Mocking him.

They would tremble, She knew. Change was terrifying. They would pray to Her when Mother Deep rose, She said with a stone voice. Change bred a need for the familiar. She would watch children die, parents die, all in darkness, all in doubt. Change was violent.

Then …A doubt spoke within him, blooming in darkness and watered with despair. What’s the point?

He heard a scrape of feet against stone floors. His own heart quickened; had he been seen? He reached for a knife that wasn’t there. Where was it? He had left it elsewhere, in another life, another house, when he had seen …

He paused, noting the silence. No one was emerging. No one came out to stop him. He glanced about, spying a shadow painted upon the walls by the dim light of the hole in the ceiling.

‘I know you’re there,’ he said. The shadow quivered, shrinking behind the pillar. ‘You shouldn’t be here, you know.’

A bush of black hair peered out from behind the pillar, the girl staring at him with dark eyes that betrayed wariness, caution. She was not panicked. He shouldn’t have smiled at her, he knew. His smile shouldn’t have been intended to reassure her, to coax her out. Change was coming. Many would die. She would likely be among them.

And yet …

‘Neither should you,’ she said to him, leaning out a little more. ‘Mesri says that no one should be in here.’

‘In the city’s temple?’

‘There’s less call for prayer these days,’ she said, easing out from behind the pillar. ‘More call for medicine and food.’

The Mouth eyed the crates stacked against the walls. ‘So they are left here to rot?’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she sneered. ‘If we had any, Mesri would have distributed them.’

‘Priests serve the Gods, not man.’

‘Well, if there were any in here, I wouldn’t be scrounging in dark, abandoned houses with weird, pale-skinned strangers,’ she replied sharply. ‘This’ — she gestured to the crates — ‘is what was left behind when the rich people left Yonder.’

He glanced to a great, hulking shape beneath a white sheet. ‘And that?’

The girl traipsed over to it, drawing it off to expose a well-made, untested ballista mounted on wheels, its string drawn and bolt loaded. ‘They bought it when fears about Karnerian and Sainite incursions were high.’ As if she suddenly remembered who she was talking to, she tensed, resting a hand on the siege weapon’s launching lever. ‘I know how to use it, too.’

Hers was the look of childish defiance, the urge to run suppressed because someone had once told her that running was for cowards. It was familiar. He fought the urge to smile. He fought the urge to point out that the ballista was pointing at least ten feet to the right of him.

‘I’m not going to hurt you,’ he said.

‘And I’m sure you’re telling the truth,’ she replied snidely. ‘Because, as we all know, only reasonablehairless freaks chase young girls through alleys with knives, screaming like lunatics.’

‘I left the knife in the house,’ he said. ‘ Myhouse.’

‘Not fair,’ she snapped back. ‘Squatters can’t claim the houses. It’s a rule.’

‘I’m not a squatter. I used to live there.’

‘Liar.’

‘What?’

‘If you used to live there, you’d be a Tohana man. If you were a Tohana man, you’d be like me.’ She tapped her dark-skinned brow. ‘I’m not quite convinced that youaren’t some kind of shaved ape.’

‘I could have been from another nation,’ he pointed out.

‘If you were, you’d have been rich and you wouldn’t live in a little shack.’ She eyed him carefully. ‘So … who are you?’

‘There is no good answer to that.’

‘Then give me a bad one.’

He glanced from her to the pool. ‘I lived here with my family once. They’re dead now.’

‘That’s not a bad answer,’ she replied. ‘Not a good one, either. Lots of people have dead families. That doesn’t explain what you’re doing here.’

He knew he shouldn’t answer. What would be the point? When the Father was freed, people would die. That was inevitable. How could he possibly tell her this? There was no need for him to even look at her, he knew. He didn’t have to kill her or anything similar. All he need do was open the vial, pour the Milk into the water, free the Father. It didn’t even need to be poured — he could just hurl the whole thing in and the objective would be achieved.

Change would come.

People would die.

He had tried to bite back his memories, to quash the pain that welled up inside him. He had served the Prophet to achieve oblivion, as the rest of the blessed had. And yet, gazing upon the girl roused memory in him, nurturing instincts that he had not felt since he sat beside a small cot and told stories.

Chief among these was the instinct to lie.

‘I’m here to help,’ he said.

‘Help?’

‘This city was my home once. I raised a child here. I want to help it return to its former glory.’

‘Glory?’ She raised a sceptical eyebrow.

‘Prosperity?’

‘Eh …’

‘Stability, then,’ he said. ‘I’m going to change this city.’

‘How?’

He smiled at her. ‘I’ll start with the people.’

She stared at him for a moment, and as he gazed upon her expression, he knew an instinctual fear. Doubt. It was painted across her unwashed face in premature wrinkles and sunburned skin. It was the expression of someone who had heard promises before and knew, in whatever graveyard inside of her that innocence went to die, that some lies, no matter how nurturing, were simply lies.

He had seen that expression only once before. He remembered it well.

And then, her face nearly split apart with her grin.

‘That’s pretty stupid,’ she said. ‘I like it. I don’t believe it, but I like it.’

‘Now, why wouldn’t you believe it?’ He grinned back. ‘If a shaven monkey can sneak into a temple unseen, why wouldn’t he be able to change people?’

‘Because everyone tells the same story. I’m too old to believe it now.’

‘How old?’

‘Sixteen.’

‘What’s your name?’

‘Kasla,’ she said, smiling. ‘What’s yours?’

He opened his mouth to speak, and the moment he did, her grin vanished, devoured by the expression of fear and panic that swallowed her face. He quirked a brow at her as she turned and fled, scampering behind a pillar and disappearing into the shadows of the temple. He was about to call after her when he heard the voice.

‘I’m not going to ask how you got in.’

He turned and saw the priest, portly, moustached and clad in fraying robes. The man eased the door shut behind him, making a point of patting the lock carefully. He turned to face the Mouth, his dark face dire.

‘I’m not going to ask who you were talking to,’ he said, taking a step forward. ‘Nor will I inquire what you’re doing here. I already know that.’ A hand slipped inside his robe. ‘All I wish to know is how a servant of Ulbecetonth thought he could walk in my city-’

His hand came out, clenching a chain from which a symbol dangled: a gauntlet clenching thirteen obsidian arrows. Mesri held it before him like a lantern, regarding the Mouth evenly.

‘-without a member of the House knowing.’

The Mouth tensed, precariously aware of his position by the pool. He glanced down, all too aware of the vial clenched in his hand. He looked back to Mesri, painfully aware that he hadn’t thrown it in yet.

‘How much else do you know?’ he whispered.

‘Only what you do,’ Mesri replied. ‘We both know what’s imprisoned beneath this city. We both know you’re carrying the key to that abomination’s release.’

‘The Father is-’

‘An abomination,’ Mesri insisted. ‘A beast that lives only to kill, only to destroy in the name of a cause that exists only to do more of the same. We both know that if he is released, that’s all we’ll see. Death. Destruction.’ He stared at the Mouth intently. ‘And yet … we both know you’ve had opportunities in abundance to do so. And we both know you haven’t.