Heavy steps descending from the upper floor.

‘Ah, here comes yon Malazan saviour. Mallet, dear friend of Kruppe, will Murillio-sweet Prince of Disenchantment-recover to his fullest self? Come, join me in this passing ferment. Meese, sweet lass, will you not find Mallet a goblet?’

Her eyes narrowed into thin slits. ‘How about one for yourself, Kruppe?’

‘Delightful suggestion.’ Kruppe wiped at the bottle’s mouth with one grimy sleeve, then beamed across at her.

She rose, stalked off.

The Malazan healer-sat down with a heavy sigh, closed his eyes and rubbed vigorously at his round, pallid face, then looked round the bar. ‘Where is everyone?’

‘Your companion of the night just past Kruppe has sent home, with the assurance that your self is safe from all harm. Tis dawn, friend, or rather morning’s fresh stumping on dawn’s gilt heels. Ships draw in alongside berths, gangplanks clatter and thump to form momentous bridges from one world to the next. Roads take sudden turns and out trundle macabre mechanisms scattering bits of flesh like dark seeds of doom! Hooded eyes scan strangers, shrikes cry out above the lake’s steaming flats, dogs scratch vigorously behind the ears-ah, Meese has brought us her finest goblets! A moment, whilst Kruppe sweeps out cobwebs, insect husks and other assorted proofs of said goblets’ treasured value-there, now, let us sit back and watch, with pleased eyes, as Meese fills our cups to brimming glory. Why-’

‘For Hood’s sake,’ Mallet cut in, ‘it’s too early for your company, Kruppe. Let me drink this wine and then escape with my sanity, I beg you.’

‘Why, friend Mallet, we await your assessment of Murillio’s physical state:’

‘He’ll live. But no dancing for a week or two.’ He hesitated, frowning down into his goblet, as if surprised to find it suddenly empty once more. ‘Assuming he comes out of his funk, that is. A mired mind can slow the body’s recovery. Can reverse it, in fact.’

‘Fret not over Murillio’s small but precise mind, friend,’ Kruppe said. ‘Such matters ever find solution through Kruppe’s wise ministrations. Does Coll remain at bedside?’

Mallet nodded, set the goblet down and rose. ‘I’m going home.’ He glowered across at Kruppe. ‘And with Oponn’s pull, I might even get there.’

‘Nefarious nuisances thrive best in night’s noisome chaos, dear healer. Kruppe confidently assures you a most uneventful return to your atypical abode.’

Mallet grunted, then said, ‘And how do you plan on assuring that?’

‘Why, with worthy escort, of course!’ He poured himself the last of the wine and smiled up at the Malazan. ‘See yon door and illimitable Irilta positioned before it? Dastardly contracts seeking your sad deaths cannot indeed be permitted. Kruppe extends his formidable resources to guarantee your lives!’

The healer continued staring down at him. ‘Kruppe, do you know who offered this contract?’

‘Ringing revelations are imminent, treasured friend. Kruppe promises.’

Another grunt, then Mallet wheeled and walked towards the door and his escort, who stood smiling with brawny arms crossed.

Kruppe watched them leave and weren’t they just quite the pair.

Meese slouched down in the chair Mallet had vacated. ‘Guild contract,’ she muttered. ‘Could simply be some imperial cleaning up, you know. New embassy’s now up and running after all. Could be somebody in it caught word of Malazan deserters running a damned bar. Desertion’s a death sentence, ain’t it?’

‘Too great it risk, sweet Meese,’ Kruppe, drawing out his silk handkerchief and blotting at his brow. ‘The Malaz Empire, alas, but its own assassins, of which two are present in said embassy, Yet, by all accounts, ’twas a Hand of Krafar’s Guild that made the Attempt last night,’ He raised a pudgy finger. ‘A mys-tery, this one who so seeks the death of inoffensive Malazan deserters, but not a mystery for long, oh no! Kruppe will discover all that needs discovering!’

‘Fine,’ Meese said, ‘now discover that council, Kruppe, for the bottle.’

Sighing, Kruppe reached into the small purse strapped to his belt, probed within the leather pouch, then, brows lifted in sudden dismay: ‘Dearest Meese, yet another discovery…’

Grainy-eyed, Scorch scowled at the teeming quayside. ‘It’s the morning fisher bouts,’ he said, ‘comin’ in right now. Ain’t no point in hangin’ round, Leff.’

‘People on the run will be coming here early,’ Leff pointed out, scooping out with his knife the freshwater conch he had purchased a moment ago. He slithered down a mouthful of white, gleaming meat. ‘I’be waitin’ for the first ships in from Gredfallan. Midmorning, right? The new locks at Dhavran have made it all regular, predictable, I mean. A day through with a final scoot to Gredfallart, overnight there, then on with the dawn to here. Desperate folk line up first, Scorch, cause they’re desperate.’

‘I hate sitting anywhere my feet have to dangle,’ Scorch complained, shifting uncomfortably on the stack of crates.

‘Decent line of sight,’ Leff said. ‘I’ll join ya up there anon.’

‘Don’t know how you can eat that. Meat should have blood in it. Any meat without blood in it ain’t meat.’

‘Aye, it’s conch.’

‘It’s a thing with eyes on the ends of its tentacles, watching as you cut its body apart-see how the stalks swivel, following up to your mouth, tracking every swallow? It’s watching you eat it!’

‘So what?’

Seagulls shrieked in swarming clouds over the low jetties where the fishers were heaving baskets of sliverfish on to the slimy stone, children scurrying about in the hopes of being hired to slip the wriggling fish on to monger-strings in time for the morning market. Grey-backed Gadrobi cats, feral now for a thousand generations, leapt out in ambush to kill gulls. Frenzied battles ensued, feathers skirling, tufts of cat hair drifting on the breeze like thistle heads.

Below the inside docks old women wandered in the gloom between pylons, using long, thin, barbed pokers to collect up the small, hand’s-length sliverfish that managed to slip through the baskets and fall in gleaming rain as the catch Was carried ashore. When the harvest was small, the old hags were wont to use those toothed pokers on each other.

Scorch could see them from where he was perched, muffled forms moving this way and that, pokers darting in the perpetual shadows. ‘I swore to never again eat anything this lake gave up,’ he muttered. ‘Gran above,’ he added in a hoarse whisper,

‘y’see I remember them cuts an’ holes in your scrawny, I remember ’em, Gran, an’ so I swore.’

‘What’s that?’ Leff asked from below.

‘Nothing, only we’re wasting our time-’

‘Patience, Scorch. We got us a list. We got us trouble. Didn’t we hear that Brokul might be making a run?’

‘The place is a damned mob, Leff.’

‘We just need to concentrate on the lines forming up.’

‘Ain’t no lines, Leff.’

Leff tossed the shell over the end of the lake wall, where it clattered down below on to ten thousand others. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Soon.’

fust past the fork at Urs, the battered remnants of the caravan headed up towards South Worrytown. Herders and quarry workers on their way out to the Ravens edged to the sides of the road, then stopped and stared at the four charred and smoke-streaked trader-wagons rocking past. A single horse struggled in a makeshift yoke before each wain.

Of the usual assortment of guards that might be expected, even for a caravan as small as this one seemed to be, only one was visible, slouched down in a Gadrobi saddle and almost entirely hidden beneath a dusty, hooded cloak. From seamed slits in the faded brown cape, just above the man’s shoulder blades, jutted the worn grips and pommels of twin cutlasses. The leather gauntlets covering his hands where they rested on the high saddle horn were stained and mostly in shreds, revealing to those close enough to see skin tattooed to very nearly solid black.