Toll the Hounds

CHAPTER FIVE

Darujhistan. Glories unending! Who could call a single deed inconsequential? This scurrying youth with his arms full of vegetables, the shouts from the stall in his wake, the gauging eye of a guard thirty paces away, assessing the poor likelihood of catching the urchin. Insignificant? Nonsense! Hungry mouths fed, glowing pride, some fewer coins for the hawker, perhaps, but it seemed all profit did was fill a drunken husband’s tankard anyway so the bastard could die of thirst for all she cared! A guard’s congenitally flawed heart beat on, not yet pushed to bursting by hard pursuit through the crowded market, and so he lives a few weeks longer, enough to complete his full twenty years’ service and so guarantee his wife and children a pension. And of course the one last kiss was yet to come, the kiss that whispered volumes of devotion and all the rest.

The pot-thrower in the hut behind the shop, hands and forearms slick with clay, dreaming, yes, of the years in which a life took shape, when each press of a fingertip sent a deep track across a once smooth surface, changing the future, reshaping the past, and was this not as much chance as design? For all that intent could score a path, that the ripples sent up and down and outward could be surmised by decades of experience, was the outcome ever truly predictable?

Oh, of course she wasn’t thinking any such thing. An ache in her left wrist obliterated all thoughts beyond the persistent ache itself, and what it might portend and what herbs she would need to brew to ease her discomfort — and how could such concerns be inconsequential?

What of the child sitting staring into the doleful eye of a yoked ox outside Corb’s Womanly Charms where her mother was inside and had been for near a bell now, though of course Mother had Uncle-Doruth-who-was-a-secret for company which was better than an ox that did nothing but moan? The giant, soft, dark-so-dark brown eye stared back and to think in both directions was obvious but what was the ox thinking except that the yoke was heavy and the cart even heavier and it’d be nice to lie down and what could the child be thinking about but beef stew and so no little philosopher was born, although in years to come, why, she’d have her own uncle-who-was-a-secret and thus like her mother enjoy all the fruits of marriage with few of the niggling pits.

And what of the sun high overhead, bursting with joyous light to bathe the wondrous city like a benediction of all things consequential? Great is the need, so sudden, so pressing, to reach up, close fingers about the fiery orb, to drag it back — and back! — into night and its sprawled darkness, where all manner of things of import have trembled the heavens and the very roots of the earth, or nearly so.

Back, then, the short round man demands, for this is his telling, his knowing, his cry of Witness! echoing still, and still. The night of arrivals, the deeds of the arrived, even as night arrives! Let nothing of consequence be forgot. Let nothing of inconsequence be deemed so and who now could even imagine such things to exist, recalling with wise nod the urchin thief, the hawker, the guard. The thrower of pots and the child and the ox and Uncle Doruth with his face between the legs of another man’s wife, all to come (excuse!) in the day ahead.

Mark, too, this teller of the tale, with his sage wink. We are in the midst!

Night, shadows overlapping, a most indifferent blur that would attract no one’s notice, barring that nuisance of a cat on the sill of the estate, amber eyes tracking now as one shadow moves out from its place of temporary concealment. Out goes this errant shadow, across the courtyard, into deeper shadows against the estate’s wall.

Crouching, Torvald Nom looked up to see the cat’s head and those damned eyes, peering down at him. A moment later the head withdrew, taking its wide gaze with it. He made his stealthy way to the back corner, paused once more. He could hear the gate guards, a pair of them, arguing over something, tones of suspicion leading to accusation answered by protestations of denial but Damn you, Doruth, I just don’t trust you-

— No reason not to, Milok. I ever give you one? No-

— To Hood you ain’t. My first wife-

— Wouldn’t leave me alone, I swear! She stalked me like a cat a rat-

— A rat! Aye, that’s about right-

— I swear, Milok, she very nearly raped me-

— The first time! I know, she told me all about it, with eyes so bright! —

— Heard it made you horny as Hood’s black sceptre-

— That ain’t any of your business, Doruth-

And something soft brushed against Torvald’s leg. The cat, purring like soft gravel, back bowed, tail writhing. He lifted his foot, held it hovering over the creature. Hesitated, then settled it back down. By Apsalar’s sweet kiss, the kit’s eyes and ears might be a boon, come to think of it. Assuming it had the nerve to follow him.

Torvald eyed the wall, the cornices, the scrollwork metopes, the braided false columns. He wiped sweat from his hands, dusted them with the grit at the wall’s base, then reached up for handholds, and began to climb.

He gained the sill of the window on the upper floor, pulled himself on to it, balanced on his knees. True, never wise, but the fall wouldn’t kill him, wouldn’t even sprain an ankle, would it? Drawing a dagger he slipped the blade in between the shutters, carefully felt for the latch.

The cat, alighting beside him, nearly pitched him from the sill, but he managed to recover, swearing softly under his breath as he resumed working the lock.

— She still loves you, you know-

— What-

— She does. She just likes some variety. I tell you, Milok, this last one of yours was no easy conquest-

— You swore! —

— You’re my bestest, oldest friend. No more secrets between us! And when I swear to that, as I’m doing now, I mean it true. She’s got an appetite so sharing shouldn’t be a problem. I ain’t better than you, just different, that’s all. Different-

— How many times a week, Duroth? Tell me true! —

— Oh, every second day or so-

— But I’m every second day, too! —

— Odd, even, I guess. Like I said, an appetite-

— I’ll say-

— After shift, let’s go get drunk-

— Aye, we can compare and contrast-

— I love it. Just that, hah!. . Hey, Milok. .-

— Aye? —

— How old’s your daughter? —

The latch clicked, springing free the shutters just as a sword hissed from a scabbard and, amidst wild shouting, a fight was underway at the gate.

— A joke! Honest! Just a joke, Milok! —

Voices now from the front of the house, as Torvald slid his dagger blade between the lead windows and lifted the inside latch. He quickly edged into the dark room, as boots rapped on the compound and more shouting erupted at the front gate. A lantern crashed and someone’s sword went flying to skitter away on the cobbles.

Torvald quickly closed the shutters, then the window.

The infernal purring was beside him, a soft jaw rubbing against a knee. He reached for the cat, fingers twitching, hesitated, then withdrew his hand. Pay attention to the damned thing, right, so when it hears what can’t be heard and when it sees what can’t be seen, yes. .

Pivoting in his crouch, he scanned the room. Some sort of study, though most of the shelves were bare. Overreaching ambition, this room, a sudden lurch towards culture and sophistication, but of course it was doomed to failure. Money wasn’t enough. Intelligence helped. Taste, an inquisitive mind, an interest in other stuff — stuff out of immediate sight, stuff having nothing to do with whatever. Wasn’t enough to simply send some servant to scour some scrollmonger’s shop and say ‘I’ll take that shelf’s worth, and that one, too.’ Master’s not too discriminating, yes. Master probably can’t even read so what difference does it make?

He crept over to the one shelf on which were heaped a score or so scrolls, along with one leather-bound book. Each scroll was rolled tight, tied with some seller’s label — just as he had suspected. Torvald began reading through them.

Treatise on Drainage Grooves in Stone Gutters of Gadrobi District, Nine shy;teenth Report in the Year of the Shrew, Extraordinary Subjects, Guild of Quarry Engineering. Author: Member 322.

Tales of Pamby Doughty and the World Inside the Trunk (with Illustrations by some dead man).

The Lost Verses of Anomandaris, with annotation. Torvald’s brows rose, since this one might actually be worth something. He quickly slipped the string off and unfurled the scroll. The vellum was blank, barring a short annotation at the bottom that read: No scholarly erudition is possible at the moment. And a publisher’s mark denoting this scroll as part of a series of Lost Works, published by the Vellum Makers’ Guild of Pale.

He rolled the useless thing back up, plucked out one more.

An Illustrated Guide to Headgear of Cobblers of Genabaris in the fourth century, Burn’s Sleep, by Cracktooth Filcher, self-avowed serial collector and scourge of cobblers, imprisoned for life. A publication of Prisoner’s Pit Library, Nathilog.

He had no doubt the illustrations were lavish and meticulous, detailed to excess, but somehow his curiosity was not up to the challenge of perusal.

By now the commotion at the gate had been settled. Various members of the guard had returned from the fracas, with much muttering and cursing that fell away abruptly as soon as they entered the main house on their way to their rooms, telling Torvald that the master was indeed home and probably asleep. Which was something of a problem, given just how paranoid the bastard was and the likely hiding place of his trove was somewhere in his damned bedroom. Well, the world presented its challenges, and without challenges life was worthless and pointless and, most crucially, devoid of interest.

He moved to the door leading to the hallway, pausing to wrap a cloth about his face, leaving only his eyes free. The cat watched intently. Lifting the latch he tugged the door open and peered out into the corridor. Left, the outer, back wall not three paces away. Right, the aisle reaching all the way through the house. Doors and a central landing for the staircase. And a guard, seated facing that landing. Black hair, red, bulbous nose, protruding lower lip, and enough muscles slabbed on to a gigantic frame to fill out two or three Torvald Noms. The fool was knitting, his mouth moving and brow knotting as he counted stitches.

And there was the horrid cat, padding straight for him.

Torvald quietly closed the door.

He should have strangled the thing.

From the corridor he heard a grunting curse, then boots thumping down the stairs.

Opening the door once more he looked out. The guard was gone, the knitting lying on the floor with one strand leading off down the stairs.

Hah! Brilliant cat! Why, if he met it again he’d kiss it — but nowhere near where it licked itself because there were limits, after all, and anywhere a cat could lick itself was nowhere he’d kiss.

Torvald quickly closed the door behind him and tiptoed up the corridor. A cautious glance down the wide, central staircase. Wherever the cat had run off with the ball of wool, it was out of sight, and so too the guard. He faced the ornate double doors directly behind the vacated wooden chair.

Locked?

Yes.

He drew his dagger and slid the thin blade between the doors.

Ornate decoration was often accompanied by neglect of the necessary mechanisms, and this lock followed the rule, as he felt the latch lift away. Boots sounded downstairs. He tugged open the door and quickly slipped inside, crouching once more. A front room, an office of sorts, with a single lantern on a short wick casting faint light across the desk and its strewn heap of papyrus sheets. A second door, smaller, narrow, behind the desk’s high-backed plush chair.

Torvald Nom tiptoed towards it.

Pausing at the desk to douse the lantern, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, crouching yet lower to squint at the crack beneath the bedroom door, pleased to find no thread of light. Drawing up against the panelled wood with its gold-leaf insets now dull in the gloom. No lock this time. Hinges feeling well oiled. He slowly worked the door open.

Inside, quietly shutting the door behind him.

Soft breathing from the huge four-poster bed. Then a sigh. ‘Sweet sliverfishy, is that you?’

A woman’s husky, whispering voice, and now stirring sounds from the bed.

‘The night stalker this time? Ooh, that one’s fun — I’ll keep my eyes closed and whimper lots when you threaten me to stay quiet. Hurry, I’m lying here, petrified. Someone’s in my room!’

Torvald Nom hesitated, truly torn between necessity and. . well, necessity.

He untied his rope belt. And, in a hissing voice, demanded, ‘First, the treasure. Where is it, woman?’

She gasped. ‘That’s a good voice! A new one! The treasure, ah! You know where it is, you horrible creature! Right here between my legs!’

Torvald rolled his eyes. ‘Not that one. The other one.’

‘If I don’t tell you?’

‘Then I will have my way with you.’

‘Oh! I say nothing! Please!’

Damn, he sure messed that one up. There was no way she’d not know he wasn’t who he was pretending to be, even when that someone was pretending to be someone else. How to solve this?

‘Get on your stomach. Now, on your hands and knees. Yes, like that.’

‘You’re worse than an animal!’

Torvald paused at the foot of the bed. Worse than an animal? What did that mean? Shaking his head, he climbed on to the bed. Well, here goes nothing.

A short time later: ‘Sliverfishy! The new elixir? Gods, it’s spectacular! Why, I can’t call you sliverfishy any more, can I? More like. . a salmon! Charging upstream! Oh!’

‘The treasure, or I’ll use this knife.’ And he pressed the cold blade of the dagger against the outside of her right thigh.

She gasped again. ‘Under the bed! Don’t hurt me! Keep pushing, damn you! Harder! This one’s going to make a baby — I know it! This time, a baby!’

Well, he did his part anyway, feeding his coins into the temple’s cup and all that, and may her prayers guide her true into motherhood’s blissful heaven. She collapsed on to the bed, groaning, while he backed off, knelt on the cold wooden floor and reached under the bed, knuckles skinning against a large, low longbox. Groping, he found one handle and dragged it out.

She moaned. ‘Oh, don’t start counting again, darling. Please. You ruin everything when you do that!’

‘Not counting, woman. Stealing. Stay where you are. Eyes closed. Don’t move.’

‘It just sounds silly now, you know that.’

‘Shut up, or I’ll do you again.’

‘Ah! What was that elixir again?’

He prised open the lock with the tip of the dagger. Inside, conveniently stored in burlap sacks tagged with precise amounts, a fortune of gems, jewels and high councils. He quickly collected the loot.

‘You are counting!’

‘I warned you.’ He climbed back on to the bed. Looked down and saw that promises weren’t quite enough. Gods below, if you only were. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I need more elixir. In the office. Don’t move.’

‘I won’t. I promise.’

He hurried out, crept across the outer room and paused at the doors to the corridor to press his ear against the panel.

Softly, the slither-click of bamboo knitting needles.

Torvald slid the dagger into its scabbard, reversed grip, opened the door, looked down at the top of the guard’s hairy head, and swung hard. The pommel crunched. The man sagged in his chair, then folded into a heap at the foot of the chair.

The cat was waiting by the library door.

Uncle One, Uncle Two, Father None. Aunt One, Aunt Two, Mother None.

Present and on duty, Uncle One, Aunt One and Cousins One, Two, Three. Cousin One edging closer, almost close enough for another hard, sharp jab with an elbow as One made to collect another onion from the heap on the table. But he knew One’s games, had a year’s list of bruises to prove it, and so, just as accidentally, he took a half-step away, keeping on his face a beaming smile as Aunt One cooed her delight at this sudden bounty, and Uncle One sat opposite, ready to deliver his wink as soon as he glanced over — which he wouldn’t do yet because timing, as Uncle Two always told him, was everything. Besides, he needed to be aware of Cousin One especially now that the first plan had been thwarted.

One, whose name was Snell, would have to work harder in his head, work that cunning which seemed to come from nowhere and wasn’t part of the dull stupidity that was One’s actual brain, so maybe it was demons after all, clattering and chittering all their cruel ideas. Snell wouldn’t let this rest, he knew. No, he’d remember and start planning. And the hurt would be all the worse for that.

But right now he didn’t care, not about Cousin One, not about anything that might come later tonight or tomorrow. He’d brought food home, after all, an armload of food, delivering his treasure to joyous cries of relief.

And the man whose name he’d been given, the man long dead who was neither Uncle One nor Uncle Two but had been Uncle Three and not, of course, Father One, well, that man would be proud that the boy with his name was doing what was needed to keep the family together.

Collecting his own onion, the child named Harllo made his way to a safe corner of the single room, and, moments before taking a bite, glanced up to meet Uncle One’s eyes, to catch the wink and then nod in answer.

Just like Uncle Two always said, timing was how a man measured the world, and his place in it. Timing wasn’t a maybe world, it was a world of yes and no, this, not that. Now, not later. Timing belonged to all the beasts of nature that hunted other creatures. It belonged to the tiger and its fixed, watching eyes. It belonged, too, to the prey, when the hunter became hunted, like with Cousin One, each moment a contest, a battle, a duel. But Harllo was learning the tiger’s way, thanks to Uncle Two, whose very skin could change into that of a tiger, when anger awakened cold and deadly. Who had a tiger’s eyes and was the bravest, wisest man in all of Darujhistan.

And the only one, apart from young Harllo himself, who knew the truth of Aunt Two, who wasn’t Aunt Two at all, but Mother One. Even if she wouldn’t admit it, wouldn’t ever say it, and wouldn’t have hardly nothing to do with her only child, her son of Rape. Once, Harllo had thought that Rape was his father’s name, but now he knew it was a thing people did to other people, as mean as an elbow in the ribs, maybe meaner. And that was why Mother One stayed Aunt Two, and why on those rare occasions she visited she wouldn’t meet Harllo’s eyes no matter how he tried, and why she wouldn’t say anything about nothing except with a voice that was all anger.

‘Aunt Stonny hates words, Harllo,’ Gruntle had explained, ‘but only when those words creep too close to her, to where she hides, you see?’

Yes, he saw. He saw plenty.

Snell caught his eye and made a wicked face, mouthing vicious promises. His little sister, Cousin Two, whose name was Mew, was watching from where she held on to the table edge, seeing but not understanding because how could she, being only three years old; while Cousin Three, another girl but this one named Hinty, was all swathed in the cradle and safe in there, safe from everything, which was how it should be for the littlest ones.

Harllo was five, maybe close to six, but already tall — stretched, laughed Gruntle, stretched and scrawny because that’s how boys grow.

Aunt Myrla had the rest of the vegetables in a steaming pot over the hearth, and Harllo saw her flick a knowing look at her husband, who nodded, not pausing in massaging the stumps below his knees, where most people had shins and ankles and then feet, but Uncle Bedek had had an accident which was something like Rape only not on purpose — and so he couldn’t walk any more which made life hard for them all, and meant Harllo had to do what needed since Snell didn’t seem interested in doing anything. Except torment Harllo, of course.

The air in the cramped room was smelling earthy and sweet now, as Myrla fed more dung on to the small health beneath the pot. Harllo knew he’d have to go out and collect more come the morrow and that might mean right out of the city, up along the West Shore of the lake, which was an adventure.

Snell finished his onion and crept closer to Harllo, hands tightening into fists.

But Harllo had already heard the boots in the alley outside, crackling on the dead fronds from the collapsed roof opposite, and a moment later Uncle Two swept the hanging aside and leaned into the room, the barbs of his face looking freshly painted, so stark were they, and his eyes glowed like candle flames. His smile revealed fangs.

Bedek waved. ‘Gruntle! Do come in, old friend! See how Myrla readies a feast!’

‘Well timed, then,’ the huge man replied, entering the room, ‘for I have brought smoked horse.’ Seeing Harllo, he waved the boy over. ‘Need to put some muscle on this one.’

‘Oh,’ said Myrla, ‘he never sits still, that’s his problem. Not for a moment!’

Snell was scowling, scuttling in retreat and looking upon Gruntle with hatred and fear.

Gruntle picked up Harllo, then held him squirming under one arm as he took the two steps to the hearth to hand Myrla a burlap-wrapped package.

Bedek was eyeing Gruntle. ‘Glad you made it back,’ he said in a low voice. ‘Heard about you at the gate and that moment in Worrytown — damn, but I wish I wasn’t so. . useless.’

Setting Harllo down, Gruntle sighed. ‘Maybe your days of riding with caravans are done, but that doesn’t make you useless. You’re raising a fine family, Bedek, a fine family.’

‘I ain’t raising nothing,’ Bedek muttered, and Harllo knew that tone, knew it all too well, and it might be days, maybe even a week, before Uncle One climbed back up from the dark, deep hole he was now in. The problem was, Bedek liked that place, liked the way Myrla closed round him, all caresses and embraces and soft murmurings, and it’d go on like that until the night came when they made noises in their bed, and come the next morning, why, Bedek would be smiling.

When Myrla was like that, though, when she was all for her husband and nothing else, it fell to Harllo to tend to the girls and do everything that was needed, and worst of all, it meant no one was holding back Snell. The beatings would get bad, then.

Myrla couldn’t work much, not since the last baby, when she’d hurt something in her belly and now she got tired too easy, and even this glorious supper she was creating would leave her exhausted and weak with a headache. When able, she’d mend clothes, but that wasn’t happening much of late, which made Harllo’s raiding the local markets all the more important.

He stayed close to Gruntle, who now sat opposite Uncle Bedek and had produced a jar of wine, and this kept Snell away for now, which of course only made things worse later but that was all right. You couldn’t choose your family, after all, not your cousins, not anyone. They were there and that was that.

Besides, he could leave early tomorrow morning, so early Snell wouldn’t even be awake, and he’d make his way out of the city, out along the lake shore where the world stretched away, where beyond the shanties there were hills with nothing but goats and shepherds and beyond even them there was nothing but empty land. That such a thing could exist whispered to Harllo of possibilities, ones that he couldn’t hope to name or put into words, but were all out in the future life that seemed blurry, ghostly, but a promise even so. As bright as Gruntle’s eyes, that promise, and it was that promise that Harllo held on to, when Snell’s fists were coming down.

Bedek and Gruntle talked about the old days, when they’d both worked the same caravans, and it seemed to Harllo that the past — a world he’d never seen because it was before the Rape — was a place of great deeds, a place thick with life where the sun was brighter, the sunsets were deeper, the stars blazed in a black sky and the moon was free of mists, and men stood taller and prouder and nobody had to talk about the past back then, because it was happening right now.

Maybe that was how he would find the future, a new time in which to stand tall. A time he could stretch into.

Across from Harllo, Snell crouched in a gloomy corner, his eyes filled with their own promise as he grinned at Harllo.

Myrla brought them plates heaped with food.

The papyrus sheets, torn into shreds, lit quickly, sending black flakes upward in the chimney’s draught, and Duiker watched them go, seeing crows, thousands of crows. Thieves of memory, stealing everything else he might have thought about, might have resurrected to ease the uselessness of his present life. All the struggles to recall faces had been surrendered, and his every effort to write down this dread history had failed. Words flat and lifeless, scenes described in the voice of the dead.

Who were those comrades at his side back then? Who were those Wickans and Malazans, those warlocks and warriors, those soldiers and sacrificial victims who perched above the road, like sentinels of futility, staring down at their own marching shadows?

Bult. Lull. Sormo Enath.

Coltaine.

Names, then, but no faces. The chaos and terror of fighting, of reeling in exhaustion, of wounds slashed open and bleeding, of dust and the reek of spilled wastes — no, he could not write of that, could not relate the truth of it, any of it.

Memory fails. For ever doomed as we seek to fashion scenes, framed, each act described, reasoned and reasonable, irrational and mad, but somewhere beneath there must be the thick, solid sludge of motivation, of significance, of meaning — there must be. The alternative is. . unacceptable.

But this was where his attempts delivered him, again and again. The unacceptable truths, the ones no sane person could ever face, could ever meet eye to eye. That nothing was worth revering, not even the simple fact of survival, and certainly not that endless cascade of failures, of deaths beyond counting.

Even here, in this city of peace, he watched the citizens in all their daily dances, and with each moment that passed, his disdain deepened. He disliked the way his thoughts grew ever more uncharitable, ever more baffled by the endless scenes of seemingly mindless, pointless existence, but there seemed no way out of that progression as his observations unveiled the pettiness of life, the battles silent and otherwise with wives, husbands, friends, children, parents; with the very crush on a crowded street, each life closed round itself, righteous and uncaring of strangers — people fully inside their own lives. Yet should he not revel in such things? In their profound freedom, in their extraordinary luxury of imagining themselves in control of their own lives?

Of course, they weren’t. In freedom, such as each might possess, they raised their own barriers, carried shackles fashioned by their own hands. Rattling the chains of emotions, of fears and worries, of need and spite, of the belligerence that railed against the essential anonymity that gripped a person. Aye, a most unac shy;ceptable truth.

Was this the driving force behind the quest for power? To tear away anonymity, to raise fame and infamy up like a blazing shield and shining sword? To voice a cry that would be heard beyond the gates of one’s own life?

But oh, Duiker had heard enough such cries. He had stood, cowering, in the midst of howls of defiance and triumph, all turning sour with despair, with senseless rage. The echoes of power were uniform, yes, in their essential emptiness. Any historian worthy of the title could see that.

No, there was no value in writing. No more effect than a babe’s fists battering at the silence that ignored every cry. History meant nothing, because the only continuity was human stupidity. Oh, there were moments of greatness, of bright deeds, but how long did the light of such glory last? From one breath to the next, aye, and no more than that. No more than that. As for the rest, kick through the bones and wreckage for they are what remain, what lasts until all turns to dust.

‘You are looking thoughtful,’ Mallet observed, leaning forward with a grunt to top up Duiker’s tankard. ‘Which, I suppose, should not come as a surprise, since you just burned the efforts of most of a year, not to mention a high council’s worth of papyrus.’

‘I will reimburse you the cost,’ Duiker said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ the healer said, leaning back. ‘I only said you looked thoughtful.’

‘Appearances deceive, Mallet. I am not interested in thinking any more. About anything.’

‘Good, then this is a true meeting of minds.’

Duiker continued studying the fire, continued watching the black crows wing up the chimney. ‘For you, unwise,’ he said. ‘You have assassins to consider.’

Mallet snorted. ‘Assassins. Antsy’s already talking about digging up a dozen cussers. Blend’s out hunting down the Guild’s headquarters, while Picker and Bluepearl work with Councillor Coll to sniff out the source of the contract. Give it all a week and the problem will cease being a problem. Permanently.’

Duiker half smiled. ‘Don’t mess with Malazan marines, retired or otherwise.’

‘You’d think people would know by now, wouldn’t you?’

‘People are stupid, Mallet.’

The healer winced. ‘Not all of us.’

‘True. But Hood waits for everyone, stupid, smart, witty, witless. Waits with the same knowing smile.’

‘No wonder you burned your book, Duiker.’

‘Yes.’

‘So, since you’re no longer writing history, what will you do?’

‘Do? Why, nothing.’

‘Now that’s something I know all about — oh, don’t even try to object. Aye, I heal someone every now and then, but I was a soldier, once. And now I’m not. Now I sit around getting fat, and it’s fat poisoned through and through with some kind of cynical bile. I lost all my friends, Duiker. No different from you. Lost ’em all, and for what? Damned if I know, damned and damned again, but no, I don’t know the why of it, the why of anything.’

‘A meeting of minds, indeed,’ Duiker said. ‘Then again, Mallet, it seems you are at war once more. Against the usual implacable, deadly enemy.’

‘The Guild? I suppose you’re right. But it won’t last long, will it? I don’t like being retired. It’s like announcing an end to your worth, whatever that worth was, and the longer you go on, the more you realize that that worth wasn’t worth anything like you once thought it was, and that just makes it worse.’

Duiker set down his tankard and rose. ‘The High Alchemist has invited me to lunch on the morrow. I’d best go to bed and get some sleep. Watch your back, healer. Sometimes the lad pushes and the lady’s nowhere in sight.’

Mallet simply nodded, having assumed the burden of staring at the fire now that Duiker was leaving.

The historian walked away from the warmth, passing through draughts and layers of chill air on his way to his room. Colder and colder, with every step.

Somewhere above this foul temple, crows danced with sparks above the mouth of a chimney, virtually unseen in the darkness. Each one carried a word, but the sparks were deaf. Too busy with the ecstasy of their own bright, blinding fire. At least, until they went out.

Gaz stormed out early, as soon as he realized he wasn’t going to get enough coin from the day’s take to buy a worthwhile night of drinking. Thordy watched her husband go, that pathetic forward tilt of the man’s walk which always came when he was enraged, the jerky strides as he marched out into the night. Where he went she had no idea, nor, truth be told, did she even care.

Twice now in the past week that skinny mite of an urchin had raided her vegetable stand. Gods, what were parents up to these days? The runt was probably five years old, no older that’s for sure, and already fast us an eel in the shallows — and why wasn’t he leashed as a child should be? Especially at that age when there were plenty of people who’d snach him, use him or sell him quick as can be. And if they used him in that bad way, then they’d wring his neck afterwards, which Thordy might not mind so much except that it was a cruel thought and a cruel picture and more like something her husband would think than her. Though he’d only be thinking in terms of how much money she might make without the thieving going on. And maybe what he might do if he ever got his hands on the runt.

She shivered at that thought, then was distracted by Nou the watchdog in the garden next to hers, an unusual eruption of barking — but then she remembered her husband and his walk and how Nou hated Gaz especially when he walked like that. When Gaz stumbled back home, drunk and useless, the mangy dog never made a sound, ignored Gaz straight out, in fact.

Dogs, she knew, could smell bad intentions. Other animals too, but especially dogs.

Gaz never touched Thordy, not even a shove or a slap, because without her and the garden she tended he was in trouble, and he knew that well enough. He’d been tempted, many times, oh, yes, but there’d be, all of a sudden, a glint in his eyes, a surprise, flickering alight. And he’d smile and turn away, saving that fist and all that was behind it for someone else. Gaz liked a good fight, in some alley behind a tavern. Liked kicking faces in, so long as the victim was smaller than he was, and more drunk. And without any friends who might step in or come up from behind. It was how he dealt with the misery of his life, or so he said often enough.

Thordy wasn’t sure what all that misery was about, though she had some ideas. Her, for one. The pathetic patch of ground she had for her vegetables. Her barren womb. The way age and hard work was wearing her down, stealing the glow she’d once had. Oh, there was plenty about her that made him miserable. And, all things considered, she’d been lucky to have him for so long, especially when he’d worked the nets on that fisher boat, the nets that, alas, had taken all his fingers that night when something big had waited down below, motionless and so unnoticed as the crew hauled the net aboard. Then it exploded in savage power, making for the river like a battering ram. Gaz’s fingers, all entwined, sprang like topped carrots, and now he had thumbs and rows of knuckles and nothing else.

Fists made for fighting, he’d say with an unconscious baring of his teeth. That and nothing more.

And that was true enough and good reason, she supposed, for getting drunk every chance he could.

Lately, however, she’d been feeling a little less generous — no, she’d been feeling not much of anything at all. Even pity had dwindled, whispered away like a dry leaf on the autumn wind. And it was as if he had changed, right in front of her eyes, though she now understood that what had changed was behind her eyes — not the one looked at, but the one doing the looking. She no longer recoiled in the face of his fury. No longer shied from that marching tilt and all its useless anger, and would now study it, seeing its futility, seeing the self-pity in that wounded pitch.

She was empty, then, and she had first thought she would remain so, probably for the rest of her life. Instead, something had begun to fill the void. At first, it arrived with a start, a twinge of guilt, but not any more. Now, when thoughts of murder filled her head, it was like immersing herself in a scented bath.

Gaz was miserable. He said so. He’d be happier if he were dead.

And, truth be told, so would she.

All this love, all this desperate need, and he was useless. She should have driven him out of her life long ago, and he knew it. Holding on to him the way she was doing was torture. He’d told her he only fought weaklings. Fools and worse. He told her he did it to keep his arms strong, to harden his knuckles, to hold on to (hah, that was a good one) some kind of reason for staying alive. A man needs a skill, aye, and no matter if it was good or bad, no matter at all. But the truth was, he chose the meanest, biggest bastards he could find. Proving he could, proving those knuckles and their killing ways.

Killing, aye. Four so far, that he was sure of.

Sooner or later, Gaz knew, the coin would flip, and it would be his cold corpse lying face down in some alley. Well enough. When you pay out more than you’re worth, again and again, eventually somebody comes to collect.

She’d not mourn him, he knew. A man in love could see when the one he loved stopped loving him back. He did not blame her, and did not love her any less; no, his need just got worse.

The Blue Ball Tavern occupied one corner of a massive, decrepit heap of tenements that stank of urine and rotting rubbish. In the midst of the fete, the nightly anarchy on these back streets up from the docks reached new heights, and Gaz was not alone in hunting the alleys for trouble.

It occurred to him that maybe he wasn’t as unusual as he might have once believed. That maybe he was just one among thousands of useless thugs in this city, all of them hating themselves and out sniffing trails like so many mangy dogs. Those who knew him gave him space, slinking back from his path as he stalked towards his chosen fighting grounds, behind the Blue Ball. That brief thought — about other people, about the shadowed faces he saw around him — was shortlived, flitting away with the first smell of blood in the damp, sultry air.

Someone had beaten him to it, and might even now be swaggering out the opposite end of the alley. Well, maybe the fool might circle back, and he could deliver to the bastard what he’d done to somebody else — and there was the body, the huddled, motionless shape. Walking up, Gaz nudged it with one boot. Heard a blood-frothed wheeze. Slammed his heel down on the ribcage, just to hear the snap and crunch. A cough, spraying blood, a low groan, then a final exhalation.

Done, easy as that.

‘Are you pleased, Gaz?’

He spun round at the soft, deep voice, forearms lifting into a guard he expected to fail — but the fist he thought was coming never arrived, and, swearing, he stepped back until his shoulders thudded against the wall, glared in growing fear at the tall, shrouded figure standing before him, ‘I ain’t afraid,’ he said in a bellingerent growl.

Amusement washed up against him like a wave. ‘Open yourself, Gaz. Your soul. Welcome your god,’

Gaz could feel the air on his teeth, could feel his lips stretching until cracks split to ooze blood. His heart hammered at his chest. ‘I ain’t got no god. I’m nothing but curses, and I don’t know you. Not at all.’

‘Of course you do, Gaz. You have made sacrifice to me, six times now. And counting.’

Gaz could not see the face within the hood, but the air between them was suddenly thick with some pungent, cloying scent. Like cold mud, the kind that ran in turgid streams behind slaughterhouses. He thought he heard the buzz of flies, but the sound was coming from somewhere inside his own head. ‘I don’t kill for you,’ he said, his voice thin and weak.

‘You don’t have to. I do not demand sacrifices. There is. . no need. You mortals consecrate any ground you choose, even this alley. You drain a life on to it. Nothing more is required. Not intent, not prayer, nor invocation. I am summoned, without end.’

‘What do you want from me?’

‘For now, only that you continue harvesting souls. When the time comes for more than that, Gaz of the Gadrobi, you will be shown what must be done.’

‘And if I don’t want-’

‘Your wants are not relevant.’

He couldn’t get that infernal buzzing out of his skull. He shook his head, squeezed shut his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again the god was gone.

The flies. The flies are in my head. Gods, get out!

Someone had wandered into the alley, weaving, mumbling, one hand held out to fend off any obstacles.

I can get them out. Yes! And, all at once, he knew the truth of that, knew that killing would silence those cursed flies. Swinging round, he pitched forward, hands lifting, and fast-marched towards the drunken fool.

Who looked up at the last moment, in time to meet those terrible knuckles.

Krute of Talient slowed as he approached the recessed entrance to the tenement where he now lived. Someone was standing in the shadows, blocking the door. He halted ten paces away. ‘That was good work,’ he said. ‘You was behind me most of the way, making me think you wasn’t good at all, but now here you are.’

‘Hello, Krute.’

At that voice Krute started, then leaned forward, trying to pierce the gloom. Nothing but a shape, but it was, he concluded, the right shape. ‘Gods below, I never thought you’d come back. Do you have any idea what’s happened since you vanished?’

‘No. Why don’t you tell me?’

Krute grinned. ‘I can do that, but not out here.’

‘You once lived in a better neighbourhood, Krute.’

He watched Rallick Nom step out from the alcove and his grin broadened. ‘You ain’t changed at all. And yes, I’ve known better times — and I hate to say it, but you’re to blame, Rallick.’

The tall, gaunt assassin turned to study the tenement building. ‘You live here? And it’s my fault?’

‘Come on,’ Krute said, ‘let’s get inside. Top floor, of course, an alley corner — easy to the roof, dark as Hood’s armpit. You’ll love it.’

A short time later they sat in the larger of the two rooms, a scarred table between them on which sat a stubby candle with a badly smoking wick, and a clay jug of sour ale. The two assassins held tin cups, both of which leaked.

Since pouring the ale, Krute had said nothing, but now he grunted in amused surprise. ‘I just thought of something. You showing up, alive and hale, has just done what Krafar couldn’t do. We had a cult, Rallick Nom, worshipping the memory of you. Krafar outlawed it in the Guild, then tried to eradicate it — forced us deeper. Not deep enough for me — I’m under suspicion and they’ve gone and isolated me, like I was already dead. Old contacts. . look right through me, Rallick. It’s been damned hard.’

‘Krafar?’

‘Seba, Talo’s brood. In the squabble over who was gonna take over after Vorcan, he’s the one got through unscathed — still breathing, I mean. The Guild’s decimated, Rallick. Infighting, lots of good killers getting disgusted and just up and leaving. Down to Elingarth, mostly, with a few to Black Coral, if you can believe that. Even heard rumours that some went to Pale, to join the Malazan Claws.’

Rallick held up a red-stained hand. ‘A moment, damn you. What idiot decided on a cult?’

Krute shrugged. ‘Just sort of happened, Rallick. Not really worship — that was the wrong word. It’s more like a. . a philosophy. A philosophy of assassination. No magic, for one. Poisons, lots of poisons. And otataral dust if we can get it. But Seba Krafar wants to take us back to all that magic, even though you made it obvious which way was the better one, the surer one. The man’s stubborn — it’s in the blood with them, eh?’ Krute slapped the table, momentarily knocking over the candle, which he hastened to right before the paltry flame went out. ‘Can’t wait to see Krafar’s face when you walk in-’

‘You will have to,’ Rallick replied. ‘Something else, friend. You don’t say a word, to anyone.’

Krute smiled knowingly. ‘You plan on an ambush, don’t you? You, stepping over Krafar’s body, to take mastery of the Guild. And you need to make plans — and I can help you there, tell you the ones sure to be loyal to you, sure to back you-’

‘Be quiet,’ Rallick said. ‘There’s something you need to know.’

‘What?’

‘The night I disappeared, recall it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Someone else vanished that night too.’

Krute blinked. ‘Well, yes-’

‘And now I am back,’

‘You are.’

Rollick drank down a mouthful of ale. Then another.

Krute stared, then swore, ‘Her, too?’

‘Yes.’

Draining his cup, Krute quickly refilled it, then leaned back. ‘Gods below. Poor Krafar. You working with her on this, Rallick?’

‘No.’

‘Not that she’d need help-’

‘I don’t know where she is, Krute. I don’t know what she’s planning. If anything. I don’t know, and can’t guess, and neither can you.’

‘So, what do we do, Rallick?’

‘You change nothing, stay with your routine.’

Krute snorted. ‘What routine? Slow starvation?’

‘I have coin, enough for both of us. Hidden here and there.’ Rallick rose. ‘I assume the rooftops are quiet these nights.’

‘Except for thieves, coming out like mice with not an owl to be seen — like I said, the Guild’s on its knees.’

‘All right. I will return before dawn. For now, Krute, we do nothing.’

‘I’m good at that.’

Rallick grimaced, but said nothing as he turned to the window and unlocked the shutters.

He didn’t need to say anything, as far as Krute was concerned. True enough, Krute was good at doing nothing. But Rallick Nom wasn’t. He wasn’t good at that at all. Oh, this is going to be fun, isn’t it?

The murmurings chased him down the alley, guttural noises issuing from a score of fanged mouths, tongues wiggling, black lips lifting clear. The glimmer and flash of rolling eyes in the gloom. Looking back over one shoulder, Iskaral Pust, Magus and High Priest of Shadow, bhokaral god, made faces at his worshippers. He cursed them in twitters. He waggled his tongue. He bared his teeth and bulged his eyes.

And did this frighten them off? Why, no! The very opposite, if such madness could be believed. They scrabbled ever closer, still clutching their loot from hapless victims in the markets, their faces writhing in constipated anguish or something equally dire. Infuriating!

‘Never mind, never mind them. I have tasks, missions, deeds of great import. I have stuff to do.’

And so he hurried on, kicking through rubbish, listening to the creatures behind him kicking through the same rubbish. He paused at each alley mouth, shot quick glances up and down the streets, then darted across to the next opening. In his wake, the bhokarala gathered in a clump at the alley mouths, looked one way, looked the other, and then tore off in pursuit.

A short time later he skidded to a halt, the sound of his heels echoed a moment later by countless claws gouging cobblestones. Iskaral Pust pulled at his hair and whirled. The crouching bhokarala all had their knobby fists up to either side of their tiny skulls.

‘Leave me be!’ he hissed.

They hissed back at him.

He spat.

And was sprayed with gobs of foul saliva.

He beat at his head.

They pounded their own heads with fistfuls of jewellery and globes of fruit.

Eyes narrowing (eyes narrowing), Iskaral Pust slowly stood on one leg. Watched the bhokarala stand tottering on single legs.

‘Gods below,’ he muttered, ‘they’ve all gone entirely insane.’

Spinning round once more, he glared across at the squat, octagonal temple fifty paces down the street to his right. Its walls were a chaotic collection of niches and misshapen angles, a veritable plethora of shadows. Iskaral Pust sighed. ‘My new abode. A modest hovel, but it suits my needs. I plan to do it up, of course, when there’s time. Oh, you like the gold place settings and silk napkins? Just something I threw together, mind, but it pleases me well enough. Spiders? No, no spiders round here, oh, no. Simply not allowed. Ghastly creatures, yes, disgusting. Never bathe, don’t you know. Ghastly.’

Wordless singsong at his back.

‘Oh, don’t mind them. My ex-wife’s relations — if I’d have known, well of course I’d never have taken the leap, if you know what I mean. But that’s how it is — get married and you end up saddled with the whole family menagerie. And even though she’s gone now, nothing but a dried-out husk with her legs sticking up in the air, well, I admit to feeling responsible for her hapless kin. No, no, she looked nothing like them. Worse, actually. I confess to a momentary insanity. The curse of being young, I suppose. When did we get married? Why, four, five years ago now, yes. Only seems like a lifetime and I’m glad, so glad, to be done with it now. More wine, sweetness?’

Smiling, Iskaral Pust set out for the temple.

Shadowed steps, leading to a shadowed landing beneath a pitted lintel stone; oh, this was all very well done. The twin doors were huge, very nearly gates, panelled in polished bronze moulded into an enormous image of charging Hounds. Delicious touch! Lovingly rendered, all that snarling terror.

‘Yes, the doors were my idea, by my own hand in fact — I dabble. Sculpture, tapestry, portraiture, caricature, potterature — pottery, I mean, I was simply using the technical term. See this funerary urn, exquisite, yes. She’s inside. Yes, my beloved departed, my belovedly departed, my blessedly departed, hee hee — oh, folding up her limbs was no easy task, let me tell you, quite a tight fit. I know, hard to believe she’s in there, in an urn barely larger than a jar of wine. I have many skills, yes, as befits the most glorious mortal servant of High House Shadow. But I’ll tell you this, she fought hard all the way in!’

He crouched in front of the bronze doors, glowering into the gaping jaws of the Hounds. Reached up one knuckled hand, and rapped Baran’s nose,

A faint, hollow reverberation.

‘I knew it,’ he said, nodding.

The bhokarala fidgeted on the steps, knocking each other on their snouts, then sagely nodding.

The door to the left opened a crack. A hood-shrouded head poked out at about chest height, the face peering up vague and blurry. ‘We don’t want any,’ said a thin, whispery woman’s voice.

‘You don’t want any what?’

‘They’ll soil the furniture.’

Iskaral Pust scowled. ‘She’s insane. Why is everyone I meet insane? Listen, wretched acolyte, step aside. Scrape your pimply forehead on the tiles and kiss my precious feet. I am none other than Iskaral Pust.’

‘Who?’

‘Iskaral Pust! High Priest of Shadow. Magus of the High House. Our god’s most trusted, favoured, valued servant! Now, move aside, let me in! I claim this temple by right of seniority, by right of rightful hierarchy, by right of natural superiority! I will speak with the High Priestess immediately! Wake her up, clean her up, prop her up — whatever you need to do to get her ready for me.’

The door creaked back and all at once the acolyte straightened, revealing herself to be ridiculously tall. She swept her hood back to display an exquisitely moulded face surrounded by long, straight, rust-red hair. In a deep, melodic voice she said, ‘I am High Priestess Sordiko Qualm of the Darujhistan Temple of Shadow.’

‘Ah, a master of disguise. Just like me.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’

‘You can?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh, isn’t that funny.’ He tilted his head. ‘Not funny at all.’ Then smiled winningly up at her. ‘And what do you think I am, dear?’

‘Some sort of sunburned toad, I believe.’

‘Just what I want you to think. Now, invite me in, before I lose my temperature.’

‘Temper, you mean.’

‘No, temperature. It’s getting chilly.’

Her amber eyes shifted to the steps behind him. ‘What of your offspring?’

‘Ha ha. Offspring they are not. Never mind them. They can weep, they can whimper, they can grovel, they can-’

‘Right now they are all waving their hands about in perfect mimicry of you, Iskaral Pust. Why would they do that?’

‘Forget them, I said.’

Shrugging, she stepped back.

Iskaral Pust scrambled inside.

Sordiko Qualm shut the door and locked it. ‘Now, you claim to be a High Priest. From where?’

‘Seven Cities, the secret monastery.’

‘What monastery?’

‘The one that’s a secret, of course. You don’t need to know and I don’t need to tell you. Show me to my chambers, I’m tired. And hungry. I want a seven-course supper, plenty of expensive, suitably delicate wine, and nubile female servants eager to appease my delighted whim.’

‘I cannot, alas, think of a single servant here who would touch your whim, as you so quaintly call it. As for the rest, let it not be said I am remiss in according fellow seneschals every courtesy as befits a guest of my temple.’

‘Your temple, is it?’ Iskaral Pust sniggered. ‘Not for long, but say nothing at the moment. Leave her such pathetic delusions. Smile, yes, and nod — and how in the Abyss did they get inside?’

The bhokarala were now crowding behind the High Priestess, heads bobbing.

She swung about. ‘I don’t know. There are wards. . should be impossible. Most disturbing indeed.’

‘Never mind,’ Iskaral Pust said. ‘Lead on, underling.’

One fine eyebrow lifted. ‘You claim to be the Magus of High House Shadow — that is quite an assertion. Have you proof?’

‘Proof? I am what I am and that is that. Pray, pray. Pray, I mean, do pray and perchance all manner of revelation will afflict you, humble you, reduce you to wondering adoration. Oh,’ he added, ‘wait until she does just that! Oh, the song will change then, won’t it just! Never mind servants servicing my whim, it will be this glorious woman!’

She stared at him a moment longer, then, in a whirl of robes, swung about and gestured that he follow. The grace she no doubt sought was fouled almost immediately as she had to kick and stumble her way through the squall of bhokaral, each of which bared teeth in rollicking but silent laughter. She shot a glance back at Iskaral Pust, but not, he was certain, in time to see his noiseless laugh.

Into the sanctum they went.

‘Not long,’ Iskaral Pust whispered. ‘Those doors need paint, yes. Not long now at all. .’

‘Gods below,’ the guard gasped, ‘you’re bigger than a Barghast!’

Mappo Runt ducked his head, embarrassed that he had so shocked this passing watchman. The guard had staggered back, clutching momentarily at his chest — yes, he was past his prime, but it seemed that the gesture had been just that, a gesture, and the Trell’s sudden dread that he had inadvertently sent the first citizen he met stumbling through Hood’s Gate slowly gave way to shame. ‘I am sorry, sir,’ he now said. ‘I thought to ask you a question — nothing more.’

The guard lifted his lantern higher between them. ‘Are you a demon, then?’

‘You regularly encounter demons on your patrols? A truly extraordinary city.’

‘Of course not. I mean, it’s rare.’

‘Ah. I am a Trell, from the plains and hills east of Nemil, which lies west of the Jhag Odhan in Seven Cities,’

‘What, then, was your question?’

‘I seek the Temple of Burn, sir,’

‘I think it best that I escort you there, Trell. You have been keeping to the alleys this night, haven’t you?’

‘I thought it best.’

‘Rightly so. And you and I shall do the same. In any case, you are in the Gadrobi District, while the temple you want is in the Daru District. We have some way to go.’

‘You are very generous with your time, sir.’

The guard smiled. ‘Trell, you plunging into any crowded street is likely to cause a riot. By taking charge of you, I hope to prevent that. Thus, not generous. Simply doing my duty.’

Mappo bowed again. ‘I thank you even so.’

‘A moment, while I douse this light, then follow me — closely, please.’

The fete’s celebrants in this quarter seemed to be concentrated in the main streets, bathed in the blue glow of the gas lamps. It was not difficult to avoid such places with the watchman guiding him down narrow, twisting and turning alleys and lanes. And those few figures they encountered quickly slunk away upon seeing the guard’s uniform (and, perhaps, Mappo’s massive bulk).

Until, behind a decrepit tavern of some sort, they came upon two corpses. Swearing under his breath, the guard crouched down beside one, fumbling to relight his lantern. ‘This is becoming a problem,’ he muttered, as he cranked the wick high and a golden glow filled the area, revealing filth-smeared cobblestones and the gleam of pooled blood. Mappo watched as he rolled over the first body. ‘This one’s a plain beating. Fists and boots — I knew him, poor man. Losing a battle with spirits. . well, the battle’s over now, Beru bless his soul.’ He moved on to the next one. ‘Ah, yes. Hood take the one that did this — four others just the same. That we know of. We still cannot fathom the weapon he uses. . perhaps a shovel handle. Gods, but it’s brutal.’

‘Sir,’ ventured Mappo, ‘it seems you have more pressing tasks this night. Directions-’

‘No, I will take you, Trell. Both have been dead for a couple of bells now — a little longer won’t matter. I think it’s time,’ he added, straightening, ‘for a mage or a priest to be brought into this.’

‘I wish you success,’ Mappo said.

‘I can never figure it,’ the guard said as he led the Trell onward. ‘It’s as if peace is not good enough — someone needs to crawl out of the pit with blood dripping from his hands. Delivering strife. Misery.’ He shook his head. ‘Could I but shake reason into such abominations. There’s no need. No one wants them and no one wants what they do. What’s needed? That’s what I wish I knew. For them, I mean. What do they need, what do they want? Is it just that sweet sip of power? Domination? The sense of control over who lives and who dies? Gods, I wish I knew what fills their brains.’

‘No, sir,’ said Mappo, ‘be glad you do not. Even the beasts succumb to such aggression. Killers among your kind, among my kind, are just that — the savagery of beasts mated with intelligence, or what passes for intelligence. They dwell in a murky world, sir, confused and fearful, stained dark with envy and malice. And in the end, they die as they lived. Frightened and alone, with every memory of power revealed as illusion, as farce.’

The guard had halted, had turned to regard the Trell as he spoke. Just beyond the alley’s mouth was a wall and, to the left, the unlit cave of a tunnel or a gate. After a moment the man grunted, then led Mappo on, into the reeking passageway through the wall, where the Trell warrior was forced to duck.

‘You must be a formidable tribe back in your homeland,’ the guard observed, ‘if your kin are as big and broad as you are.’

‘Alas, we are, generally, not killers, sir. If we had been, perhaps we would have fared better. As it is, the glory of my people has waned.’ Mappo then halted and looked back at the gate they had just passed through. He could see that the wall was but a fragment, a stretch no more than fifty paces in length. At both ends leaning buildings thrust into the spaces where it should have continued on.

The guard laughed. ‘Aye, not much left of the Gadrobi Wall. Just this one gate, and it’s used mostly by thieves and the like. Come, not much further.’

The Temple of Burn had seen better days. Graffiti covered the plain limestone walls, some the blockish list of prayers, others elliptical sigils and obscure local symbols. A few raw curses, or so Mappo suspected from the efforts made to deface the messages. Rubbish clogged the gutter surrounding the foundations, through which rats ambled.

The guard led him along the wall and to the right, where they came out on to a slightly wider thoroughfare. The temple’s formal entrance was a descending set of stairs, down to a landing that looked ankle deep in rainwater. Mappo regarded it in some dismay.

The guard seemed to notice. ‘Yes, the cult is fading. She had slept too long, I suppose. I know I have no business asking, but what do you seek here?’

‘I am not sure,’ Mappo admitted.

‘Ah. Well, Burn’s blessings on you, then.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

The guard set out to retrace his route, no doubt returning to the alley with the corpses. The memory of them remained with Mappo, leaving him with a gnawing disquiet. He had glimpsed something of the mysterious wounds on the second body. Brutal indeed. Would there could be an end to such things, yes. A true bless shy;ing of peace.

He made his way down the steps. Splashed through the pool to the doors.

They opened before he could knock.

A gaunt, sad-faced man stood before him. ‘You had to know, Mappo Runt of the Trell, that it could not last. You stand before me like a severed limb, and all that you bleed stains the ether, a flow seeming without end.’

‘There will be an end,’ Mappo replied. ‘When I have found him once more.’

‘He is not here.’

‘I know,’

‘Would you walk the veins of the earth, Mappo Runt? Is that why you have come to this temple?’

‘Yes.’

‘You choose a most perilous path. There is poison. There is bitter cold. Ice, stained with foreign blood. There is fire that blinds those who wield it. There is wind that cries out an eternal death cry. There is darkness and it is crowded. There is grief, more than even you can withstand. There is yielding and that which will not yield. Pressures too vast even for one such as you. Will you still walk Burn’s Path, Mappo Runt?’

‘I must.’

The sad face looked even sadder. ‘I thought as much. I could have made my list of warnings even longer, you know. We could have stood in our places for the rest of the night, you in that sodden pool, me standing here uttering dire details. And still, at long last, you would say “I must” and we would have wasted all that time. Me hoarse and you asleep on your feet.’

‘You sound almost regretful, Priest.’

‘Perhaps I am at that. It was a most poetic list.’

‘Then by all means record it in full when you write your log of this fell night.’

‘I like that notion. Thank you. Now, come inside, and wipe your feet. But hurry — we have been preparing the ritual since your ship docked.’

‘The breadth of your knowledge is impressive,’ Mappo said as, ducking, he stepped inside.

‘Yes, it is. Now, follow me.’

A short corridor, ceiling dripping, into a broader transept, across a dingy mosaic floor, down a second corridor, this one lined with niches, each home to a holy object — misshapen chunks of raw ore, crystals of white, rose and purple quartz and amethyst, starstones, amber, copper, flint and petrified wood and bones. At the end of this passage the corridor opened out into a wider colonnaded main chamber, and here, arrayed in two rows, waited acolytes, each wearing brown robes and holding aloft a torch.

The acolytes chanted in some arcane tongue as the High Priest led Mappo down between the rows.

Where an altar should have been, at the far end, there was instead a crevasse in the floor, as if the very earth had opened up beneath the altar, swallowing it and the dais it stood on. From the fissure rose bitter, hot smoke.

The sad-faced High Priest walked up to its very, edge then turned to face Mappo. ‘Burn’s Gate awaits you, Trell.’

Mappo approached and looked down.

To see molten rock twenty spans below, a seething river sweeping past.

‘Of course,’ the High Priest said, ‘what you see is not in this realm. Were it so, Darujhistan would now be a ball of fire bright as a newborn sun. The caverns of gas and all that.’

‘If I jump down there,’ Mappo said, ‘I will be roasted to a crisp.’

‘Yes. I know what you must be thinking.’

‘Oh?’

‘Some gate.’

‘Ah, yes. Accurate enough.’

‘You must be armoured against such forces. This is the ritual I mentioned ear shy;lier. Are you ready, Mappo Runt?’

‘You wish to cast some sort of protective spell on me?’

‘No,’ he replied, with an expression near to weeping, ‘we wish to bathe you in blood.’

Barathol Mekhar could see the pain in Scillara’s eyes, when they turned inward in a private moment, and he saw how Chaur held himself close to her, protective in some instinctive fashion as might be a dog with a wounded master. When she caught Barathol studying her, she was quick with a broad smile, and each time he felt as if something struck his heart, like a fist against a closed door. She was indeed a most beautiful woman, the kind of beauty that emerged after a second look, or even a third, unfolding like a dark flower in jungle shadows. The pain in those eyes only deepened his anguish.

Cutter was a damned fool. Yes, there had been another woman — his first love, most likely — but she was gone. Time had come to cut the anchor chain. No one could drown for ever. This was what came of being so young, and deftness with knives was a poor replacement for the skill of surviving everything the world could throw in the way. Longing for what could never be found was pointless, a waste of time.

Barathol had left his longing behind, somewhere in the sands of Seven Cities. A sprawl of motionless bodies, mocking laughter disguised as unceasing wind, a lizard perched like a gift on a senseless black-crusted hand. Moments of madness — oh, long before the madness of the T’lan Imass in Aren — when he had railed at remorseless time, at how too late was something that could not be changed — not with blood spilled at the foot of a god, not with a knife poised to carve out his own heart. Too late simply grinned at him, lifeless, too poignant for sanity.

Those two words had begun a chant, then stride by stride a gleeful echo, and they had lifted to a roar in the raiders’ camp, amidst screams and the clash of iron; lifted, yes, into a deafening maelstrom that crashed inside Barathol’s skull, a surging tide with nowhere to go. Too late cannot be escaped. It crooned with every failed parry, every failed dodge from a scything weapon. It exploded in eyes as death hammered home, exploded along with blood and fluids. It lunged in the wake of toppling bodies. It scrawled messages (ever the same message) in the sands dying men crawled across.

He could have chanted for ever, but he had left no one alive. Oh, a dozen horses that he gave away to a caravan some days later, a gift for taking in the half-dead warrior, for treating his raging fever, for cleaning his wounds and burning out infection. They would accept no payment for their efforts — they could do nothing for the bleak anguish in his soul, they explained, and so to ask for anything would be dishonourable. Now a gift, well, that was different.

In the desert nothing disguised time’s cruel face. Its skin was stretched to the bone, its lone eye burned the sky and its gaping mouth was cold and airless as a mountain peak. The traders understood this. They were as much a tribe of the desert as anyone, after all. They gave him bladders of water — enough to take him to the nearest garrison outpost ‘Aye, give the Mezla that — they know how to build waystations and equip them well. They turn no one away, friend.’

They gave him the strongest of the raiders’ horses, a fine saddle, jerked meat and dried fruit. They gave him feed for the mount to last four days and, finally, they showed him the track he would take, the path that cheated death and yes, it was the only one.

Death stalked him, they said. Waited, for now, out beyond the glare of the dung-fires, but when Barathol finally rode out the reaper with the long legs would set out after him, singing of time, singing of the hunger that never ended, never slowed, never did anything but devour all in its path.

‘When longing comes to you, friend, step not into its snare, for longing is the fatal bait — find yourself in its snare and you will be dragged, dragged through all the time allotted you, Barathol Mekhar, and nothing you grasp will remain, all torn from your fingers. All that you see will race past in a blur. All that you taste will be less than a droplet, quickly stripped away. Longing will drag you into the stalker’s bony arms, and you will have but a single, last look back, on to your life — a moment of clarity that can only be some unknown god’s most bitter gift — and you will understand, all at once, all that you have wasted, all that you let escape, all that you might have had.

‘Now ride, friend. And ’ware the traps of your mind.’

Too late. Those two words haunted him, would perhaps for ever haunt him. The cruel chant had filled his head when he’d looked down upon Chaur’s drowned face. Too late!

But he’d spat into that gleeful cry. That time, yes, he had. He had said no and he had won.

Such victories were without measure.

Enough to hold a man up for a while longer. Enough to give him the courage to meet a woman’s eyes, to meet unflinching what he saw there. .

In cavorting, clashing light, faces smeared past as they walked through the crowd. Rollicking songs in the local tongue, jars and flasks thrust at them in drunken generosity. Shouted greetings, strangers in clutches by walls, hands groping beneath disordered clothing. The smell of sex everywhere — Barathol slowed and half turned.

Scillara was laughing. ‘You lead us into most unusual places, Barathol. This street called out to you, did it?’

Chaur was staring at the nearest pair, mouth hanging open as his head unconsciously began bobbing in time with their rhythmic thrusts.

‘Gods below,’ Barathol muttered. ‘I wasn’t paying much attention.’

‘So you say. Of course, you were on that boat for a long time, pretty much alone, I’d wager — unless Spite decided-’

‘No,’ he cut in firmly. ‘Spite decided nothing of the sort.’

‘Well then, the city beckons with all its carnal delights! This very street, in fact-’

‘Enough of that, please.’

‘You can’t think I’ll ease up on you, Barathol?’

Grimacing, he squinted at Chaur. ‘This is disturbing him-’

‘It is not! It’s exciting him, and why wouldn’t it?’

‘Scillara, he may have a man’s body, but his is a child’s mind.’

Her smile went away and she nodded thoughtfully. ‘I know. Awkward.’

‘Best we leave this,’ Barathol said.

‘Right. Let us find somewhere to eat supper — we can make plans there. But the issue won’t go away, I suspect — he’s caught the scent, after all.’

Moving to either side of Chaur, they turned him about and began guiding him away. He resisted briefly, but then fell in step, joining in a nearby chorus of singers with loud, wordless sounds not quite matching their somewhat better efforts.

‘We really are the lost ones, aren’t we?’ Scillara said. ‘We need to find ourselves a purpose. . in life. Aye, let’s grasp our biggest, most glaring flaw, shall we? Never mind what to do tomorrow or the day after. What to do with the rest of our lives, now there’s a worthy question.’

He groaned.

‘Seriously. If you could have anything, anything at all, Barathol, what would it be?’

A second chance. ‘There’s no point in that question, Scillara. I’ll settle for a smithy and a good day’s work, each and every day. I’ll settle for an honest life.’

‘Then that’s where we’ll start. A list of necessary tasks. Equipment, location, Guild fees and all that.’

She was trying hard, he could see. Trying hard to keep her own feelings away from this moment, and each moment to come, for as long as she could.

I accept no payment, Scillara, but I will take your gift. And give you one in turn. ‘Very well. I can certainly use your help in all that.’

‘Good. Look, there’s a crowded courtyard with tables and I see food and people eating. We can stand over a table until the poor fool sitting at it leaves. Shouldn’t take long.’

Blend withdrew her bared foot from Picker’s crotch and slowly sat straight. ‘Be subtle,’ she murmured, ‘but take a look at the trio that just showed up.’

Picker scowled. ‘Do you always have to make me uncomfortable in public, Blend?’

‘Don’t be silly. You’re positively glowing-’

‘With embarrassment, yes! And look at Antsy — his face is like a sun-baked crabshell.’

‘It’s always like that,’ Blend said.

‘I don’t mind,’ Antsy said, licking his lips. ‘I don’t mind at all what you two get up to, in public or in that favourite room you use, the one with the thin walls and creaking floor and ill-fitting door-’

‘A door you were supposed to fix,’ snapped Picker, only now half turning to take in the newcomers. She flinched, then huddled down over the table. ‘Gods below. Now, don’t that grizzed one look familiar’.’

‘I been trying to fix it, honest. I work on it all the time-’

‘You work all right, with one eye pressed to the crack,’ Blend said. ‘You think we don’t know you’re there, sweating and grunting as you-’

‘Be quiet!’ Picker hissed. ‘Didn’t you two hear me? I said-’

‘He looks just like Kalam Mekhar, aye,’ Antsy said, poking with his knife at the chicken carcass on the platter in the centre of the table. ‘But he’s not Kalam, is he? Too tall, too big, too friendly-looking.’ He frowned and tugged at his moustache. ‘Who was it said we should eat here tonight?’

‘That bard,’ said Picker.

‘Our bard?’

‘For the rest of the week, aye.’

‘He recommended it?’

‘He said we should eat here tonight, is what he said. Is that a recommendation? Might be. But maybe not. He’s an odd one. Anyway, he said it would be open till dawn.’

‘The chicken was too scrawny. And I don’t know who they got to pluck the damned thing, but I’m still chewing on feathers.’

‘You were supposed to avoid the feet, Antsy. They didn’t even wash those.’

‘Of course they did!’ Antsy protested. ‘That was sauce-’

‘The sauce was red. The stuff on the feet was dark brown. Want something to get embarrassed about, Picker, just drag Antsy along to supper.’

‘The feet was the best part,’ the Falari said.

‘He’s Seven Cities for sure,’ Picker noted. ‘All three of them, I’d wager.’

‘The fat one likes her rustleaf.’

‘If she’s fat, Antsy, then so am I.’

Antsy looked away.

Picker cuffed him on the side of the head.

‘Ow, what was that for?’

‘I wear armour and quilted underpadding, remember?’

‘Well, she’s not, is she?’

‘She’s delicious,’ Blend observed. ‘And I bet she don’t get embarrassed by anything much.’

Picker offered her a sweet smile. ‘Why not go stick your foot in and see?’

‘Ooh, jealous.’

Antsy sat up, suddenly excited. ‘If your legs was long enough, Blend, you could do both! And I could-’

Two knives slammed point first into the table in front of the ex-sergeant. His bushy brows shot upward, eyes bulging. ‘Just an idea,’ he muttered. ‘No reason to get all uppity, you two.’

‘Could be he’s another Kalam,’ Picker said. ‘A Claw.’

Antsy choked on something, coughed, hacked, then managed a breath. He leaned forward until he was very nearly lying on the table from the chest up. He chewed on his moustache for a moment, eyes darting between Picker and Blend. ‘Listen, if he is, then we should kill him.’

‘Why?’

‘Could be he’s hunting us, Picker. Could be he’s come to finish off the Bridgeburners once and for all.’

‘Why would any of them care?’ Picker asked.

‘Maybe the bard set us up, did you think of that?’

Blend sighed and rose. ‘How about I just go up and ask him?’

‘You want to take a grab at a tit,’ Picker said, smiling again. ‘So, go ahead, Blend. Go on. See if she blows you a kiss.’

Shrugging, Blend set out to where the three newcomers had just acquired a table.

Antsy choked again, plucked at Picker’s sleeve and gasped, ‘She’s heading straight over!’

Picker licked her lips. ‘I didn’t really mean-’

‘She’s almost there — they seen her — don’t turn round!’

Barathol saw the Malazan threading her way to where they now sat. By hue of skin, by cast of features, by any obvious measure one might find, there was nothing that differentiated the woman from any local Daru or Genabarii; yet he knew, instantly. A Malazan, and a veteran. A damned marine.

Scillara noted his attention and half turned in her chair. ‘Good taste, Barathol — and it seems she likes-’

‘Quiet,’ Barathol muttered.

The slim woman came up, soft brown eyes fixed on Barathol. And in Malazan, she said, ‘I knew Kalam.’

He snorted. ‘Yes, he’s a popular man.’

‘Cousin?’

He shrugged. ‘That will do. Are you with the embassy?’

‘No. Are you?’

Barathol’s eyes narrowed. Then he shook his head. ‘We arrived today. I never directly served in your empire.’

She seemed to think about that. Then she nodded. ‘We’re retired. Causing no trouble to anyone.’

‘Sounds retired indeed.’

‘We run a bar. K’rul’s, in the Estates District, near Worry Gate.’

‘And how does it fare?’

‘Slow to start, but we’re settled in now. Getting by.’

‘That’s good.’

‘Come by, I’ll set you the first round.’

‘We just might.’

She glanced down at Scillara then, and winked. Then turned away and walked back to her table.

‘What just happened?’ Scillara asked after a moment.

Barathol smiled. ‘Do you mean the wink or all the rest?’

‘I figured out the wink, thank you. The rest.’

‘They’re deserters, I’d wager. Worried that we might be imperial. That I might be a Claw, come to deliver a message from the Empress — the usual message to deserters. They knew Kalam Mekhar, a relation of mine, who was once a Claw, and then a Bridgeburner.’

‘A Bridgeburner. I’ve heard about them. The nastiest company ever. Started in Seven Cities and then left with Dujek.’

‘The same.’

‘So they thought you were here to kill them.’

‘Yes.’

‘So one of them just decided to walk up and talk to you. That seems either incredibly brave or profoundly stupid.’

‘The former,’ said Barathol. ‘About what you’d expect from a Bridgeburner, deserter or otherwise.’

Scillara twisted round, quite deliberately, to study the two women and the red-bearded man at the table on the other side of the plaza. And did not flinch from the steady regard they then fixed on her.

Amused, Barathol waited until Scillara slowly swung back and reached for her jar of wine, before saying, ‘Speaking of brave. .’

‘Oh, I just don’t go for that kowtowing stuff.’

‘I know.’

‘So do they, now.’

‘Right. Shall we join them, then?’

Scillara suddenly grinned. ‘Tell you what, let’s buy them a pitcher, then watch and see if they drink from it.’

‘Gods, woman, you play sharp games.’

‘Nah, it’s just flirting.’

‘With what?’

Her smile broadened, and she gestured over a nearby server.

‘Now what?’ Antsy demanded.

‘Guess they’re thirsty,’ Picker said.

‘It’s that quiet one who worries me,’ Antsy continued. ‘He’s got that blank look, like the worst kinda killer.’

‘He’s a simpleton, Antsy,’ said Blend.

‘Worst kinda killer there is.’

‘Oh, really. He’s addled, a child’s brain — look how he looks round at everything. Look at that silly grin.’

‘It’s probably an act, Blend. Tell her, Pick, it’s an act. That’s your Claw, right there, the one that’s gonna kill us starting with me, since I ain’t never had no luck, except the pushin’ kind. My skin’s all clammy already, like I was practising being a corpse. It’s no fun, being a corpse — take it from me.’

‘That explains the fingernails,’ Blend said.

Antsy frowned at her.

The server who had just been at the other table now arrived, delivering a large clay jar. ‘Wine,’ she said. ‘Compliments of them three o’er there.’

Picker snorted. ‘Oh, that’s cute. And now they want to see if we drink from it. Get that wench back here, Blend. Buy them a bottle of white apricot nectar. Returning the favour, like.’

Blend rolled her eyes. ‘This could get expensive,’ she said as she rose.

‘I ain’t drinkin’ from nothing I didn’t buy myself,’ Antsy said. ‘We shoulda brought Bluepearl, he could’ve sniffed out whatever. Or Mallet. They got poisons so secret here there’s no taste, no smell, the one drop that kills ya don’t even feel wet. Why, all you need to do is look in its direction!’

‘What in Hood’s name are you going on about, Antsy?’

‘You heard me, Pick-’

‘Pour me some of this wine, then. Let’s see if they got good taste.’

‘I ain’t touching that jar, could be powdered with something-’

‘Only if the wench was in on it. If she wasn’t and there was, she’d be dead, right?’

‘She don’t look too healthy to me.’

‘You’d look pretty rough too with all the cysts she’s got on her head and neck.’

‘Some Daru poisons show up as knobby lumps-’

‘Gods below, Antsy!’ Picker reached across and collected the jar, filled her goblet. Drank down a mouthful of the amber liquid. ‘There. Not half bad. We got better in our cellar, I’m pleased to say.’

Antsy was studying her with slightly bulging eyes.

Blend returned, sank into a slouch in her chair. ‘On its way,’ she said. ‘How was the wine, Pick?’

‘Passing. Want some?’

‘All this trudging back and forth has worked up a fierce thirst, so fill it up, darling.’

‘You’re both suicidal,’ Antsy said.

‘We’re not the ones feeling clammy, are we?’

‘There are some poisons,’ Picker said, ‘that kill the person next to the one who took it.’

The ex-sergeant lurched back in his chair. ‘Damn you — I heard of those — you killed me!’

‘Calm down,’ Blend interjected. ‘She was teasing you, Antsy. Honest. Right, Picker?’

‘Well. .’

‘If you don’t want his knife in your throat, Pick, tell him quick.’

‘Aye, a jibe. A jest. Teasing, nothing more. Besides, if you’re naturally clammy, you’re immune.’

‘You must think me an idiot, Pick. Both of you!’ When neither objected to that assertion the Falari snarled and took the jar from Blend, raised it defiantly to his mouth and downed the rest of the contents in a cascade of gulps, his oversized Adam’s apple bobbing as if he was trying to swallow a cork.

‘A fearless idiot,’ Blend said, shaking her head.

Antsy sucked on his moustache ends for moment, then thumped the empty jar on to the tabletop. He belched,

They watched as the wench delivered the bottle of white apricot nectar. A brief conversation with the woman ensued, whereupon she flounced off with a toss of her knobby head. The pleasantly plump woman and the Mekhar both poured a healthy measure of the liquor. With a bold toast in the Malazans’ direction, they sipped.

‘Look at that,’ Blend said, smiling, ‘such handsome shades of green.’

And the woman was on her feet, was marching over.

Antsy set a hand on the grip of his short sword.

In Malazan tainted with the accent of Seven Cities, the woman — with a hard frown — said, ‘You trying to kill us or something? That was awful!’

‘It gets better,’ Blend said with an innocent blink.

‘Really? And when would that be?’

‘Well, embalmers swear by it.’

The woman snorted. ‘Damned Mezla. This is war, you know.’ And she spun about and walked, a little unsteadily, back to her table.

The server was simply waiting in the wings, it turned out, as she arrived at the table moments after the Seven Cities woman sank down into her chair. More conversation. Another toss of the head, and off she trundled.

The bottle she showed up with was of exquisite multihued glass, shaped like some giant insect.

‘This is for you!’ the server snapped. ‘And I ain’t playing no more no matter how much you tip me. Think I can’t work this out? Two women and a man here, one woman and two men o’er there! You are all disgusting and when I tell the manager, well, banning the likes of you won’t hurt us none, will it?’ A whirl, nose in the air, and a most impressive stalk to the restaurant’s nether regions or wherever it was managers squatted in the nervous gloom common to their kind.

The three Malazans said nothing for a long time, each with eyes fixed upon that misshapen bottle.

Then Picker, licking dry lips, asked, ‘Male or female?’

‘Female,’ Antsy said in a thin, grating voice, as if being squeezed from below. ‘Should smell. . sweet.’

Clearing her throat, Blend said, ‘They just won the war, didn’t they?’

Picker looked at her. ‘A damned slaughter, too.’

Antsy moaned. ‘We got to drink it, don’t we?’

The two women nodded.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘I once plunged straight into a squad of Crimson Guard-’

‘You fell out of the tree-’

‘-and made it out alive. And I once stood down a charging wild boar-’

‘Wasn’t wild, Antsy. It was Trotts’s pet, and you made a grunt that sounded just like a sow.’

‘-and at the last moment I jumped right over it-’

‘It threw you into a wall.’

‘-so if anyone here’s got the guts to start, it’s me.’ And with that he reached for the bottle of Quorl Milk. Paused to study the sigil on the stopper. ‘Green Moranth. The cheap brand. Figures.’

The normal dosage was a thimbleful. Sold exclusively to women who wanted to get pregnant. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn’t. Maybe all it did was shock the body into pregnancy — anything to avoid another taste of that stuff.

Picker drew out a pale handkerchief and waved it over her head. They’d have to offer them rooms now, at least a week’s stay, she judged. Us Mezla just got trounced. Gods, it’s about time we met folk worth meeting.

Makes it almost worth drinking Quorl Milk.

Antsy drank down a mouthful then set the bottle down. And promptly passed out. Crumpling like a man without bones, except for his head which crunched audibly on the cobbles.

Almost worth it. Sighing, she reached for the bottle. To Blend she said, ‘Good thing your foot’s been neutered, love.’

‘Don’t you mean sterile?’

‘I ain’t that delusional,’ Picker replied. ‘Be sure they promise to hire us all a carriage, before you drink, Blend.’

‘I will. See you tomorrow, sweetie.’

‘Aye.’

Crone circled the edge, fixing one eye then the other on the strange apparition swirling above the enchanted dais. The power of the High Alchemist’s sorcery was as sweet and intoxicating as the pollen of d’bayang poppies, but that which came from the demon was foul, alien — yet, the Great Raven knew, not quite as alien as it should be. Not to her and her kind, that is.

‘You are bold,’ she said to Baruk, who stood facing the dais with hands folded. ‘And the reach of your power, and will, is most impressive.’

‘Thank you,’ replied the High Alchemist, squinting at the demon he had conjured and then trapped. ‘Our conversations have been. . most enlightening. Of course, what we see here is not a true physical manifestation. A soul, I believe, disconnected from its corporeal self.’

‘With eyes of jade,’ Crone noted, beak opening in silent laughter. She hesitated, then asked, ‘What has it told you?’

Baruk smiled.

From the mantel above the fireplace Chillbais wheezed derisively and made insulting gestures with its stubby hands.

‘You should spike that thing to a wall,’ Crone hissed. ‘At the very least send it back up the chimney and thus out of my sight.’

Baruk spoke as if he had not heard Crone’s complaining: ‘Its flesh is very far away indeed. I was granted an image of the flesh — a human, as far as I could tell, which is in itself rather extraordinary. I was able to capture the soul due to its heightened meditative state, one in which the detachment is very nearly absolute. I doubt the original body draws breath ten times a bell. A most spiritual individual, Crone.’

The Great Raven retured her attention to the apparition. Studied its jade eyes, its jagged traceries of crackling filaments, pulsing like a slowed heart. ‘And you know, then,’ she said.

‘Yes. The demon is from the realm of the Fallen One. His birthplace.’

‘Meditating, you say. Seeking its god?’

‘That seems likely,’ Baruk murmured. ‘Reaching, touching. . recoiling.’

‘From the agony, from the ferocious fires of pain.’

‘I will send it home, soon.’

Crone half spread her wings and hopped down on to the tiles. Cocking her head, she fixed an eye upon the High Alchemist. ‘This is not simple curiosity.’

Baruk blinked, then turned away. ‘I had a guest, not so long ago.’

‘In truth?’

The High Alchemist paused, then shook his head. ‘Half-truth.’

‘Did he sit in a chair?’

‘Well now, that would hardly be appropriate, Crone.’

She laughed. ‘Shadowthrone.’

‘Please, do not act surprised,’ Baruk said. ‘Your master is well aware of such matters. Tell me, where are the rest of them?’

‘Them?’

‘The gods and goddesses. The ones cringing every time the Crippled God clears his throat. So eager for this war, as long as someone else does the fighting. None of this should be set at your Lord’s feet. I don’t know what Shadowthrone has offered Anomander Rake, but you would do well to warn your master, Crone. With Shadow, nothing is as it seems. Nothing.’

The Great Raven cackled, then said, ‘So true, so true.’ And now it was his turn, she noted, to regard her with growing suspicion. ‘Oh, Baruk, people raise standing stones, one after another, only to topple them down one by one. Is it not always the way? They dig holes only to fill them in again. As for us Great Ravens, why, we build nests only to tear them apart next season, all because the mad lizard in our skulls demands it. See your demon on the dais. It pays nothing to be spiritual, when it is the flesh that ever clamours for attention. So send him back, yes, that he can begin to repair all the severed tendons — whilst his comrades witness the distance of his gaze, and wonder, and yearn to find the same otherworldliness for themselves, fools that they all are.

‘Have you exhorted him to pray all the harder, Baruk? I thought as much, but it’s no use, I tell you, and who better to make such judgement? And consider this: my master is not blind. He has never been blind. He stands before a towering stone, yes, and would see it toppled. So, old friend, be sure to stay a safe distance.’

‘How can I?’ the High Alchemist retorted.

‘Send the soul home,’ Crone said again. ‘Look to the threat that even now creeps closer in the night, that is but moments from plucking the strands of your highest wards — to announce her arrival, yes, to evince her. . desperation.’ She hopped towards the nearest window sill. ‘For myself, I must now depart, yes, winging away most quickly.’

‘A moment. You have lingered, Crone, in search of something. And it seems you have found it.’

‘I have,’ she replied, cackling again.

‘Well?’

‘Only confirmation, to ease my master’s mind.’

‘Confirmation? Ah, that Shadowthrone spoke true.’

A third cackle from the sill — as threes were ever preferable to pairs, not that Crone was superstitious of course — but if but two, then a third would sound somewhere, and might that one not be at her own expense? Not to be, oh no, not to be! ‘Farewell, Baruk!’

Moments after he closed the window in the wake of that oily black-tarred hen, Chillbais lifted his head and cried out: ‘She comes! She comes!’

‘Yes,’ Baruk sighed.

‘Deadly woman!’

‘Not this time, little one. Fly to Derudan, and quickly. Tell her, from me, that the one who once hunted us has returned. To discuss matters. Further, Chillbais, invite Derudan to join us as soon as she is able. She will understand, I am sure, the need.’

Chillbais flapped (well, mostly fell) to the floor in front of the fireplace, then scrambled into the embers and vanished up the chimney.

Baruk frowned at the conjured demon spinning above the dais; then, with a single gesture, he released the spirit, watching as the swirling energy dwindled, then winked out. Go home, lost one. With my blessing.

And then he stood, facing the wall she would come through.

Stood, awaiting Vorcan.

No longer afraid of her.

No, the terror he was feeling belonged instead to her reason for coming. As for the Mistress of Assassins herself, damn but he had harsh words awaiting her.

You killed the others, woman. All but myself and Derudan. Yes, only the three of us left. Only three.

To stop, if we can, the return of the Tyrant.

Oh, Vorcan, you toppled far too many stones that night.

Should he have asked Anomander Rake for help? Gods below, it had been as close to offered him as it could have been, if he understood Crone and he was sure that he did — at least in that matter. And if he chose to accept that offer, should he tell Derudan and Vorcan? How could he not?

Neither would be pleased, he was sure. Especially Vorcan. And their fragile (and yes, it would be most fragile) alliance might die in the very moments of its birth.

Oh, Baruk, be open, be honest with them both. Ask them. Simple as that.

Yet, even as he saw the wall before him blurring, seeming to melt, a figure slowly, cautiously stepping through, he knew he would not. Could not.

There were but three left, now. Not enough to stop the Tyrant’s return. Even with Rake’s help. . not enough.

Which means one of us will choose to betray the others. Currying favour for when He returns. Favour, well. Bargaining to stay alive would be more accurate.

One of us will betray the others.

Maybe Derudan. Maybe this one here.

Gods, maybe me.

He stood thirty paces up the street. Beneath the hood his eyes held unwavering on the ill-lit entrance to the Phoenix Inn. On the old steps, on the tattered sign still hanging misaligned above the inset door. For a hundred heartbeats he had watched, as figures entered, others left — no one as yet familiar to him, as if in his absence all that he had known had vanished, melted away, and now strangers sat where he had once sat. Held tankards he had once held. Smiled at the servers and flung out over-familiar suggestions as they swayed past.

Cutter imagined himself inside, imagined the resentment there on his face as he looked upon a score or more intruders, invaders into his own memories, each one crowding him, trying to push him out. And on, to whatever new life he had found, which was not in the Phoenix Inn. Not even in Darujhistan.

There was no returning. He had known that all along, at least intellectually, but only now, as he stood here, did the full realization descend upon him, a burden of such emotion that he felt crushed by it. And was it not equally true that the man behind the eyes was not the same man from those years past? How could he not see it differently, with all that he had been through, with all that he had seen and felt?

His heart thundered in his chest. Each drumming thud, he now understood, was, once done, never to return. Even the repetition was in truth nothing but an illusion, a sleight of similitude. It might be a comfort to pretend that the machinery never changed, that each pulse and swirl was identical, that a man could leap back and then forward in his mind and no matter where he ended up all that he saw would remain the same. Fixed like certainty.

The rough stones of the dank walls. The quality of the yellow light bleeding from the pitted glass window. Even the susurration of sound, the voices, the clank of pewter and fired clay, the very laughter spilling out as the door was opened, spilling out sour as bile as far as Cutter was concerned.

Who was left in there that he might recognize? The faces tugged a little older, shoulders a fraction more hunched, eyes framed in the wrinkled map of the weary. Would they light upon seeing him? Would they even know him? And even then, after the slapped backs and embraces, would he see something gauging come into their eyes, painting colourless their words, a certain, distance widening with every drawn-out moment that followed?

The faintest scrape of a boot two paces behind him. Spinning round, ducking low as he did so, daggers flashing in both hands. Left blade half raised, point downward, into a guard position. Right blade darting out in a stop-thrust-

— and the figure leaned back with a soft grunt of surprise, tjaluk knife snapping out from beneath a cloak to block the dagger-

Cutter twisted his wrist to fold into that parry, flicking his blade’s edge into a deep slice across the base of the attacker’s gloved palm, even as he lunged forward — staying low — and slashed his left-hand dagger for the indent beneath his foe’s right kneecap.

Avoiding that attack very nearly toppled the man straight into Cutter’s arms, but Cutter had already slipped past, slicing both blades for thigh, then hip, as he darted by on the man’s left.

Amazingly, that heavy tjaluk caught every slash — and another of the oversized, hooked knives now appeared in the man’s other hand, straightening in a back-flung stop-thrust in case Cutter pivoted round to take him from behind. Cutter was forced to pitch hard to evade that damned fend, and, balanced on one leg, he threw the dagger in his left hand, side-arm, launching the weapon straight for the man’s shadowed face-

Sparks as — impossibly — the man batted the flying weapon aside.

A new knife already in that hand, Cutter made to launch yet another attack — then he skidded on his heels and leaned back into an all-out defence as the man came forward, his heavy knives whirling a skein before him.

Two of those? Two?

‘Wait!’ Cutter cried out. ‘Wait! Rallick? Rallick?’

The tjaluks withdrew. Blood spattered down from the one in the right hand — where the palm had been laid open. Dark eyes glittered from beneath the hood.

‘Rallick — it’s me. Cut- Crokus! Crokus Younghand!’

‘As I’d first thought,’ came the rumbling reply, ‘only to change my mind, in a hurry. But now, yes, it is you. Older — gods, I have indeed been away a long time.’

‘I cut your hand — I’m sorry-’

‘Not half as sorry as me, Crokus. You are in the Guild now, aren’t you? Who has trained you? Not Seba Krafar, that’s for sure. I don’t recognize the style at all-’

‘What? No, no Guild. Not anything like that, Rallick. I’ve been — wait, you said you’ve been gone? From Darujhistan? Where? How long? Not since that night behind Coll’s? But-’

‘Aye,’ Rallick cut in, ‘it’s you all right.’

‘Gods below,’ Cutter said, ‘but it’s so good to see you, Rallick Nom. I mean, if I’d known it was you at first — you shouldn’t come up on a man from behind like that. I could’ve killed you!’

The assassin stood studying him.

Suddenly trembling, Cutter sheathed his knives, then began looking around for the one he’d thrown. ’Two of those pig-choppers — who else would use those? I should’ve realized when I saw the first one. I’m so sorry, Rallick. Instincts took over. They just. . took over.’

‘You did not heed my warning, then.’

Years ago, those dark, angry words, but Cutter did not need to ask what warning? He remembered it all too well. ‘I would have,’ he said, pausing in his search. ‘Truly, Rallick, I went with the Malazans, you see and Apsalar, Fiddler, Kalam, the four of us, to Seven Cities. Where everything. . changed.’

‘When did you return, Crokus?’

‘Today. Tonight.’ He glanced ruefully at the entrance to the Phoenix Inn. ‘I’ve not even gone inside yet. It’s. . changed — aye, that word is already starting to haunt me.’ He resumed his hunt. ‘I suppose I should have expected it — where in Hood’s name did that knife go, dammit?’

Rallick leaned back against a wall. ‘The one you aimed at my throat?’

‘Yes — I’m so-’

‘Yes, you’re sorry. Well, you won’t find it down there. Try my left shoulder.’

‘Oh, the thickness of blood! Darujhistan and her hundred thousand hearts and each and every one beats for none other than this hale, most generous resident of the Phoenix Inn! Seated here at this most grand of tables — although surely Meese should attend to this wobbly leg — nay, not mine, though that would be delicious indeed and well beyond common service in said establishment — with — where was Kruppe? Oh yes, with nary fell company to jiggle awake the night! Tell prescient Kruppe, yon friends, why the glowing faces belied by fretful eyes? Did Kruppe not promise boons galore? Pressures eased? Panics prevented? Purses packed with precious baubles all aglitter? Drink up — oh, humble apologies, we shall order more anon, ’tis a promise most pertinent should one elect to toast this, that and, perchance, t’other!’

‘We got news,’ Scorch said, looking surprised by his own words, ‘and if you’d just shut your trap, you’d hear about it too.’

‘News! Why, Kruppe is news personified. Details, analysis, reactions from common folk in the street, all in the blink of an eye and the puff of a single breath, who needs more? This new madness we must witness now weekly and all the bolts of burlap wasted on which some purple fool blathers all manner of foul gossip, why, ’tis nothing but rags for the ragman, or wipes for the arse-wipes or indeed blots for the blotters bless their feminine wiles — Kruppe rails at this elevation of circumstance and incidence! A profession, the fops now claim, as if baying hounds need certification to justify their slavering barks and snarls! Whatever happened to common decency? To decent commonry? What’s decent is rarely common — that is true enough, while the obverse is perverse in all prickly irony, would you not agree? Kruppe would, being such an agreeable sort-’

‘We found Torvald Nom!’

Kruppe blinked at Leff, then at Scorch, then — seeing perhaps the disbelief mirrored in the face of the latter — back to Leff. ‘Extraordinary! And did you horribly hand him over to hirsute Gareb the Lender?’

Scorch growled under his breath.

‘We worked out a better deal,’ said Leff, licking his lips. ‘Torvald will pay Gareb back, in full, and, you see, to do so he had to pay us for the privilege, right? So, Torvald pays us, Gareb pays us. We get paid twice!’

Kruppe lifted one pudgy finger — on which, he saw with momentary dismay, there was a smear of something unrecognizable — ‘A moment, please. Torvald has both returned and bought you off? Then why is it Kruppe buying the drinks this night? Ah, allow Kruppe to answer his own question! Why, because Torvald is yet to pay off trusting Leff and Scorch, yes? He begged, yes, for one night. One night! And all would be well and such!’

‘How’d you guess?’

Kruppe smiled. ‘Dear foolish friends, should Gareb hear of this any time soon — should he, yes, learn that you had the notorious Torvald Nom in your very grasp, why, you will find your names on the very list you hold, thus forcing you to turn in yourselves to great reward, which will avail you nothing when Gareb hides and quarters poor Scorch and Leff. Ah, calamities await!’

‘Torvald Nom was once our partner,’ said Leff, though now sweating in earnest. ‘He gave us his word, he did. And if he goes back on it, well, doing wrong to Scorch and Leff is never a good idea, for anybody. So you keep that in mind, too, Kruppe, if you go blabbing to Gareb or some such thing.’

‘Beru forbid. Kruppe would do no such thing, dearest temperamental friends! Nay, Kruppe’s fear relates back to those new rags abounding in the grubby hands of urchins at every street corner these days, such a plague upon Darujhistan! Said rags are nefariously quick and diabolical with their gossip, and who can know the multitude of dubious sources? Kruppe worries what the morrow’s rag will proclaim!’

‘Damned well better proclaim nothing,’ snarled Scorch, looking terrified and belligerent all at once.

‘Now, blessed friends,’ Kruppe said with a perfunctory but flourished wave of his hands, ‘we must end this debacle for tonight! Dread circumstance hovers. Kruppe senses stupendous events imminently. . imminent. A taste upon the air, a flutter in the wind, a flicker in the lantern light, a waver in watery pools of ale, a thump upon the stairs. . a rattling exposure of front doors — ho! Noms and flowers! Knives and bleeders! Faces most ashen and dismayed! Begone from Kruppe’s table, recent wumplings of desultory concourse! Reunion most precious awaits!’

Rallick was leaning heavily against Cutter by the time they reached the entrance to the Phoenix Inn. Gods, if I’ve killed him — my friend — gods, no-

Pushing open the door he half dragged Rallick inside.

And saw, behind the counter, Meese. Beyond her, Irilta. And there, to his left, frozen in mid-step and staring with wide eyes-

‘Sulty! Rallick’s hurt — we need a room — and help-’

All at once Meese was pulling the assassin from Cutter’s arms. ‘Hood’s breath, he’s cut to pieces!’

‘I’m sorry-’ Cutter began.

But Irilta was now there, taking his face between hands that smelled of ale and chopped garlic. Lips suddenly looming large as she planted a full kiss on his mouth, tongue briefly writhing in like a worm down a hole.

Cutter reeled back, then found Sulty in his arms, grasping him tight — tight with arms astonishingly strong after a dozen or so years of trays and pitchers — so light all the air was pushed from his lungs,

‘He’ll live,’ pronounced Meese from where she crouched over Rallick, who was lying on the floor behind the counter. ‘Once we stop the bleeding. He musta been lumped by three or four, by the looks.’ Straightening, she dropped the bloody dagger on the counter. A crowd was gathering, and heads now tilted in for a closer look at that foreign-made weapon.

‘Malazan!’ hissed someone.

Pulling himself from Sulty’s arms, Cutter pushed through. ‘Give me room! Don’t touch that knife! It’s mine.’

‘Yours?’ demanded Irilta. ‘What’s that supposed t’mean, Crokus?’

‘He came up on me from behind — all quiet — like a killer. I thought I was defending myself — it was all a mistake — you sure he’s going to be all right, Meese?’

‘You was that scrawny thief years back!’ said a man with a vaguely familiar face, his expression flitting between disbelief and accusation.

‘Crokus, Irilta said,’ added the man beside him. — ‘Did something the night the Moon came down, I heard. Knocked over a pillar or something. You remember, Scorch, don’t you?’

‘I make a point of remembering only what I need to, Leff. Though sometimes other stuff sticks, too. Anyway, he was a pickpocket, one of Kruppe’s lads.’

‘Well he ain’t any more, is he?’ Scorch said in a half-snarl. ‘Now he’s a Guild assassin!’

‘No I’m not!’ shouted Cutter — all at once feeling like the ungainly youth he had been years ago. Furious at his own burning face he swung to Meese. ‘Where’s everybody else? I mean-’

Meese held up a hand — on which there was some of Rallick’s blood — and said, ‘He’s waiting, Crokus. At his usual table — go on. Hey,’ she shouted to the crowd, ‘give him a way through! Go back t’your tables!’

Just like that, Cutter reflected, he had made things a shambles. His grand return. Everything. Reaching out as he passed, he retrieved his knife — not meeting Meese’s eyes as he did so. Then, as bodies pulled back, he saw-

There, at his usual table, the small round man with greasy hair and beaming, cherubic smile. Filthy frilly cuffs, a faded and stained red waistcoat. A glistening pitcher on the puddled tabletop, two tankards.

Just a thief. A pickpocket. A raider of girls’ bedrooms. Wasn’t I the breathless one? A wide-eyed fool. Oh, Kruppe, look at you. If anybody wasn’t going to change, it’s you.

Cutter found himself at the table, collapsing into the waiting chair, reaching for the tankard. ‘I gave up on my old name, Kruppe. It’s now Cutter. Better suited, don’t you think?’ Then why do I feel like weeping? ‘Especially after what I did to Rallick just now.’

Kruppe’s brows lifted. ‘Kruppe sympathizes, oh yes he does. Life stumbles on — although the exception is none other than Kruppe himself, for whom life dances. Extraordinary, how such truth rubs so many so wrongly; why, can one’s very existence prove sufficient for such inimical outrage? Seems it can, oh yes, most certainly. There are always those, dear friend, for whom a wink is an insult, a smile a taunt. For whom humour alone is cause for suspicion, as if laughter was sly contempt. Tell Kruppe, dear Cutter, do you believe that we are all equal?’

‘Equal? Well-’

‘A laudable notion, we can both agree, yes? Yet’ — and he raised one rather unclean finger-’is it not true that, from one year to the next, we each ourselves are capable of changes so fundamental that our present selves can in no reasonable way be considered equal to our past selves? If the rule does not apply even within our own individual lives, how can one dare hope to believe that it pertains collectively?’

‘Kruppe, what has all this-’

‘Years past, Cutter who was once named Crokus, we would not have a discussion such as this, yes? Kruppe sees and sees very well. He sees sorrow and wisdom both. Pain and still open wounds. Love found and love lost. A certain desperation that still spins like a coin — which way will it fall? Question as yet unanswered, a future as yet undecided. So, old friend now returned, let us drink, thus yielding the next few moments to companionable silence.’ And with that Kruppe collected his tankard and lifted it high.

Sighing, Cutter did the same.

‘The spinning coin!’

And he blanched. ‘Gods below, Kruppe!’

‘Drink, friend! Drink deep the unknown and unknowable future!’

And so he did.

The wheel had stopped spinning, milky water dripping down its sides to gather in the gutter surrounding it. The bright lanterns had been turned well down, sinking the room into soft light, and she now walked towards her bed, drying her hands with a towel.

In a day or two she would fire up the kiln.

It was late and this was no time to be thinking the heavy, turgid thoughts that now threatened to reach up and take hold of her weary mind. Regret has a flavour and it is stale, and all the cups of tea in the world could do nothing to wash it away.

The scratching at the door brought her round — some drunk at the wrong house, no doubt. She was in no mood to answer.

Now knuckles, tapping with muted urgency.

Tiserra tossed the towel down, rubbed absently at her aching wrist, then collected one of the heavier stirring sticks from the glaze table and approached the door. ‘Wrong house,’ she said loudly. ‘Go on, now!’

A fist thumped.

Raising the stick, Tiserra unlatched the door and swung it back.

The man stepping into the threshold was wearing a stupid grin.

One she knew well, had known for years, although it had been some time since she had last seen it. Lowering the stick, she sighed. ‘Torvald Nom. You’re late.’

‘Sorry, love,’ he replied. ‘I got waylaid. Slavers. Ocean voyages. Toblakai, dhenrabi, torture and crucifixion, a sinking ship.’

‘I had no idea going out for a loaf of bread could be so dangerous.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘the whole mess started with me hearing about a debt. One I didn’t know I had. That bastard Gareb set me up, said I owed him when I didn’t, but that’s not something one can argue, not without an advocate — which we couldn’t afford-’

‘I know all about Gareb,’ Tiserra replied. ‘His thugs visited here often enough once you disappeared, and yes, I did need an advocate — to get Gareb to back off.’

‘He was threatening you?’

‘He claimed that your debt was my debt, dear husband. Of course that’s nonsense. Even after I won that challenge, he had me followed around. For months. Suspected you were in hiding somewhere and I was delivering food and the like, I suppose. I can’t tell you how much fun that was. Why can’t I, Torvald? Because it wasn’t. Fun, that is. Not fun at all.’

‘I’m home now,’ Torvald said, trying the smile again. ‘Wealthy, too. No more debt — I’m clearing that in the morning, straight away. And no more low-grade temper for your clay either. And a complete replenishment of your herbs, tinctures and such — speaking of which, just to be safe we should probably put together a ritual or two-’

‘Oh, really? You’ve been stealing again, haven’t you? Tripped a few wards, did you? Got a bag of coins all glowing with magic, have you?’

‘And gems and diamonds. It was only proper, love, honest. A wrongful debt dealt with wrongfully, the two happily cancelling each other out, leaving everything rightful!’

She snorted, then stepped back and let him inside. ‘I don’t believe I’m buying all this.’

‘You know I never lie to you, Tis. Never.’

‘So who did you rob tonight?’

‘Why, Gareb, of course. Cleaned him out, in fact.’

Tiserra stared at him. ‘Oh, husband.’

‘I know, I’m a genius. Now, about those wards — as soon as he can, he’ll bring in some mages to sniff out the whereabouts of his loot.’

‘Yes, Torvald, I grasp the situation well enough. You know where the secret hole is — drop the bag in there, if you please, while I get started on the rest.’

But he had not moved. ‘Still love me?’ he asked.

Tiserra turned and met his eyes. ‘Always, y’damned fool. Now hurry.’

Glories unending this night in Darujhistan! And now the dawn stirs awake, a light to sweep aside the blue glow of the unsleeping city. See the revellers stumbling towards their beds or the beds of newfound friends or even a stranger’s bed, what matter the provenance of love? What matter the tangled threads of friendship so stretched and knotted?

What matter the burdens of life, when the sun blazes into the sky and the gulls stir from their posts in the bay, when crabs scuttle for deep and dark waters? Not every path is well trod, dearest friends, not every path is set out with even pave-stones and unambiguous signs.

Rest eyes in the manner of a thief who is a thief no longer, as he looks with deepest compassion down upon the sleeping face of an old friend, there in a small room on the upper floor of the Phoenix Inn; and sees too a noble councilman snoring slouched in yon chair. While in the very next room sits an assassin who is, perhaps, an assassin no longer, dull-eyed with pain as he ponders all manner of things, in fashions sure to be mysterious and startling, were any able to peek into his dark mind.

Elsewhere, a child long ago abandoned by his mother frets in his sleep, pursued by a nightmare face with the absurd name of Snell attached to it.

And two guards run, hearts pounding, from the gate to the estate as alarms ring loud and urgent, for an evil man has lost all his ill-won wealth — a fact as sure to pluck his talons as a torturer’s pliers, since evil only thrives in a well of power, and when the coin of cruelty is stolen away, why, so too vanishes the power.

A fingerless man stumbles home, god-blessed and blood oozing from battered knuckles, while his wife sleeps without dreams, her expression so peaceful even the most unsentimental sculptor could do naught but weep.

And, in a street unworthy of any particular notice, stands an ox, thinking about breakfast. What else is there, after all, when love and friendship and power, and regret and loss and reunion fierce enough to tear away all that might have been bittersweet, when all — all — is gone and done with, what else is there, but the needs of the stomach?

Eat! Dine on pleasures and taste sweet life!

Inconsequential? Bah!

As Kruppe ever says, it is a wise ox that gets the yoke.