Since pouring the ale, Krute had said nothing, but now he grunted in amused surprise. ‘I just thought of something. You showing up, alive and hale, has just done what Krafar couldn’t do. We had a cult, Rallick Nom, worshipping the memory of you. Krafar outlawed it in the Guild, then tried to eradicate it-forced us deeper. Not deep enough for me-I’m under suspicion and they’ve gone and isolated me, like I was already dead. Old contacts… look right through me, Rallick. It’s been damned hard.’

‘Krafar?’

‘Seba, Talo’s brood. In the squabble over who was gonna take over after Vorcan, he’s the one got’through unscathed-still breathing, I mean. The Guild’s decimated, Rallick. Infighting, lots of good killers getting disgusted and just up and leaving. Down to Elingarth, mostly, with a few to Black Coral, if you can believe that. Even heard rumours that some went to Pale, to join the Malazan Claws.’

Rallick held up a red-stained hand. ‘A moment, damn you. What idiot decided on a cult?’

Krute shrugged. ‘Just sort of happened, Rallick. Not really worship-that was the wrong word. It’s more like a… a philosophy. A philosophy of assassination. No magic, for one. Poisons, lots of poisons. And otataral dust if we can get it. But Seba Krafar wants to take us back to all that magic, even though you made it obvious which way was the better one, the surer one. The man’s stubborn-it’s in the blood with them, eh?’ Krute slapped the table, momentarily knocking over the candle, which he hastened to right before the paltry flame went out. ‘Can’t wait to see Krafar’s face when you walk in-’

‘You will have to,’ Rallick replied. ‘Something else, friend. You don’t say a word, to anyone.’

Krute smiled knowingly. ‘You plan on an ambush, don’t you? You, stepping over Krafar’s body, to take mastery of the Guild. And you need to make plans-and I can help you there, tell you the ones sure to be loyal to you, sure to back you-’

‘Be quiet,’ Rallick said. ‘There’s something you need to know.’

‘What?’

‘The night I disappeared, recall it?’

‘Of course.’

‘Someone else vanished that night too.’

Krute blinked.’Well, yes-’

‘And now I am back,’

‘You are’

Rollick drank down a mouthful of ale. Then another.

Krute stared, then swore, ‘Her, too?’

‘Yes.’

Draining his cup, Krute quickly refilled it, then leaned back. ‘Gods below. Poor Krafar. You working with her on this, Rallick?’

‘No.’

‘Not that she’d need help-’

‘I don’t know where she is, Krute. I don’t know what she’s planning. If anything. I don’t know, and can’t guess, and neither can you.’

‘So, what do we do, Rallick?’

‘You change nothing, stay with your routine.’

Krute snorted. ‘What routine? Slow starvation?’

‘I have coin, enough for both of us. Hidden here and there.’ Rallick rose. ‘I assume the rooftops are quiet these nights.’

‘Except for thieves, coming out like mice with not an owl to be seen-like I said, the Guild’s on its knees.’

‘All right. I will return before dawn. For now, Krute, we do nothing.’

‘I’m good at that.’

Rallick grimaced, but said nothing as he turned to the window and unlocked the shutters.

He didn’t need to say anything, as far as Krute was concerned. True enough, Krute was good at doing nothing. But Rallick Nom wasn’t. He wasn’t good at that at all. Oh, this is going to be fun, isn’t itl

The murmurings chased him down the alley, guttural noises issuing from a score of fanged mouths, tongues wiggling, black lips lifting clear. The glimmer and flash of rolling eyes in the gloom. Looking back over one shoulder, Iskaral Pust, Magus and High Priest of Shadow, bhokaral god, made faces at his worshippers. He cursed them in twitters. He waggled his tongue. He bared his teeth and bulged his eyes.

And did this frighten them off? Why, no! The very opposite, if such madness could be believed. They scrabbled ever closer, still clutching their loot from hapless victims in the markets, their faces writhing in constipated anguish or something equally dire. Infuriating!

‘Never mind, never mind them. I have tasks, missions, deeds of great import. I have stuff to do.’

And so he hurried on, kicking through rubbish, listening to the creatures behind him kicking through the same rubbish. He paused at each alley mouth, shot quick glances up and down the streets, then darted across to the next opening. In his wake, the bhokarala gathered in a clump at the alley mouths, looked one way, looked the other, and then tore off in pursuit.

A short time later he skidded to a halt, the sound of his heels echoed a moment later by countless claws gouging cobblestones. Iskaral Pust pulled at his hair and whirled. The crouching bhokarala all had their knobby fists up to either side of their tiny skulls.

‘Leave me be!’ he hissed.

They hissed back at him.

He spat.

And was sprayed with gobs of foul saliva.

He beat at his head.

They pounded their own heads with fistfuls of jewellery and globes of fruit.

Eyes narrowing (eyes narrowing), Iskaral Pust slowly stood on one leg. Watched the bhokarala stand tottering on single legs.

‘Gods below,’ he muttered, ‘they’ve all gone entirely insane.’

Spinning round once more, he glared across at the squat, octagonal temple fifty paces down the street to his right. Its walls were a chaotic collection of niches and misshapen angles, a veritable plethora of shadows. Iskaral Pust sighed. ‘My new abode. A modest hovel, but it suits my needs. I plan to do it up, of course, when there’s time. Oh, you like the gold place settings and silk napkins? Just something I threw together, mind, but it pleases me well enough. Spiders? No, no spiders round here, oh, no. Simply not allowed. Ghastly creatures, yes, disgusting. Never bathe, don’t you know. Ghastly.’

Wordless singsong at his back.

‘Oh, don’t mind them. My ex-wife’s relations-if I’d have known, well of course I’d never have taken the leap, if you know what I mean. But that’s how it is-get married and you end up saddled with the whole family menagerie. And even though she’s gone now, nothing but a dried-out husk with her legs sticking up in the air, well, I admit to feeling responsible for her hapless kin. No, no, she looked nothing like them. Worse, actually. I confess to a momentary insanity. The curse of being young, I suppose. When did we get married? Why, four, five years ago now, yes. Only seems like a lifetime and I’m glad, so glad, to be done with it now. More wine, sweetness?’

Smiling, Iskaral Pust set out for the temple.

Shadowed steps, leading to a shadowed landing beneath a pitted lintel stone; oh, this was all very well done. The twin doors were huge, very nearly gates, panelled in polished bronze moulded into an enormous image of charging Hounds. Delicious touch! Lovingly rendered, all that snarling terror.

‘Yes, the doors were my idea, by my own hand in fact-I dabble. Sculpture, tapestry, portraiture, caricature, potterature-pottery, I mean, I was simply using the technical term. See this funerary urn, exquisite, yes. She’s inside. Yes, my beloved departed, my belovedly departed, my blessedly departed, hee hee-oh, folding up her limbs was no easy task, let me tell you, quite a tight fit. I know, hard to believe she’s in there, in an urn barely larger than a jar of wine. I have many skills, yes, as befits the most glorious mortal servant of High House Shadow. But I’ll tell you this, she fought hard all the way in!’.

He crouched in front of the bronse doors, glowering into the gaping jaws of the Hounds Reached up one knuckled hand, and rapped Baran’s nose,

A Irtim, hollow reverberation.

‘I knew it,’ he said, nodding.

The bhokarala fidgeted on the steps, knocking each other on their snouts, then sagely nodding.

The door to the left opened a crack. A hood-shrouded head poked out at about chest height, the face peering up vague and blurry. ‘We don’t want any,’ said a thin, whispery woman’s voice.