After a moment, Clip stepped back from the ledge and set out down the path once more.

Nimander made to follow but Skintick grasped his arm, forcing him round.

‘Enough,’ Skintick growled, and Nenanda moved up beside him, Desra joining them. ‘We want to know what’s going on, Nimander.’

Nenanda spoke. ‘She didn’t just fall-do you think we’re fools, Nimander?’

‘Not fools,’ he replied, and then hesitated, ‘but you must play at being fools… for a little longer.’

‘He killed her, didn’t he?’

At Skintick’s question Nimander forced himself to lock gazes with his cousin, but he said nothing.

Nenanda gave a sudden hiss and whirled to glare at Aranatha, who stood nearby. ‘You must have sensed something!’

Her brows arched. ‘Why do you say that?’

He seemed moments from closing on her with a hand upraised, but she too did not flinch, and after a moment a look a sheer helplessness crumpled Nenanda’s face and he turned from them all.

‘He’s not what he was,’ said Desra. ‘I’ve felt it-he’s… uninterested.’

Of course she was speaking of Clip. Indeed they were not fools, none of them. Still Nimander said nothing. Still he waited.

Skintick could no longer hold Nimander’s gaze. He glanced briefly at Desra and then stepped back. ‘Fools, you said. We must play at being fools.’

Nenanda faced them once more. ‘What does he want with us? What did he ever want? Dragging us along as if we were but his pets.’ His eyes fixed on Desra. ‘Flinging you on your back every now and then to keep the boredom away-and now you’re saying what? Only that he’s become bored by the distraction. Well.’

She gave no sign that his words wounded her. ‘Ever since he awakened,’ she said. ‘I don’t think boredom is a problem for him, not any more. And that doesn’t make sense.’

‘Because,’ added Skintick, ‘he’s still contemptuous of us. Yes, I see your point, Desra.’

‘Then what does he want with us?’ Nenanda demanded again. ‘Why does he still need us at all?’

‘Maybe he doesn’t,’ said Skintick.

Silence.

Nimander finally spoke. ‘She made a mistake.’

‘Confronted him.’

‘Yes.’ He stepped away from Skintick, setting his gaze upon the descent awaiting them. ‘My authority holds no weight,’ he said. ‘I told her to stay away-to leave it alone.’

‘Leave it to Anomander Rake, you mean.’

He faced Skintick again. ‘No. That is too much of an unknown. We-we don’t know the situation in Black Coral. If they’re… vulnerable. We don’t know any-thing of that. It’d be dangerous to assume someone else can fix all this.’

They were all watching him now.

‘Nothing has changed,’ he said. ‘If he gets even so much as a hint-it rnust be us to act first. We choose the ground, the right moment. Nothing has changed-do you all understand me?’

Nods. And odd, disquieting expressions on every face but Aranatha’s-he could not read them. ‘Am I not clear enough?’

Skintick blinked, as if surprised. ‘You are perfectly clear, Nimander. We should get moving, don’t you think?’

What-what has jusi happened here? But he had no answers. Uneasy, he moved out on to the trail.

The rest fell in behind him.

Nenanda drew Skintick back, slowing their progress, and hissed, ‘How, Skin? How did he do that? We were there, about to-I don’t know-and then, all of a sudden, he just, he just-’

‘Took us into his hands once more, yes.’

‘How?’

Skintick simply shook his head. He did not think he could find the right words-not for Nenanda, not for the others. He leads. In the ways of leading, the ways the rest of us cannot-and can never-understand.

I looked into his eyes, and I saw such resolve that I could not speak.

Absence of doubt? No, nothing so egotistic as that. Nimander has plenty of doubts, so many that he’s lost his fear of them. He accepts them as easily as any-lliing else. Is that the secret? Is that the very definition of greatness?

He leads. We follow-he took us into his hands, again, and each one of us stood, silent, finding in ourselves what he had just given us-that resolve, the will to go on-and it left us humbled.

Oh, do I make too much of this! Are we all no more than children, and these the silly, meaningless games of children!

‘He killed Kedeviss,’ muttered Nenanda.

‘Yes.’

‘And Nimander will give answer to that.’

Yes.

Monkrat squatted in the mud and watched the line of new pilgrims edge closer to the camp. Most of their attention, at least to begin with, had been on the barrow itself-on that emperor’s ransom of wasted wealth-but now, as they approached the decrepit ruin, he could see how they hesitated, as something of the wrongness whispered through. Most were rain-soaked, senses dulled by long, miserable jour-neys. It would take a lot to stir their unease.

He watched the sharpening of their attention, as details resolved from the gloom, the mists and the woodsmoke. The corpse of the child in the ditch, the rotting swaths of clothes, the broken cradle with four crows crowding the rail, looming over the motionless, swaddled bundle. The weeds now growing up on the path leading to and from the barrow. Things were not as they should be.

Some might beat a quick retreat. Those with a healthy fear of corruption. But so many pilgrims came with the desperate hunger that was spiritual need-it was what made them pilgrims in the first place. They were lost and they wanted to be found. How many would resist that first cup of kelyk, the drink that welcomed, the nectar that stole… everything?

Perhaps more than among those who had come before-as they saw the growing signs of degradation, of abandonment of all those qualities of humanity the Redeemer himself honoured. Monkrat watched them hesitate, even as the least broken of the kelykan shuffled into their midst, each offering up a jug of the foul poison.

‘The Redeemer has drunk deep!’ they murmured again and again.

Well, not yet. But that time was coming, of that Monkrat had little doubt. At which point… he shifted about slightly and lifted his gaze to the tall, narrow tower rising into the dark mists above the city. No, he couldn’t make her out from here, not with this sullen weather sinking down, but he could feel her eyes-eternally open. Oh, he knew that damned dragon of old, could well recall his terror as the creature sailed above the treetops in Blackdog and Mott Wood, the devastation of her attacks. If the Redeemer fell, she would assail the camp, the barrow, everything and everyone. There would be fire, a fire that needed no fuel, yet devoured all.

And then Anomander Rake himself would arrive, striding through the wreck age with black sword in his hands, to take the life of a god-whatever life hap pened to be left.

Shivering in the damp, he rose, pulling his tattered raincape about himself. Gradithan was probably looking for him, wanting to know what Monkrat’s countless sets of eyes in the city might have seen-not that there was much to re-port. The Tiste Andii weren’t up to much, but then they never were, until such time as necessity stirred them awake. Besides, he’d woken up with a headache, a dull throb just behind the eyes-it was the weather, pressure building in his sinuses. And even the rats in the camp were proving elusive, strangely nervous, skittish when he sought to snare them to his will.

He wasn’t interested in seeing Gradithan. The man had moved from opportunist to fanatic alarmingly fast, and while Monkrat had no problem understanding the former, he was baffled by the latter. And frightened.

The best way to avoid Gradithan was to wander down into Black Coral. The blessing of darkness was far too bitter for the worshippers of Saemenkelyk.

He worked his way into the ankle-deep river of mud that was the trail leading into Night.

From somewhere nearby a cat suddenly yowled and Monkrat started as he sensed a wave of panic sweep through every rat within hearing. Shaking himself, he continued on.