‘They’ll try to stop anyone doing business with you.’

‘I am very familiar with Malazan weapons and armour, Mallet. My work meets military standards in your old empire, and as you know, those are set high.’ He glanced across at the healer. ‘Will the Guild scare you off? Your friends?’

‘Of course not. But remember, we’re retired.’

‘And being hunted by assassins.’

‘Ah, I’d forgotten about that. You have a point. Even so, Barathol, I doubt us few Malazans can keep you in business for very long.’

‘The new embassy has a company of guards.’

‘True.’

‘And there are other Malazans living here. Deserters from the campaigns up north-’

‘That’s true, too, though they tend to hide from us-not that we care. In fact, we’d rather get their business at the bar. What’s the point in grudges?’

‘Those that come to me will be told just that, then, and so we can help each other.’

Mallet tossed the sodden cone away and wiped his hands on his leggings. ‘They tasted better when I was a young brat-although they were more expensivesince a witch was needed to make the ice In the first place. Here, of course, it’s to do with some of the gases in the caverns below.’

Barathol thought about that for a moment as he looked upon the healer with his purple lips and saw, for the briefest moment, how this man had been when he was a child, and then he smiled once more. ‘I need to find a suitable location lor my smithy. Will you walk with me, Mallet?’

‘Glad to,’ the healer replied. ‘Now, I know the city-what precisely are you looking for?’

And so Barathol told him.

And oh how Mallet laughed and off they went into the city’s dark chambers of the heart, where blood flowed in a roar and all manner of deviousness was possible. If the mind was so inclined. A mind such as Barathol Mekhar’s when down-down!-was thrown the ghastly gauntlet!

The ox, the selfsame ox, swung its head back and forth as it pulled the cartload of masonry into the arched gateway, into blessed shade for a few clumping strides, and then out into the bright heat once more-delicate blond lashes fluttering-to find itself in a courtyard and somewhere close was sweet cool water, the sound as it trickled an invitation, the smell soft as a kiss upon the broad glistening nose with its even more delicate blond hairs, and up rose the beast’s massive head and would not the man with the switch have pity on this weary, thirsty ox?

He would not. The cart needed unloading first and so the ox must stand, silently yearning, jaws working the cud of breakfast with loud, thick sounds of suction and wetly clunking molars, and the flies were maddening but what could be done about flies? Nothing at all, not until the chill of night sent them away and so left the ox to sleep, upright in bovine majesty beneath stars (if one was lucky) which, perhaps, was where the flies slept.

Of course, to know the mind of an ox is to waste inordinate amounts of time before recognizing the placid civility of a herbivore’s sensibilities. Lift gaze, then, to the two vaguely shifty characters edging in through the gate-not workers struggling to and fro in the midst of the old estate’s refurbishment; not clerks nor servants; not masons nor engineers nor inspectors nor weight-gaugers nor measurers. To all appearances malingerers, skulkers, but in truth even worse than that-

Twelve names on the list. One happily struck off. Eleven others found and then escaped like the slippery eels they no doubt were, being hunted by debt, ill luck and the vagaries of a clearly malicious universe intent on delivering misery and whatnot. But no matter such failure among the thugs sent out to enforce collection or deliver punishment-not the problem of these men, now, was it?

Bereft of all burdens, blessed with exquisite freedom, Scorch and Leff were here, in this soon-to-be-opulent estate that was even now rising from the dust of neglect and decay to enshroud like a cloak of jewels the mysterious arrival of a noblebom-a woman, it was rumoured, all veiled, but sec the eyes! Eyes of such beauty! Why, imagine them widening as I reach downScorch and Leff, edging in nervously, barely emerging from the shadow of the arched gate. Peering round, as if lost, as if moments from running off with stolen chunks of masonry or an armload of bricks or even a bag of iron wedges-

‘Ho you two! What do you want here?’

Starting guiltily. Scorch staring wide-eyed at the grizzled foreman walking up to them-a Gadrobi so bowlegged he looked to be wading hip-deep through mud. Leff ducking his head as if instinctively dodging an axe-which said a lot about his life thus far, didn’t it-and then stepping one small pace forward and attempting a smile that fared so poorly it could not even be described as a grimace.

‘Is there a castellan we could talk to?’ Leff asked.

‘About what?’

‘Gate guards,’ Leff said. ‘We got lots of qualifications.’

‘Oh. Any of them relevant?’

‘What?’

Leff looked at Scorch and saw the panic spreading like a wildfire on his friend’s face. A match to his own growing dismay-madness, thinking they could just step up another rung on the ladder. Madness! ‘We… we could walk her dogs, I mean?’

‘You could? I suppose you could, if the Mistress had any.’

‘Does she?’ Leff asked.

‘Does she what?’

‘Have any. Dogs we could walk.’

‘Not even ones you can’t walk.’

‘We can guard the gate!’ Scorch shouted. ‘That’s what we’re here for! To get hired on, you see, as estate guards. And if you don’t think we can swing a sword or use a crossbow, why, you don’t know us at all, do you?’

‘No, you’re right,’ the foreman replied. ‘I don’t.’

Leff scowled. ‘You don’t what?’

‘Stay here,’ the old man said, turning away, ‘while I get Castellan Studlock.’ As the foreman waded away through the dust-watched with longing by the ox beside the rubble heap-Leff turned on Scorch. ‘Studlock?’

Scorch shrugged helplessly. ‘I ain’t never heard of him. Why, have you?’

‘No. Of course not. I’d have remembered.’

‘Why?’

‘Why? Are you a Hood-damned idiot?’

‘What are we doing here, Leff?’

‘Torvald said no, remember? To everything. He’s too good for us now. So we’ll show him. We’ll get hired on this fancy estate. As guards. With uniforms and polished buckles and those braided peace-straps for our swords. And so he’ll curse himself that he didn’t want us no more, as partners or anything. It’s his wife, I bet-she never liked us at all, especially you, Scorch, so that’s what you’ve done to us and I won’t forget any time soon neither so don’t even think otherwise.’

He shut his mouth then and stood at attention since the foreman was returning and at his side pitter-pattered a figure so wrapped up in swaddles of cotton it took three steps for every pendulum pitch forward from the foreman. The feet beneath the ragged hem were small enough to be cloven hoofs. A hood covered thecastellan’s head and in the shadow of the hood’* broad mouth there was some-thing that might have been a mask. Gloved hands were drawn up in a way that to minded Leff-and, a moment later, Scorch-of a praying mantis, and if this was the estate castellan then someone had knocked the world askew in ways unimag-inable to either Leff or Scorch.

The foreman said, ‘Here they are, sir.’

Were there eyes in the holes of that smooth mask? Who could tell? But the head shifted and something told both men-like spider legs dancing up their spines-that they were under scrutiny.

‘So true,’ Castellan Studlock said in a voice that made Leff think of gravel under the fingernails while Scorch thought about the way there was always one gull that bullied all the rest and if the others just ganged up, why, equality and freedom would belong to everyone! ‘So true,’ said the swaddled, masked man (or woman, but then the foreman had said ‘sir’, hadn’t he), ‘there is need for estate guards. The Mistress will be arriving today, in fact, from the out-country. Proper presentation is desired.’ The castellan paused and then leaned forward from the waist and Leff saw the red glint of unhuman eyes in the holes of the mask. ‘You, what is your name?’