‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘Ah, yes. Thoughtless of me. Your pardon.’ Bugg walked over with the tray.

Tehol collected his cup and cautiously sniffed. Then he frowned at his manservant.

Who shrugged. ‘We don’t have no herbs, master. I had to improvise.’

‘With what? Sheep hide?’

Bugg’s brows rose. ‘Very close indeed. I had some leftover wool.’

‘The yellow or the grey?’

‘The grey.’

‘Well, that’s all right, then.’ He sipped. ‘Smooth.’

‘Yes, it would be.’

‘We’re not poisoning ourselves, are we?’

‘Only mildly, master.’

‘There are times,’ Shurq Elalle said, ‘when I regret being dead. This is not one of those times, however.’

The two men eyed her speculatively, sipping at their tea.

‘Ideally,’ she continued, ‘I would now clear my throat to cover this moment of awkwardness. But I am incapable of feeling any more awkward than is my normal state. Secondly, clearing my throat has unpleasant consequences.’

‘Ah, but Selush has devised a pump,’ Tehol said. ‘The operation will be, uh, not for the delicate. Even so, soon you shall exude the perfume of roses.’

‘And how will she manage that?’

‘With roses, I imagine.’

Shurq raised a thin brow. ‘I am to be stuffed with dried flowers?’

‘Well, not everywhere, of course.’

‘A practical question, Tehol Beddict. How am I to be stealthy if I crackle with every step I take?’

‘A good question. I suggest you bring that up with Selush.’

‘Along with everything else, it would seem. Shall I resume my account of the potential victim’s estate? I assume your manservant is trustworthy.’

‘Exceptionally so,’ Tehol replied. ‘Please continue.’

‘Finadd Gerun Eberict will be attending the Special Drownings, whereupon, at its conclusion, he will be a guest at an event hosted by Turudal Brizad-’

‘The Queen’s Consort?’

‘Yes. I once robbed him.’

‘Indeed! And what did you take?’

‘His virginity. We were very young – well, he was, anyway. This was long before he danced at the palace and so earned the interest of the queen.’

‘Now that’s an interesting detail. Were you his true love, if I may ask such a personal question?’

‘Turudal’s only love is for himself. As I said, he was younger and I the older. Of course, he’s now older than me, which is a curious fact. Somewhat curious, anyway. In any case, there was no shortage of men and women pursuing him even back then. I imagine he believed the conquest was his. Perhaps he still does. The measure of the perfect theft is when the victim remains blissfully unaware that he or she has been stolen from.’

‘I’d think,’ observed Bugg, ‘that Turudal Brizad did not regret his surrender.’

‘None the less,’ Shurq Elalle said. She was silent, then: ‘There is nothing in this world that cannot be stolen.’

‘And with that thought swirling like lanolin in our stomachs,’ Tehol said, setting his cup down, ‘you and I should take a walk, Shurq.’

‘How far to Selush’s?’

‘We can stretch it out. Thank you, dear Bugg, for the delightfully unique refreshment. Clean up around here, will you?’

‘If I’ve the time.’

Shurq hesitated. ‘Should I climb down the wall then shadow you unseen?’

Tehol frowned. ‘Only if you must. You could just draw that hood up and so achieve anonymity.’

‘Very well. I will meet you in the street, so that I am not seen exiting a house I never entered.’

‘There are still watchers spying on me?’

‘Probably not, but it pays to be cautious.’

‘Very good. I will see you in a moment, then.’

Tehol descended the ladder. The single room reeked of sheep sweat, and the heat from the hearth was fierce. He quickly made his way outside, turned right instead of left and came to what had once been a sort of unofficial mews, now cluttered with refuse and discarded building materials, the fronts facing onto it sealed by bricks or doors with their latches removed.

Shurq Elalle emerged from the shadows, her hood drawn about her face. ‘Tell me more about this Selush.’

They began walking, threading single file down a narrow lane to reach the street beyond. ‘A past associate of Bugg’s. Embalmers and other dealers of the dead are a kind of extended family, it seems. Constantly exchanging techniques and body parts. It’s quite an art, I gather. A body’s story can be unfurled from a vast host of details, to be read like a scroll.’

‘What value assembling a list of flaws when the subject is already dead?’

‘Morbid curiosity, I imagine. Or curious morbidity.’

‘Are you trying to be funny?’

‘Never, Shurq Elalle. I have taken to heart your warnings on that.’

‘You, Tehol Beddict, are very dangerous to me. Yet I am drawn, as if you were intellectual white nectar. I thirst for the tension created by my struggle to avoid being too amused.’

‘Well, if Selush succeeds in what she intends, the risk associated with laughter will vanish, and you may chortle fearlessly.’

‘Even when I was alive, I never chortled. Nor do I expect to do so now that I am dead. But what you suggest invites… disappointment. A releasing of said tension, a dying of the sparks. I now fear getting depressed.’

‘The risk of achieving what you wish for,’ Tehol said, nodding as they reached Trench Canal and began to walk along its foul length. ‘I empathize, Shurq Elalle. It is a sore consequence to success.’

‘Tell me what you know of the old tower in the forbidden grounds behind the palace.’

‘Not much, except that your undead comrade resides in the vicinity. The girl.’

‘Yes, she does. I have named her Kettle.’

‘We cross here.’ Tehol indicated a footbridge. ‘She means something to you?’

‘That is difficult to answer. Perhaps. It may prove that she means something to all of us, Tehol Beddict.’

‘Ah. And can I be of some help in this matter?’

‘Your offer surprises me.’

‘I endeavour to remain ever surprising, Shurq Elalle.’

‘I am seeking to discover her… history. It is, I think, important. The old tower appears to be haunted in some way, and that haunting is in communication with Kettle. It poses desperate need.’

‘For what?’

‘Human flesh.’

‘Oh my.’

‘In any case, this is why Gerun Eberict is losing the spies he sets on you.’

Tehol halted. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Kettle kills them.’

Steeply sloped, the black wall of rock reached up into the light. The currents swept across its rippled face with unceasing ferocity, and all that clung to it to draw sustenance from that roiling stream was squat, hard-shelled and stubborn. Vast flats stretched out from the base of the trench wall, and these were scoured down to bedrock. Enormous tangled islands of detritus, crushed and bound together by unimaginable pressures, crawled across the surface, like migrating leviathans in the flow of dark water.

Brys stood on the plain, watching the nearest tumbling mass roll past. He knew he was witness to sights no mortal had ever seen, where natural eyes would see only darkness, where the pressures would have long since killed corporeal flesh descending from the surface far above. Yet here he stood, to his own senses as real, as physical, as he had been in the palace. Clothed, armoured, his sword hanging at his hip. He could feel the icy water and its wild torrent in a vague, remote fashion, but the currents could not challenge his balance, could not drag him off his feet. Nor did the cold steal the strength from his limbs.

He drew breath, and the air was cool and damp – it was, he realized, the air of the subterranean chamber of the Cedance.

That recognition calmed his heart, diminished his disorientation.

A god dwells in this place. It seemed well suited for such a thing. Primal, fraught with extremes, a realm of raw violence and immense, clashing forces of nature.

Another mass of wreckage shambled past, and Brys saw, amidst pale, skeletal branches and what seemed to be bundles of unravelled rope, flattened pieces of metal whose edges showed extruded white tendrils. By the Errant, that metal is armour, and those tendrils are…