‘Because I gave my life to the Guild, Rallick.’ Krute stood with a turnip in one hand. After a moment he flung it into the basket beside the cask of fresh water. ‘He’s single-handedly destroying it. True, he’ll be gone soon enough, but what will be left by then?’

Rallick rubbed at his face. ‘Everyone’s mood is sour these days, it seems.’

‘What are we waiting for?’

Krute could not long hold Rallick’s gaze when the assassin finally looked at him. There was something so… remorseless in those cold eyes, in that hard face that seemed carved to refute for ever the notion of a smile. A face that could not soften, could not relax into anything human. No wonder he’d been Vorcan’s favourite.

Krute fidgeted with the food he’d purchased. ‘You hungry?’ he asked.

‘What did you have in mind?’

‘Fish stew.’

‘In a few bells it’ll be hot enough outside to melt lead.’

‘That’s what I’m cooking, Rallick.’

Sighing, the assassin rose and stretched. ‘Think I’ll take a walk instead.’

‘As you like.’

At the door Rallick paused and glanced over, his expression suddenly wry. ‘It wears off, doesn’t it?’

Krute frowned. ‘What does?’

Rallick did not reply, and moments later he was gone, the door closing behind him.

‘What does?’ Did I have any reason there to be so obtuse? Must have, though

/ ciin’i think of one right now. Maybe just… instinctive. Yes, Ralllick Nom, it wears off. Fast.

Things were easier before-should have recognized that back then. Should have liked things just fine. Should have stopped gnawing.

On her hands and knees, Thordy rubbed the ashes into the spaces between the set stones, into every crack and fissure, every groove scoring the vaguely flat sur-faces. Tiny bits of bone rolled under her fingertips. No ash was perfect unless it came from nothing but wood, and this ash was made of more things than just wood. The dry season had, she hoped, finally arrived. Otherwise she might have to do this all over again, to keep the glyphs hidden, the pleasant, beautiful glyphs with all the promises they whispered to her.

She heard the back door swing open on its leather hinges and knew Gaz was standing on the threshold, eyes hooded, watching her. His fingerless hands twitch-ing at the ends of his arms, the ridge of knuckles marred and bright red, teeth-cut and bone-gouged.

He killed people every night, she knew, to keep from killing her. She was, she knew, the cause of their deaths. Every one of them a substitute for what Gaz re-ally wanted to do.

She heard him step outside.

Straightening, wiping the ash from her hands on her apron, she turned.

‘Breakfast leavings,’ he muttered.

‘What?’

‘The house is full of flies,’ he said, standing there as if struck rooted by the sunlight. Red-shot eyes wandered about the yard as if wanting to crawl out from his head and find shelter. Beneath that rock, or the bleached plank of grey wood, or under the pile of kitchen scraps.

‘You need a shave,’ she said. ‘Want me to heat the water?’

The haunted eyes flicked towards her-but there was nowhere to hide in that direction, so he looked away once more. ‘No, don’t touch me.’

She thought of holding the razor in her hand, settling its edge against his throat. Seeing the runnels winding down through the lathered soap, the throb of his pulse. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘the beard hides how thin you’ve become. In the face, anyway.’

His smile was a threat. ‘And you prefer that, wife?’

‘It’s just different, Gaz.’

‘You can’t prefer anything when you don’t care, right?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You didn’t have to. Why’d you make that stone thing-right there on the best dirt?’

‘I just felt like it,’ she replied. ‘A place to sit and rest. Where I can keep an eye on all the vegetables.’

‘In case they run away?’

‘No. I just like looking at them, that’s all.’ They don’t ask questions. They don’t ask for much of anything at all. A few dribbles of water, maybe. A clear path to the sun, free of any weeds.

They don’t get suspicious. They don’t think about murdering me.

‘I have supper ready for dusk,’ Gaz said, lurching into motion.

She watched him leave. Gritty ash made black crescents of her fingernails, as if she had been rooting through the remnants of a pyre. Which was appropriate, because she had, but Gaz didn’t need to know things like that. He didn’t need to know anything at all.

Be a plant, Gaz. Worry about nothing. Until the harvest.

The ox was too stupid to worry. If not for a lifetime of back-breaking labour and casual abuse, the beast would be content, existence a smooth cycle to match the ease of day into night and night into day and on and on for ever. Feed and cud aplenty, water to drink and salt to lick, a plague to eradicate the world’s biting flies and ticks and fleas. If the ox could dream of paradise, it would be a simple dream and a simple paradise. To live simply was to evade the worries that came with complexity. This end was achieved at the expense, alas, of intelligence.

The drunks that staggered out of the taverns as the sun rose were in search of paradise and they had the sodden, besotted brains to prove it. Lying senseless in the durhang and d’bayang dens could be found others oozing down a similar path. The simplicity they would find was of course death, the threshold crossed almost without effort.

Unmindful (naturally) of any irony, the ox pulled a cart into an alley behind the dens where three emaciated servants brought out this night’s crop of wasted corpses. The carter, standing with a switch to one side, spat out a mouthful of rustleaf juice and silently gestured to another body lying in the gutter behind a back door. In for a sliver, in for a council. Grumbling, the three servants went over to this corpse and reached for limbs to lift it from the cobblestones. One then gasped and recoiled, and a moment later so too did the others.

The ox was not flicked into motion for some time thereafter, as humans rushed about, as more arrived. It could smell the death, but it was used to that. There was much confusion, yet the yoked beast remained an island of calm, en-joying the shade of the alley.

The city guardsman with the morning ache in his chest brushed a hand along the ox’s broad flank as he edged past. He crouched down to inspect the corpse.

Another one, this man beaten so badly he was barely recognizable as human. Not a single bone in his face was left unbroken. The eyes were pulped. Few teeth remained. The blows had continued, down to his crushed throat-which was the likely cause of death-and then his chest. Whatever weapon had been used left short, elongated patterns of mottled bruising. Just like all the others.

The guardsman rose and faced the three servants from the dens. ‘Was he a cus-tomer?’

Three blank faces regarded him, then one spoke, ‘How in Hood’s name can we tell? His damned face is gone!’

‘Clothing? Weight, height, hair colour-anyone in there last-’

‘Sir,’ cut in the man, ‘if he was a customer he was a new one-he’s got meat on his bones, see? And his clothes was clean. Well, before he spilled hisself.’

The guardsman had made the same observations. ‘Might he have been, then? A new customer?’

‘Ain’t been none in the last day or so. Some casuals, you know, the kind who can take it or leave it, but no, we don’t think we seen this one, by his clothes and hair and such.’

‘So what was he doing in this alley?’

No one had an answer.

Did the guardsman have enough to requisition a necromancer? Only if this man was well born. But the clothes aren’t that high-priced. More like merchant class, or some mid-level official. If so, then what was he doing here in the dregs of Gadrobi District? ‘He’s Daru,’ he mused.

‘We get ’em,’ said the loquacious servant, with a faint sneer. ‘We get Rhivi, we get Callowan, we get Barghast even.’