‘Where’s the good stuff, innkeeper?’ Coop stared, eyes wide. The youth scowled, shifted a hand to the knife at his belt. ‘Don’t fool with me or I’ll use this.’

Temper nudged Coop who started as if jerked from a dream. ‘The pantry,’ he gasped, ‘through that door. Glass bottles.’

The youth went to the door, opened it, and returned carrying a brown bottle. He paused at their booth. ‘You storing ice in the kitchen, old man?’

His brow furrowed with puzzlement, Coop shook his head.

Scowling, the guard returned to his table.

‘What is it?’ Temper whispered to Coop.

‘Moranth distilled spirits.’

Temper stared back at the innkeeper. ‘Gods, man. That’s pure alcohol. How long have you been hiding that?’

Coop lowered his eyes. ‘Sorry, Temp. I use it to fortify the liqueurs.’

‘They’ll be blind in a few hours, but I can’t wait that long.’

Coop opened his mouth but one of the guards shouted, ‘Quiet back there, damn your eyes! No whisperin’.’ Coop snapped his mouth shut. Temper half sat up, but decided against blindly charging in and eased himself back down. He’d wait and watch a few minutes more.

While they played their game of bones the guards tossed back shots of the spirits, gasping as it seared their throats. Temper silently cursed them for amateur fools, the most useless hands out of a bad lot. Of course there was no way Ash would’ve spared good men for this duty; he needed everyone he could muster for whatever lay ahead. Fists clenched on the table, Temper could stand the inaction no longer and called out to them across the room: ‘You don’t really expect Ash to come back, do you?’

Coop gaped at him.

All four guards turned, their eyes glistening through the brazier’s hanging smoke.

‘Shut your Hood-cursed mouth.’

‘Been paid already have you?’

The youngest jerked up from the table. Another pulled him down, growled, ‘Shut that mouth or I’ll pin your tongue to your jaw.’

Temper grimaced into the haze. He was almost disappointed he hadn’t goaded them into action. At least then it would all be over, one way or another. Waiting was not his strength. Fifty more heartbeats and he’d charge them. That bottle would do well as a weapon. He had to get moving; he wasn’t even sure where Ash and his gang were headed.

Coop’s boot nudged his. Temper glanced over. The innkeeper, pale-faced and goggle-eyed, stared down at the floor. Temper followed his gaze. Fog, like the advancing lip of a tide, covered the stone floor in a layer no thicker than a thumb’s width. It was welling up from behind the small pantry door. That dark stairwell down into cold cellars no one ever enters. Solid’s Mercy! Never mind the storm outside: what was gathering right here around them now?

Faro suddenly jerked upright, making Coop yelp. His eyes, clear and aware, made Temper glance away; they opened onto depths far greater than those of any cellar. Faro murmured to Trenech, ’Shtol eg’nab lemal.’

It was a language Temper had never heard before, though it reminded him somewhat of Old Talian. But Trenech understood. His eyes snapped to the front of the room.

The young guard jumped to his feet. ‘Shut that old-’

A hound’s roar tore through the air of the common room, exploding from just outside the door. The guards froze, glanced to the door then each other. Their eyes gleamed wide in the firelight. A scream sounded then, a man’s cry of utter horror and hopelessness, ending in sobs even as the guards erupted from their chairs. Weapons scraped from sheaths and the guards whispered among themselves, then the oldest of them edged to the door. His free hand hovered at the latch.

‘Bell?’ he called. ‘Bell? You there?’

The latch ground as he opened it. He pulled the door towards him and looked out. A cold wind blew in, whipped flames and sent the clouds of smoke and fog swirling. Temper heard rain hissing down.

The guard shouted up the stairwell. ‘Bell? Theo?’

A sigh from across the table brought Temper’s attention around. Faro murmured to Trenech, ‘Soon, my friend. Very soon.’ The man now spoke thickly accented Talian.

Trenech nodded. They ignored Temper and Coop, who sat, eyes bulging, the rag pressed into his mouth.

From across the room, the youth came snarling to the table, his knife out. His pale face glistened with sweat. He waved the knife first at Trenech, then Temper, but when they didn’t flinch he turned his attention to Faro. To get at him he’d have to reach in past Trenech, and Temper could see he was unwilling. The knife shook in his hand. He quivered with nerves, frustration and fear. This, knew Temper, was the moment a man could snap.

‘You shut him up or by the Gods I swear I’ll kill the bastard. I will!’

Temper nodded. Trenech and Faro acted as if no one had spoken.

‘Eli!’ the older guard called. ‘Eli, get back over here, damn you!’

Hunching, the youth edged away, his boots scraping the floor. The door was eased closed and the four conferred. It sounded to Temper as if they were arguing over just who would go outside to check on their companions.

The low fire in the massive hearth guttered then, and went out. No one said a word. The braziers and low torches now supplied the only light, dim and smoky-yellow. The fire hadn’t been blown out or smothered. Rather it seemed to Temper as if the flames had been sucked back down into the very stone itself. A damp cold bit at his ankles. There was sorcery gathering as of a slow summoning, an upwelling like the pressure behind a geyser. Temper had felt its like on a hundred battlefields; soon it would burst.

Low under his breath, Temper hissed to Faro, ‘Stop it. No sense making things worse.’

The old man blinked his rheumy eyes as if he were fluttering on his own knife-edge. ’Things,’ he announced, ‘will become much worse if you do not leave this place at once.’

Temper gaped and pushed himself back from the table. What was the old man up to?

Eli had heard. ‘That’s damn well it!’ he shouted, and came marching across the room.

Temper shot an appeal for help to the other three guards. They looked on with lazy indifference. None moved to help.

Eli waved the knife. ‘Get out of the damned booth.’

Faro didn’t even seem aware of the threat. He stared off into space.

‘Come on,’ said Temper, trying to sound reasonable, ‘the old man’s booze-addled.’

The blade swung to him. ‘You,’ breathed Eli, his eyes dilated, ‘can shut the Abyss up.’

Temper said nothing. At first he’d been hopeful, seeing that no veteran had remained behind. Now he wished one was here. Any veteran of Imperial engagements, marine or otherwise, would smell the danger, the oddness, the charged atmosphere. It reeked of the Warrens; of sorcery. And all any poor foot soldier could do in the face of that was run for cover.

Faro broke the stalemate. He announced, unbidden, ‘You have all been warned.’

Eli lunged into the booth but Trenech’s hand grabbed his arm. He gave a sharp twist and Temper heard the snap of bones, then Coop’s scream. Trenech released the arm and Eli straightened, gaping at the ragged end of bone poking out from the meat of his forearm. He threw his head back and loosed a shriek that ended when Trenech chopped a hand across his throat. A lash of hot blood droplets whipped across the booth as he toppled backwards.

Coop screamed again but Temper clamped a hand over the brewer’s mouth. He held himself motionless, staring into Faro’s glazed eyes.

A stunned pause, then the trample of boots as the three remaining guards rushed Trenech. Curses, a hoarse yell, a crash as a body slammed into one of the heavy oak tables. Then silence. It had lasted barely an instant.

Coop struggled in Temper’s grip then froze. Faro was staring across the table. His lips climbed into a satisfied smile. Temper released Coop, who lay his head on the table, whimpering.