The woman leapt to his mind, and he felt that cringe return. He recalled the bruises on her face, the way she folded into herself to escape the room. He recalled her eyes, so empty and distant as she watched two men burn for what they had done to her. He tried to picture what she might have been before the wizard, the heretic, had shattered her.

He found he couldn’t bear to.

‘Perhaps, if rhetoric does not sway you, we might see if personal experience truly does trump age-old loathing?’ Miron asked as Bralston looked up. ‘I am told you were one of the few members of the Venarium that assisted with transporting the wounded during the Night of Hounds.’

He nodded, slowly, loath to remember the event. A lesser man would have remembered images and sounds: fire, screams, felons running in the street, women begging for their lives, looting, carnage. Bralston, however, was a Librarian and had no choice but to remember the horror with precise chronology.

One hour after dawn: the Houndmistress, bane of the Jackals and champion of the citizenry, before there were statuettes of her in every place of business in Cier’Djaal, had been found in her bed with her throat cut, her adviser missing from his chambers and her child missing from hers.

Two hours: a man named Ran Anniq, small-time Jackal thug, had thrown the stone that struck the herald announcing her death.

Three hours: Bralston was strongly reconsidering his denial that hell, as men knew it, existed.

The Venarium had not been petitioned by the fashas of Cier’Djaal to aid until seven hours after dawn, when the wounded had become too great for the healers of the city to tend to. Bralston had not stepped away from the window of his study for all seven of the hours, save to file a request to visit a brothel, which was promptly denied. He had spared that building, still unblackened by the flames engulfing the city, only a glance as he and several other wizards filed onto a ship to use their magic to propel it toward Muraska and the healers there.

They arrived seventeen hours after dawn, exhausted. The priests of Talanas had offered succour to the wizards, in addition to the wounded they had brought over, and many had grudgingly accepted. Bralston declined with no thought to why he should; he simply could not sleep for fear that the brothel had been razed, its women defiled.

Twenty-two hours in, he had felt a hand on his shoulder. He had looked up into bright eyes, into a smile offering comfort. Hands flecked with dried blood had offered him a cup of tea. A woman in blue robes had placed her right hand around him and asked him what the matter was.

At twenty-three hours, he wept. At twenty-four, he slept. At forty-three, he watched her from his ship, taking her words with him. Two weeks later, he had returned to the brothel, still thanking her quietly.

Seven years later, he now thought of her again, of her god, of what she had done for him.

‘I know not much about the specifics of your mission,’ Miron continued. ‘Only that you seek a violator of laws, both wizardly and godly, and in this we coincide. I know what direction you head, and I know what direction I sent my employees … what direction I sent her.’

‘I … will do it,’ Bralston replied softly without looking up. ‘If I can find her … I will return her.’

‘I am sure you can find her … if someone else has not found her first.’ Miron cringed. ‘But I am not asking you to go without aid on my part. Your coat flew you here from Cier’Djaal, did it not? A journey that takes weeks by ship done in only a day and a half … its power must be exhausted.’

‘It will take some time to replenish itself, yes,’ Bralston replied.

‘Time, I fear, she does not have. A ship, however, is what I have.’ Miron pointed out the window of his room, toward the city’s harbour. ‘Seek a ship called the Riptide; you will find its captain not far away. Tell him that his charter requests that he deliver you to your destination.’

‘Our intelligence suggests that the outlaw is based near the Reaches,’ Bralston said. ‘But beyond that, we know little.’

‘There may be someone who knows more,’ Miron suggested. ‘A man by the name of Rashodd. He was involved in certain … peculiarities before my employees brought him low. We entrusted him to the care of authorities at Port Yonder.’

‘I shall seek him out, then. Your assistance is duly noted and will be reflected in my report.’

‘I trust that you will,’ Miron replied, nodding sternly. ‘Godspeed, Librarian.’

Bralston rose swiftly and stiffly from his chair and cast a look over the table at the priest. He sniffed, then placed his hat upon his head, running fingers along its brim.

‘I don’t need gods.’

The door shut with a resilient slam, as though the Librarian sought to make his discontent known through the rattle of porcelain as the impact sent Miron’s teacup stirring on its saucer. The Lord Emissary let it settle, listening for the sound of the Librarian’s determined footsteps over the hiss of the brown liquid.

When all was quiet once more, he gently took his cup in hand and smiled at the door through a veil of steam.

‘Idiot.’

*

The harbour of Port Destiny was lax, only a few ships bobbing in blue waters that kissed blue sands, rendering city and sea indistinct from one another. Their cargoes had been unloaded, their crews vanished into the city for wine, dice and women. Most would return destitute and broken, ready to serve at sea for further wages. A few would not return, usually paying for debts they had racked up with either their service or their kidneys.

That was a problem for a captain, Argaol thought as he lay back and shut his eyes against the morning sun. He would be one of those again someday, a captain with problems of unruly men and hostile seas and obligations to greedy men. But today, he was a man whose long, dark legs hung bare over the docks, a fishing line tied to his big toe.

His titanic ship, the Riptide, lounged as lazily as her captain did, bobbing up and down in the water beside him. They would both be called away before too long. But for now, each was content to lose themselves in their shared insignificance between the vast city and the boundless ocean, each content in the knowledge they could ask for no better company.

‘It just goes on and on, doesn’t it?’

He never askedfor worse company. It always just seemed to find him.

‘Vast … endless …’

Argaol stifled a groan, attempting to pretend he couldn’t hear her. He remembered many an awkward conversation that had begun with this particular cliched pseudo-insight.

‘I can’t even begin to fathom how enormous it is …’

Any moment now, this would turn to some horrible confession, probably one involving a pelvic rash or a request for help removing a fishing hook from a particularly tender area. He clenched his teeth, hoped quietly that she would give up before she said-

‘On and on and on and on and-’

‘Zamanthras’ loving bosoms, all right,’ he finally spat out. ‘ Whatin the sweet hell that I so dearly prefer to listening to you is on your wretched little mind?’

Quillian looked down with disdain as he cracked one eye open from his lounging on the dock. Her face was hard, barely any more femininity revealed in it than was revealed in her bronze-swaddled body. She brushed a lock of black hair aside, exposing the red line of an indecipherable oath written beneath her eye.

‘What makes you think something’s on my mind?’

Argaol stared at her with disbelief that bordered on offended. ‘I suppose I’m just the sensitive type.’

Her befuddlement was short-lived, concern etching its way across her features as she turned her gaze back out past the docks and over the sea.

‘I heard what the Lord Emissary plans,’ she said, ‘before he met with the heathen.’