‘Fine. I’ll go alone.’

Lubben frowned, shoved a wood stopper into the skin and set it down on the floor. He cleared his throat, spat into a corner. ‘You could stay here for the night, y’know. Been safe enough so far.’

Shifting to warm her hands over the brazier, Kiska shook her head. ‘No. Thanks. I’ve got to look into this. There’s…’ She stopped herself, decided against revealing names or just what might be at stake. ‘This is important. I’ve got to know what’s going on.’

A deep-throated chuckle shook Lubben. ‘I’m thinking that’s what everyone would like to know.’

Kiska got the feeling that Lubben knew more than he was revealing. He’d been the Hold’s gatekeeper for as long as she could remember. As a child she and her friends had often gathered at the open gate, daring each other to tease the ’hunch’ with his crablike walk and the great ring of keys rattling at his side. Remembering that, Kiska felt her face burn with sudden embarrassment. To think she’d almost called him a coward for hiding in his cell. Who was she to judge?

She sighed. ‘All right. I’ll be going then.’ Lubben nodded, stared at the sullen coals as if reviewing his own painful memories. Struck by a thought, she turned from the door. ‘Can you lend me a weapon?’

He grunted, pulled a dagger from the wide belt at his waist and handed it over. She took it: one of the meanest-looking blades she’d ever seen on a knife – curved like a hand-scythe.

‘Thanks.’

He grunted again, his gaze averted. She unbolted the door.

‘Lass…’

She turned. ‘Yes?’

‘You keep your back to the walls, you hear?’

‘Yes. I will.’ Slipping through the door, she pulled it shut behind her.

The bailey stood empty, unguarded. Just inside the fortified door to the main keep she found four more dead mercenaries. Among them was one of the scarred commander’s picked veterans. No visible wounds – it was as if they’d simply dropped dead. Her back prickled at the possibility of a Warren-laid trap such as a ward. If so, she prayed it was now spent. She wasn’t sure how many men had escaped the hound’s attack: maybe fifteen or twenty. By her rough reckoning that left ten men, including their commander and the woman she believed to be a cadre mage.

In the reception hall the light was low. The candles had burnt out, leaving only oil-lamps guttering here and there along the walls. Deep shadows swallowed most of the chamber, gaps so dark someone could stand within and she’d never know it. A circular stone stairway hugging the wall started on her right. The high official and her Claws had taken over the top floors of the keep.

With Lubben’s warning in mind, she eased herself along one wall. In the darkness her foot pushed up against something at the base of the stairs. She crouched down. One of Artan’s two remaining guards, dead, a throwing spike jammed into his throat. Hood’s breath! At this rate no one would be left alive. And who was doing all the killing? So far, the murders stank of the Claws.

At the second-floor landing a single oil lamp cast a weak glow upon a scene beyond her worst nightmares. The dead lay in heaps, most of them from the mercenary band. Smouldering tapestries and scorched furniture sent wisps of smoke into the air. She gagged at the sweet odour of burnt flesh. Eviscerated and blackened, the head and upper torso of a Claw hung through the smashed planking of a door. Another Claw lay sprawled amidst the thickest pile of dead, virtually hacked to pieces. It looked as though another one of those alchemical bombs – Moranth munitions – had been touched off in the enclosed quarters.

Holding a portion of her cloak over her nose and mouth to keep out the worst of the stench, Kiska stepped over the bodies to cross the landing. A hall led to a second flight of stairs. Another veteran lay on the floor in a pool of blood, throat slit. From the number of corpses, it looked like the commander couldn’t be left with more than a few survivors at most. The woman didn’t appear to be among the bodies, nor Artan or Hattar.

Blood dripped down the worn stairs, sticking to her slippers as she followed the curve of the inner wall. She halted just short of the top behind the body of a man who’d dragged himself up from the carnage below. She recognized the lozenged armour: it was the sergeant who’d captured her at Mossy Tors.

She stepped over him and crouched, head level with the landing above. She paused to listen. Silence. Profound and utter quiet. It made her back itch. Was everyone dead?

A sough and a slip of cloth sounded beneath her. She looked down, the hair at the nape of her neck rising. The mercenary was not dead. While she watched, a hand rose then snapped at her ankle. She nearly shrieked aloud. It yanked and she fell back onto him, her head cracking on the stairs. Stars and tearing pain half-blinded her. The mercenary’s arm rose and she blocked his feeble blow, though the effort sent her sliding backwards down the stairs.

The grip on her ankle weakened and she jerked her leg free. The mercenary lay slumped on his back. Half the flesh of his face had been burned away. He glared at her. ‘You again,’ he chuckled. Oddly, he merely sounded tired.

Kiska snapped, ‘What in K’rul’s pits are you trying to do?’

That roused him. He grimaced, foam on his torn lips. ‘What’re we trying to do? Bring back the old glory! Return Malaz to its true path! You know nothing of how it was. He came to us. He promised us!’

The man coughed up blood, his eye lost focus, then found her again. Kiska did not need to ask who He was. ‘And what happened?’ she whispered.

‘A damned free for all, s’what. Claws comin’ out of the woodwork like roaches. Don’t know how many left. Too many is my wager. She came ready for anything.’

‘She? Who is she? Tell me.’

Kiska shook him, but his eye closed and his head eased back to the stairs. His last breath hissed: ’Surly.’

So. There it was. Yet he could be wrong. He might be mistaken. It was possible confirmation of what she’d suspected but dared not believe. And now that she knew, or suspected that she knew, fear replaced curiosity. Agayla, Artan, even Lubben, they were right: she had no business here. This was between what everyone in Imperial service called the Old Guard. She – and anyone else – would be killed as unwanted witnesses to old grudges.

Kiska shrank back down the stairs. At the bottom she leapt back into shadow, spotting someone coming up the hall. Smoke still hung thick in the air, and the lamps cast poor light, but even at noon on a clear day the figure would have sent shivers of dread up her spine. It looked like a hoary shape out of the legendary past, ripped from its grave by the Shadow Moon.

Two curving longswords out, crouched, the apparition strode heavily through the wreckage. In archaic armour that might’ve been worn decades ago by the Iron Guard or the Heng Lion Legion, a battered, lobster-tailed and visored helmet covered its head. And Kiska was thankful for that, for no one could have survived the ferocious wounds the mangled armour betrayed. Steel scales swung loose from the torn leather and padding. Iron rings clattered to the stone floor as it lumbered forward. Surely this was one of the horrors hinted at in the legends of the Shadow Moon. A demon, or an inhuman Jaghut tyrant clawed from its rest, lusting to settle ancient wrongs.

Kiska couldn’t move: there was no way past it, and she couldn’t go up. While she watched its implacable advance, a shadow flickered at the edge of her vision. Something thudded from the figure’s layered armour. It grunted, turning awkwardly sideways in the hall like a battered siege tower, one weapon ahead, the other to the rear.

Two shapes emerged from the shadows before and behind the figure.

Claws. Needle-thin blades gleamed in their hands. The figure glanced behind, then returned its attention to the front.