Cold bit into his right hand-what? And then his head was lifted above the surface. And he was sucking in icy lungfuls of air.

Darkness, the rush and gurgle of water flowing past, seeking to pull him back, back and down. But Bainisk was tugging him along, and it was getting shallower as the tunnel widened. The black, dripping ceiling seemed to be sagging, forming a crooked spine overhead. Harllo stared up at it, wondering how he could see at all.

And then he was being dragged across broken stone.

They halted, lying side by side.

Before too long, the shivering began. Racing into Harllo like demonic posses-sion, a spirit that shook through him with rabid glee. His teeth chattered uncon-trollably.

Bainisk was plucking at him. Through clacking teeth he said, ‘Venaz won’t stop. He’ll see the lantern-he’ll know. We got to keep going, Harllo. It’s the only way to get warm again, the only way to get away.’

Hut it was so hard to climb to his feet. His legs still didn’t work properly. Bainisk had to help him and he leaned heavily on the bigger boy as they staggered skidding upslope along the scree-scattered path.

It seemed to Harllo that they walked for ever, into and out of faint light. Sometimes the slope pitched downward, only to slowly climb yet again. Pain throbbed in Harllo’s legs now, but it was welcome-life was returning, filled with its stubborn fire, and now he wanted to live, now it mattered more than anything else.

‘Look!’ Bainisk gasped. ‘At what we’re walking on-Harllo, look!’

Phosphorescent mould limned the walls, and in the faint glow Harllo could make out the vague shapes of the rubble underfoot. Broken pottery. Small fragments of burned bone.

‘It’s got to lead up,’ Bainisk said. ‘To some cave. The Gadrobi used them to bury their ancestors. A cave overlooking the lake. We’re almost there.’

Instead, they reached a cliff ledge.

And stood, silent.

A vertical section of rock had simply plummeted away, leaving a broad gap. The bottom of the fissure was swallowed in black, from which warm air rose in dry gusts. Opposite them, ten or more paces across, a slash of diffuse light revealed the continuation of the tunnel they had been climbing.

‘We’ll climb down,’ said Bainisk, uncoiling the rope and starting to tie a knot at one end. ‘And then back up. We can do this, you’ll see.’

‘What if the rope’s not long enough? I can’t see the bottom, Bainisk.’

‘We’ll just find more handholds.’ Now he was tying a loop at the other end which he then set round a knoblike projection. ‘I’ll throw a snake back up to dislodge this, so we can take the rope with us for the climb up the other side. Now, you go first.’ He tossed the rest of the rope over the edge. They heard it snap out to its full length. Bainisk grunted. ‘Like I said, we can find handholds.’

Harllo worked his way over the side, gripping hard the wet rope-it wanted to slide through, but if that happened he knew he was dead, so he held tight. His feet scrambled, found shallow ledges running at an angle across the cliff-face. Not much, but they eased the strain. He began working his way down.

He was perhaps three body-lengths down when Bainisk began following. The rope began swaying unpredictably, and Harllo found his feet slipping from their scant purchases again and again, each time resulting in a savage tug on his arms.

‘Bainisk!’ he hissed. ‘Wait! Let me go a little farther down first-you’re throwing me about.’

‘Okay. Go on.’

Harllo found purchase again and resumed the descent.

If Bainisk started up again he no longer felt the sways and tugs. The rope was getting wetter, which meant that he was reaching its end-the water was soaking its way down. And then he reached the sodden knot. Sudden panic as he sought to find projections in the wall for his feet. There were very few-the stone was almost sheer.

‘Bainisk! I’m at the knot!’ He craned his neck to look down. Blackness, unre-licved, depthless. ‘Bainisk! Where arc you?’

Since Harllo’s first call, Bainisk had not moved. The last thing he wanted to do was accidentally dislodge the boy, not after they’d made it this far. And, truth be told, he was experiencing a growing fear. This wall was too even-no cracks, the strata he could feel little more than ripples at a steeply canted angle. They would never be able to hold on once past the rope-and there was nothing he could use to slip the loop round.

They were, he realized, in trouble.

Upon hearing Harllo’s last call-the boy reaching the knot-he readied himself to resume his descent.

And there was a sharp upward tug on the rope.

He looked up. Vague faces peering over, hands and more hands reaching to close on the rope. Venaz-yes, there he was, grinning.

‘Got you,’ he murmured, low and savage. ‘Got you both, Bainisk.’

Another tug upward.

Bainisk drew his knife one-handed. He reached down to cut the rope beneath him, and then hesitated, looking up once more at Venaz’s face.

Maybe that had been his own, only a few years ago. That face, so eager to take over, to rule the moles. Well, Venaz could have them. He could have it all.

Bainisk reached up with the knife, just above his fist where it held tight. And he sliced through.

Dig heels in, it will not help. We must wing back to the present. For everything to be understood, every facet must flash alight at least once. Earlier, the round man begged forgiveness. Now, he pleads for trust. His is a sure hand, even if it trembles. Trust.

A bard sits opposite an historian. At a nearby table in K’rul’s Bar, Blend watches Scillara unfolding coils of smoke from her mouth. There is something avid in that gaze, but every now and then a war erupts in her eyes, when she thinks of the woman lying in a coma upstairs. When she thinks of her, yes. Blend has taken to sleeping in the bed with Picker, has taken to trying all she could think of to awaken sensation once more in her lover. But nothing has worked. Picker’s soul is lost, wandering far from the cool, flaccid flesh.

Blend hates herself now, as she senses her soul ready to move on, to seek the blessing of a new life, a new body to explore and caress, new lips to press upon her own.

But this is silly. Scillara’s amiability was ever casual. She was a woman who preferred a man’s charms, such as they were. And truth be told, Blend had played in that crib more than once herself. So why now has this lust awakened? What made it so wild, so needy?

Loss, my dear. Loss is like a goad, a stinging shove that sets one lunging for-

ward necking handholds, seeking ecstasy, delicious surrender, even the lure of self destruction. The bud cut at the stem throws its last energy into one final flowering, one glorious exclamation. The flower defies, to quote in entirety an ancient Tistc Andii poem. Life runs from death. It must, it cannot help it. Life runs, to quote a round man’s epitome of poetic brevity.

Slip into Blend’s mind, ease in behind her eyes, and watch as she watches, feel as she feels, if you dare.

Or try Antsy, there at the counter on which are arrayed seven crossbows, twelve flatpacks of quarrels amounting to one hundred and twenty darts, six shortswords, three throwing axes of Falari design, a Genabarii broadsword and buckler, two local rapiers with fancy quillons-so fancy the weapons were snagged together and Antsy had spent an entire morning trying to separate them, with no luck-and a small sack containing three sharpers. He is trying to decide what to wear.

But the mission they were about to set out on was meant to be peaceful, so he should just wear his shortsword as usual, peace-strapped as usual, everything as usual, in fact. But then there were assassins out there who wanted Antsy’s head on a dagger point, so maybe keeping things usual was in fact suicidal. So he should strap on at least two shortswords, throw a couple of crossbows over his shoulders and hold the broadsword in his right hand and the twin rapiers in his left, with a flatpack tied to each hip, the sharper sack at his belt, and a throwing axe between his teeth-no, that’s ridiculous, he’d break his jaw trying that. Maybe an extra shortsword, but then he might cut his own tongue out the first time he tried saying anything and he was sure to try saying something eventually, wasn’t he?