‘Antsy,’ Picker said, sighing, ‘much as I’d love to murder every damned assas-sin in this city, and the Guild Master, too, they’re not the source of the problem. Someone hired them, only we don’t know who, and we don’t know why. We’ve been through this before. We’re back right where we started, in fact, only this time we’re down two.’ She found she was trembling, and was unable to meet Antsy’s stare. ‘You know, I find myself wishing Ganoes Paran was here-if any-body could work out what’s going on, it’s the Captain.’

Antsy grunted. ‘Master of the Deck, aye.’ He drank down the last of his drink and straightened. ‘Fine, let’s go to the Finnest House, then-maybe he’s in there, maybe he’s not. Either way, it’s doing something.’

‘And leave Blend here on her own?’

‘She’s not alone. There’s Duiker and Scillara. Not to mention that bard. There ain’t nobody coming back to finish us, not in the daytime at least. We can be back before dusk, Pick.’

Still she hesitated.

Antsy stepped close. ‘Listen, I ain’t so stupid, I know what’s goin’ on in your head. But us just sitting here is us waiting for their next move. You know the ma-rine doctrine, Corporal. It ain’t our job to react-it’s our job to hit first and make them do the reacting. Twice now they hit us-they do it again and we’re fin-ished.’

Despite the alcoholic fumes drifting off the man, his blue eyes were hard and clear, and Picker knew he was right, and yet… she was afraid. And she knew he could see it, was struggling with it-badly-since fear was not something he’d ex-pect from her. Not ever. Gods, you’ve become an old woman, Pick. Frail and cowering.

They’ve killed your damned friends. They damn near killed your dearest love.

‘I doubt he’s there,’ she said. ‘Else he’d have been by. He’s gone somewhere, Antsy. Might never be back and why would he? Wherever Paran’s gone, he’s prob-ably busy-he’s the type. Always in the middle of some damned thing.’

‘All right,’ Antsy allowed. ‘Still, maybe there’s some way we can, um, send him a message.’

Her brows rose. ‘Now that’s an idea, Antsy. Glad one of us is thinking.’

‘Aye. Can we go now, then?’

They set out, making use of a side postern gate. Both wore cloaks, hiding armour and their swords, the weapons loose in their scabbards. Antsy also carried two sharpers, each in its own cloth sack, one knotted to his weapon harness and the other down at his belt. He could tug a grenado loose and fling it in its sack as one might throw a slingstone. It was.his own invention, and he’d practised with a stone inside the sack, acquiring passable skill. Hood knew he was no sapper, but he was learning.

Nothing infuriated him more than losing a fight. True, they’d come out the

Other side, while pretty much all of the assassins had died, so it wasn’t really a defecit, but it felt like one. Since retiring, his handful of Malazan companions had come to feel like family. Not in the way a squad did, since squads existed to fight, to kill, to wage war, and this made the tightness between the soldiers a strange one. Stained with brutality, with the extremes of behaviour that made every mo-ment of life feel like a damned miracle. No, this family wasn’t like that. They’d all calmed down some. Loosened up, left the nasty shit far behind. Or so they’d thought.

As he and Picker set out for Coll’s estate and the wretched house behind its grounds, he tried to think back to when he’d had nothing to do with this kind of life, back to when he’d been a scrawny bow-legged runt in Falar. Bizarrely, his own mental image of his ten-year-old face retained the damned moustache and he was pretty sure he’d yet to grow one, but memories were messy things. Unreli-able, maybe mostly lies, in fact. A scatter of images stitched together by invented shit, so that what had been in truth a time as chaotic as the present suddenly seemed like a narration, a story.

The mind in the present was ever eager to narrate its own past, each one its own historian, and since when were historians reliable on anything? Aye, look at Duiker. He spun a fine tale, that one about Coltaine and the Chain of Dogs. Heartbreaking, but then those were always the best kind, since they made a per-son feel-when so much of living was avoiding feeling anything. But was any of it real! Aye, Coltaine got killed for real. The army got shattered just like he said. But any of the rest? All those details?

No way of ever knowing. And it don’t really matter in the end, does it?

Just like our own tales. Who we were, what we did. The narration going on, until it stops. Sudden, like a caught breath that never again lets out.

End of story.

The child with the moustache was looking at him, there in his head. Scowling, suspicious, maybe disbelieving. ‘You think you know me, old man? Not a chance. You don’t know a thing and what you think you remember ain’t got nothing to do with me. With how I’m thinking. With what I’m feeling. You’re farther away than my own da, that miserable, bitter tyrant neither of us could ever figure out, not you, not me, not even him. Maybe he’s not us, but then he’s not him, either.

‘Old man, you’re as lost as I am and don’t pretend no different. Lost in life… till death finds you.’

Well, this was why he usually avoided thinking about his own past. Better left untouched, hidden away, locked up in a trunk and dropped over the side to sink down into the depths. Problem was, he was needing to dredge up some things all over again. Thinking like a soldier, for one. Finding that nasty edge again, the hard way of looking at things. The absence of hesitation.

Gallons of ale wasn’t helping. Just fed his despondency, his sense of feeling too old, too old for all of it, now.

‘Gods below, Antsy, I can hear you grinding your teeth from over here. What-ever it is, looks like it’s tasting awful.’

He squinted across at her. ‘Expect me to be skippin’ a dance down this damned street? We’re in more trouble than we’ve ever been, Tick.’

‘We’ve faced worse-’

‘No. Because when we faced worse we was ready for it. We was trained to deal with it. Grab it by the throat, choke the life from it.’ He paused, and then spat on to the cobbles before adding, ‘I’m starting to realize what “retirement” really means. Everything we let go of, we’re now scrabbling to get back, only it’s outa reach. It’s fuckin’ out of reach.’

She said nothing, and that told Antsy she knew he was right; that she felt the same.

Scant comfort, this company.

They reached Coil’s estate, went round towards the back wall. The journey from K’rul’s Bar to here was already a blur in Antsy’s mind, so unimportant as to be instantly worthless. He’d not registered a single figure amidst the crowds on the streets. Had they been tracked? Followed? Probably. ‘Hood’s breath, Pick, I wasn’t checkin’ if we picked up a sniffin’ dog. See what I mean?’

‘We did,’ she replied. ’Two of ’em. Lowlifes, not actual assassins, just their dogs, like you say. They’re keeping their distance-probably warned right off us. I doubt they’ll follow us into the wood.’

‘No,’ Antsy agreed. ‘They’d smell ambush.’

‘Right, so never mind them.’

She led the way into the overgrown thicket behind the estate. The uneven for-est floor was littered at the edges with rubbish, but this quickly dwindled as they pushed deeper into the shadowy, overgrown copse. Few people, it was obvious, wanted to set eyes on the Finnest House, to feel the chill of it looking right back at them. Attention from something as ghastly as that dark edifice was unwanted attention.

Thirty uneven strides in, they caught sight of the black half-stone half-wood walls, the wrinkled, scarred face of the house, shutters matted like rotted wicker, no light leaking through from anywhere. Vines snaked up the sides, sprawled out over the humped ground in the low-walled yard. The few trees in that yard were twisted and leafless, roots bared like bones.