Toll the Hounds

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Gather close, and let us speak of nasty little shits. Oh, come now, we are no strangers to the vicious demons in placid disguises, innocent eyes so wide, hidden minds so dark. Does evil exist? Is it a force, some deadly possession that slips into the unwary? Is it a thing separate and thus subject to accusation and blame, distinct from the one it has used? Does it flit from soul to soul, weaving its diabolical scheme in all the unseen places, snarling into knots tremulous fears and appalling opportunity, stark terrors and brutal self-interest?

Or is the dread word nothing more than a quaint and oh so convenient encapsulation of all those traits distinctly lacking moral context, a sweeping generalization embracing all things depraved and breathtakingly cruel, a word to define that peculiar glint in the eye — the voyeur to one’s own delivery of horror, of pain and anguish and impossible grief?

Give the demon crimson scales, slashing talons. Tentacles and dripping poison. Three eyes and six slithering tongues. As it crouches there in the soul, its latest abode in an eternal succession of abodes, may every god kneel in prayer.

But really. Evil is nothing but a word, an objectification where no objectifica shy;tion is necessary. Cast aside this notion of some external agency as the source of inconceivable inhumanity — the sad truth is our possession of an innate proclivity towards indifference, towards deliberate denial of mercy, towards disengaging all that is moral within us.

But if that is too dire, let’s call it evil. And paint it with fire and venom.

There are extremities of behaviour that seem, at the time, perfectly natural, indeed reasonable. They are arrived at suddenly, or so it might seem, but if one looks the progression reveals itself, step by step, and that is a most sad truth.

Murillio walked from the duelling school, rapier at his hip, gloves tucked into his belt. Had he passed anyone who knew him they might be forgiven for not at first recognizing him, given his expression. The lines of his face were drawn deep, his frown a clench, as if the mind behind it was in torment, sick of itself. He looked older, harder. He looked to be a man in dread of his own thoughts, a man haunted by an unexpected reflection in a lead window, a silvered mirror, flinching back from his own face, the eyes that met themselves with defiance.

Only a fool would have stepped directly into this man’s path.

In his wake, a young student hesitated. He had been about to call out a greeting to his instructor; but he had seen Murillio’s expression, and, though young, the student was no fool. Instead, he set out after the man.

Bellam Nom would not sit in any god’s lap. Mark him, mark him well.

There had been fervent, breathless discussion. Crippled Da was like a man reborn, finding unexpected reserves of strength to lift himself into the rickety cart, with Myrla, her eyes bright, fussing over him until even he slapped her hands away.

Mew and Hinty stared wide-eyed, brainless as toddlers were, faces like sponges sucking in everything and understanding none of it. As for Snell, oh, it was ridiculous, all this excitement. His ma and da were, he well knew, complete idiots. Too stupid to succeed in life, too thick to realize it.

They had tortured themselves and each other over the loss of Harllo, their mutual failure, their hand-in-hand incompetence that made them hated even as they wallowed in endless self-pity. Ridiculous. Pathetic. The sooner Snell was rid of them the better, and at that thought he eyed his siblings once again. If Ma and Da just vanished, why, he could sell them both and make good coin. They weren’t fit for much else. Let someone else wipe their stinking backsides and shove food into their mouths — damned things choked half the time and spat it out the other half, and burst into tears at the lightest poke.

But his disgust was proving a thin crust, cracking as terror seethed beneath, the terror born of remote possibilities. Da and Ma were going to a temple, a new temple, one devoted to a god as broken and useless as Bedek himself. The High Priest, who called himself a prophet, was even more crippled. Nothing worked below his arms, and half his face sagged and the eye on that side had just dried up since the lids couldn’t close and now it looked like a rotten crab apple — Snell had seen it for himself, when he’d stood at the side of the street watching as the Prophet was being carried by his diseased followers to the next square, where he’d croak out yet another sermon predicting the end of the world and how only the sick and the stupid would survive.

No wonder Da was so eager. He’d found his god at last, one in his own image, and that was usually the way, wasn’t it? People don’t change to suit their god; they change their god to suit them.

Da and Ma were on their way to the Temple of the Crippled God, where they hoped to speak to the Prophet himself. Where they hoped to ask the god’s blessing. Where they hoped to discover what had happened to Harllo.

Snell didn’t believe anything would come of that. But then, he couldn’t be sure, could he? And that was what was scaring him. What if the Crippled God knew about what Snell had done? What if the Prophet prayed to it and was told the truth, and then told Da and Ma?

Snell might have to run away. But he’d take Hinty and Mew with him, selling them off to get some coin, which he’d need and need bad. Let someone else wipe their stinking. .

Yes, Ma, I’ll take care of them. You two go, see what you can find out.

Just look at them, so filled with hope, so stupid with the idea that something else will solve all their problems, swipe away their miseries. The Crippled God: how good can a god be if it’s crippled? If it can’t even heal itself? That Prophet was getting big crowds. Plenty of useless people in the world, so that was no surprise. And they all wanted sympathy. Well, Snell’s family deserved sympathy, and maybe some coin, too. And a new house, all the food they could eat and all the beer they could drink. In fact, they deserved maids and servants, and people who would think for them, and do everything that needed doing.

Snell stepped outside to watch Ma wheeling Da off down the alley, clickety-click.

Behind him Hinty was snuffling, probably getting ready to start bawling since Ma was out of sight and that didn’t happen often. Well, he’d just have to shut the brat up. A good squeeze to the chest and she’d just pass out and things would get quiet again. Maybe do that to both of them. Make it easier wrapping them up in some kind of sling, easier to carry in case he decided to run.

Hinty started crying.

Snell spun round and the runt looked at him and her crying turned into shrieks.

‘Yes, Hinty,’ Snell said, grinning, ‘I’m coming for ya. I’m coming for ya.’

And so he did.

Bellam Nom had known that something was wrong, terribly so. The atmosphere in the school was sour, almost toxic. Hardly conducive to learning about duelling, about everything one needed to know about staying alive in a contest of blades.

On a personal, purely selfish level, all this was frustrating, but one would have to be an insensitive bastard to get caught up in that kind of thinking. The problem was, something had broken Stonny Menackis. Broken her utterly. And that in turn had left Murillio shattered, because he loved her — no doubt about that, since he wouldn’t have hung around if he didn’t, not with the way she was treating him and everyone else, but especially him.

It hadn’t been easy working out what was wrong, since nobody was talking much, but he’d made a point of lingering, standing in shadows as if doing little more than cooling himself off after a bell’s worth of footwork in the sunlight. And Bellam Nom had sharp ears. He also had a natural talent, one it seemed he had always possessed: he could read lips. This had proved useful, of course. People had a hard time keeping secrets from Bellam.

Master Murillio had reached some sort of decision, and walked as one driven now, and Bellam quickly realized that he did not need to employ any stealth while trailing him — an entire legion of Crimson Guard could be marching on the man’s heels and he wouldn’t know it.

Bellam was not certain what role he might be able to play in whatever was coming. The only thing that mattered to him was that he be there when the time came.

Mark him well. These are the thoughts of courage, unquestioning and uncompromising, and this is how heroes come to be. Small ones. Big ones. All kinds. When drama arrives, they are there. Look about. See for yourself.

He seemed such an innocuous man, so aptly named, and there was nothing in this modest office that might betray Humble Measure’s ambitions, nor his blood-thirsty eagerness in making use of Seba Krafar and his Guild of Assassins.

Harmless, then, and yet Seba found himself sweating beneath his nondescript clothes. True, he disliked appearing in public, particularly in the light of day, but that unease barely registered when in the presence of the Master Ironmonger.

It’s simple. I don’t like the man. And is that surprising? Despite the fact that he’s provided the biggest contract I’ve seen, at least as head of the Guild. Probably the Malazan offer Vorcan took on was bigger, but only because achieving it was impossible, even for that uncanny bitch.

Seba’s dislike was perhaps suspect, even to his own mind, since it was caught up in the grisly disaster of Humble Measure’s contract. Hard to separate this man from the scores of assassins butchered in the effort (still unsuccessful) to kill those damned Malazans. And this particular subject was one that would not quite depart, despite Humble Measure’s casual, dismissive wave of one soft hand.

‘The failing is of course temporary,’ Seba Krafar said. ‘Hadn’t we best complete it, to our mutual satisfaction, before taking on this new contract of yours?’

‘I have reconsidered the K’rul Temple issue, at least for the moment,’ said Humble Measure. ‘Do not fear, I am happy to add to the original deposit commensurate with the removal of two of the subjects, and should the others each fall in turn, you will of course be immediately rewarded. As the central focus, however, I would be pleased if you concentrated on the new one.’

Seba Krafar was never able to meet anyone’s gaze for very long. He knew that most would see that as a weakness, or as proof that Seba could not be trusted, but he always made a point of ensuring that what he had to say was never evasive. This blunt honesty, combined with the shying eyes, clearly unbalanced people, and that was fine with Seba. Now, if only it worked on this man. ‘This new one,’ he ventured, ‘is political.’

‘Your specialty, I gather,’ said Humble Measure.

‘Yes, but one that grows increasingly problematic. The noble class has learned to protect itself. Assassinations are not as easy as they once were.’

The Ironmonger’s brows lifted. ‘Are you asking for more money?’

‘Actually, no. It’s this: the Guild is wounded. I’ve had to promote a dozen snipes months ahead of their time. They’re not ready — oh, they can kill as efficiently as anyone, but most of them are little more than ambitious thugs. Normally, I would cull them, ruthlessly, but at the moment I can’t afford to.’

‘This will require, I assume, certain modifications to your normal tactics.’

‘It already has. Fifteen of my dead from K’rul’s Bar were my latest promotions. That’s left the rest of them rattled. An assassin without confidence is next to useless.’

Humble Measure nodded. ‘Plan well and execute with precision, Master Krafar, and that confidence will return.’

‘Even that won’t be enough, unless we succeed.’

‘Agreed.’

Seba was silent for a moment, still sweating, still uneasy. ‘Before I accept this latest contract,’ he said, ‘I should offer you a way out. There are other, less bloody ways of getting elected to the Council. It seems money is not a problem, and given that-’ He stopped when the man lifted a hand.

Suddenly, there was something new in Humble Measure’s eyes, something Seba had not seen before, and it left him chilled. ‘If it was my desire to buy my way on to the Council, Master Krafar, I would not have summoned you here. That should be obvious.’

‘Yes, I suppose-’

‘But I have summoned you, yes? Therefore, it is reasonable to assume my desires are rather more complicated than simply gaining a seat on the Council.’

‘You want this particular councillor dead.’

Humble Measure acknowledged this with a brief closing of his eyes that somehow conveyed a nod without his having to move his head. ‘We are not negotiating my reasons, since they are none of your business and have no rele shy;vance to the task itself. Now, you will assault this particular estate, and you will kill the councillor and everyone else, down to the scullery maid and the terrier employed to kill rats.’

Seba Krafar looked away (but then, he’d been doing that on and off ever since he’d sat down). ‘As you say. Should be simple, but then, these things never are.’

‘Are you saying that you are not up to this?’

‘No, I’m saying that I have learned to accept that nothing is simple, and the simpler it looks the more complicated it probably is. Therefore, this will need careful planning. I trust you are not under any pressure to get on to the Council in a hurry? There’re all kinds of steps needed in any case, sponsorships or bloodline claims, assessment of finances and so on. .’ He fell silent after, in a brief glance, he noted the man’s level look. Seba cleared his throat, and then said, ‘Ten days at the minimum. Acceptable?’

‘Acceptable.’

‘Then we’re done here.’

‘We are.’

‘The deposition provided us by the Malazan embassy is unacceptable.’

Councillor Coll fixed a steady regard on Hanut Orr’s smooth-shaven face, and saw nothing in it but what he had always seen. Fear, contempt, misdirection and outright deceit, the gathered forces of hatred and spite. ‘So you stated,’ he replied. ‘But as you can see, the meeting has finished. I do my best to leave matters of the Council in the chamber. Politicking is a habit that can fast run away with you, Councillor.’

‘I do not recall seeking your advice.’

‘No, just my allegiance. Of the two, you elected the wrong one, Councillor.’

‘I think not, since it is the only relevant one.’

‘Yes,’ Coll smiled, ‘I understood you well enough. Now, if you will excuse me-’

‘Their explanation for why they needed to expand the embassy is flimsy — are you so easily duped, Councillor Coll? Or is it just a matter of filling your purse to buy your vote?’

‘Either you are offering to bribe me, Councillor Orr, or you are suggesting that I have been bribed. The former seems most unlikely. Thus, it must be the latter, and since we happen to be standing in the corridor, with others nearby — close enough to hear you — you leave me no choice but to seek censure.’

Hanut Orr sneered. ‘Censure? Is that the coward’s way of avoiding an actual duel?’

‘I accept that it is such a rare occurrence that you probably know little about it. Very well, for the benefit of your defence, allow me to explain.’

A dozen or more councillors had now gathered and were listening, expressions appropriately grave.

Coll continued, ‘I hereby accept your accusation as a formal charge. The procedure now is the engagement of an independent committee that will begin investigating. Of course, said investigation is most thorough, and will involve the detailed auditing of both of our financial affairs — yes, accuser and accused. Such examination inevitably. . propagates, so that all manner of personal information comes to light. Once all pertinent information is assembled, my own advocates will review your file, to determine whether a countercharge is appropriate. At this point, the Council Judiciary takes over proceedings.’

Hanut Orr had gone somewhat pale.

Coll observed him with raised brows. ‘Shall I now seek censure, Councillor?’

‘I was not suggesting you were taking bribes, Councillor Coll. And I apologize if my carelessness led to such an interpretation.’

‘I see. Were you then offering me one?’

‘Of course not.’

‘Then, is our politicking done here?’

Hanut Orr managed a stiff bow, and then whirled off, trailed after a moment by Shardan Lim and then, with studied casualness, young Gorlas Vidikas.

Coll watched them depart.

Estraysian D’Arle moved to his side and, taking him by the arm, led him towards a private alcove — the ones designed precisely for extra-chamber politicking. Two servants delivered chilled white wine and then quickly departed.

‘That was close,’ Estraysian murmured.

‘He’s young. And stupid. A family trait? Possibly.’

‘There was no bribe, was there?’

Coll frowned. ‘Not as such. The official reasons given are just as Orr claimed. Flimsy.’

‘Yes. And he was not privy to the unofficial ones.’

‘No. Wrong committee.’

‘Hardly an accident. That ambitious trio’s been given places on every meaningless committee we can think of — but that’s not keeping them busy enough, it seems. They still find time to get in our way.’

‘One day,’ said Coll, ‘they will indeed be as dangerous as they think they are.’

Outside the building, standing in the bright sun, the three ambitious young counsellors formed a sort of island in a sea of milling pigeons. None took note of the cooing on all sides.

‘I’ll have that bastard’s head one day,’ said Hanut Orr. ‘On a spike outside my gate.’

‘You were careless,’ said Shardan Lim, doing little to disguise his contempt.

Stung, Orr’s gloved hand crept to the grip of his rapier. ‘I’ve had about enough of you, old friend. It’s clear you inherited every mewling weakness of your predecessor. I admit I’d hoped for something better.’

‘Listen to you two,’ said Gorlas Vidikas. ‘Bitten by a big dog so here you are snapping at each other, and why? Because the big dog’s too big. If he could see you now.’

Hanut Orr snorted, ‘So speaks the man who can’t keep his wife on a tight enough leash.’

Was the perfect extension of the metaphor deliberate? Who can say? In any case, to the astonishment of both Orr and Lim, Gorlas Vidikas simply smiled, us if appreciative of the riposte. He made a show of brushing dust from his cuffs. ‘Well then, I will leave you to. . whatever, as I have business that will take me out of the city for the rest of the day.’

‘That Ironmonger will never get on the Council, Vidikas,’ Shardan Lim said. ‘There’s no available seat and that situation’s not likely to change any time soon. This partnership of yours will take you nowhere and earn you nothing.’

‘On the contrary, Shardan. I am getting wealthy. Do you have any idea how essential iron is to this city? Ah, I see that such matters are beneath you both. So be it. As a bonus, I am about to acquire a new property in the city as well. It has been and will continue to be a most rewarding partnership. Good day to you, sirs.’

There was no denying Seba Krafar’s natural air of brutality. He was a large, bearish man, and though virtually none of the people he pushed past while crossing the market’s round knew him for the Master of the Assassin’s Guild, they none the less quickly retreated from any confrontation; and if any might, in their own natural belligerence, consider a bold challenge to this rude oaf, why, a second, more searching glance disavowed them of any such notions.

He passed through the press like a heated knife through pig fat, a simile most suited to his opinion of humanity and his place within it. One of the consequences of this attitude, however, was that his derisive regard led to a kind of arrogant carelessness. He took no notice whatsoever of the nondescript figure who fell into his wake.

The nearest cellar leading down into the tunnels was at the end of a narrow, straight alley that led to a dead end. The steps to the cellar ran along the back of the last building on the left. The cellar had once served as a storage repository for coal, in the days before the harnessing of gas — back when the notion of poisoning one’s own air in the name of brainless convenience seemed reasonable (at least to people displaying their lazy stupidity with smug pride). Now, the low-ceilinged chamber squatted empty and sagging beneath three levels of half-rotted tenement rooms in symbolic celebration of modernity.

From the shutterless windows babies cried to the accompaniment of clanking cookware and slurred arguments, sounds as familiar to Seba Krafar as the rank air of the alley itself. His thoughts were busy enough to justify his abstracted state. Fear warred with greed in a mutual, ongoing exchange of masks which were in fact virtually identical, but never mind that; the game was ubiquitous enough, after all. Before too long, in any case, the two combatants would end up supine with exhaustion. Greed usually won, but carried fear on its back.

So much for Seba Krafar’s preoccupations. Even without them, it was unlikely he would have heard the one on his trail, since that one possessed unusual talents, of such measure that he was able to move up directly behind the Master Assassin, and reach out with ill intent.

A hand closed on Seba’s neck, fingers like contracting claws of iron pressing nerves that obliterated all motor control, yet before the assassin could collapse (as as his body wanted to do) he was flung halfway round and thrown up against a grimy stone wall. And held there, moccasined feet dangling.

He felt a breath along one cheek, and then heard whispered words.

‘Pull your watchers off K’rul’s Bar. When I leave here, you will find a small sack at your feet. Five councils. The contract is now concluded — I am buying it out.’ The tip of a knife settled beneath Seba’s right eye. ‘I trust five councils are sufficient. Unless you object.’

‘No, not at all,’ gasped Seba. ‘The Malazans are safe — at least from the Guild. Of course, that just means the client will seek, er, other means.’

‘Yes, about your client.’

‘I cannot-’

‘No need to, Seba Krafar. I am well aware of the Master Ironmonger’s particular obsession.’

‘Lucky you,’ Seba said in a growl — gods, whoever this was still held him off the ground, and that grip did not waver. ‘Because,’ he added — for he was still a brave man — ‘I’m not.’

‘If you were,’ said the man, ‘you would not be so eager to take his coin, no matter how much he offered.’

‘Since you put it that way, perhaps those five councils down there could buy him an accident.’

‘Generous offer, but suicidal on your part. No, I do not hire people to do my dirty work.’

Through gritted teeth — feeling was returning to his limbs, like sizzling fire — Seba said, ‘So I’ve gathered.’

‘We’re done here,’ the man said.

‘Unless you’ve other pressing business,’ Seba managed, and felt a slackening of that grip, and, vague beneath his feet, the greasy cobblestones.

‘Very well,’ said the voice, ‘you’ve actually managed to impress me, Seba Krafar. Reach up to that old lantern hook, there on your left — you can hold yourself up until the strength returns to your legs. It wouldn’t do anything to your already damaged dignity to have you fall now. Stay facing the wall for ten steady breaths, eyes closed. I don’t want to have to change my mind about you.’

‘First impressions are never easy to live up to,’ said Seba, ‘but I’ll do my best.’

The hand pulled away, then returned to give his shoulder a gentle pat.

He stood, forehead pressed against the wall, eyes closed, and counted ten slow breaths. Somewhere round the third one, he caught the stench — oh, more than just muscles let loose below his neck, and now he understood the man’s comments on dignity. Yes, plopping down on my arse would’ve been most unpleasant.

Sweat ran down both sides of his face. Glancing straight down, he saw the small bag with its measly five coins. ‘Shit,’ he muttered, ‘I forgot to write him a receipt.’

Fisher waited at the mouth of the alley, until he saw the Master Assassin delicately bend down to retrieve the bag.

Agreement consummated.

The Master Assassin, he was certain, would bother them no more. As for Humble Measure, well, that man’s downfall would require something considerably more complicated. But there was time.

And this is the lesson here, dear friends. Even a man such as Fisher kel Tath, for all his formidable, mysterious qualities, was quite capable of grievous errors in judgement.

Time then to return to K’rul’s Bar. Perhaps Picker had found her way back, into that cool flesh that scarcely drew breath. If not, why, Fisher might have to do something about that. Lost souls had a way of getting into trouble.

Was this sufficient cause for his own carelessness? Perhaps. Leaving the round and its crowds, he walked into the narrow, shady Avenue of the Bullocks, threading between the few hurrying passers-by — at night, this street was notorious for muggings, and indeed, was it not but two days ago that the City Guard found yet another battered corpse? There, before those very steps leading to a shop selling square nails, rivets and wooden frames on which to hang skinned things and other works worthy of display. Even during the day this track was risky. It was the shadows, you see-

And out from one stepped a small, toad-visaged apparition wearing a broad grin that split the very dark, somewhat pocked face, reminding one of a boldly slashed overripe melon. Seemingly balanced on this creature’s head was a bundle of bow-gut — no, it was hair — in which at least three spiders nested.

‘You,’ hissed the man, his eyes bright and then shifty, and then bright once more.

‘None other,’ said Fisher, with the faintest of sighs.

‘Of course not.’ The head tilted but the hair did not slide off. ‘Another idiot — this city’s full of them! “None other.” What kind of thing to say is that? If some other, why, I’d not have leapt into his path, would I? Best keep this simple.’ The head righted itself, spiders adjusting their perches to match. ‘I bring word from my brilliant not-all-there master.’ A sudden whisper: ‘Brilliant, yes, a word used most advisedly; still, use it once and we’re done with it for ever.’ He then raised his voice once more. ‘When all this is done-’

‘Excuse me,’ cut in Fisher. ‘When all what is done?’

‘This, of course! Foolish Iskaral — keep it simple! Simpler, even! Listen, dear middling bard, when all this is done, eke out the eel — no, wait — er, seek out the eel. Seal? Damn, I had the message memorized and everything! Peek at — eat an eel — seek and peek the bleak earl — perk the veal, deal the prick — oh, Hood’s breath! What was it again? And I had the gall to call him brilliant! He should’ve sent Sor shy;diko Qualm, yes, so I could’ve followed the glorious rocking ship of her sweethips-’ and he wagged his head side to side, side to side, eyes glazing, ‘slib-slab, slib-slub, oh!’

‘Thank you,’ Fisher said as the man began muttering under his breath and pausing every now and then to lick his lips, ‘for, er, the message. I assure you, I understand.’

‘Of course you do — you’re a man, aren’t you? Gods, that a simple casual stride could so reduce one to gibbering worship — why, who needs gods and goddesses when we have arses like that?’

‘Indeed, who? Now, since you have successfully delivered your message from your master, may I proceed on my way?’

‘What? Naturally. Go away. You’re a damned distraction, is what you are.’

A tilt of the head, and the bard was indeed on his way once more.

The mob outside the newly consecrated Temple of the Fallen One, or the Crippled God, or indeed the name by which most knew it — the Temple of Chains — was thick and strangely rank. More than natural sweat as might be squeezed out by the mid-morning sun, this was the human rendering of desperation, made even sicklier with obsequious anticipation.

Yet the door to the narrow-fronted temple remained shut, evidently barred from within. Offerings were heaped up against it — copper and tin coins as well as links of chain and the odd clasp and cheap jewellery.

Bedek on his cart and Myrla standing before him, gripping the handles, found themselves in the midst of trembling alcoholics, the pock-scarred, the lame and the deformed. Milky eyes stared, as if cataracts were punishment for having seen too much — all other eyes were filled with beseeching need, the hunger for blessing, for even the passing brush of a twisted hand if it belonged to the Prophet. Misshapen faces lifted up, held fixedly upon that door. Once within the press, and unable to get any closer, the stink became unbearable. The breath of rotting teeth and consumptive dissolution. From his low perch, Bedek could see nothing but shoulders and the backs of heads. Whimpering, he plucked at his wife’s tunic.

‘Myrla. Myrla!’

The look she turned on him was both savage and. . small, and with a shock Bedek suddenly saw her — and himself — as meaningless, insignificant, worthless. They were, he realized, no better than anyone else here. Each of them seeking to be singled out, to be guided out, to be raised up from all the others. Each dreaming of coming into glorious focus in the eyes of a god — eyes brimming with pity and knowledge, eyes that understood injustice and the unfairness of existence. A god, yes, to make them right. To make us all — each and every one of us — right. Whole.

But Bedek had held no such notions. They were not why he was here. He and Myrla were different. From all of these people. They, you see, had lost a child.

The door would remain locked, they learned, until at least midday. Sometimes even later. And even then, the Prophet might not emerge. If he was communing with his own pain, they were told, he might not be seen for days.

Yes, but did he bless people? Did he help people?

Oh, yes. Why, I saw a man in terrible pain, and the Prophet took it all away.

He healed the man?

No, he smothered him. Delivered his spirit — now at peace — into the hands of the Fallen One. If you are in pain, this is where you can end your life — only here, do you understand, can you be sure your soul will find a home. There, in the loving heart of the Fallen One. Don’t you want to find your legs again? Other side of life, that’s where you’ll find them.

And so Bedek came to understand that, perhaps, this Crippled God could not help them. Not with finding Harllo. And all at once he wanted to go home.

But Myrla would have none of that. The yearning was unabated in her eyes, but it had been transformed, and what she sought now had nothing to do with Harllo. Bedek did not know what that new thing might be, but he was frightened down to the core of his soul.

Snell struggled to form a sling to take the runts, both of whom were lying senseless on the floor. He had checked to see they were both breathing, since he’d heard that making them black out could sometimes kill them — if he’d held them tight for too long — though he’d been careful. He was always careful when doing that, though if one of them did die, why, he would say it went to sleep and just never woke up and that happened, didn’t it, with the little ones? And then he’d cry because that was expected.

Poor thing, but it’d always been weak, hadn’t it? So many children were weak. Only the strong ones, the smart ones, survived. It’s what the world was like, after all, and the world can’t be changed, not one bit.

There was a man in the Daru High Market who always dressed well and had plenty of coin, and it was well known he’d take little ones. Ten, twenty silver councils, boy or girl, it didn’t matter which. He knew people, rich people — he was just the middleman, but you dealt with him if you didn’t want no one to find out anything, and if there were any small bodies left over, well, they never ever showed up to start people asking questions.

It would be a bit of a walk, especially with both Mew and Hinty, and that’s why he needed to work out a sling of some sort, like the ones the Rhivi mothers used. Only, how did they do that?

The door opened behind him and Snell whirled in sudden terror.

The man standing in the threshold was familiar — he’d been with Stonny Men shy;ackis the last time she’d visited — and Snell could see at once that dear Snell was in trouble. Ice cold fear, a mouth impossibly dry, a pounding heart.

‘They’re just sleeping!’

The man stared. ‘What have you done with them, Snell?’

‘Nothing! Go away. Da and Ma aren’t here. They went to the Chains Temple. Come back later.’

Instead, the man stepped inside. One gloved hand casually flung Snell back, away from the motionless girls on the floor. The blow rocked Snell, and as if a stopper had been jarred loose fear poured through him. As the man knelt and drew off a glove to set a palm against Mew’s forehead, Snell scrabbled to the back wall.

‘I’m gonna call the guards — I’m gonna scream-’

‘Shut your damned face or I’ll do it for you.’ A quick, heavy look. ‘I’ve not yet started with you, Snell. Everything comes back to you. On the day Harllo went missing, on that day, Snell. .’ He lifted his hand and straightened. ‘Are they drugged? Tell me how you did this.’

He meant to keep lying, but all at once he thought that maybe if he told the truth about this, the man might believe the lies he used afterwards, on the other stuff. ‘I just squeeze ’em, when they cry too much, that’s all. It don’t hurt them none, honest.’

The man had glanced at the stretch of burlap lying beside Mew. Maybe he was putting things together, but nothing could be proved, could it? It would be all right. It would be-

Two quick strides and those hands — one gloved and the other bare and scarred — snagged the front of Snell’s tunic. He was lifted into the air until his eyes were level with the man’s. And Snell saw in those deadly eyes something dark, a lifeless whisper that could flatten out at any moment, and all thoughts of lying whimpered away.

‘On that day,’ the man said, ‘you came back with a load of sun-dried dung. Something you’d never done before, and have never done since. No, your mother said it was Harllo who did such things. Harllo, who at five fucking years old did more to help this family than you ever have. Who collected that dung, Snell?’

Snell had widened his eyes as wide as they could go. He made his chin tremble. ‘Harllo,’ he whispered, ‘but I never hurt him — I swear it!’

Oh, he hadn’t wanted to lie. It just came out.

‘Past Worrytown or Two-Ox Gate?’

‘The gate. Two-Ox.’

‘Did you go with him or did you follow him? What happened out there, Snell?’

And Snell’s eyes betrayed him then, a flicker too instinctive to stop in time — down to where Mew and Hinty were lying.

The man’s eyes flattened just as Snell had feared they might.

‘I never killed him! He was breathing when I left him! If you kill me they’ll find out — they’ll arrest you — you’ll go the gallows — you can’t kill me — don’t!’

‘You knocked him out and left him there, after stealing the dung he’d collected. The hills beyond Two-Ox Gate.’

‘And I went back, a couple of days — the day after — and he was gone! He’s just run off, that’s all-’

‘A five-year-old boy doing everything he could to help his family just ran off, did he? Or did you drive him off, Snell?’

‘I never did — he was just gone — and that’s not my fault, is it? Someone maybe found him, maybe even adopted him.’

‘You are going to tell your parents everything, Snell,’ the man said. ‘I will be back tonight, probably late, but I will be back. Don’t even think of running-’

‘He won’t,’ said a voice from the door,

The man turned. ‘Bellam — what-’

‘Master Murillio, I’ll stay here and keep an eye on the fucker. And when his parents show up, well, he’ll spill it all out. Go on, Master, you don’t need to worry about anything happening back here.’

The man — Murillio — was silent for a time, seeming to study the rangy boy who stood, arms folded, leaning against the doorway’s frame.

And then he set Snell down and stepped back. ‘I won’t forget this, Bellam.’

‘It’ll be fine, Master. I won’t beat the bones out of him, much as I’d like to, and much as he obviously deserves it. No, he’s going to sit and play with his little sisters — soon as they come round-’

‘A splash of water should do it.’

‘After a splash, then. And not only is Snell going to play with them, but he’s going to make a point of losing every game, every argument. If they want him to stand on his head while picking his arsehole, why, that’s what Snell will do. Right, Snell?’

Snell had met older boys just like this one. They had calm eyes but that was just to fix you good when you weren’t expecting nothing. He was more frightened of this Bellam than he’d been of Murillio. ‘You hurt me and I’ll get my friends after you,’ he hissed. ‘My street friends-’

‘And when they hear the name Bellam Nom they’ll cut you loose faster than you can blink.’

Murillio had found a clay bowl into which he now poured some water.

‘Master,’ said Bellam, ‘I can do that. You got what you needed from him — at least a trail, a place to start.’

‘Very well. Until tonight then, Bellam, and thank you.’

After he’d left, Bellam shut the door and advanced on Snell, who once more cringed against the back wall.

‘You said-’

‘We do that, don’t we, when it comes to grown-ups.’

‘Don’t touch me!’

‘No grown-ups anywhere close, Snell — what do you like to do when they’re not around? Oh, yes, that’s right. You like to torment everyone smaller than you. That sounds a fun game. I think I’ll play, and look, you’re smaller than me. Now, what torment shall we do first?’

In leaving them for the time being, all grim concern regarding anything unduly cruel can be thankfully dispensed with. Bellam Nom, being cleverer than most, knew that true terror belonged not to what did occur, but to what might occur. He was content to encourage Snell’s own imagination into the myriad possibilities, which was a delicate and precise form of torture. Especially useful in that it left no bruises.

Bullies learn nothing when bullied in turn; there are no lessons, no about-face in their squalid natures. The principle of righteous justice is a peculiar domain where propriety and vengeance become confused, almost indistinguishable. The bullied bully is shown but the other side of the same fear he or she has lived with all his or her life. The about-face happens there, on the outside, not the inside. Inside, the bully and everything that haunts the bully’s soul remains unchanged.

It is an abject truth, but conscience cannot be shoved down the throat.

If only it could.

Moths were flattened against the walls of the narrow passageway, waiting for something, probably night. As it was a little used route to and from the Vidikas estate, frequented twice a day at specific times by deliveries to the kitchen, Chal shy;lice had taken to using it with all the furtive grace of the insouciant adulteress that she had become. The last thing she expected was to almost run into her husband there in the shadows midway through.

Even more disconcerting, it was clear that he had been awaiting her. One hand holding his duelling gloves as if about to slap them across her cheek, yet there was an odd smile on his face. ‘Darling,’ he said.

She halted before him, momentarily struck dumb. It was one thing to play out the game at breakfast, a table between them cluttered with all the false icons of a perfect and perfectly normal marriage. Their language then was such a smooth navigation round all those deadly shoals that it seemed the present was but a template of the future, of years and years of this; not a single wound stung to life, no tragic floundering on the jagged shallows, sailors drowning in the foam.

He stood before her now, tall with a thousand sharp edges, entirely blocking her path, his eyes glittering like wrecker fires on a promontory. ‘So pleased I found you,’ he said. ‘I must head out to the mining camp — no doubt you can hear the carriage being readied behind you.’

Casual words, yet she was startled, like a bird; flash of fluttering, panicked wings in the gloom as she half turned to register the snort of horses and the rustle of traces from the forecourt behind her. ‘Oh,’ she managed, then faced him once more. Her heart’s rapid beat began slowing down.

‘Even here,’ Gorlas said, ‘there is a sweet flush to your cheeks, dear. Most becoming.’

She could almost feel the brush of fingertips to grant benediction to the compliment. A moth, startled awake by the clash of currents in the dusty air, wings dry as talc as it fluttered against her face. She flinched back. ‘Thank you,’ she said.

This was just another game, of course. She realized that now. He did not want things to get messy, not here, not any time soon. She told herself this with certainty, and hoped it was true. But then, why not an explosive shattering? Freeing him, freeing her — wouldn’t that be healthier in the end? Unless his idea of freeing himself is to kill me. Such things happen, don’t they?

‘I do not expect to be back for at least three days. Two nights.’

‘I see. Be well on your journey, Gorlas.’

‘Thank you, darling.’ And then, without warning, he stepped close, his free hand grasping her right breast. ‘I don’t like the thought of strangers doing this,’ he said, his voice low, that odd smile still their, ‘I need to picture the face, one I know well. I need a sense of the bastard behind it.’

She stared into his eyes and saw only a stranger, calculating, as clinical and cold as a dresser of the dead — like the one who’d come to do what was needed with the corpse of her mother, once the thin veil of sympathy was tossed aside like a soiled cloth and the man set to work.

‘When I get back,’ he continued, ‘we’ll have a talk. One with details. I want to know all about him, Challice.’

She knew that what she said at this precise moment would echo in her husband’s mind for virtually every spare moment in the course of the next three days and two nights, and by the time he returned her words would have done their work in transforming him — into a broken thing, or into a monster. She could say All right, as if she was being forced, cornered, and whatever immediate satisfaction he felt would soon twist into something dark, unpleasant, and she would find herself across from a vengeful creature in three days’ time. She might say If you like, and he would hear that as defiance and cruel indifference — as if for her his needs were irrelevant, as if she would oblige out of pity and not much else. No, in truth she had few choices in what she might utter at this moment. In an instant, as he awaited her response, she decided on what she would say and when it came out it was calm and assured (but not too much so). ‘Until then, husband.’

He nodded, and she saw the pupils of his eyes dilate. She caught his quickened breathing, and knew her choice had been the right one. Now, the next three days and two nights, Gorlas would be as one on fire. With anticipation, with his imagination unleashed and playing out scenarios, each one a variation on a single theme.

Yes, Gorlas, we are not done with each other yet, after all.

His hand withdrew from her breast and, with a courtly bow, he stepped to one side to permit her to pass.

She did so.

Murillio hired a horse for the day; with tack included, the rental amounted to three silver councils along with a twenty-council deposit. Of that, the animal was worth perhaps five, certainly not much more. Slope-backed, at least ten years old, worn out, beaten down, the misery in the beast’s eyes stung Murillio to sympathy and he was of half a mind to forgo the deposit and leave the animal in the hands of a kindly farmer with plenty of spare pasture.

He rode at a slow, plodding walk through the crowded streets, until he reached Two-Ox Gate. Passing through the archway’s shadow, he collected the horse into a steady trot on the cobbled road, passing laden wagons and carts and the occa shy;sional Gadrobi peasant struggling beneath baskets filled with salted fish, flasks of oil, candles and whatever else they needed to make bearable living in a squalid hut along the roadside.

Once beyond the leper colony, he began scanning the lands to either side, seeking the nearest active pasture. A short distance on he spied sheep and goats wandering the slope of a hillside to his right. A lone shepherd hobbled along the ridge, waving a switch to keep the flies off. Murillio pulled his mount off the road and rode towards him.

The old man noticed his approach and halted.

He was dressed in rags, but the crook he carried looked new, freshly oiled and polished. His eyes were smeared with cataracts from too many years in the bright sunlight, and he squinted, wary and nervous, as Murillio drew up and settled back in the saddle.

‘Hello, good shepherd.’

A terse nod answered him.

‘I am looking for someone-’

‘Nobody but me here,’ the old man replied, flicking the switch before his face.

‘This was a few weeks back. A young boy, up here collecting dung, perhaps.’

‘We get ’em, out from the city.’

The furtiveness was ill-disguised. The old man licked his lips, switched at flies that weren’t there. There were secrets here, Murillio realized. He dismounted. ‘You know of this one,’ he said. ‘Five years old. He was hurt, possibly unconscious.’

The shepherd stepped back as he approached, half raised the crook. ‘What was I supposed to do?’ he demanded. ‘The ones that come out here, they got nothing. They live in the streets. They sell the dung for a few coppers. I got no help here, we just working for somebody else. We go hungry every winter — what was I supposed to do?’

‘Just tell me what happened,’ said Murillio. ‘You do that and maybe I’ll just walk away, leave you be. But you’re a bad liar, old man, and if you try again I might get angry.’

‘We wasn’t sure he was gonna live — he was beat up near dead, sir. Woulda died if we hadn’t found him, took care of him.’

‘And then?’

‘Sold him off. It’s hard enough, feedin’ ourselves-’

‘To who? Where is he?’

‘Iron mines. The Eldra Holdings, west of here.’

Murillio felt a chill grip his heart. ‘A five-year-old boy-’

‘Moles, they call ’em. Or — so I heard.’

He returned to the horse. Lifted himself into the saddle and roughly pulled the beast round. Rode hard back to the road.

A thousand paces along, the horse threw a shoe.

The ox lumbered along at the pace of a beast for which time was meaningless, and perhaps in this it was wise indeed. Walking beside it, the man with the crop twitched its flank every now and then, but this was habit, not urgency. The load of braided leather was not a particularly onerous burden, and if the carter timed things right, why, he might wangle himself a meal at the camp before the long return journey back to the city. At least by then the day would be mostly done and the air would’ve cooled. In this heat, neither man nor beast was in any hurry.

Hardly surprising, then, that the lone traveller on foot caught up with them before too long, and after a brief conversation — a few words to either side of the jangle of coins — the load on the cart grew heavier, yet still not enough to force a groan from the ox. This was, after all, the task of its life, the very definition of its existence. In truth, it had little memory of ever being free, of ever trundling along without something to drag behind it, or the endless reverberation in its bones as wheels clunked across cobbles, slipping into and out of worn ruts in the stone.

Languid blinks, the storm of flies that danced in the heat, twitching tail and spots of blood on the fetlocks, and pulling something from one place to another. And at its side, squinting red-shot eyes, a storm of flies dancing, spots of blood here and there from midges and whatnot, and taking something from one place to another. Ox and driver, parallel lives through meaningless years. A singular variation, now, the man sitting with legs dangling off the cart, his boots worn and blisters oozing, and the dark maelstrom in his eyes that was for neither of them, and no business of theirs besides.

The ornate, lacquered, leaf-sprung carriage that rumbled past them a league from the camp had its windows shuttered against the heat and dust.

The man in the back had watched its approach. The carter watched it pass. The ox saw it moving away in front of it at a steady pace that it could never match, even had it wanted to, which it didn’t.

Snell was nobody’s fool, and when the ball of bound multicoloured twine rolled close to the door and Hinty stared at it, expecting its miraculous return to her pudgy, grimy hands, why, Snell obliged — and as soon as he was at the door, he darted outside and was gone.

He heard Bellam’s shout, but Snell had a good head start and besides, the stupid idiot wouldn’t just leave the runts behind, would he? No, Snell had made good his escape, easy as that, because he was clever and jerks could threaten him all the time but he won in the end, he always won — proof of his cleverness.

Up the street, into an alley, under the broken fence, across the narrow yard — chickens scattering from his path — and on to the stacked rabbit pens, over the next fence, into Twisty Alley, twenty strides up and then left, into the muddy track where a sewage pipe leaked. Nobody’d go down this pinched passageway, what with the stench and all, but he did, piss soaking through his worn moccasins, and then he was out on to Purse Street, and freedom.

Better if he’d stolen the runts to sell. Better still if he’d still had his stash of coins. Now, he had nothing. But nobody would catch him now. There were some older boys with connections to the gang that worked Worrytown, lifting what they could from the trader wagons that crowded through. If Snell could get out there, he’d be outside the city, wouldn’t he? They could hunt for ever and not find him.

And he could make himself rich. He could rise in the ranks and become a pack leader. People would be scared of him, terrified even. Merchants would pay him just to not rob them. And he’d buy an estate, and hire assassins to kill Bellam Nom and Stonny Menackis and Murillio. He’d buy up his parents’ debts and make them pay him every month — wouldn’t that be something? It’d be perfect. And his sisters he could pimp out and eventually he’d have enough money to buy a title of some sort, get on the Council, and proclaim himself King of Darujhistan, and he’d order new gallows built and execute everyone who’d done him wrong.

He rushed through the crowds, his thoughts a world away, a future far off but almost in reach.

His feet were clipped out from under him and he fell hard: numbing shock from one shoulder and his hip. Bellam Nom stood over him, breathing hard but grinning. ‘Nice try,’ he said.

‘Mew and Hinty! You left them-’

‘Locked up, yes. That’s what slowed me down.’ And he reached down, grasped Snell’s arm and yanked him to his feet, twisting hard enough to make him yelp in pain.

Bellam dragged Snell back the way he’d come.

‘I’m going to kill you one day,’ Snell said, then winced as Bellam’s grip tightened on his arm.

‘It’s what people like you rely on, isn’t it?’

‘What?’

‘That none of us are as nasty as you. That we’ll have qualms about, say, skinning you alive. Or shattering your kneecaps. Gouging out your eyes. You want to kill me? Fine, just don’t be surprised if I get to you first, Snell.’

‘You can’t murder-’

‘Can’t I? Why not? You seem to think you can, whenever you like, whenever the chance arises. Well, I’m not Stonny Menackis. I’m not Murillio, either. They’re. . civilized folk. No, Snell, I’m more like you, only I’m older and better at it.’

‘If you did anything to me, Murillio would have to go after you. Like you say, he’s not like us. Or Stonny. She’d cut you to pieces. Yes, it’d be Stonny, once Da asked her to, and he would.’

‘You’re making a big assumption, Snell.’

‘What?’

‘That they’d ever figure out it was me.’

‘I’ll warn them — as soon as they come back — I’ll warn them about you-’

‘Before or after you make your confession? About what you did to poor Harllo?’

‘That was different! I didn’t do nothing on purpose-’

‘You hurt him, probably killed him, and left his body for the birds. You kept it all a secret, Snell. Hood knows, if I asked nicely enough, your da might just hand you over to me and good riddance to you.’

Snell said nothing. There was true terror inside him now. So much terror it filled him up, spilled out through his pores, and out from between his legs. This Bellam was a monster. He didn’t feel anything for nobody. He just wanted to hurt Snell. A monster. A vicious demon, yes, a demon. Bellam was everything that was wrong with. . with. . everything.

‘I’ll be good,’ Snell whimpered. ‘You’ll see. I’ll make it right, all of it.’

But these were lies, and both of them knew it. Snell was what he was, and no amount of cuddling and coddling would change that. He stood, there in the mind, as if to say: we are in your world. More of us than you imagine. If you knew how many of us there are, you’d be very, very frightened. We are here. Now, what are you going to do with us? Snell was what he was, yes, and so, too, was Bellam Nom.

When he was dragged in through the narrow door of a nondescript shop at the near end of Twisty Alley, Snell suddenly recoiled — he knew this place. He knew-

‘What you got yourself there, Bellam?’

‘A fresh one, Goruss, and I’ll let him go cheap.’

‘Wait!’ Snell shrieked, and then a heavy hand clamped over his mouth and he was pulled into the gloom, smelling rank sweat, feeling a breath on his cheek as the ogre named Goruss leaned in close.

‘A screamer, iz he?’

‘A nasty little shit, in fact.’

‘We’ll work that outer ’im.’

‘Not this one. He’d stab his mother just to watch the blood flow. ’Sprobably left a trail of tortured small animals ten leagues long, buried in little holes in every back yard of the neighbourhood. This is one of those, Goruss.’

‘Eighteen silver?’

‘Slivers?’

‘Yah.’

‘All right.’

Snell thrashed about as he was carried off into a back room, then down steps and into an unlit cellar that smelled of piss-soaked mud. He was gagged and bound and thrown into a low iron cage. Goruss then went back up the stairs, leaving Snell alone.

In the front room, Goruss sat down across from Bellam. ‘Ale, nephew?’

‘Too early for me, Uncle.’

‘How long you want me to hold him?’

‘Long enough to shit everything out of him. I want him so scared he breaks inside.’

‘Give him a night, then. Enough to run through all his terrors, but not so much he gets numb. Shit, nephew, I don’t deal in anybody under, oh, fifteen years old, and we do careful interviewing and observing, and only the completely hopeless ones get shipped to the rowing benches. And even then, they get paid and fed and signed out after five years — and most of them do good after that.’

‘I doubt Snell knows any of that, Uncle. Just that children are dragged into this shop and they don’t come back out.’

‘Must look that way.’

Bellam smiled. ‘Oh, it does, Uncle, it does.’

‘Not seen him in days.’

Barathol just nodded, then walked over to the cask of water to wash the grime off his forearms and hands. Chaur sat on a crate nearby, eating some local fruit with a yellow skin and pink, fleshy insides. Juice dribbled down his stubbled chin.

Scillara gave him a bright smile as she wandered into the front room. The air smelled brittle and acrid, the way it does in smithies, and she thought now that, from this moment on, the scent would accompany her every recollection of Barathol, this large man with the gentle eyes. ‘Had any more trouble with the Guilds?’ she asked.

He dried himself off and flung the cloth to one side. ‘They’re making it hard, but I expected that. We’re surviving.’

‘So I see.’ She kicked at a heap of iron rods. ‘New order?’

‘Swords. The arrival of the Malazan embassy’s garrison has triggered a new fad among the nobles. Imperial longswords. Gave trouble to most of the local sword-smiths.’ He shrugged. ‘Not me, of course.’

Scillara settled down in the lone chair and began scraping out her pipe. ‘What’s so special about Malazan longswords?’

‘The very opposite, actually. The local makers haven’t quite worked out that they have to reverse engineer to get them right.’

‘Reverse engineer?’

‘The Malazan longsword’s basic design and manufacture is originally Untan, from the imperial mainland. Three centuries old, at least, maybe older. The empire still uses the Untan foundries and they’re a conservative bunch.’

‘Well, if the damned things do what they’re supposed to do, why make changes?’

‘That seems to be the thinking, yes. The locals have gone mad folding and refolding, trying to capture that rough solidity, but the Untan smiths are in the habit of working iron not hot enough. It’s also red iron that they’re using — the Untan Hills are rotten with it even though it’s rare everywhere else.’ He paused, watching as she lit her pipe. ‘This can’t be of any real interest to you, Scillara.’

‘Not really, but I do like the sound of your voice.’ And she looked up at him through the smoke, her eyes half veiled.

‘Anyway, I can make decent copies and the word’s gone out. Eventually, some swordsmith will work things out, but by then I’ll have plenty of satisfied customers and even undercutting me won’t be too damaging.’

‘Good,’ she said.

He studied her for a moment, and then said, ‘So, Cutter’s gone missing, has he?’

‘I don’t know about that. Only that I’ve not seen him in a few days.’

‘Are you worried?’

She thought about it, and then thought some more, ‘Barathol, that wasn’t my reason for visiting you. I wasn’t looking for someone to charge in as if Cut shy;ter’s been kidnapped or something. I’m here because I wanted to see you. I’m lonely — oh, I don’t mean anybody’ll do, either, when I say that. I just wanted to see you, that’s all.’

After a moment, he shrugged and held out his hands. ‘Here I am.’

‘You won’t make it easy, will you?’

‘Scillara, look at me. Please, look. Carefully. You’re too fast for me. Cutter, that historian, even that Bridgeburner, you leave them all spinning in your wake. Given my choice, I’d rather go through the rest of my life beneath the notice of everyone. I’m not interested in drama, or even excitement.’

She stretched out her legs. ‘And you think I am?’

‘It’s life that you’re full of.’ Barathol frowned and then shook his head. ‘I’m not very good at saying what I mean, am I?’

‘Keep trying.’

‘You can be. . overwhelming.’

‘Typical, put on a little fat and suddenly I’m too much for him.’

‘You’re not fat and you know it. You have,’ he hesitated, ‘shape.’

She thought to laugh, decided that it might come out too obviously hurt, which would make him feel even worse. Besides, her comment had been little more than desperate misdirection — she’d lost most of the weight she’d put on during her pregnancy. ‘Barathol, has it not occurred to you that maybe I am as I am because behind it all there’s not much else?’

His frown deepened.

Chaur dropped down from the crate and came over. He patted her on the head with a sticky hand and then hurried off into the yard.

‘But you’ve lived through so much.’

‘And you haven’t? Gods below, you were an officer in the Red Blades. What you did in Aren-’

‘Was just me avoiding a mess, Scillara. As usual.’

‘What are we talking about here?’

His eyes shied away. ‘I’m not sure. I suppose, now that Cutter’s left you. .’

‘And Duiker’s too old and Picker’s a woman and that’s fun but not serious — for me, at least — I’ve found myself in need of another man. Chaur’s a child, in his head, that is. Leaving. . you.’

The harsh sarcasm of her voice stung him and he almost stepped back. ‘From where I’m standing,’ he said.

‘Well,’ she said, sighing, ‘it’s probably what I deserve, actually. I have been a bit. . loose. Wayward. Looking, trying, not finding, trying again. And again. From where you’re standing, yes, I can see that.’

‘None of that would matter to me,’ Barathol then said. ‘Except, well, I don’t want to be just another man left in your wake.’

‘No wonder you’ve devoted your life to making weapons and armour. Problem is, you’re doing that for everyone else.’

He said nothing. He simply watched her, as, she realized, he had been doing for some time now. All at once, Scillara felt uncomfortable. She drew hard on her pipe. ‘Barathol, you need some armour of your own.’

And he nodded. ‘I see.’

‘I’m not going to make promises I can’t keep. Still, it may be that my waywardness is coming to an end. People like us, who spend all our time looking, well, even when we find it we usually don’t realize it — until it’s too late.’

‘Cutter.’

She squinted up at him. ‘He had no room left in his heart, Barathol. Not for me, not for anyone.’

‘So he’s just hiding right now?’

‘In more ways than one, I suspect.’

‘But he’s broken your heart, Scillara.’

‘Has he?’ She considered. ‘Maybe he has. Maybe I’m the one needing armour.’ She snorted. ‘Puts me in my place, doesn’t it.’ And she rose.

Barathol started. ‘Where are you going?’

‘What? I don’t know. Somewhere. Nowhere. Does it matter?’

‘Wait.’ He stepped closer. ‘Listen to me, Scillara.’ And then he was silent, on his face a war of feelings trying to find words. After a moment, his scowl deepened. ‘Yesterday, if Cutter had just walked in here to say hello, I’d have taken him by the throat. Hood, I’d have probably beaten him unconscious and tied him up in that chair. Where he’d stay — until you dropped by.’

‘Yesterday.’

‘When I thought I had no chance.’

She was having her own trouble finding words. ‘And now?’

‘I think. . I’ve just thrown on some armour.’

‘The soldier. . un-retires.’

‘Well, I’m a man, and a man never learns.’

She grinned. ‘That’s true enough.’

And then she leaned close, and as he slowly raised his arms to take her into an embrace she almost shut her eyes — all that relief, all that anticipation of pleasure, even joy — and the hands instead grasped her upper arms and she was pushed suddenly to one side. Startled, she turned to see a squad of City Guard crowding the doorway.

The officer in the lead had the decency to look embarrassed.

‘Barathol Mekhar? By city order, this smithy is now under temporary closure, and I am afraid I have to take you into custody.’

‘The charge?’

‘Brought forward by the Guild of Smiths. Contravention of proper waste disposal. It is a serious charge, I’m afraid. You could lose your business.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Barathol said. ‘I am making use of the sewage drains — I spill nothing-’

‘The common drain, yes, but you should be using the industrial drain, which runs alongside the common drain.’

‘This is the first I have heard of such a thing ‘

‘Well,’ said a voice behind the guards, ‘if you were a member of the Guild, you’d know all about it, wouldn’t you?’

It was a woman who spoke, but Scillara could not see past the men in the doorway.

Barathol threw up his hands. ‘Very well, I am happy to comply. I will install the proper pipes-’

‘You may do so,’ said the officer, ‘once the charges are properly adjudicated, fines paid, and so forth. In the meantime, this establishment must be shut down. The gas valves must be sealed. Materials and tools impounded.’

‘I see. Then let me make some arrangement for my helper — somewhere to stay and-’

‘I am sorry,’ cut in the officer, ‘but the charge is against both you and your apprentice.’

‘Not precisely,’ said the unseen woman. ‘The blacksmith cannot have an apprentice unless he is a member of the Guild. The two are colluding to undermine the Guild.’

The officer’s expression tightened. ‘As she said, yes. I’m not here to prattle on in the language of an advocate. I do the arrest and leave one of my guards to over shy;see the decommissioning of the establishment by a qualified crew.’

‘A moment,’ said Barathol. ‘You are arresting Chaur?’

‘Is that your apprentice’s name?’

‘He’s not my apprentice. He’s a simpleton-’

‘Little more than a slave, then,’ snapped the unseen official of the Guild. ‘That would be breaking a much more serious law, I should think.’

Scillara watched as two men went to the yard and returned with a wide-eyed, whimpering Chaur. Barathol attempted to console him, but guards stepped in between them and the officer warned that, while he didn’t want to make use of shackles, he would if necessary. So, if everyone could stay calm and collected, they could march out of here like civilized folk. Barathol enquired as to his right to hire an advocate and the officer replied that, while it wasn’t a right as such, it was indeed a privilege Barathol could exercise, assuming he could afford one.

At that point Scillara spoke up and said, ‘I’ll find one for you, Barathol.’

A flicker of relief and gratitude in his eyes, replaced almost immediately by his distress over the fate of Chaur, who was now bawling and tugging his arms free every time a guard sought to take hold of him.

‘Let him alone,’ said Barathol. ‘He’ll follow peacefully enough — just don’t grab him.’

And then the squad, save one, all marched out with their prisoners. Scillara fell in behind them, and finally saw the Guild official, a rather imposing woman whose dignity was marred by the self-satisfied smirk on her face.

As Scillara passed behind the woman, she took hold of her braid and gave it a sharp downward tug.

‘Ow!’ The woman whirled, her expression savage.

‘Sorry,’ Scillara said. ‘Must have caught on my bracelet.’

And as Scillara continued on down the street, she heard, from the squad officer: ‘She’s not wearing any bracelet.’

The Guild woman hissed and said, ‘I want her-’

And then Scillara turned the corner. She did not expect the officer to send anyone in pursuit. The man was doing his job and had no interest in complicating things.

‘And there I was,’ she muttered under her breath, ‘about to trap a very fine man in my messed-up web. Hoping — praying — that he’d be the one to untangle my life.’ She snorted. ‘Just my luck.’

From rank superstitions to scholarly treatises, countless generations had sought understanding of those among them whose minds stayed undeveloped, childlike or, indeed, seemingly trapped in some other world. God and demon possession, stolen souls, countless chemical imbalances and unpleasant humours, injuries sustained at birth or even before; blows to the head as a child; fevers and so on. What could never be achieved, of course (barring elaborate, dangerous rituals of spirit-walking); was to venture into the mind of one thus afflicted.

It would be easy to assume an inner world of simple feelings, frightening unknowns and the endless miasma of confusion. Or some incorporeal demon crouched down on every thought, crushing the life from it, choking off every possible passage to awareness. Such assumptions, naturally, are but suppositions, founded only on external observation: the careful regard of seemingly blank eyes and stupid smiles, repetitive behaviour and unfounded fears.

Hold tight, then, this hand, on this momentary journey into Chaur’s mind.

The world he was witness to was a place of objects, some moving, some never moving, and some that were still but could be moved if one so willed it. These three types were not necessarily fixed, and he well knew that things that seemed destined to immobility could suddenly come awake, alive, in explosive motion. Within himself, Chaur possessed apprehensions of all three, in ever shifting forms. There was love, a deeply rooted object, from which came warmth, and joy, and a sense of perfect well-being. It could, on occasion, reach out to take in another — someone or something on the outside — but, ultimately, that was not necessary. The love was within him, its very own world, and he could go there any time he liked. This was expressed in a rather dreamy smile, an expression disengaged with everything on the outside.

Powerful as it was, love was vulnerable. It could be wounded, jabbed into recoiling pain. When this happened, another object was stirred awake. It could be called hate, but its surface was mottled with fear and anger. This object was fixed as deeply in his soul as was love, and the two needed each other even if their relationship was strained, fraught. Prodded into life by love’s pain, hate opened eyes that could only look outward — never to oneself, never even to the identity known as Chaur. Hate blazed in one direction and one only — to the outer world with its objects, some moving, some not, some that might do either, shifting from one to the next and back again.

Hate could, if it must, make use of Chaur’s body. In lashing out, in a frenzied reordering of the world. To bring it back into the right shape, to force an end to whatever caused love its pain.

All of this depended upon observation, but such observation did not rely overmuch on what he saw, or heard, smelled, touched or tasted. Hate’s secret vision was much sharper — it saw colours that did not exist for others, and those colours were, on an instinctive level, encyclopedic. Seeing them, hate knew everything. Knew, indeed, far beyond what a normal mind might achieve.

Was this little more than a peculiar sensitivity to nonverbal communication? Don’t ask Chaur. He is, after all, in his own world.

His object called hate had a thing about blood. Its hue, the way it flowed, the way it smelled and tasted, and this was a bizarre truth: his hate loved blood. To see it, to immerse oneself in it, was to feel joy and warmth and contentment.

The guards flanking Chaur, walking at ease and with modest thoughts of their own, had no inkling of all that swirled in the seemingly simple mind of their prisoner. Who walked, limbs loose and swinging now that the natural tension that had bound up the huge man’s neck and shoulders had eased away — clearly, the oaf had forgotten all the trouble he was in, had forgotten that they were all walking to a gaol, that soon Chaur would find himself inside a cage of stolid black iron bars. All those thick walls enclosing the simpleton’s brain were clearly back in place.

Not worth a second glance.

And so there were none to see the hate-filled eyes peering out through every crack, every murder hole, every arrow slit — a thousand, ten thousand glittering eyes, seeing everything, the frenzied flicking as immobile objects were observed, gauged and then discarded; as others were adjudged potentially useful as things that, while unmoving, could be made to move. Seeing all, yes, absorbing and processing at speeds that would stun one of normal intelligence — because this was something different, something alien, something almost perfect in its own way, by its own rules, by all the forces it could assemble, harbour, and then, when the time was appropriate, unleash upon a most unsuspecting world.

The simple ones aren’t simple. The broken ones aren’t broken. They are rearranged. For better, for worse? Such judgements are without relevance. After all, imagine a world where virtually every mind is simpler than it imagines itself to be, or is so utterly broken that it is itself unaware of its own massive, stunning dysfunction. In such a world, life goes on, and madness thrives. Stupidity repeats. Behaviours destroy and destroy again, and again, yet remain impervious to enlightenment. Crimes against humanity abound, and not one victimizer can even comprehend one day becoming victim; not a single cruel soul understands that cruelty delivered yields cruelty repaid tenfold. It is enough to eat today and let tomorrow’s children starve. Wealth ever promises protection against the strictures of an unkind, avaricious world, and yet fails to deliver on that promise every single time, be the slayer disease, betrayal or the ravaging mobs of revolution. Wealth cannot comprehend that the very avarice it fears is its own creation, the toxic waste product of its own glorious exaltation. Imagine such a world, then — oh, don’t bother. Better to pity poor, dumb Chaur.

Who, without warning, exploded into motion. Placid thoughts in guardian skulls shattered into oblivion as fists smashed, sending each man flying out to the side. As dulled senses of something awry shot the first spurt of chemical alarm through the nearest of the remaining guards, Chaur reached him, picked him up by belt and neck, and threw him against a happily immobile stone wall on the right. The officer and the last guard both began their whirl to confront the still mostly unknown threat, and Chaur, smiling, was there to meet them. He had in his left hand — gripped by one ear — a heavy amphora, which he had collected from a stall to his left, and he brought this object round to crash into the officer. Clay shards, a shower of pellet grain, and in their midst a crumpling body. The last guard, one hand tugging at his sword, mouth open to begin a shout of alarm, saw in his last conscious moment Chaur and his broad smile, as the simpleton, with a roundhouse swing, drove his fist into the side of the man’s head, collapsing the helm on that side and sending the headpiece flying. In a welter of blood from ear and temple, the guard fell to the ground, alive but temporarily unwilling to acknowledge the fact.

And Chaur stood now facing Barathol, with such pleased, excited eyes that the blacksmith could only stare back, speechless, aghast.

Gorlas Vidikas stepped out from the carriage and paused to adjust his leggings, noting with faint displeasure the discordant creases sitting in that sweaty carriage had left him with, and then glanced up as the sickly foreman wheezed his way over.

‘Noble sir,’ he gasped, ‘about the interest payments — I’ve been ill, as you know-’

‘You’re dying, you fool,’ Gorlas snapped. ‘I am not here to discuss your problems. We both know what will happen should you default on the loan, and we both know — I should trust — that you are not long for this world, which makes the whole issue irrelevant. The only question is whether you will die in your bed or end up getting tossed out on your backside.’ After a moment, he stepped closer and slapped the man on his back, triggering a cloud of dust. ‘You’ve always got your shack here at camp, yes? Come now, it’s time to discuss other matters.’

The foreman blinked up at him, with all that pathetic piteousness perfected by every loser the world over. Better, of course, than the dark gleam of malice — the stupid ones were quick to hate, once they’d got a sense of how they’d been duped — no, best keep this one making all those mewling help-me faces.

Gorlas smiled. ‘You can stay in your lovely new home, friend. I will withhold the interest payments so you can leave this world in peace and comfort.’ And oh, wasn’t this such extraordinary favour? This concession, this grave sacrifice, why, it would not be remiss if this idiot fell to his knees in abject gratitude, but never mind that. A second thump on the back, this one triggering a coughing fit from the old man.

Gorlas walked to the edge of the vast pit and surveyed the bustling hive of activity below. ‘All is well?’

The foreman, after hacking out a palmful of yellow phlegm, hobbled up to stand hunched beside him, wiping a hand on a caked trouser leg. ‘Well enough, sir, yes, well enough indeed.’

See how his mood has improved? No doubt eaten up with worry all morning, the poor useless bastard. Well, the world needed such creatures, didn’t it? To do all the dirty, hard work, and then thank people like Gorlas for the privilege. You’re so very welcome, you stupid fool, and see this? It’s my smile of indulgence. Bask and bask well — it’s the only thing I give away that’s truly free.

‘How many losses this week?’

‘Three. Average, sir, that’s average as can be. One mole in a cave-in, the others died of the greyface sickness. We got the new vein producing now. Would you believe, it’s red iron!’

Gorlas’s brows lifted, ‘Red iron?’

A quick, eager nod. ‘Twice the price at half-weight, that stuff. Seems there’s growing demand-’

‘Yes, the Malazan longswords everyone’s lusting after. Well, this will make it easier to order one, since up to now only one smith had the skill to make the damned weapons.’ He shook his head. ‘Ugly things, if you ask me. Curious thing is, we don’t get red iron round here — not till now, that is — so how was the fool making such perfect copies?’

‘Well, noble sir, there’s an old legend ’bout how one can actually turn regular iron into the red stuff, and do it cheap besides. Maybe it ain’t just a legend.’

Gorlas grunted. Interesting. Imagine finding out that secret, being able to take regular iron, toss in something virtually worthless, and out comes red iron, worth four times the price. ‘You’ve just given me an idea,’ he murmured. ‘Though I doubt the smith would give up the secret — no, I’d have to pay. A lot.’

‘Maybe a partnership,’ the foreman ventured.

Gorlas scowled. He wasn’t asking for advice. Still, yes, a partnership might work. Something he’d heard about that smith. . some Guild trouble. Well, could be Gorlas could smooth all that over, for a consideration. ‘Never mind,’ he said, a tad overloud, ‘it was just a notion — I’ve already discarded it as too compli shy;cated, too messy. Let’s forget we ever discussed it.’

‘Yes, sir.’

But was the foreman looking oddly thoughtful? Might be necessary, Gorlas reflected, to hasten this fool’s demise.

From up the road behind them, a trader’s cart was approaching.

Stupid, really. He’d elected to wear his riding boots, but the things were ancient, worn, and it seemed his feet had flattened out some since he’d last used them, and now he had enormous blisters, damned painful ones. And so, for all his plans of a stentorian, impressive arrival at the camp, full of dour intent and an edge of bluster, to then be ameliorated by a handful of silver councils, a relieved foreman sending a runner off to retrieve the wayward child, Murillio found himself on the back of a rickety cart, covered in dust and sweating in the midst of a cloud of flies.

Well, he would just have to make the best of it, wouldn’t he? As the ox halted at the top of the ridgeline, the old man walking slow as a snail over to where stood the eponymous foreman beside some fancy noble — now both looking their way — Murillio eased himself down, wincing at the lancing pain shooting up his legs, thinking with dread of the long walk back to the city, his hand holding Harllo’s tiny one, with darkness crawling up from the ditches to either side — a long, long walk indeed, and how he’d manage it was, truth be told, beyond him.

Soldiers knew about blisters, didn’t they? And men and women who worked hard for a living. To others, the affliction seemed trivial, a minor irritation — and when there were years between this time and the last time one had suffered from them, it was easy to forget, to casually dismiss just how debilitating they truly were.

Raw leather rubbed at each one like ground glass as he settled his weight back down. Still, it would not do to hobble over, and so, mustering all his will, Murillio walked, one careful step at a time, to where the foreman and the nobleman stood discussing things with the carter. As he drew closer, his gaze narrowed on the highborn one, a hint of recognition. . but where? When?

The carter had been told by the foreman where to take the supplies, and off he went, with a passing nod at Murillio.

The foreman was squinting curiously, and as Murillio drew up before them he spat to one side and said, ‘You look lost, sir. If you’ve the coin you can buy a place at the workers’ table — it’s plain fare but fillin’ enough, though we don’t serve nothing but weak ale.’ He barked a laugh. ‘We ain’t no roadside inn, are we?’

Murillio had thought long on how he would approach this. But he had not expected a damned nobleman in this particular scene, and something whispered to him that what should have been a simple negotiation, concluded by paying twice the going rate for a five-year-old boy, might now turn perilously complicated, ‘Are you the foreman of the camp, sir?’ he asked, after a deferential half-bow to the nobleman. At the answering nod, Murillio continued, ‘Very good. I am here in search of a young boy, name of Harllo, who was sold to your camp a few weeks back.’ He quickly raised a gloved hand. ‘No, I have no desire to challenge the propriety of that arrangement. Rather, I wish to purchase the boy’s freedom, and so deliver him back to his, er, terribly distressed parents.’

‘Do ye now?’ The foreman looked over at the nobleman.

Yes, Murillio thought he might know this young man.

‘You are the one named Murillio,’ the nobleman said, with an odd glitter in his gaze.

‘You have the better of me-’

‘That goes without saying. I am the principal investor of this operation. I am also a councillor. Gorlas Vidikas of House Vidikas.’

Murillio bowed a second time, as much to hide his dismay as in proper deference. ‘Councilman Vidikas, it is a pleasure meeting you.’

‘Is it? I very much doubt that. It took me a few moments to place you. You were pointed out, you see, a couple years back, at some estate fete.’

‘Oh? Well, there was a time when I was-’

‘You were on a list,’ Gorlas cut in.

‘A what?’

‘A hobby of a friend of mine, although I doubt he would have seen it as a hobby. In fact, if I was so careless as to use that word, when it came to his list, he’d probably call me out.’

‘I am sorry,’ Murillio said, ‘but I’m afraid I do not know what you are talking about. Some sort of list, you said?’

‘Likely conspirators,’ Gorlas said with a faint smile, ‘in the murder of Turban Orr, not to mention Ravyd Lim — or was it some other Lim? I don’t recall now, but then, that hardly matters. No, Turban Orr, and of course the suspicious suicide of Lady Simtal — all on the same night, in her estate. I was there, did you know that? I saw Turban Orr assassinated with my own eyes.’ And he was in truth smiling now, as if recalling something yielding waves of nostalgia. But his eyes were hard, fixed like sword points. ‘My friend, of course, is Hanut Orr, and the list is his.’

‘I do recall attending the Simtal fete,’ Murillio said, and in his mind he was re-living those moments after leaving the Lady’s bedchamber — leaving her with the means by which she could take her own life — and his thoughts, then, of everything he had surrendered, and what it might mean for his future. Appropriate, then, that it should now return to crouch at his feet, like a rabid dog with fangs bared. ‘Alas, I missed the duel-’

‘It was no duel, Murillio. Turban Orr was provoked. He was set up. He was assassinated, in plain view. Murder, not a duel — do you even comprehend the difference?’

The foreman was staring back and forth between them with all the dumb bewilderment of an ox.

‘I do, sir, but as I said, I was not there to witness the event-’

‘You call me a liar, then?’

‘Excuse me?’ Gods below, ten years past and he would have handled this with perfect grace and mocking equanimity, and all that was ruffled would be smoothed over, certain debts accepted, promises of honouring those debts not even needing explicit enunciation. Ten years past and-

‘You are calling me a liar.’

‘No, I do not recall doing so, Councillor. If you say Turban Orr was assassinated, then so be it. As for my somehow conspiring to bring it about, well, that is itself a very dangerous accusation.’ Oh, he knew where this was leading. He had known for some time, in fact. It was all there in Gorlas Vidikas’s eyes — and Murillio now recalled where he had last seen this man, and heard of him. Gorlas enjoyed duelling. He enjoyed killing his opponents. Yes, he had attended one of this bastard’s duels, and he had seen-

‘It seems,’ said Gorlas, ‘we have ourselves a challenge to honour here.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘When you retracted your accusation, well, I admit I thought you were about to tuck your tail between your legs and scuttle off down the road. And perhaps I would’ve let you go at that — it’s Hanut’s obsession, after all. Not mine.’

Murillio said nothing, understanding how he had trapped himself, with the foreman to witness the fact that the demand for a duel had come from him, not Gorlas Vidikas. He also understood that there had been no chance, none at all, that Gorlas would have let him go.

‘Naturally,’ continued the councillor, ‘I have no intention of withdrawing my accusation — so either accept it or call me out, Murillio. I have vague recollections that yon were one judged a decent duellist.’ He scanned the track to either side. ‘This place seems well suited. Now, a miserable enough audience, granted, but-’

‘Excuse me,’ cut in the foreman, ‘but the day’s shift bell is about to sound. The crews can get a perfect view, what with you two on the ridgeline — if you’d like.’

Gorlas winked over at Murillio as he said, ‘By all means we shall wait, then.’

The foreman trundled down the path into the pit, to ensure that the crew captains were told what was going on. They’d enjoy the treat after a long day’s work in the tunnels.

As soon as the foreman was out of earshot, Gorlas grinned at Murillio. ‘Now, anything more we should talk about, now that we’ve got no witness?’

‘Thank you for the invitation,’ Murillio said, tightening the straps of his glove. ‘Turban Orr didn’t deserve an honourable death. Hanut is your friend? Tell me, do you enjoy sleeping with vipers, or are you just stupid?’

‘If that was an attempt to bring me to a boil, it was pathetic. You truly think I don’t know all the tricks leading up to a duel? Gods below, old man. Still, I am pleased by your admission — Hanut will be delighted to hear that his suspicions were accurate. More important, he will find himself in my debt.’ And then he cocked his head. ‘Of course, the debt will be all the greater if I let you live. A duel unto wounding — leaving your fate in Hanut’s hands. Yes, that would be perfect. Well, Murillio, shall it be wounding?’

‘If you like,’ Murillio said.

‘Are your boots pinching?’

‘No.’

‘You seem in discomfort, Murillio, or is that just nerves?’

Bells clanged in the pit below. Distant shouts, and out from the tunnel mouths spewed filthy figures looking barely human at this distance. Runners raced down the lines. Word was getting out.

‘What’s this Harllo boy to you, anyway?’

Murillio glanced back to Gorlas. ‘You married Estraysian D’Arle’s daughter, didn’t you? She’s made herself very. . popular, of late, hasn’t she? Alas, I am starting to understand why — you’re not much of a man, are you, Gorlas?’

For all the councillor’s previous bravado, he paled in the late afternoon light.

‘It’s terrible, isn’t it,’ Murillio went on, ‘how every sordid detail, no matter how private and personal, so easily leaves the barricaded world of the wellborn and races like windblown seeds among all us common folk, us lowborn. Why, whatever happened to decency?’

The rapier rasped its way out of the sheath and the point lifted towards Murillio. ‘Draw your weapon, old man.’

Krute of Talient stepped inside. He saw Rallick Nom standing by the window, but it was shuttered closed. The man might as well be standing facing a wall. Oh, he was a strange one indeed, stranger now than he’d ever been before. All that si shy;lence, all that sense of something being very much. . wrong. In his head? Maybe. And that was a worrying thought — that Rallick Nom might not be right any more,

‘It’s confirmed,’ said Krute, setting down the burlap sack filled with the makings for supper. ‘One contract dissolved, a new one accepted. Stinks of desperation, doesn’t it? Gods, Seba’s even called me back and that’s an invitation no sane man would refuse.’ He paused, eyeing his friend, and then said, ‘So you may not be seeing much of me from now on. From what I’ve gathered, this new one’s pretty straightforward, but it’s the kind that’ll shake up the precious bloods.’

‘Is it now?’ Rallick asked, expressionless.

‘Listen,’ said Krute, knowing he was betraying his nerves, ‘I couldn’t say no, could I? It’s fine enough living off your coin, but that’s hard on a man’s pride. I’ve got a chance to get back into the middle of things again. I’ve got a chance to walk with the Guild again. Rallick, I got to take it, you understand?’

‘Is it that important to you, Krute?’

Krute nodded.

‘Then,’ said Rallick, ‘I had best leave your company.’

‘I’m sorry about that — it’s my being. . what’s that word again?’

‘Compromised.’

‘Exactly. Now, if you’d made your move on Seba, well, we wouldn’t be in this situation, would we? It’s the waiting that’s been so hard.’

‘There are no plans to replace Seba Krafar,’ said Rallick. ‘I am sorry if I have unintentionally misled you on that count. This is not to say we’re uninterested in the Guild.’ He hesitated. ‘Krute, listen carefully. I can leave you some coin — enough for a while, a half-year’s worth, in fact. Just decline Seba’s invitation — you don’t know what you’re getting into-’

‘And you do? No, Rallick, the point is, if I don’t know it’s because I’ve been pushed out of things.’

‘You should be thankful for that.’

‘I don’t need any patronizing shit from you, Rallick Nom. You’re all secrets now, nothing but secrets. But you’ll live here, with me, and eat what I cook, and what about me? Oh, right, on the outside again, this time with you. Well, I can’t live like that, so you’d better go. Don’t think ill of me — I won’t tell Seba about you.’

‘Can I not buy your retirement, Krute?’

‘No.’

Rallick nodded and then walked to the door. ‘Guard yourself well, Krute.’

‘You too, Rallick.’

Emerging from the tenement building’s narrow back door, Rallick Nom stepped out into the rank, rubbish-filled alley. His last venture into the world had seen him very nearly killed by Crokus Younghand, and of his time spent recovering at the Phoenix Inn, it was clear that no one who’d known of his presence had said a thing — not Kruppe, nor Coll, nor Murillio, nor Meese or Irilta; the Guild had not sniffed out his ignominious return. Even that wayward cousin of his, Torvald, had said nothing — although why that man had so vigorously avoided him was both baffling and somewhat hurtful.

Anyway, in a sense, Rallick remained invisible.

He paused in the alley. Still light, a ribbon of brightness directly above. It felt odd, to be outside in the day, and he knew it would not be long before someone caught sight of him, recognizing his face — eyes widening with astonishment — and word would race back to Seba Krafar. And then?

Well, the Master would probably send one of his lieutenants to sound Rallick out — what did he want? What did he expect from the Guild? There might be an invitation as well, the kind that was deadly either way. Accept it and walk into an ambush. Reject it and the hunt would begin. There were few who could take down Rallick one on one, but that wouldn’t be the preferred tactic in any case. No, it would be a quarrel to the back.

There were other places he could hide — he could probably walk right back into the Firmest House. But then, Krute was not the only one getting impatient. Besides, Rallick had never much liked subterfuge. He’d not used it when he’d been active in the Guild, after all — except when he was working, of course.

No, the time had come to stir things awake. And if Seba Krafar’s confidence had been rattled by a handful of rancorous Malazans, well, he was about to be sent reeling.

The notion brought a faint smile to Rallick’s lips. Yes, I am back.

He set out for the Phoenix Inn.

I am back, so let’s get this started, shall we?

Echoing alarms at the blurred border between the Daru and Lakefront districts, a half-dozen streets behind them now as Barathol — holding Chaur’s hand as he would a child’s — dragged the giant man through the late afternoon crowds. They had passed a few patrols, but word had yet to outdistance the two fugitives, although it was likely that this flight would, ultimately, prove anything but surreptitious — guards and bystanders both could not help but recall the two huge foreigners, one onyx-skinned, the other the hue of stained rawhide, rushing past.

Barathol had no choice but to dispense with efforts at stealth and subterfuge. Chaur was bawling with all the indignant outrage of a toddler justly punished, astonished to discover that not all things were cute and to be indulged by adoring caregivers — that, say, shoving a sibling off a cliff was not quite acceptable behaviour.

He had tried calming Chaur down, but simple as Chaur was, he was quick to sense disapproval, and Barathol had been unthinking and careless in expressing that disapproval — well, rather, he had been shocked into carelessness — and now the huge child would wail unto eventual exhaustion, and that exhaustion was still a long way off.

Two streets away from the harbour, three guards thirty paces behind them suddenly raised shouts, and now the chase was on for real.

To Barathol’s surprise, Chaur fell silent, and the smith pulled him up along shy;side him us they hurried along. ‘Chaur, listen to me. Get back to the ship — do you understand? Back to the ship, to the lady, yes? Back to Spite — she’ll hide you. To the ship, Chaur, understand?’

A tear-streaked face, cheeks blotchy, eyes red, Chaur nodded.

Barathol pushed him ahead. ‘Go. On your own — I’ll catch up with you. Go!’

And Chaur went, lumbering, knocking people off their feet until a path mirac shy;ulously opened before him.

Barathol turned about to give the three guards some trouble. Enough to pur shy;chase Chaur the time he needed, at least.

He managed that well enough, with fists and feet, with knees and elbows, and if not for the arrival of reinforcements, he might even have won clear. Six more guards, however, proved about five too many, and he was wrestled to the ground and beaten half senseless.

The occasional thought filtered weakly through the miasma of pain and confusion as he was roughly carried to the nearest gaol. He’d known a cell before. It wasn’t so bad, so long as the jailers weren’t into torture. Yes, he could make a tour of gaol cells, country to country, continent to continent. All he needed to do was start up a smithy without the local Guild’s approval.

Simple enough.

Then these fragmented notions went away, and the bliss of unconsciousness was unbroken, for a time.

‘’Tis the grand stupidity of our kind, dear Cutter, to see all the errors of our ways, yet find in ourselves the inability to do anything about them. We sit, dumb shy;founded by despair, and for all our ingenuity, our perceptivity, for all our extraor shy;dinary capacity to see the truth of things, we hunker down like snails in a flood, sucked tight to our precious pebble, fearing the moment it is dislodged beneath us. Until that terrible calamity, we do nothing but cling.

‘Can you even imagine a world where all crimes are punished, where justice is truly blind and holds out no hands happy to yield to the weight of coin and influence? Where one takes responsibility for his or her mistakes, acts of negligence, the deadly consequences of indifference or laziness? Nay, instead we slip and duck, dance and dodge, dance the dodge slip duck dance, feet ablur! Our selves transformed into shadows that flit in chaotic discord. We are indeed masters of evasion — no doubt originally a survival trait, at least in the physical sense, but to have such instincts applied to the soul is perhaps our most egregious crime against morality. What we will do so that we may continue living with ourselves. In this we might assert that a survival trait can ultimately prove its own antithesis, and in the cancelling out thereof, why, we are left with the blank, dull, vacuous expression that Kruppe now sees before him.’

‘Sorry, what?’

‘Dear Cutter, this is a grave day, I am saying. A day of the misguided and the misapprehended, a day of mischance and misery. A day in which to grieve the unanticipated, this yawning stretch of too-late that follows fell decisions, and the stars will plummet and if we truly possessed courage we would ease ourselves with great temerity into that high, tottering footwear of the gods, and in seeing what they see, in knowing what they have come to know, we would at last comprehend the madness of struggle, the absurdity of hope, and off we would stumble, wailing our way into the dark future. We would weep, my friend, we would weep.’

‘Maybe I have learned all about killing,’ Cutter said in a mumble, his glazy eyes seemingly fixed on the tankard in his hand. ‘And maybe assassins don’t spare a thought as to who deserves what, or even motivations. Coin in hand, or love in the heart — reward has so many. . flavours. But is this what she really wants? Or was that some kind of careless. . burst, like a flask never meant to be opened — shatters, everything pours out — staining your hands, staining. . everything.’

‘Cutter,’ said Kruppe in a low, soft but determined tone. ‘Cutter. You must listen to Kruppe, now. You must listen — he is done with rambling, with his own bout of terrible, grievous helplessness. Listen! Cutter, there are paths that must not be walked. Paths where going back is impossible — no matter how deeply you would wish it, no matter how loud the cry in your soul. Dearest friend, you must-’

Shaking himself, Cutter rose suddenly. ‘I need a walk,’ he said. ‘She couldn’t have meant it. That future she paints. . it’s a fairy tale. Of course it is. Has to be. No, and no, and no. But. .’

Kruppe watched as the young man walked away, watched as Cutter slipped through the doorway of the Phoenix Inn, and was gone from sight.

‘Sad truth,’ Kruppe said — his audience of none sighing in agreement — ‘that a tendency towards verbal excess can so defeat the precision of meaning. That intent can be so well disguised in majestic plethora of nuance, of rhythm both serious and mocking, of this penchant for self-referential slyness, that the unwitting simply skip on past — imagining their time to be so precious, imagining themselves above all manner of conviction, save that of their own witty perfection. Sigh and sigh again.

‘See Kruppe totter in these high shoes — nay, even his balance is not always precise, no matter how condign he may be in so many things. Totter, I say, as down fall the stars and off wail the gods and helplessness is an ocean in flood, ever rising — but we shall not drown alone, shall we? No, we shall have plenty of company in this chill comfort. The guilty and the innocent, the quick and the thick, the wise and the dumb, the righteous and the wicked — the flood levels all, faces down in the swells, oh my.

‘Oh my. .’

A miracle, better than merely recounted second or third hand, but witnessed. Witnessed: the four bearers would have carried their charge directly past, but then — see — a gnarled, feeble hand reached out, damp fingertips pressing against Myrla’s forehead.

And the bearers — who were experienced in such random gestures of deliverance halted.

She stared up into the Prophet’s eyes and saw terrible pain, a misery so pro shy;found it purified, and knowledge beyond anything her useless, dross-filled mind could comprehend. ‘My son,’ she gasped. ‘My son. . my self — oh my heart-’

‘Self, yes,’ he said, fingers pressing against her forehead like four iron nails, pinning her guilt and shame, her weakness, her useless stupidity. ‘I can bless that. So I shall. Do you feel my touch, dear woman?’

And Myrla could not but nod, for she did feel it, oh, yes, she felt it.

From behind her Bedek’s quavering voice drifted past. ‘Glorious One — our son has been taken. Kidnapped. We know not where, and we thought, we thought. .’

‘Your son is beyond salvation,’ said the Prophet. ‘He has the vileness of knowledge within his soul. I can sense how you two merged in his creation — yes, your blood was his poison of birth. He understands compassion, but he chooses it not. He understands love, but uses it as a weapon. He understands the future, and knows it does not wait for anyone, not even him. He is a living maw, your son, a living maw, which all of the world must feed.’

The hand withdrew, leaving four precise spots of ice on Myrla’s forehead — every nerve dead there, for ever more. ‘Even the Crippled God must reject such a creature. But you, Myrla, and you, Bedek, I bless. I bless you both in your lifelong blindness, your insensitive touch, the fugue of your malnourished minds. I bless you in the crumpling of the two delicate flowers in your hands — your two girls — for you have made of them versions no different from you, no better, perhaps much worse. Myrla. Bedek. I bless you in the name of empty pity. Now go.’

And she staggered back, stumbled into the cart, knocking it and Bedek over. He cried out, falling hard on to the cobbles, and a moment later she landed on top of him. The snap of his left arm was loud in the wake of the now-resumed procession of bearers and Prophet, the swirling press of begging worshippers sweeping in, stepping without care, without regard. A heavy boot stamped down oh Myrla’s hip and she shrieked as something broke, lancing agony into her right leg. Another foot collided with her face, toenails slashing one cheek. Heels on hands, fingers, ankles.

Bedek caught a momentary glimpse upward, to see the face of a man desperate to climb over them, for they were in his way and he wanted to reach the Prophet, and the man looked down, his pleading expression transforming into one of black hate. And he drove the point of his boot into Bedek’s throat, crushing the trachea.

Unable to breathe past the devastation that had once been his throat, Bedek stared up with bulging eyes. His face deepened to a shade of blue-grey, and then purple. The awareness in the eyes flattened out, went away, and away.

Still screaming, Myrla dragged herself over her husband — noting his stillness but otherwise uncomprehending — and pulled herself through a forest of hard, shifting legs — shins and knees, jabbing feet, out into a space, suddenly open, clear, the cobbles slick beneath her.

Although she was not yet aware of them, four spots of gangrene were spreading across her forehead — she could smell something foul, horribly foul, as though someone had dropped something in passing, somewhere close; she just couldn’t see it yet. The pain of her broken hip was now a throbbing thing, a deadweight she dragged behind her, growing ever more distant in her mind.

We run from our place of wounding. No different from any other beast, we run from our place of wounding. Run, or crawl, crawl or drag, drag or reach. She realized that even such efforts had failed her. She was broken everywhere. She was dying.

See me? I have been blessed. He has blessed me.

Bless you all.

He could barely stand, and now he must duel. Murillio untied his coin pouch and tossed it towards the foreman who had just returned, gasping and red-faced. The bag landed in a cloud of dust, a heavy thud. ‘I came for the boy,’ Murillio said. ‘That’s more than he’s worth — do you accept the payment, foreman?’

‘He does not,’ said Gorlas. ‘No, I have something special in mind for little Harllo.’

‘He’s not part of any of this-’

‘You just made him so, Murillio. One of your clan, maybe even a whelp of one of your useless friends in the Phoenix Inn — your favoured hangout, yes? Hanut knows everything there is to know about you. No, the boy’s in this, and that’s why you won’t have him. I will, to do with as I please.’

Murillio drew his rapier. ‘What makes people like you, Gorlas?’

‘I could well ask the same of you.’

Well, a lifetime of mistakes. And so we are perhaps more alike than either of us would care to admit. He saw the foreman bend down to collect the purse. The odious man hefted it and grinned. ‘About those interest payments, Councillor. .’

Gorlas smiled. ‘Why, it seems you can clear your debt after all.’

Murillio assumed his stance, point extended, sword arm bent slightly at the elbow, left shoulder thrown back to reduce the plane of his exposed torso. He settled his weight, gingerly, down through the centre of his hips.

Smiling still, Gorlas Vidikas moved into a matching pose, although he was leaning slightly forward. Not a duellist ready to retreat, then. Murillio recalled that from the fight he’d seen the very end of, the way Gorlas would not step back, unwilling to yield ground, unwilling to accept that sometimes pulling away earned advantages. No, he would push, and push, surrendering nothing.

He rapped Murillio’s blade with his own, a contemptuous batting aside to gauge response.

There was none. Murillio simply resumed his line.

Gorlas probed with the rapier’s point, jabbing here and there round the bell hilt, teasing and gambling with the quillons that could trap his blade, but for Murillio to do so he would have to twist and fold his wrist — not much, but enough for Gorlas to make a darting thrust into the opened guard, and so Murillio let the man play with that. He was in no hurry; footsore and weary as he was, he suspected he would have but one solid chance, sooner or later, to end this, Point to lead kneecap, or down to lead boot, or a flicking slash into wrist tendons, crippling the sword arm possibly for ever, Or higher, into the shoulder, stop hitting a lunge.

Gorlas pressed, closing the distance, and Murillio stepped back.

And that hurt.

He could feel wetness in his boots, that wretched clear liquid oozing out from the broken blisters.

‘I think,’ ventured Gorlas, ‘there’s something wrong with your feet, Murillio. You move like a man standing on nails.’

Murillio shrugged. He was past conversation it was hard enough concentrating through the stabs of pain.

‘Such an old-style stance you have, old man. So. . upright.’ Gorlas resumed the flitting, wavering motions of his rapier, minute threats here and there. He had begun a rhythmic rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, attempting to lull Murillio into that motion.

When he finally launched into his attack, the move was explosive, lightning last.

Murillio tracked the feints, caught and parried the lunge, and snapped out a riposte — but he was stepping back as he did so, and his point snipped the cloth of Gorlas’s sleeve. Before he could ready himself, the younger duellist extended his attack with a hard parrying beat and then a second lunge, throwing his upper body far forward — closing enough to make Murillio’s retreat insufficient, as was his parry.

Sizzling fire in his left shoulder. Staggering back, the motion tugging the point free of his flesh, Murillio righted himself and then straightened. ‘Blood drawn,’ he said, voice tightened by pain.

‘Oh, that,’ said Gorlas, resuming his rocking motion once more, ‘I’ve changed my mind.’

One insult too many. I never learn.

Murillio felt his heart pounding. The scar of his last, near-fatal wounding seemed to be throbbing as if eager to reopen. He could feel blood pulsing down from his pierced shoulder muscle, could feel warm trickles running down the length of his upper arm to soak the cloth at his elbow.

‘Blood drawn,’ he repeated. ‘As you guessed, I am in no shape to duel beyond that, Gorlas. We were agreed, before a witness.’

Gorlas glanced over at his foreman. ‘Do you recall, precisely, what you heard?’

The old man shrugged. ‘Thought there was something about wounding. .’

Gorlas frowned.

The foreman cleared his throat. ‘. . but that’s all. A discussion, I think. I heard nothing, er, firmed up between you.’

Gorlas nodded. ‘Our witness speaks.’

A few hundred onlookers in the pit below were making restless sounds. Murillio wondered if Harllo was among them.

‘Ready yourself,’ Gorlas said.

So, it was to be this way. A decade past Murillio would have been standing over this man’s corpse, regretful, of course, wishing it all could have been handled peacefully. And that was the luxury of days gone past, that cleaner world, while everything here, now, ever proved so. . messy.

I didn’t come here to die this day. I’d better do something about that. I need to survive this. For Harllo. He resumed his stance. Well, he was debilitated, enough to pretty much ensure that he would fight defensively, seeking only ripostes and perhaps a counterattack — taking a wound to deliver a death. All of that would be in Gorlas’s mind, would shape his tactics. Time, then, to surprise the bastard.

His step and lunge was elegant, a fluid forward motion rather quick for a man his age. Gorlas, caught on the forward tilt of his rocking, was forced to jump a half-step back, parrying hard and without precision. His riposte was wild and in shy;accurate, and Murillio caught it with a high parry of his own, following through with a second attack — the one he had wanted to count from the very first — a fully extended lunge straight for his opponent’s chest — heart or lungs, it didn’t matter which-

But somehow, impossibly, Gorlas had stepped close, inside and to one side of that lunge — his half-step back had not been accompanied by any shift in weight, simply a repositioning of his upper body, and this time his thrust was not at all wild.

Murillio caught a flash along the length of Daru steel, and then he could not breathe. Something was pouring down the front of his chest, and spurting up into his mouth.

He felt part of his throat tearing from the inside out as Gorlas slashed his blade free and stepped to the right.

Murillio twisted round to track him, but the motion lost all control, and he continued on, legs collapsing under him, and now he was lying on the stony ground.

The world darkened.

He heard Gorlas say something, possibly regretful, but probably not.

Oh, Harllo, I am so sorry. So sorry-

And the darkness closed in.

He was rocked momentarily awake by a kick to his face, but that pain quickly flushed away, along with everything else.

Gorlas Vidikas stood over Murillio’s corpse. ‘Get that carter to take the body back,’ he said to the foreman, bending down to clean his blade on the threadbare silk sleeve of his victim’s weapon arm. ‘Have him deliver it to the Phoenix Inn, rapier and all.’

From the pit below, people were cheering and clanging their tools like some ragtag mob of barbarians. Gorlas faced them and raised his weapon in salute. The cheering redoubled. He turned back to the foreman. ‘An extra tankard of ale for the crews tonight.’

‘They will toast your name, Councillor!’

‘Oh, and have someone collect the boy for me.’

‘It’s his shift in the tunnels, I think, but I can send someone to get him.’

‘Good, and they don’t have to be gentle about it, either. But make sure — nothing so bad he won’t recover. If they kill him, I will personally disembowel every one of them — make sure they understand.’

‘I will, Councillor.’ The foreman hesitated. ‘I never seen such skill, I never seen such skill — I thought he had you-’

‘I’m sure he thought so, too. Go find that carter, now.’

‘On my way, Councillor.’

‘Oh, and I’ll take that purse, so we’re clear.’

The foreman rushed over to deliver it. Feeling the bag’s weight for the first time, Gorlas raised his brows — a damned year’s wages for this foreman, right here — probably all Murillio had, cleaned right out. Three times as much as the interest this fool owed him. Then again, if the foreman had stopped to count out the right amount, intending to keep the rest, well, Gorlas would have two bodies to dispose of rather than just one, so maybe the old man wasn’t so stupid after all.

It had, Gorlas decided, been a good day.

And so the ox began its long journey back into the city, clumping along the cobbled road, and in the cart’s bed lay the body of a man who might have been precipitous, who might indeed have been too old for such deadly ventures, but no one could say that his heart had not been in the right place. Nor could anyone speak of a lack of courage.

Raising a most grave question — if courage and heart are not enough, what is?

The ox could smell blood, and liked it not one bit. It was a smell that came with predators, with hunters, notions stirring the deepest parts of the beast’s brain. It could smell death as well, there in its wake, and no matter how many clumping steps it took, that smell did not diminish, and this it could not understand, but was resigned to none the less.

There was no room in the beast for grieving. The only sorrow it knew was for itself. So unlike its two-legged masters.

Flies swarmed, ever unquestioning, and the day’s light fell away.