'We are not alone, cutter.'

'No. I would be surprised if we were. She will spare her followers, her carriers. She will-'

'Quiet,' Paran said, reining in. 'I meant, we are not alone right now.'

Eyes darting, Noto Boil scanned the immediate area. 'There,' he whispered, pointing towards an alley mouth.

They watched as a young woman stepped out from the shadows of the alley. She was naked, frighteningly thin, her eyes dark, large and luminous. Her lips were cracked and split, her hair wild and braided in filth. An urchin who had survived in the streets, a harvester of the discarded, and yet…

'Not a carrier,' Paran said in a murmur. 'I see about her… purest health.'

Noto Boil nodded. 'Aye. In spite of her apparent condition. Captain Kindly, this child has been chosen… by Soliel.'

'I take it, not something you even thought possible, back when you were a priest.'

The cutter simply shook his head.

The girl came closer. 'Malazans,' she said, her voice rasping as if from lack of use. 'Once. Years – a year? Once, there were other Malazans. One of them pretended he was a Gral, but I saw the armour under the robes, I saw the sigil of the Bridgeburners, from where I hid beneath a wagon. I was young, but not too young. They saved me, those Malazans. They drew away the hunters. They saved me.'

Paran cleared his throat. 'And so now Soliel chooses you… to help us.'

Noto Boil said, 'For she has always blessed those who repay kindness.'

The cutter's voice was tremulous with wonder. 'Soliel,' he whispered, 'forgive me.'

'There are hunters,' the girl said. 'Coming. They know you are here.

Strangers, enemies to the goddess. Their leader holds great hatred, for all things. Bone-scarred, broke-faced, he feeds on the pain he delivers. Come with me-'

'Thank you,' Paran said, cutting in, 'but no. Know that your warning is welcome, but I intend to meet these hunters. I intend to have them lead me to the Grey Goddess.'

'Brokeface will not permit it. He will kill you, and your horse. Your horse first, for he hates such creatures.'

Noto Boil hissed. 'Captain, please – this is an offer from Soliel-'

'The offer I expect from Soliel,' Paran said, tone hardening, 'will come later. One goddess at a time.' He readied his horse under him, then hesitated, glanced over at the cutter.

'Go with her, then. We will meet up at the entrance to the Grand Temple.'

'Captain, what is it you expect of me?'

'Me? Nothing. What I expect is for Soliel to make use of you, but not as she has done this child here. I expect something a lot more than that.' Paran nudged his mount forward. 'And,' he added amidst clumping hoofs, 'I won't take no for an answer.'

Noto Boil watched the madman ride off, up the main avenue, then the healer swung his horse until facing the girl. He drew the fish spine from his mouth and tucked it behind an ear. Then cleared his throat. '

Goddess… child. I have no wish to die, but I must point out, that man does not speak for me. Should you smite him down for his disrespect, I most certainly will not see in that anything unjust or undeserving. In fact-'

'Be quiet, mortal,' the girl said in a much older voice. 'In that man the entire world hangs in balance, and I shall not be for ever known as the one responsible for altering that condition. In any way whatsoever. Now, prepare to ride – I shall lead, but I shall not once wait for you should you lose the way.'

'I thought you offered to guide me-'

'Of lesser priority now,' she said, smirking. 'Inverted in a most unholy fashion, you might say. No, what I seek now is to witness. Do you understand? To witness!' And with that the girl spun round and sped off.

Swearing, the cutter drove heels into his mount's flanks, hard on the girl's trail.

Paran rode at a canter down the main avenue that seemed more a processional route into a necropolis than G'danisban's central artery, until he saw ahead a mob of figures fronted by a single man – in his hands a farmer's scythe from which dangled a blood-crusted horse-tail.

The motley army – perhaps thirty or forty in all – looked as if they had been recruited from a paupers' burial pit. Covered in sores and weals, limbs twisted, faces slack, the eyes glittering with madness.

Some carried swords, others butcher's cleavers and knives, or spears, shepherd's crooks or stout branches. Most seemed barely able to stand.

Such was not the case with their leader, the one the girl had called Brokeface. The man's visage was indeed pinched misshapen, flesh and bones folded in at right lower jaw, then across the face, diagonally, to the right cheekbone. He had been bitten, the captain realized, by a horse. … your horse first. For he hates such creatures…

In that ruined face, the eyes, misaligned in the sunken pits of their sockets, burned bright as they fixed on Paran's own. Something like a smile appeared on the collapsed cave of the man's mouth.

'Her breath is not sweet enough for you? You are strong to so resist her. She would know, first, who you are. Before,' his smile twisted further, 'before we kill you.'

'The Grey Goddess does not know who I am,' Paran said, 'for this reason. From her, I have turned away. From me she can compel nothing.'

Brokeface flinched. 'There is a beast… in your eyes. Reveal yourself, Malazan. You are not as the others.'

'Tell her,' Paran said, 'I come to make an offering.'

The head cocked to one side. 'You seek to appease the Grey Goddess?'

'In a manner of speaking. But I should tell you, we have very little time.'

'Very little? Why?'

'Take me to her and I will explain. But quickly.'

'She does not fear you.'

'Good.'

The man studied Paran for a moment longer, then he gestured with his scythe. 'Follow, then.'

There had been plenty of altars before which she had knelt over the years, and from them, one and all, Torahaval Delat had discovered something she now held to be true. All that is worshipped is but a reflection of the worshipper. A single god, no matter how benign, is tortured into a multitude of masks, each shaped by the secret desires, hungers, fears and joys of the individual mortal, who but plays a game of obsequious approbation.

Believers lunged into belief. The faithful drowned in their faith.

And there was another truth, one that seemed on the surface to contradict the first one. The gentler and kinder the god, the more harsh and cruel its worshippers, for they hold to their conviction with taut certainty, febrile in its extremity, and so cannot abide dissenters. They will kill, they will torture, in that god's name. And see in themselves no conflict, no matter how bloodstained their hands.

Torahaval's hands were bloodstained, figuratively now but once most literally. Driven to fill some vast, empty space in her soul, she had lunged, she had drowned; she had looked for some external hand of salvation – seeking what she could not find in herself. And, whether benign and love-swollen or brutal and painful, every god's touch had felt the same to her – barely sensed through the numbed obsession that was her need.

She had stumbled onto this present path the same way she had stumbled onto so many others, yet this time, it seemed there could be no going back. Every alternative, every choice, had vanished before her eyes.

The first strands of the web had been spun more than fourteen months ago, in her chosen home city Karashimesh, on the shores of the inland Karas Sea – a web she had since, in a kind of lustful wilfulness, allowed to close ever tighter.

The sweet lure from the Grey Goddess, in spirit now the poisoned lover of the Chained One – the seduction of the flawed had proved so very inviting. And deadly. For us both. This was, she realized as she trailed Bridthok down the Aisle of Glory leading to the transept, no more than the spreading of legs before an inevitable, half-invited rape. Regret would come later if at all.