‘Interest, Torvald,’ said Leff. ‘You know how it is.’

‘Besides,’ added Scorch, ‘you just up and ran. Where ya been all this time?’

‘You’d never believe me.’

‘Is that shackle scars on your wrists?’

‘Aye, and worse. Nathii slave pens. Malazan slavers-all the way to Seven Cities. Beru fend, my friends, none of it was pretty. And as for the long journey back, why, if I was a bard I’d make a fortune spinning that tale!’

The sword hovering in front of his face had wavered, dipped, and now finally fell away, while the knife point jabbing his ribs eased back. Torvald looked quickly into both faces before him, and said, ‘One night, old friends, and all this will be cleared up. And I can start helping you with that list.’

‘We already got us help,’ Leff said, although he didn’t seem pleased by that admission.

‘Oh? Who?’

‘Kruppe. Remember him?’

‘That oily, fat fence always hanging out at the Phoenix Inn? Are you two mad?’

Scorch said, ‘It’s our new taproom, Torvald, ever since Bormen threw us out for-’

‘Don’t tell him stuff like that, Scorch!’

‘One night,’ Torvald said, nodding. ‘Agreed? Good, you won’t regret it.’

Stepping back, Leff sheathed his short sword. ‘I already do. Listen, Torvald. You run and we’ll chase you, no matter where you go. You can jump straight back into the Nathii slave pens and we’ll be there right beside you. You understanding me?’

Torvald frowned at the man for a moment, then nodded. ‘That I do, Leff. But I’m back, now, and I’m not going anywhere, not ever again.’

‘One night.’

‘Aye. Now, you two better head back to watching the quay-who knows who might be readying to flee on the next outbound ship.’

Both men suddenly looked nervous. Leff gave Torvald a push as he worked past, Scorch on his heels. Torvald watched them scurry to the alley mouth, then plunge into the crowd on Front Street.

‘How is it,’ he asked under his breath, of no one, ‘that complete idiots just live on, and on? And on?’

He adjusted his Moranth raincape, making certain that none of the items secreted in the underside pockets had been jostled loose or, gods forbid, broken. ‘ Nothing dripping. No burning sensations, no slithering presence of… whatever. Good. Tugging down his floppy hat, he set off once more.

This thing with Gareb was damned irritating. Well, he’d just have to do something about it, wouldn’t he? One night. Fine. So be it. The rest can wait.

I hope.

Born in the city of One Eye Cat twenty-seven years ago, Humble Measure was of mixed blood. A Rhivi woman, sold to a local merchant in exchange for a dozen bars of quenched iron, gave birth to a bastard son a year later. Adopted into his father’s household eight years on, the boy was apprenticed in the profession of iron¬mongery and would have inherited the enterprise if not for one terrible night when his sheltered, stable world ended.

A foreign army had arrived, investing the city in a siege. Days and nights of high excitement from the young man, then, with the streets aflame with rumours of the glory promised by the city’s membership in the great, rich Malazan Empire-if only the fools in the palace would capitulate. His father’s eyes had glowed with that Imagined promise, and no doubt it was on the rising tide of such visions that the elderly trader conspired with agents of the Empire to open the city gates one night-an attempt that ended in Catastrophic failure, with the merchant suffering arrest and then execution, and his estate invaded by city garrison soldiers with swords drawn.

That assault had left nightmare memories that would never leave Humble Measure. Witnessing his mother’s rape and murder, and that of his half-sisters. Screams, smoke and blood, everywhere blood, like the bitter gift of some dark god-oh, he would remember that blood. Beaten and in chains, he had been dragged into the st reet and would have suffered the same fate as the others if not for the presence of a mercenary company allied with the city. Its commander, a tall, fierce warrior named lorrick Sharplance, had taken command of the handful of surviving prisoners.

That company was subsequently driven from One Eye Cat by the city’s paranoid rulers, sailing out on ships across Old King Lake, shortly before yet another act of treachery proved more successful than the first attempt. Another night of slaughter, this time at the bloodied hands of Claw assassins, and One Eye Cat fell to the Malazan Empire.

Jorrick Sharplance had taken his prisoners with him, setting them free on the wild south shore of the lake, at the very feet of One Eye Range, with sufficient supplies to take them through the mountain passes on to the Old King Plateau. From there, Humble Measure had led his household’s survivors, slaves and free citizens alike, down the trader tracks to the city of Bear. A brief stay there, then southward to Patch and on to the Rhivi Trail.

A short stay in Pale, until, fleeing yet another Malazan siege, down to Darujhistan in the midst of a decrepit column of refugees.

Whereupon Humble Measure had settled in the last surviving office of his father’s business, there to begin a long, careful rebuilding process that honed his tactical skills and, indeed, his fortitude.

Such a long, fraught journey had ensured the loyalty of his staff. The slaves were rewarded with emancipation, and not one refused his offer of employment. His trade in iron burgeoned. For a time, it seemed that the curse that was the Malazan Empire might well track him down once more, but there had been a gift, a gift of blood that he well understood now, and the city’s life had been spared.

For how long? Humble Measure was well acquainted with how the Empire got things done. Infiltration, clever acts of destabilization, assassinations, the formenting of panic and the dissolution of order. That they now had an embassy in the city was no more than a means of bringing their deadly agents into Darujhis-tan. Well, he was done running.

His father’s ancestors had traded in iron for twelve generations. Here in the office in the Gadrobi District of Darujhistan, in the vaults far below street level, he had found written records reaching back almost six hundred years. And among the most ancient of those vellum scrolls, Humble Measure had made a discovery.

Darujhistan would not fall to the Malazan Empire-he had found the means to ensure that. To ensure, indeed, that no foreign power could ever again threaten the city he now called home, ever again endanger his family, his loved ones.

To achieve this, Humble Measure well understood that he would need all his acumen in bringing complicated plans to fruition. He would need vast sums of coin, which he now had at his disposal. And, alas, he would need to be ruthless.

Unpleasant, yes, but a necessary sacrifice.

The central office of Eldra Iron Mongers was a sprawling collection of buildings, warehouses and work yards just north of Two-Ox Gate. The entire complex was walled and virtually self-contained. Three sets of forges fronted an elongated, single-storey foundry resting against the west wall. Beneath it ran a subterranean stream that provided outflow into the Maiten River, the effluent and wastes issuing from that stream giving the bay beyond its name of Brownrun, and most days the stain spread out far on to Lake Azure, an unfortunate consequence of working iron, as he said often to city officials when the complaints of the Gadrobi fishers grew too strident to ignore. Offers of recompense usually sufficed to silence such objections, and as for the faintly bitter irony Humble Measure felt when paying out these sums-an irony founded on the cold fact that iron was needed by all, the demand unending, from fishhooks to gaffs to armour and swords-well, he wisely kept that to himself.

The administration building rose against the south wall of the compound, both office and residence. Staff quarters dominated the wing nearest the south end of the foundry. The central block housed the records and clerical chambers. The final wing was the oldest part of the structure, its foundations dating back to an age when bronze was the primary metal, and civilization was still a raw promise. Far beneath the ground level of this wing, ancient stairs wound down through layers of limestone, opening out on to a succession of.rough-hewn vaults that had been used as storage rooms for generations. Long before such mundane usage, Humble Measure suspected, these crypts had held a darker purpose.