Sinn, the child witch. The High Mage with a thirst for blood.

Child of the rebellion. Stolen from the life she should have lived, fashioned by horror into something new. Child of Seven Cities, of the Apocalyptic, oh yes. Dryjhna’s blessed spawn.

He wondered how many such creatures were out there, stumbling through the ruins like starved dogs. Uprising, grand failure, then plague: how many scars could a young soul carry? Before it twisted into something unrecognizable, something barely human?

Did Sinn find salvation in sorcery? Shard held no faith that such salvation was in truth benign. A weapon for her will, and how far could a mortal go with such a weapon in their hands? How vast the weight of their will, unbound and unleashed?

They were right to fear. So very right.

A gruff command from Sergeant Cord and it was time to begin the patrol. A league’s worth of blasted, wind-torn coastline. Crump climbed out of the pit and dusted his palms, his face shining as he looked down on his handiwork.

‘Isn’t she fine, Corporal? A hole dug by a High Marshal of Mott Wood, and we know how to dig ‘em, don’t we just. Why, I think it might be the best one yet! Especially with all the baby skulls on the bottom, like cobbles they are, though they break too easy-need to step light! Step light!’

Suddenly chilled in a place far deeper than any wind could reach, Shard walked to the edge of the pit and looked down. Moments later the rest of the squad joined him.

In the gloom almost a man’s height down, the glimmer of rounded shapes. Like cobbles they are.

And they were stirring.

A hiss from Ebron and he glared across at Sinn, whose music and dancing had reached a frenzied pitch. ‘Gods below! Sergeant-’

‘Grab that shovel again,’ Cord growled to Crump. ‘Fill it in, you fool! Fill it in! Fill them all in!’

Crump blinked, then collected up his shovel and began pushing the dry soil back into the hole. ‘Best hole-fillers t’be found anywhere! You’ll see, Sergeant! Why, you won’t never see holes filled so good as them’s done by a High Marshal of Mott Wood!’

‘Hurry up, you damned fool!’

‘Yes sir, hurry up. Crump can do that!’

After a moment, the sapper began singing.

‘Shillydan the red-water man Croaks and kisses the lass’s brow Hillyman the blue-cocked man Strokes and blessings t’thank ‘er now!’

Nimander Golit, wrapped in a heavy dark blue woollen cloak, stood at one end of the winding street. Decrepit harbour buildings leaned and sagged, a brick grimace curling down to the waterfront that glittered a hundred paces distant. Shreds of cloud scudded beneath a night sky of bleary stars, rushing southward like advance runners of snow and ice.

Tiste Andii, sentinel to the dark; he would have liked such grand notions wrapped about him as tightly as this cloak. A mythic stance, heavy with… with something. And the sword at his side, a weapon of heroic will, which he could draw forth when dread fate arrived with its banshee wail, and use with a skill that could astound-like the great ones of old, a consummate icon of power unveiled in Mother Dark’s name.

But it was all a dream. His skill with the sword was middling, a symbol of mediocrity as muddied as his own bloodline. He was no soldier of darkness, just a young man standing lost in a strange street, a man with nowhere to go-yet driven, driven on at this very moment-to go somewhere.

No, even that was untrue. He stood in the night because of a need to escape. Phaed’s malice had become rabid, and Nimander was the one in whom she had chosen to confide. Would she murder Sandalath Drukorlat here in this port city, as she had vowed? More to the point, was he, Nimander, going to permit it? Did he even have the courage to betray Phaed-knowing how swiftly she would turn, and how deadly her venom?

Anomander Rake would not hesitate. No, he would kick down the door to Phaed’s room and drag the squealing little stoat out by her neck. And he’d then shake the life from her. He’d have no choice, would he? One look into Phaed’s eyes and the secret would be revealed. The secret of the vast empty space within her, where her conscience should be. He would see it plain, and then into her eyes would come the horror of exposure-moments before her neck snapped.

Mother Dark would wait for Phaed’s soul, then, for its shrieking delivery, the malign birth of just execution, of choices that were not choices at all. Why? Because nothing else can be done. Not for one such as her.

And Rake would accept the blood on his hands. He would accept that terrible burden as but one more amidst countless others he carried across a hundred thousand years. Childslayer. A child of one’s own blood.

The courage of one with power. And that was Nimander’s very own yawning emptiness in the heart of his soul. We may be his children, his grandchildren, we may be of his blood, but we are each incomplete. Phaed and her wicked moral void. Nenanda and his unreasoning rage. Aranatha with her foolish hopes. Kedeviss who screams herself awake every morning. Skintick for whom all of existence is a joke. Desra who would spread her legs for any man if it could boost her up one more rung on the ladder towards whatever great glory she imagines she deserves. And Nimander, who imagines himself the leader of this fell family of would-be heroes, who will seek out the ends of the earth in his hunt for… for courage,, for con-viction, for a reason to do, to feel anything.

Oh, for Nimander, then, an empty street in the dead of night. With the denizens lost in their fitful, pathetic sleep-as if oblivion offered any escape, any escape at all. For Nimander, these interminable moments in which he could contemplate actually making a decision, actually stepping between an innocent elder Tiste Andii and Nimander’s own murderous little sister. To say No, Phaed. You will not have this. No more. You shall be a secret no longer. You shall be known.

If he could do that. If he could but do that.

He heard a sound. Spinning, the whisper of fine chain cutting a path through the air-close, so close that Nimander spun round-but there was no-one. He was alone. Spinning, twirling, a hiss-then a sudden snap, two distinct, soft clicks as of two tiny objects held out at each end of that fine chain-yes, this sound, the prophecy-Mother fend, is this the prophecy?

Silence now, yet the air felt febrile on all sides, and his breath was coming in harsh gasps. ‘He carries the gates, Nimander, so it is said. Is this not a worthy cause? For us? To search the realms, to find, not our grandsire, but the one who carries the gates?

‘Our way home. To Mother Dark, to her deepest embrace-oh, Nimander, my love, let us-’

‘Stop it,’ he croaked. ‘Please. Stop.’

She was dead. On the Floating Isle. Cut down by a Tiste Edur who’d thought nothing of it. Nothing. She was dead.

And she had been his courage. And now there was nothing left.

The prophecy? Not for one such as Nimander.

Dream naught of glory. She too is dead.

She was everything. And she is dead.

A cool wind sighed, plucking away that tension-a tension he now knew he but imagined. A moment of weakness. Something skittering on a nearby roof.

These things did not come to those who were incomplete. He should have known better.

Three soft chimes sounded in the night, announcing yet another shift of personnel out in the advance pickets. Mostly silent, soldiers rose, dark shapes edging out from their positions, quickly replaced by those who had come to guard in their stead. Weapons rustled, clasps and buckles clicked, leather armour making small animal sounds. Figures moved back and forth on the plain. Somewhere in the darkness beyond, on the other side of that rise, out in the sweeps of high grasses and in the distant ravines, the enemy hid.