Except, perhaps, this. In love, grief is a promise. As sure as Hood’s nod. There will be many gardens, but this last one to visit is so very still. Not meant for lovers. Not meant for dreamers. Meant only for a single figure, there in the dark, standing alone.

XX

Taking a single breath.

In hollow grove and steeple chamber

The vine retreats and moss rolls inside

The void from whence it came

In shallow grave and cloven crypt

The bones shiver and shades flee

Into the spaces between breaths

In tilted tower and webslung doorway

Echoes still and whispers will die

Men in masks rap knuckles ‘gainst walls

In dark cabinets and beneath bed slats

Puppets clack limbs and painted eyes widen

To the song pouring down from hills

And the soul starts in its cavern drum

Battered and blunted to infernal fright

This is the music of the beast

The clamour of the world at bay

Begun its mad savage charge

The hunt commences my friends

The Hounds are among us.

– Prelude, Toll The Hounds, Fisher Kel That

Faces of stone, and not one would turn Nimander’s way. His grief was too cold for them, too strange. He had not shown enough shock, horror, dismay. He had taken he news of her death as would a commander hearing of the loss of a soldier, and nly Aranatha-in the single, brief moment when she acknowledged anyone or anything-had but nodded in his direction, as if in grim approval.

Skintick’s features were tight with betrayal, once the stunned disbelief wore off, and the closeness he had always felt with Nimander now seemed to have suddenly widened into a chasm no bridge could span. Nenanda had gone so far as to half draw his sword, yet was torn as to who most deserved his blade’s bite: Clip or Nimander. Clip for his shrug, after showing them the crumbled edge of the cliff where she must have lost her footing. Or Nimander, who stood dry-eyed and said nothing. Desra, calculating, selfish Desra, was the first to weep.

Skintick expressed the desire to climb down into the crevasse, but this was a sentimental gesture he had drawn from his time among humans-the need to observe the dead, perhaps even to bury Kedeviss’s body beneath boulders-and his suggestion was met with silence. The Tiste Andii held no regard for corpses. There would be no return, to Mother Dark, after all. The soul was flung away, to wander for ever lost.

They set out shortly thereafter, Clip in the lead, continuing on through the rough pass. Clouds swept down the flanks of the peaks, as if the mountains were shedding their mantles of white, and before long the air grew cold and damp, thin in their lungs, and all at once the clouds swallowed the world.

Stumbling on the slick, icy stone, Nimander trudged on in Clip’s wake-although the warrior was no longer even visible, there was only one possible path. He could feel judgement hardening upon his back, an ever thickening succession of layers, from Desra, from Nenanda, and most painfully from Skintick, and it seemed the burdens would never relent. He longed for Aranatha to speak up, to whisper the truth to them all, but she was silent as a ghost.

They were now all in grave danger. They needed to be warned, but Nimander could guess the consequences of such a revelation. Blood would spill, and he could not be certain that it would be Clip’s. Not now, not when Clip could unleash the wrath of a god-or whatever it was that possessed the warrior.

Kedeviss had brought to him her suspicions down in the village beside the lake bed, giving firm shape to what he had already begun to believe. Clip had awakened but at a distance, as if behind a veil. Oh, he had always shown his contempt for Nimander and the others, but this was different. Something fundamental had changed. The new contempt now hinted of hunger, avarice, as if Clip saw them as nothing more than raw meat, awaiting the flames of his need.

Yet Nimander understood that Clip would only turn upon them if cornered, if confronted. As Kedeviss had done-even when Nimander had warned her against such a scene. No, Clip still needed them. His way in. As for what would happen then, not even the gods knew. Lord Anomander Rake did not suffer upstarts. He was never slowed by indecisiveness, and in delivering mercy even the cruellest miser could not match his constraint. And as for Clip’s claim to be some sort of emissary from Mother Dark, well, that had become almost irrelevant, unless the god within the warrior was seeking to usurp Mother Dark herself.

This notion disturbed Nimander. The goddess was, after all, turned away. Her leaving had left a void. Could something as alien as the Dying God assume the Unseen Crown? Who would even kneel before such an entity?

It was hard to imagine Anomander Rake doing so, or any of the other Tiste Andii that Nimander and his kin had known. Obedience had never been deemed a pure virtue among the Tiste Andii. To follow must be an act born of deliberation, of clear-eyed, cogent recognition that the one to be followed has earned the privilege. So often, after all, formal structures of hierarchy stood in place of such personal traits and jud|gements. A title or rank did not automatically confer upon the one wearing it any true virtue, or even worthiness to the claim.

Nimander had seen for himself the flaws inherent in that hierarchy. Among the Malazans, the renegade army known as the Bonehunters, there had been officers whom Nimander would not follow under any circumstances. Men and women of incompetence-oh, he’d seen how such fools were usually weeded out, through the informal justice system practised by the common soldier, a process often punctu-ated by a knife in the back, which struck Nimander as a most dangerous habit. But these were human ways, not those of the Tiste Andii.

If Clip and the Dying God that possessed him truly believed they could usurp Mother Dark, and indeed her chosen son, Anomander Rake, as ruler of the Tiste Andii, then that conceit was doomed. And yet, he could not but recall the poisonous lure of Saemenkelyk. There could be other paths to willing obedience.

And that is why I can say nothing. Why Aranatha is light. We must lull Clip into disregarding us, so that he continues believing we are fools. Because there is the chance, when the moment arrives, that I alone will be standing close enough. To strike. To catch him-them-unawares.

It may be that Anomander Rake and the others in Black Coral will have nothing to fear from Clip, from the Dying God. It may be that they will swat them down with ease.

But we cannot be sure of that.

In truth, I am afraid …

‘I can see water.’

Startled, Nimander glanced back at Skintick, but his cousin would not meet his eyes.

‘Where the valley dips down, eastward-I think that is the Cut that Clip de-scribed. And along the north shore of it, we will find Black Coral.’

Clip had halted on an outcropping and was staring down into the misty valley. They had left most of the cloud in their wake, descending beneath its ceiling. Most of the range was now on their left, westward, the nearest cliff-face grey and black and broken only by a dozen or so mountain sheep wending their way along a seam.

Skintick called out to the warrior, ‘That looks to be a long swim across, Clip.’

The man turned, rings spinning on their chain. ‘We will find a way,’ he said. ‘Now, we should continue on, before it gets too dark.’

‘What is your hurry?’ Skintick asked. ‘The entire trail down is bound to be treacherous, especially in this half-light. What would be the point in taking a tumble and…’ Skintick went no further.

And breaking a neck.

In the uncomfortable silence that followed, only the clack of the rings carried on, like a man chewing stones.