Yes, misery is egalitarian. ‘Into the cart, then, with the others.’

The servants set to work.

The guardsman watched. After a moment his gaze drifted to the carter. He studied the wizened face with its streaks of rustleaf juice running down the stub-bled chin. ‘Got a loving woman back home?’

‘Eh?’

‘I imagine that ox is happy enough.’

‘Oh, aye, that it is, sir. All the flies, see, they prefer the big sacks.’

‘The what?’

The carter squinted at him, then stepped closer. ‘The bodies, sir. Big sacks, I call ’em. I done studies and lots of thinking, on important things. On life and stuff. What makes it work, what happens when it stops and all.’

‘Indeed. Well-’

‘Every body in existence, sir, is made up of the same stuff. So small you can’t see except with a special lens but I made me one a those. Tiny, that stuff. I call ’em bags. And inside each bag there’s a wallet, floating in the middle like. And I figure that in that wallet there’s notes.’

‘I’m sorry, did you say notes?’

A quick nod, a pause to send out a stream of brown juice. ‘With all the details of that body written on ’em. Whether it’s a dog or a cat or a green-banded nose-worm. Or a person. And things like hair colour and eye colour and other stuff-all written on those notes in that wallet in that bag. They’re instructions, you see, telling the bag what kind of bag it’s supposed to be. Some bags are liver bags, some are skin, some are brain, some are lungs. And it’s the mother and the father that sew up them bags, when they make themselves a baby. They sew ’em up, you see, with half and half, an’ that’s why brats share looks from both ma and da. Now this ’ere ox, it’s got bags too that look pretty much the same, so’s I been thinking of sewing its half with a human half-wouldn’t that be something?’

‘Something, good sir, likely to get you run out of the city-if you weren’t stoned to death first.’

The carter scowled. ‘That’s the probbem wi’ the world then, ain’t it? No sense of adventure!’

‘I have a very important meeting.’

Iskaral Pust, still wearing his most ingratiating smile, simply nodded.

Sordiko Qualm sighed. ‘It is official Temple business.’

He nodded again.

‘I do not desire an escort.’

‘You don’t need one, High Priestess,’ said Iskaral Pust. ‘You shall have me!’ And then he tilted his head and licked his lips. ‘Won’t she just! Hee hee! And she’ll see that with me she’ll have more than she ever believed possible! Why, I shall be a giant walking penis!’

‘You already are,’ said Sordiko Qualm.

‘Are? Are what, dearest? We should get going, lest we be late!’

‘Iskaral Pust, I don’t want you with me.’

‘You’re just saying that, but your eyes tell me different.’

‘What’s in my eyes,’ she replied, ‘could see me dangling on High Gallows. As-suming, of course, the entire city does not launch into a spontaneous celebration upon hearing of your painful death, and set me upon a throne of solid gold in ac-clamation.’

‘What is she going on about? No one knows I’m even here! And why would I want a gold throne? Why would she, when she can have me?’ He licked his lips again, and then revised his smile. ‘Lead on, my love. I promise to be most offi-cious in this official meeting. After all, I am the Magus of the House of Shadow. Not a mere High Priest, but a Towering Priest! A Looming Priest! I shall venture no opinions of whatever, unless invited to, of course. No, I shall be stern and wise and leave all the jabbering to my sweet underling.’ He ducked and added, ‘With whom I shall be underlinging very shortly!’

Her hands twitched oddly, most fetchingly, in fact, and then surrender cas-caded in her lovely eyes, thus providing Iskaral Pust with the perfect image to res-urrect late at night under his blankets with Mogora snoring through all the spider balls filled with eggs lodged up her nose.

‘You will indeed be silent, Iskaral Pust. The one with whom I must speak does not tolerate fools, and I will make no effort to intercede should you prove fatally obnoxious.’ She paused and shook her head. ‘Then again, I cannot imagine you being anything but obnoxious. Perhaps I should retract my warning, in the hope that you will give such offence as to see you instantly obliterated. Whereupon I can then evict those foul bhokarala and your equally foul wife.’ Sudden surprise. ‘Listen to me! Those thoughts were meant to be private! Yours is a most exe-crable influence, Iskaral Pust.’

‘Soon we shall be as peas in a pod! Those spiny, sharp pods that stick to every-

thing especially crotch hair if one is forced to wee in the bushes.’ He reached out for her. ‘Hand in hand gliding down the streets!’

She seemed to recoil, but of course that was only his delicate and fragile self-esteem and its niggling worries, quickly buried beneath the plastering of yet another ingratiating smile on his face.

They escaped the temple through a little used side postern gate, slamming it shut just in time to avoid the squall of bhokarala excitedly pursuing them down the corridor.

Wretched sunshine in the streets, Sordiko Qualm seemingly indifferent to such atmospheric disregard-why, not a single cloud in sight! Worse than Seven Cities, with not a crevasse to be found anywhere.

Miserable crowds to thread through, a sea of ill-tempered faces snapping round at the gentle prod of his elbows and shoulders as he hurried to keep pace with the long-legged High Priestess. ‘Long legs, yes! Ooh. Ooh ooh ooh. Look at them scythe, see the waggle of those delicious-’

‘Quiet!’ she hissed over a shapely shoulder.

‘Shadowthrone understood. Yes he did. He saw the necessity of our meeting, her and me. The consummation of Shadow’s two most perfect mortals. The fated sto-rybook love-the lovely innocent woman-but not too innocent, one hopes-and the stalwart man with his brave smile and warm thews. Er, brave thews and warm smile. Is “thews” even the right word? Muscled arms and such, anyway. Why, I am a mass of muscles, am I not? I can even make my ears flex, when the need presents itself-no point in showing off. She despises the strutting type, being delicate and all. And soon-’

‘Watch that damned elbow, runt!’

‘And soon the glory will be delivered unto us-’

‘-a damned apology!’

‘What?’

A hulking oaf of a man was forcing himself into Iskaral Pust’s path, his big flat face looking like something one found at the bottom of a nightsoil bucket. ‘I said I expect a damned apology, y’damned toad-faced ferret!’

Iskaral Pust snorted. ‘Oh, look, a hulking oaf of a man with a big flat face look-ing like something one finds at the bottom of a nightsoil bucket wants me to apologize! And I will, good sir, as soon as you apologize for your oafishness and your bucket-face-in fact, apologize for existing!’

The enormous apish hand that reached for his throat was so apish that it barely possessed a thumb, or so Iskaral Pust would later report to his wide-eyed murmuring audience of bhokarala.

Naturally, he ignored that hand and did some reaching out of his own, straight into the oaf’s crotch, where he squeezed and yanked back and forth and tugged and twisted, even as the brute folded up with a whimper and collapsed like a sack of melons on to the filthy cobbles, where he squirmed most pitifully.

Iskaral Pust stepped over him and hurried to catch up to Sordiko Qualm, who seemed to have increased her pace, her robes veritably flying out behind her.

‘The rudeness of some people!’ Iskaral Pust gasped,

They arrived at the gates of a modest estate close to Hinter’s Tower. The gates were locked and Sordiko Qualm tugged on a braided rope, triggering chiming Irom somewhere within.

They waited.

Chains rattled on the other side of the gates, and a moment later the solid doors creaked open, streams of rust drifting down from the hinges.