to suffering. If you were, you wouldn’t be here, would you? I spoke of limited worlds. They exist everywhere, but that doesn’t mean they’re all identical. Some are a damned sight more limited than others.’

‘You had choices, Cutter,’ she said. ‘More choices than I ever had.’

‘You could have told Gorlas no when he sought your hand in marriage.’

‘Really? Now that reveals one thing in you that’s not changed — your naivete.’

He shrugged. ‘If you say so. What next, Challice?’

His sudden, seemingly effortless dismissal of the argument took her breath away. It doesn’t matter to him. None of it. Not how I feel, not how I see him. ‘I need to think,’ she said, inwardly flailing.

He nodded as if unsurprised.

‘Tomorrow evening,’ she said, ‘we should meet again.’

A half-grin as he asked, ‘To talk?’

‘Among other things.’

‘All right, Challice.’

Some thoughts, possessing a frightening kind of self-awareness, knew to hide deep beneath others, riding unseen the same currents, where they could grow unchallenged, unexposed by any horrified recognition. One could always sense them, of course, but that was not the same as slashing through all the obfusca shy;tion, revealing them bared to the harsh light and so seeing them wither into dust. The mind ran its own shell-game, ever amused at its own sleight of hand misdirection — in truth, this was how one tended to live, from moment to moment, with the endless exchange of denials and deference and quick winks in the mirror, even as inner proclamations and avowals thundered with false willpower and posturing conviction.

Does this lead one into unease?

Challice Vidikas hurried home, nevertheless taking a circuitous route as now and then whispers of paranoia rose in faint swells to the surface of her thoughts.

She was thinking of Cutter, this man who had once been Crokus. She was thinking of the significance in the new name, the new man she had found. She was thinking, also (there, beneath the surface), of what to do with him.

Gorlas would find out, sooner or later. He might confront her, he might not. She might discover that he knew only by arriving one afternoon at the loft in the annexe, and finding Cutter’s hacked, lifeless corpse awaiting her on the bed.

She knew she was trapped — in ways a free man like Cutter could never comprehend. She knew, as well, that the ways out were limited, each one chained to sacrifices, losses, abandonments, and some. . despicable. Yes, that was the only word for them.

Despicable. She tasted the word anew, there in her mind. Contemplated whether she was in fact capable of living with such a penance. But why would I? What would I need to see done, to make me see myself in that way?

How many lives am I willing to destroy, in order to be free?

The question itself was despicable, the stem to freedom’s blessed flower — to grasp hold was to feel the stab of countless thorns.

Yet she held tight now, riding the pain, feeling the slick blood welling up, running down. She held tight, to feel, to taste, to know what was coming. . if. . if I decide to accept this.

She could wait for Gorlas to act. Or she could strike first.

A corpse lying on the bed. A mangled rose lying on the floor.

Cutter was not Crokus — she could see that, yes, very clearly. Cutter was. . dangerous. She recalled the scars, the old knife wounds, sword wounds even, perhaps. Others that might have been left by the punch of arrows or crossbolts. He had fought, he had taken lives — she was certain of it.

Not the boy he’d once been. But this man he now is. . can he be used? Would he even blink if I so asked?

Should I ask? Soon? Tomorrow?

Thus exposed, one must recoil indeed, but these were deep-run thoughts, nowhere near the surface. They were free to flow, free to swirl round unseen, if as detached from all reality. But they weren’t, were they? Detached from all reality.

Oh, no, they were not.

Does this lead one into unease?

On a surge of immense satisfaction, Barathol Mekhar’s rather large fist smashed into the man’s face, sending him flying back through the doorway of the smithy. He stepped out after him, shaking the stinging pain from his hand. ‘I will be pleased to pay the Guild’s annual fees, sir,’ he said, ‘when the Guild decides to accept my membership. As for demanding coin while denying my right to run my business, well, you have just had my first instalment.’

A smashed nose, blood pouring forth, eyes staring up from a puffiness burgeoning to swallow up his features, the Guild agent managed a feeble nod.

‘You are welcome,’ Barathol continued, ‘to come back next week for the next one, and by all means bring a few dozen of your associates — I expect I’ll be in an even more generous mood by then.’

A crowd had gathered to watch, but the blacksmith was disinclined to pay them any attention. He rather wanted word to get out, in fact, although from what he’d gathered his particular feud was already a sizzling topic of conversation, and no doubt his words just spoken would be quoted and misquoted swift as a plague on the hot winds.

Turning about, he walked back into his shop.

Chaur stood near the back door, wearing his heavy apron with its spatter of burn holes revealing the thick weave of aesgir grass insulation beneath the leather — the only plant known that did not burn, even when flung into a raging fire. Oversized gloves of the same manufacture covered his hands and forearms, and he was holding tongs that gripped a fast-cooling curl of bronze. Chaur’s eyes were bright and he was smiling.

‘Best get that back into the forge,’ Barathol said.

As expected, business was slow. A campaign had begun, fomented by the Guild, that clearly involved the threat of a blacklist that could — and would — spread to other guilds in the city. Barathol’s customers could find themselves unable to pur shy;chase things they needed from a host of other professions, and that of course would prove devastating. And as for Barathol’s own material requirements, most doors had already begun closing in his face. He was forced to seek out alternatives in the black market, never a secure option.

As his friend Mallet had predicted, Malazans resident in the city had been in shy;different to all such extortions and warnings against taking Barathol’s custom. There was, evidently, something in their nature that resisted the notion of threats, and in fact being told they could not do something simply raised their hackles and set alight a stubborn fire in their eyes. That such a response could prove a curse had been driven home with the slaughter at K’rul’s — and the grief that followed remained deeply embedded in Barathol, producing within him a dark, cold rage. Unfortunately for the latest agent from the Guild of Blacksmiths, something of that fury had transferred itself into Barathol’s instinctive reaction to the man’s demand for coin.

Even so, he had not come to Darujhistan to make enemies. Yet now he found hmself in a war. Perhaps more than one at that. No wonder, then, his foul mood.

He made his way into the work yard, where the heat from the two stoked forges rolled over him in a savage wave. His battle axe needed a new edge, and it might do to fashion a new sword — something he could actually wear in public.

Barathol’s new life in Darujhistan was proving anything but peaceful.

Bellam Nom was, in Murillio’s estimation, the only student of the duelling school worthy of the role. Fifteen years of age, still struggling with the awkwardness of his most recent growth spurt, he approached his studies with surprising determination. Even more astonishing, the lad actually wanted to be here.

In the prolonged absence of Stonny Menackis’s attention, it had fallen to Muril shy;lio to assume most of the school’s responsibilities, and he was finding this very distant relation of Rallick (and Torvald) in every respect a Nom, which alone encouraged a level of instruction far beyond what he gave the others. The young man stood before him sheathed in sweat, as the last of class hurried out through the compound gate, the echoes of their voices quickly fading, and Murillio sensed that Bellam was far from satisfied with the torturously slow pace of the day’s session.

‘Master,’ he now said, ‘I have heard of an exercise, involving suspended rings. To achieve the perfect lunge, piercing the hole and making no contact with the ring itself-’

Murillio snorted. ‘Yes. Useful if you happen to be in a travelling fair or a circus. Oh, for certain, Bellam, point control is essential in fencing with the rapier — I wouldn’t suggest otherwise. But as an exercise, I am afraid its value is limited.’

‘Why?’

Murillio eyed the young man for a moment, and then sighed. ‘Very well. The exercise requires too many constraints, few of which ever occur in the course of a real fight. You achieve point control — useful point control, I mean — when it’s made integral to other exercises. When it’s combined with footwork, distance, timing and the full range of defence and offence demanded when facing a real, living opponent. Spearing rings is all very impressive, but the form of concentration it demands is fundamentally different from the concentration necessary in a duel. In any case, you can spend the next two months mastering the art of spearing a ring, or two months mastering the art of staying alive against a skilled enemy, and not just staying alive, but presenting a true threat to that enemy, in turn.’ He shrugged. ‘Your choice, of course.’

Bellam Nom grinned suddenly and Murillio saw at once how much he looked like his oh-so-distant cousin. ‘I still might try it — in my own time, of course.’

‘Tell you what,’ Murillio said. ‘Master spearing a suspended ring at the close of a mistimed lunge, an off-balance recovery to your unarmed side, two desperate parries, a toe-stab to your opponent’s lead foot to keep him or her from closing, and a frantic stop-thrust in the midst of a back-pedalling retreat. Do that, and I will give you my second best rapier.’

‘How long do I have?’

‘As long as you like, Bellam.’

‘Extra time with an instructor,’ said a voice from the shaded colonnade to one side, ‘is not free.’

Murillio turned and bowed to Stonny Menackis. ‘Mistress, we were but con shy;versing-’

‘You were giving advice,’ she cut in, ‘and presenting this student with a challenge. The first point qualifies as instruction. The second is an implicit agreement to extracurricular efforts on your part at some time in the future.’

Bellam’s grin had broadened. ‘My father, Mistress, will not hesitate to meet any extra expense, I assure you.’

She snorted, stepping out from the gloom. ‘Any?’

‘Within reason, yes.’

She looked terrible. Worn, old, her clothes dishevelled. If Murillio had not known better, he would judge her as being hungover, a condition of temporary, infrequent sobriety to mark an alcoholic slide into fatal oblivion. Yet he knew she was afflicted with something far more tragic. Guilt and shame, self-hatred and grief. The son she didn’t want had been taken from her — to imagine that such a thing could leave her indifferent was to not understand anything at all.

Murillio said to Bellam, ‘You’d best go now.’

They watched him walk away.

‘Look at him,’ Stonny muttered as he reached the gate, ‘all elbows and knees.’

‘That’ll pass,’ he said.

‘A stage, is it?’

‘Yes.’ And of course he knew this particular game, the way she spoke of Harllo by not speaking of him, of the life that might await him, or the future taken away from him, stolen by her cruel denial. She would inflict this on herself again and again, at every opportunity. Seemingly innocent observations, each one a masochistic flagellation. For this to work, she required someone like Murillio, who would stand and listen and speak and pretend that all this was normal — the back and forth and give and take, the blood pooling round her boots. She had trapped him in this role — using the fact of his adoration, his love for her — and he was no longer certain that his love could survive such abuse.

The world is small. And getting smaller.

He had walked the pauper pits south of the city, just outside the wall between the two main trader gates. He had looked upon scores of recent unclaimed dead. It was, in fact, becoming something of a ritual for him, and though he had only secondhand descriptions of Harllo, he did his best, since no one who knew the boy would accompany him. Not Stonny, not Myrla nor Bedek. On occasion, Murillio had been forced to descend into one of the pits to make closer examination of some small body, a soft, lime-dusted face, eyes lidded shut as if in sleep or, on occasion, scrunched in some last moment of pain, and these mute, motionless faces now paraded in his dreams at night, a procession of such sorrow that he awoke with tears streaming from his eyes.

He told Stonny none of this. He’d said nothing of how his and Kruppe’s enquiries among the sailors and fisherfolk had failed to find any evidence of someone press-ganging a five-year-old boy. And that every other possible trail thus far had turned up nothing, not even a hint or remote possibility, leaving at last the grim likelihood of some fell mishap, unreported, uninvestigated — just another dead child abandoned long before death’s arrival, known only in the records of found corpses as the “twice-dead”.

‘I am thinking of signing over my stakes in this school,’ Stonny now said. ‘To you.’

Startled, he turned to stare at her. ‘I won’t accept.’

‘Then you’d be a fool — as if I didn’t already know that. You’re better suited. You’re a better teacher. I barely managed any interest in this from the very start — it was always the coin — and now I find I could not care less. About the school, the students — even promising ones like Nom there. I don’t care about anything, in fact.’

Including you, Murillio. Yes, he heard that unspoken addition without the need for her to actually say it aloud. Well, she would of course want to push him away. Much as she needed him to play those self-wounding games with her, she needed even more the solitude necessary for complete self-destruction. Isolation was more than a simple defence mechanism; it also served to prepare one for more severe punishments, possibly culminating in suicide. On another level, she would view her desire to drive him off as an act of mercy on her part. But that was a most irritating form of self-pity.

He had given his heart to the wrong woman. Timing, Bellam Nom, is everything. With sword in hand.

With love in hand.

Oh, well. I’d figured it out with a rapier, at least.

‘Don’t make that decision just yet,’ he said. ‘I have one more thing I can try.’ It won’t be pleasant, but you don’t need to know that.

Stonny simply turned away. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then.’

Many adults, in the indurated immobility of years, acquire a fear of places they have never been, even as they long for something different in their lives, something new. But this new thing is a world of the fantastical, formless in answer to vague longings, and is as much defined by absence as presence. It is a conjuration of emotions and wishful imaginings, which may or may not possess a specific geography. Achieving such a place demands a succession of breaks with one’s present situation, always a traumatic endeavour, and upon completion, why, sudden comes the fear.

Some do not choose the changes in their lives. Some changes no one in their right mind would ever choose. In K’rul’s Bar, a once-soldier of the Malazan Em shy;pire stands tottering over the unconscious form of her lover, whilst behind her paces Antsy, muttering self-recriminations under his breath, interrupted every now and then with a stream of curses in a half-dozen languages.

Blend understood all that had motivated Picker to attempt what she had done. This did little to assuage her fury. The very same High Denul healer that had just attended to her had set to a thorough examination of Picker as soon as Antsy had returned with his charge lying in the bed of a hired oxcart, only to pronounce that there was nothing to be done. Either Picker would awaken or she wouldn’t. Her spirit had been torn loose and now wandered lost.

The healer had left. In the main room below, Duiker and Scillara sat in the company of ghosts and not much else.

Although still weak, Blend set out to collect her weapons and armour. Antsy followed her into the corridor.

‘What’re you planning?’ he demanded, almost on her heels as she went into her own room.

‘I’m not sure,’ she replied, laying out her chain hauberk on the bed, then pulling off her shirt to find the padded undergarment.

Antsy’s eyes bugged slightly as he stared at her breasts, the faint bulge of her belly, the sweet-

Blend tugged on the quilted shirt and then returned to the hauberk. ‘You’ll need to wrap me,’ she said.

‘Huh? Oh, aye. Right. But what about me?’

She regarded him for a moment. ‘You want to help?’

He half snarled in reply.

‘All right,’ she said. ‘Go find a couple of crossbows and plenty of quarrels. You’re going to cover me, for as long as that’s possible. We don’t walk together.’

‘Aye, Blend.’

She worked the hauberk over her head and pushed her arms through the heavy sleeves.

Antsy went to the equipment trunk at the foot of the bed and began rummaging through its contents, looking for the swaths of black cloth to bind the armour close and noiseless about Blend’s body. ‘Gods below, woman, what do you need all these clothes for?’

‘Banquets and soirees, of course.’

‘You ain’t never been to one in your life woman.’

‘The possibility always exists, Antsy. Yes, those ones, but make sure the draw-strings are still in them.’

‘How do you expect to find the nest?’

‘Simple,’ she said. ‘Don’t know why we didn’t think of it before. The name Picker said, the one that Jaghut heard.’ She selected a matched pair of Wickan longknives from her store of weapons and strapped the belt on, low on her hips, offered Antsy a hard grin. ‘I’m going to ask the Eel.’