Nimander glanced across at Skintick. His cousin shrugged; then, eyes narrowing, he suddenly smiled.

‘Your god, Nimander?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not likely to die any time soon, then.’

‘No, never that.’

‘What are you two talking about?’ Clip demanded, then, dismissing any possible reply, he faced the window once more. ‘A dying god needs to die sometime.’

‘Notions of mercy, Great One?’ Skintick asked.

‘Not where you are concerned.’

‘Just as well, since I could never suffer the gratitude.’

Nimander watched as Desra glided up to stand beside Clip. They stood looking out through the pane, like husband and wife, like allies against the world. Her left arm almost touching him, up near her elbow, but she would not draw any closer. The spinning rings prevented that, whirling a metal barrier.

‘Tonight,’ Clip said loudly, ‘no one drinks.’

Nimander thought back to those black-stained mouths and the ravaged eyes above them, and he shivered.

Mist drifted down from the parklike forest north of the Great Barrow, merging with the smoke of cookfires from the pilgrims encamped like an army around the enormous, circular mound. Dawn was paling the sky, seeming to push against the unnatural darkness to the south, but this was a war the sun could not win.

From the city gate the cobbled road ran between lesser barrows where hundreds of corpses had been interred following the conquest. Malazans, Grey Swords, Rhivi, Tiste Andii and K’Chain Che’Malle. Farther to the west rose longer barrows, final home to the fallen citizens and soldiers of the city.

Seerdomin walked the road through the gloom. A path through ghosts-too many to even comprehend-but he thought he could hear the echoes of their death-cries, their voices of pain, their desperate pleas for mothers and loved ones. Once he was past this place, who was there to hear those echoes? No one, and it was this truth that struck him the hardest. They would entwine with naught hut themselves, falling unheeded to the dew-flattened grass.

He emerged into morning light, like passing through a curtain, suddenly brushed with warmth, and made his way up the slope towards the sprawled encampment. For this, he wore his old uniform, a kind of penance, a kind of self-flagellation. There was need, in his mind, to bear his guilt openly, brazenly, to leave himself undefended and indefensible. This was how he saw his daily pilgrimage to the Great Barrow, although he well knew that some things could never be purged, and that redemption was a dream of the deluded.

Eyes fixed on him from the camps to either side as he continued on towards that massive heap of treasure-wealth of such measure that it could only belong to a dead man, who could not cast covetous eyes upon his hoard, who would not feel its immense weight night and day, who would not suffer beneath its terrible curse. He was tracked, then, by no doubt hardening eyes, the fixation of hatred, contempt, perhaps even the desire of murder. No matter. He understood such sentiments, the purity of such desires.

Armour clanking, chain rustling across the fronts of his thighs as he drew ever closer. •

The greater vastness of wealth now lay buried beneath more mundane trinkets, yet it was these meagre offerings that seemed most potent in their significance to Seerdomin. Their comparative value was so much greater, after all. Sacrifice must be weighed by the pain of what is surrendered, and this alone was the true measure of a virtue’s worth.

He saw now the glitter of sunlight in the dew clinging to copper coins, the slick glimmer on sea-polished stones in an array of muted colours and patterns. The fragments of glazed ceramics from some past golden age of high culture. Feathers now bedraggled, knotted strips of leather from which dangled fetishes, gourd rattles to bless newborn babes and sick children. And now, here and there, the picked-clean skulls of the recent dead-a subcult, he had learned, centred on the T’lan Imass, who knelt before the Redeemer and so made themselves his immortal servants. Seerdomin knew that the truth was more profound than that, more breathtaking, and that servitude was not a vow T’lan Imass could make, not to anyone but the woman known as Silverfox. No, they had knelt in gratitude. ‘

That notion could still leave him chilled, wonder awakened in his heart like a gust of surprised breath.

Still, these staring skulls seemed almost profane.

He stepped into the slightly rutted avenue and drew closer. Other pilgrims were placing their offerings ahead, then turning about and making their way back, edging round him with furtive glances. Seerdomin heard more in his wake, a susurration of whispered prayers and low chanting that seemed like a gentle wave carrying him forward.

Reaching the barrow’s ragged, cluttered edge, he moved to one side, off the main approach, then settled down into a kneeling position before the shrine, lowering his head and closing his eyes.

He heard someone move up alongside him, heard the soft breathing but nothing else,

Seerdomin prayer in silence. The same prayer, every day, every time, always the same.

Redeemer. I do not seek your blessing. Redemption will never be mine, nor should It, not by your touch, nor that of anyone else. Redeemer, I bring no gift to set upon your barrow. I bring to you naught but myself. Worshippers and pilgrims will hear nothing of your loneliness. They armour you against all that is human, for that is how they make you into a god. But you were once a mortal soul. And so I come, my only gift my company. It is paltry, I know, but it is all I have and all I would offer.

Redeemer, bless these pilgrims around me.

Bless them with peace in their need.

He opened his eyes, then slowly climbed to his feet.

Beside him spoke a woman. ‘Benighted.’

He started, but did not face her. ‘I have no such title,’ he said.

There was faint amusement in her reply, ‘Seerdomin, then. We speak of you often, at night, from fire to fire.’

‘I do not flee your venom, and should it one day take my life, so it will be.’

All humour vanished from her voice as she seemed to draw a gasp, then said, ‘We speak of you, yes, but not with venom. Redeemer bless us, not that.’

Bemused, he finally glanced her way. Was surprised to see a young, unlined face-the voice had seemed older, deep of timbre, almost husky-framed in glistening black hair, chopped short and angled downward to her shoulders. Her large eyes were of darkest brown, the outer corners creased in lines that did not belong to one of her few years. She wore a woollen robe of russet in which green strands threaded down, but the robe hung open, unbelted, revealing a pale green linen blouse cut short enough to expose a faintly bulging belly. From her undersized breasts he judged that she was not with child, simply not yet past the rounded softness of adolescence.

She met his eyes in a shy manner that once again startled him. ‘We call you the Benighted, out of respect. And all who arrive are told of you, and by this means we ensure that there is no theft, no rape, no crime at all. The Redeemer has chosen you to guard his children.’

‘That is untrue.’

‘Perhaps.’

‘I had heard that no harm befell the pilgrims this close to the Great Barrow.’

‘Now you know why.’

Seerdomin was dumbfounded. He could think of nothing to say to such a no¬tion. It was madness. It was, yes, unfair.

‘Is it not the Redeemer who shows us,’ said the,woman, ‘that burdens are the lot of us all? That we must embrace such demands upon our souls, yet stand fearless, open and welcoming?’

‘I do not know what the Redeemer shows-to anyone.’ His tone was harsher than he’d intended. ‘I have enough burdens of my own. I will not accept yours – I will not be responsible for your safety, or that of any other pilgrim, This – this…’ This is not why I am here,’ Yet, much as be wanted to shout that out loud. Instead he turned away, marched back to the avenue.