The man sighed, and then straightened. 'Ah, s.h.i.t, Murillio,' he muttered. 'I'm sorry.'

'Wait this Harllo was he that important? I mean-' and the foreman gestured, to encompa.s.s not only the corpse lying on the road, but the one that had been there the day before as well, 'all this killing. Who was was Harllo?' Harllo?'

The man walked to his horse and swung himself into the saddle. He collected the reins. 'I'm not sure,' he said after a moment's consideration. 'The way it started, well, it seemed . . .' he hesitated, and then said, 'he was a boy n.o.body loved.'

Bitter and scarred as he was, even the foreman winced at that. 'Most of 'em are, as end up here. Most of 'em are.'

The man studied him from the saddle.

The foreman wondered he didn't see much in the way of triumph or satisfaction in that face looking down at him. He wasn't sure what he was seeing, in fact. Whatever it was, it didn't fit.

The stranger drew the horse round and set off up the road. Heading back to the city.

The foreman coughed up a throatful of rank phlegm, then stepped forward and spat down, quite precisely, on to the upturned face of Gorlas Vidikas. Then he turned round. 'I want three guards and the fastest horses we got!' He watched the runner scramble.

From the pit below rose the occasional s.n.a.t.c.h of harsh laughter. The foreman understood that well enough, and so he nodded. 'd.a.m.n and below, I'll give 'em all an extra flagon of ale anyway.'

Cutter rode for a time as dusk surrendered to darkness. The horse was the first to sense a loss of will, as the rider on its back ceased all efforts at guiding its pace. The beast dropped from a canter to a trot, then a walk, and then it came to rest and stood at the edge of the road, head lowering to snag a tuft of gra.s.s.

Cutter stared down at his hands, watched as the reins slithered free. And then he began to weep. For Murillio, for a boy he had never met. But most of all, he wept for himself.

Come to me, my love. Come to me now.

A short time later, three messengers thundered past paying him no heed at all. The drum of horse hoofs was slow to fade, and the clouds of dust left in their wake hung suspended, lit only by starlight.

Venaz the hero, Venaz who followed orders, and if those meant something vicious, even murderous, then that was how it would be. No questions, no qualms. He had returned up top in grim triumph. Another escape thwarted, the message sweetly delivered. Even so, he liked being thorough. In fact, he'd wanted to make sure.

And so, in keeping with his new privileges as head of the moles, when he collected a knotted climbing rope and set off back into the tunnels, he was not accosted. He could do as he liked now, couldn't he? And when he returned, carrying whatever proof he could find of the deaths of Bainisk and Harllo, then Gorlas Vidikas would see just how valuable he was, and Venaz would find a new life for himself.

Good work led to good rewards. A simple enough truth.

Whatever flood had filled part of the pa.s.sage deep in the Settle had mostly drained away, easing his trek to the creva.s.se. When he reached it he crouched at the edge, listening carefully to make certain that no one was still alive, maybe scuffling about in the pitch blackness down below. Satisfied, he worked Bainisk's rope off the k.n.o.b of stone and replaced it with his own, then sent the rest of the coil tumbling over the edge.

Venaz set his lantern to its lowest setting and tied half a body-length of twine to the handle, and the other end to one ankle. He let the lantern down, and then followed with his legs. He brought both feet together, the rope in between, and edged further over until they rested on a knot. Now, so long as the twine didn't get fouled with the rope, he'd be fine.

Moving with great caution, he began his descent.

Broken, bleeding bodies somewhere below, killed by rocks not by Venaz, since he'd not even cut the rope. Bainisk had done that, the fool. Still, Venaz could take the credit nothing wrong with that.

Even with the knots, the slow going was making his arms and shoulders ache. He didn't really have to do this. But maybe it would be the one deed that made all the difference in the eyes of Gorlas Vidikas. n.o.bles looked for certain things, mysterious things. They were born with skills and talents. He needed to show the man as much as he could of his own talents and all that.

The lantern clunked below him and he looked down to see the faint blush of dull light playing across dry, jagged stones. A few moments later he was standing, somewhat uneasily as the rocks shifted about beneath him. He untied the lantern and put away the twine, and then twisted the wick up a couple of notches. The circle of light widened.

He saw Bainisk's feet, the worn soles of the moccasins, the black-spattered shins, both of which were snapped and showing the split ends of bones. But there was no flowing blood. Bainisk was dead as dead come.

He worked his way closer and stared down at the smashed face, slightly startled by the way it seemed fixed in a smile.

Venaz crouched. He would collect Bainisk's belt-pouch, where he kept all his valuables the small ivory-handled knife that Venaz so coveted; the half-dozen coppers earned as rewards for special tasks; the one silver coin that Bainisk had cherished the most, as it showed on one face a city skyline beneath a rainbow or some sort of huge moon filling the sky a coin, someone had said, from Darujhistan, but long ago, in the time of the Tyrants. Treasures now belonging to Venaz.

But he could not find the pouch. He rolled the body over, scanned the blood-smeared rocks beneath and to all sides. No pouch. Not even fragments of string.

He must have given it to Harllo. Or maybe he'd lost it somewhere back up the pa.s.sage if Venaz didn't find it down here he could make a careful search on his way back up top.

Now, time to find the other boy, the one he'd hated almost from the first. Always acted like he was smarter than everyone else. It was that look in his eyes, as if he knew he was better, so much better it was easy to be nice to all the stupider people. Easy to smile and say nice things. Easy to be helpful and generous.

Venaz wandered out from Bainisk's body. Something was missing and not just Harllo's body. And then, after a moment, he realized what it was. The rest of the d.a.m.ned rope, which should have fallen close to the cliff base, close to Bainisk. The d.a.m.ned rope was gone and so was Harllo and so was Harllo.

He worked his way along the creva.s.se and after twenty or so steps he reached the edge of the floor, which he discovered wasn't a floor at all, but a plug, a bridge of fallen rock. The creva.s.se dropped away an unknown depth, and the air rising from below was hot and dry. Frightened by the realization that he was standing on something that could collapse and fall away at any moment, Venaz hurried back in the other direction.

Harllo was probably badly hurt. He must have been. Unless . . . maybe he had been already down, standing, holding the d.a.m.ned rope, just waiting for Bainisk to join him. Venaz found his mouth suddenly dry. He'd been careless. That wouldn't go down well, would it? This could only work out right if he tracked the runt down and finished him off. The thought sent a cold tremor through him he'd never actually killed somebody before. Could he even do it? He'd have to, to make everything right.

The plug sloped slightly upward on the other side of Bainisk's body, and each chunk of stone was bigger, the s.p.a.ces between them whistling with winds from below. Terrifying grating sounds accompanied his every tender step.

Fifteen paces on, another sudden drop-off. Baffled, Venaz worked his way along the edge. He reached the facing wall the other side of the creva.s.se and held high the lantern. In the light he saw an angular fissure, two shelves of bedrock where one side had shifted faster and farther than the other he could even see where the broken seams continued between the shelves. The drop had been about a body's height, and the fissure barely a forearm wide angled sharply into a kind of chute.

Bainisk would never have squeezed into that crack. But Harllo could, and did it was the only way off the plug.

Venaz retied the lantern, and then forced himself into the fissure. A tight fit. He could only draw half-breaths before the cage of his ribs met solid, unyielding stone. Whimpering, he pushed himself deeper, but not so deep as to get stuck no, to climb he'd need at least one arm free. By crabbing one leg sideways and squirming with his torso, he moved himself into a position whereby he could hitch himself up in increments. The dry, baked feel of the stone began as a salvation. Had it been wet he would simply have slid back down again and again. Before he'd managed two man-heights, however, he was slick with sweat, and finding streaks of the same above him, attesting to Harllo's own struggles. And he found that the only way he could hold himself in place between forward hitches was to take the deepest breath he could manage, turning his own chest into a wedge, a plug. The rough, worn fabric of his tunic was rubbing his skin raw.

How much time pa.s.sed? How long this near vertical pa.s.sage? Venaz lost all sense of such details. He was in darkness, a world of stone walls, dry gusts of air along one flank, a right arm that screamed with fatigue. He bled. He oozed sweat. He was a ma.s.s of sc.r.a.pes and gouges. But then the fissure widened in step fractures, each one providing a blessed ledge on which to finally rest his quivering muscles. Widening, becoming a manageable chute. He was able to draw in deep breaths, and the creaking ache of his ribs slowly faded. He continued on, and before long he reached a new stress fracture, this one cutting straight into the bedrock, perpendicular to the chute.

Venaz hesitated, and then worked his way into it, to see how far it went and almost instantly he smelled humus, faint and stale, and a little farther in he arrived at an almost horizontal dip where forest detritus had settled. Behind that heady smell there was something else acrid, fresh. He brightened the lantern and held it out before him. A steep slope of scree rose along the pa.s.sage, and even as he scanned it there was the clatter of stones bouncing down to patter amidst the dried leaves and dead moss.

He hurried to the base of the slide and peered upward.

And saw Harllo no more than twenty man-heights above him, flattened on the scree, pulling himself upward with feeble motions.

Yes, he had smelled the boy.

Venaz smiled, and then quickly shuttered the lantern. If Harllo found out he was being chased still, he might try to kick loose a deadly slide of the rubble of course, if he did that it'd take him down with it. Harllo wasn't stupid. Any wrong move on this slide and they'd both die. The real risk was when he reached the very top, pulling clear. Then there could be real trouble for Venaz.

And smell that downward draught that was fresh, clean air. Smelling of reeds and mud. The lake sh.o.r.e.

Venaz thought about things, and thought some more. And then settled on a plan. A desperate, risky one. But really, he had no choice. No matter what, Harllo would hear him on this climb. Fine, then, let him.

He laughed, a low, throaty laugh that he knew would travel up the stones like a hundred serpents, coiling with icy poison round Harllo's heart. Laughed, and then crooned, 'Harrrllo! Found youuu!' 'Harrrllo! Found youuu!'

And he heard an answering cry. A squeal like a crippled puppy underfoot, a whimper of bleak terror. And all of this was good.

Panic was what he wanted. Not the kind that would make the boy scrabble wildly since that might just send him all the way back down but the kind that would, once he gained the top, send him flying out into the night, to run and run and run.

Venaz abandoned the lantern and began climbing.

The chase was torturous. Like two worms they snaked up the dusty slabs of shale. Desperate flight and pursuit were both trapped in the stuttering beating of hearts, the quaking gasps of needful lungs. All trapped inside, for their limbs could move but slowly, locked in an agonizing tentativeness. Minute slides froze them both, queasy shifts made them spread arms and legs wide, breaths held, eyes squeezed shut.

Venaz would have to kill him. For all of this, Harllo would die. There was no other choice now, and Venaz found it suddenly easy to think about choking the life from the boy. His hands round Harllo's chicken neck, the face above them turning blue, then grey. Jutting tongue, bulging eyes yes, that wouldn't be hard at all.

Sudden scrambling above, a skitter of stones, and then Venaz realized he was alone on the slide. Harllo had reached the surface, and thank the G.o.ds, he was running. running.

Your one mistake, Harllo, and now I'll have you. Your throat in my hands.

I have you.

The soft whisper of arrivals once more awakens, even as figures depart. From places of hiding, from refuges, from squalid nests. Into the streams of darkness, shadowy shapes slide unseen.

Thordy watched as the killer who was her husband set out from the cage of lies they called, with quaint irony, their home. As his chopping footfalls faded, she walked out to her garden, to stand at the edge of the pavestone circle. She looked skyward, but there was no moon as yet, no bright smudge to bleach the blue glow of the city's gaslight.

A voice murmured in her head, a heavy, weighted voice. And what it told her made her heart slow its wild hammering, brought peace to her thoughts. Even as it spoke, in measured tones, of a terrible legacy of death.

She drew the one decent kitchen knife they possessed, and held the cold flat of the blade against one wrist. In this odd, ominous stance, she waited.

In the city, at that moment, Gaz walked an alley. Wanting to find someone. Anyone. To kill, to beat into a ruin, smashing bones, bursting eyes, tearing slack lips across the sharp stumps of broken teeth. Antic.i.p.ation was such a delicious game, wasn't it?

In another home, this one part residence, part studio, Tiserra dried her freshly washed hands. Every sense within her felt suddenly raw, as if sc.r.a.ped with crushed gla.s.s. She hesitated, listening, hearing naught but her own breathing, this frail bellows of life that now seemed so frighteningly vulnerable. Something had begun. She was, she realized, terrified.

Tiserra hurried to a certain place in the house. Began a frantic search. Found the hidden cache where her husband had stored his precious gifts from the Blue Moranth.

Empty.

Yes, she told herself, her husband was no fool. He was a survivor it was his greatest talent. Hard won at that nowhere near that treacherous arena where Oponn played push and pull. He'd taken what he needed. He'd done what he could.

She stood, feeling helpless. This particular feeling was not pleasant, not pleasant at all. It promised that the night ahead would stretch out into eternity.

Blend descended to the main floor, where she paused. The bard sat on the edge of the stage, tuning his lyre. Duiker sat at his usual table, frowning at a tankard of ale that his hands were wrapped round as if he was throttling some hard, unyielding fate.

Antsy Antsy was in gaol. Scillara had wandered out a few bells earlier and had not returned. Barathol was spending his last night in his own cell he'd be on a wagon headed out to some ironworks come the dawn.

Picker was lying on a cot upstairs, eyes closed, breaths shallow and weak. She was, in truth, gone. Probably never to return.

Blend drew on her cloak. Neither man paid her any attention.

She left the bar.

Ever since the pretty scary woman had left earlier how long, days, weeks, years, Chaur had no idea he had sat alone, clutching the sweating lance a dead man wearing a mask had once given C'ur, and rocking back and forth. Then, all at once, he wanted to leave. Why? Because the gulls outside never stopped talking, and the boat squeaked like a rat in a fist, and all the slapping water made him need to pee.

Besides, he had to find Baral. The one face that was always kind, making it easy to remember. The face that belonged to Da and Ma both, just one face, to make it easier to remember. Without Baral, the world turned cold. And mean, and nothing felt solid, and trying to stay together when everything else wasn't was so hard.

So he dropped the lance, rose and set out.

To find Baral. And yes, he knew where to find him. How he knew no one could say. How he thought, no one could imagine. How deep and vast his love, no one could conceive.

Spite stood across the street from the infernal estate that was the temporary residence of her infernal sister, and contemplated her next move, each consideration accompanied by a pensive tap of one finger against her full, sweetly painted lips.

All at once that tapping finger froze in mid-tap, and she slowly c.o.c.ked her head. 'Oh,' she murmured. And again, 'Oh.'

The wind howled in the distance.

But, of course, there was no wind, was there?

'Oh.'

And how would this change things?

A guard, ignoring once more the dull ache in his chest and the occasional stab of pain shooting down his left arm, walked out from the guard annexe to begin his rounds, making his way to the Lakefront District and the wall that divided it from the Daru District the nightly murders had begun cl.u.s.tering to either side of that wall. Maybe this time he'd be lucky and see something someone and everything would fall into place. Maybe.

He had put in a requisition for a mage, a necromancer, in fact, but alas the wheels of bureaucracy ground reluctantly in such matters. It would probably take the slaying of someone important before things could lurch into motion. He really couldn't wait for that. Finding this killer had become a personal crusade.

The night was strangely quiet, given that it marked the culmination of the Gedderone Fete. Most people were still in the taverns and bars, he told himself, even as he fought off a preternatural unease, and even as he noted the taut expressions of those people he pa.s.sed, and the way they seemed to scurry by. Where was the revelry? The delirious dancing? Early yet Early yet, he told himself. But those two words and everything behind them felt oddly flat.

He could hear a distant storm on the plains south of the city. Steady thunder, an echoing wind, and he told himself he was feeling that storm's approach. Nothing more, just the usual fizz fizz in the air that preceded such events. in the air that preceded such events.

He hurried on, grimacing at the ache in his chest, still feeling the parting kiss of his wife on his lips, the careless hugs of his children round his waist.

He was a man who would never ask for sympathy. He was a man who sought only to do what was right. Such people appear in the world, every world, now and then, like a single refrain of some blessed song, a fragment caught on the spur of an otherwise raging cacophony.

Imagine a world without such souls.

Yes, it should have been harder to do.

After a rather extended time of muted regard fixed dully upon a sealed crypt, four mourners began their return journey to the Phoenix Inn, where Meese would make a grim discovery although one that, in retrospect, did not in fact shock her as much as it might have.

Before they had gone five hundred paces, however, Rallick Nom drew to a sudden halt. 'I must leave you now,' he said to the others.

'Kruppe understands.'

And the a.s.sa.s.sin narrowed his gaze upon the short, solemn-faced man.

'Where,' Rallick asked, 'will this go, Kruppe?'

'The future, my friend, is ever turned away, even when it faces us.'

To this bizarre, unlikely truism, Coll grunted, 'G.o.ds below, Kruppe-' But Rallick had already completed his own turning away and was walking towards the mouth of an alley.

'I got a sick feeling inside,' Meese said.

Coll grunted a second time and then said, 'Let's go. I need to find me another bottle this time with something in it that actually does something.'

Kruppe offered him a beatific smile. Disingenuous? Really now. Really now.

Seba Krafar, Master of the a.s.sa.s.sins' Guild, surveyed his small army of murderers. Thirty-one in all. Granted, absurd overkill, but even so he found himself not quite as comfortable or as confident as such numbers should have made him. 'This is ridiculous,' he muttered under his breath. And then he gestured.

The mob shifted into three distinct groups, and then each hurried off in a different direction, to close on the target at the appointed time.

Come the morning, there'd be a newly vacated seat on the Council. Blood-drenched, true, but it would hardly be the first time for that, would it?

Shardan Lim saw before him a perfect future. He would, if all went well, finally step out from Hanut Orr's shadow. And into his own shadow he'd drag Gorlas Vidikas. They would be sharing a woman, after all, and there would be no measured balance in that situation, since Gorlas was next to useless when it came to satisfying Challice. So Gorlas would find that his wife's happiness was dependent not upon him, but upon the other man sharing her pleasure Shardan Lim and when the first child arrived, would there be any doubt as to its progeny? An heir of provable bloodline, the perfect usurpation of House Vidikas.

He had set out alone this night, making his casual way to the Vidikas estate, and he now stood opposite the front gate, studying the modest but well-constructed building. There were hints of Gadrobi in the style, he saw. The square corner tower that was actually higher than it looked, its rooms abandoned to dust and spiders virtually identical edifices could still be found here and there in the Gadrobi District, and in the hills to the east of the city. Vines covered three of the four walls, reaching up from the garden. If the tower had been a tree it would be dead, centuries dead. Hollowed out by rot, the first hard wind would have sent it thrashing down. This deliberate rejection was no accident. Gadrobi blood among the n.o.bles was an embarra.s.sment. It had always been that way and it always would be.