‘And that is a problem?’

‘It is, because one of the strangers is a chosen chief-chosen by Bentract himself. Hostille Rator.’

‘And the other two?’ Quick Ben asked.

‘Yes, even more difficult. Ulshun Pral’s Bonecaster is gone. Til’aras Benok and Gr’istanas Ish’ilm, who stand to either side of Hostille Rator, are Bonecasters.’

Trull Sengar drew a deep breath. ‘They contemplate usurpation, then.’

Onrack the Broken nodded.

‘Then what had stopped them?’ Quick Ben asked.

‘Rud Elalle, wizard. The son of Menandore terrifies them.’

The rain thundered down, every moment another hundred thousand iron-tipped lances crashing down out of the dark onto slate rooftops, exploding on the cobbled streets where streams now rushed down, racing for the harbour.

The ice north of the island had not died quietly. Sundered by the magic of a wilful child, the white and blue mountains had lifted skyward in pillars of steam that roiled into massive stormclouds, which had then marched south freed from the strictures of refusal, and those clouds now erupted over the beleaguered city with rage and vengeance. Late afternoon had become midnight and now, as the half-drowned chimes of midnight’s bells sounded, it seemed as if this night would never end.

On the morrow-if it ever came-the Adjunct would set sail with her motley fleet. Thrones of War, a score of well-armed fast escorts, the last of the-transports holding the rest of the Fourteenth Army, and one sleek black dromon propelled by the tireless oars manned by headless Tiste Andii. Oh, and of course, in the lead would be a local pirate’s ship, captained by a dead woman-but never mind her. Return, yes, to that black-hulled nightmare.

Their hosts had worked hard to keep the dread truth of that Quon dromon from Nimander Golit and his kin. The severed heads on the deck, mounded around the mainmast, well, they had kept them covered. No point in encouraging hysteria, should their living Tiste Andii guests see the faces of their kin, their true kin, for were they not of Drift Avalii? Oh yes, they were indeed. Uncles, fathers, mothers, oh, a play on words now would well serve the notion-they were, yes, heads of families, cut away before their time, before their children had grown old enough, wise enough, hard enough to survive in this world. Cut away, ha ha. Now, death would have been one thing. Dying was one thing. Just one and there were other things, always, and you didn’t need any special wisdom to know that. But those heads had not died, not stiffened then softened with rot. The faces had not fallen away to leave just bone, just the recognition that came with a sharing of what-is, what-was and what’ would-be. No, the eyes stared on, the eyes blinked because some memory told them that blinking was necessary. The mouths moved, resuming interrupted conversations, the sharing of jests, the gossip of parents, yet not a single word could claw free.

But hysteria was a complicated place in which a young mind might find itself. It could be deafening with screams, shrieks, the endless bursts of horror again and again and again-a tide surging without end. Or it could be quiet-silent in that awful way of some silences-like that of gaping mouths, desperate but unable to draw breath, the eyes above bulging, the veins standing prominent in their need, but no breath would come, nothing to slide life into the lungs. This was the hysteria of drowning. Drowning inside oneself, inside horror. The hysteria of a child, blank-eyed, drool smearing the chin.

Some secrets were impossible to keep. The truth of that ship, for one. The Silanda’s lines were known, were profoundly familiar. The ship that had taken their parents o-

a pathetic journey in search of the one whom every Tiste Andii of Drift Avalii called Father. Anomander Rake. Anomander of the silver hair, the dragon’s eyes. Didn’t find him, alas. Never the chance to plead for help, to ask all the questions that needed asking, to stab fingers in accusation, condemnation, damnation. All that, yes yes.

Take to your oars, brave parents, there is more sea to cross. Can you see the shore? Of course not. You see the sunlight when there is sunlight through canvas weave, and in your heads you feel the ache of your bodies, the strain in your shoulders, the bunch and loose, bunch and loose of every draw on the sweeps. You feel the blood welling up to pool in the neck as if it was a gilded cup, only to sink back down again. Row, damn you! Row for the shore!

Aye, the shore. Other side of this ocean, and this ocean, dear parents, is endless.

So row! Row!

He might have giggled, but that would be a dangerous thing, to break the silence of his hysteria, which he had held on to for so long now it had become warm as a mother’s embrace.

Best to carry on, working to push away, shut away, all thought of the Silanda. Easier on land, in this inn, in this room.

But, on the morrow, they would sail. Again. Onto the ships, oh the spray and wind enlivens so!

And this was why, on this horrid night of vengeful rain, Nimander was awake. For he knew Phaed. He knew Phaed’s own stain of hysteria, and what it might lead her to do. Tonight, in the sodden ashes of midnight’s bell.

She could make her footfalls very quiet, as she crept out of her bed and padded barefoot to the door. Blessed sister blessed daughter blessed mother blessed aunt, niece, grandmother-blessed kin, blood of my blood, spit of my spit, gall of my gall. 1 hear you.

For I know your mind, Phaed. The ever-surging bursts in your soul-yes, 1 see your bared teeth, the smear of intent. You imagine yourself unseen, yes, unwitnessed, and so you reveal your raw self. There in that blessed slash of grey-white, so poetically echoed by the gleam of the knife in your hand.

To the door, darling Phaed. Lift the latch, and out you go, to slide down the corridor all slithering limbs as the rain lashes the roof above and water trickles down the walls in dirty tears. Cold enough to see your breath, Phaed, remind-ing you not just that you are alive, but that you are sexually awakened; that this journey is the sweetest indulgence of under’the-cover secrets, fingers ever playful on the knife, and on the rocking ship in the harbour eyes stare at blackness beneath drenched canvas, water trickling down…

She worries, yes, about Withal. Who might awaken. Before or after. Who might smell the blood, the iron stench, the death riding out on Sandalath Drukorlat’s last breath. Who might witness when all that Phaed was, truly was, could never be witnessed-because such things were not allowed, never allowed, and so she might have to kill him, too.

Vipers strike more than once.

Now at the door, the last barrier-row you fools-the shore lies just beyond!-and of course there is no lock binding the latch. No reason for it. Save one murderous child whose mother’s head stares at canvas on a pitching deck. The one child who went to see that for herself. And we are drawn to pilgrimage. Because to live is to hunt for echoes. Echoes of what? No-one knows. But the pilgrimage is taken, yes, ever taken, and every now and then those echoes are caught-just a whisper-creaking oars, the slap and chop of waves like fists against the hull, clamouring to get in, and the burbling blood, the spitting suck as it sinks back down. And we hear, in those echoes, some master’s voice: Row! Row for the shore! Row for your lives!

He remembered a story, the story he always remembered, would ever remember. An old man alone in a small fisher boat. Rowing into the face of a mountain of ice. Oh, he did love that story. The pointless glory of it, the mindless magic-he would grow chilled at the thought, at the vision he conjured of that wondrous, profound and profoundly useless scene. Old man, what do you think you are doing? Old man-the ice!