Kalam studied the gate, the swirling shadows at its threshold. ‘Where would you have me begin?’

‘A confluence to your own desires, I suspect.’

The assassin glanced at the god, then slowly nodded.

In the half-light of dusk, the seas grew calm, gulls wheeling in from the shoals to settle on the beach. Cutter had built a fire from driftwood, more from the need to be doing something than seeking warmth, for the Kanese coast was subtropical, the breeze sighing down off the verge faint and sultry. The Daru had collected water from the spring near the trail head and was now brewing tea. Overhead, the first stars of night flickered into life.

Apsalar’s question earlier that afternoon had gone unanswered. Cutter was not yet ready to return to Darujhistan, and he felt nothing of the calm he’d expected to follow the completion of their task. Rellock and Apsalar had, finally, returned to their home, only to find it a place haunted by death, a haunting that had slipped its fatal flavour into the old man’s soul, adding yet one more ghost to this forlorn strand. There was, now, nothing for them here.

Cutter’s own experience here in the Malazan Empire was, he well knew, twisted and incomplete. A single vicious night in Malaz City, followed by three tense days in Kan that closed with yet more assassinations. The empire was a foreign place, of course, and one could expect a certain degree of discord between it and what he was used to in Darujhistan, but if anything what he had seen of daily life in the cities suggested a stronger sense of lawfulness, of order and calm. Even so, it was the smaller details that jarred his sensibilities the most, that reinforced the fact that he was a stranger.

Feeling vulnerable was not a weakness he shared with Apsalar. She seemed possessed of absolute calm, an ease, no matter where she was-the confidence of the god who once possessed her had left something of a permanent imprint on her soul. Not just confidence . He thought once more of the night she had killed the man in Kan. Deadly skills, and the icy precision necessary when using them . And, he recalled with a shiver, many of the god’s own memories remained with her, reaching back to when the god had been a mortal man, had been Dancer. Among those, the night of the assassinations-when the woman who would become Empress had struck down the Emperor… and Dancer.

She had revealed that much, at least, a revelation devoid of feeling, of sentiment, delivered as casually as a comment about the weather. Memories of biting knives, of dust-covered blood rolling like pellets across a floor…

He removed the pot from the coals, threw a handful of herbs into the steaming water.

She had gone for a walk, westward along the white beach. Even as dusk settled, he had lost sight of her, and he had begun to wonder if she was ever coming back.

A log settled suddenly, flinging sparks. The sea had grown entirely dark, invisible; he could not even hear the lap of the waves beyond the crackling fire. A cooler breath rode the breeze.

Cutter slowly rose, then spun round to face inland as something moved in the gloom beyond the fire’s light. ‘Apsalar?’

There was no reply. A faint thumping underfoot, as if the sands trembled to the passage of something huge… huge and four-legged.

The Daru drew out his knives, stepping away from the flickering light.

Ten paces away, at a height to match his own, he saw two glowing eyes, set wide, gold and seemingly depthless. The head and the body beneath it were darker stains in the night, hinting at a mass that left Cutter cold.

‘Ah,’ a voice said from the shadows to his left, ‘the Daru lad. Blind has found you, good. Now, where is your companion?’

Cutter slowly sheathed his weapons. ‘That damned Hound gave me a start,’ he muttered. ‘And if it’s blind, why is it looking straight at me?’

‘Well, her name is something of a misnomer. She sees, but not as we see.’ A cloaked figure stepped into the firelight. ‘Do you know me?’

‘Cotillion,’ Cutter replied. ‘Shadowthrone is much shorter.’

‘Not that much, though perhaps in his affectations he exaggerates certain traits.’

‘What do you want?’

‘I would speak with Apsalar, of course. There is the smell of death here… recent, that is-’

‘Rellock. Her father. In his sleep.’

‘Unfortunate.’ The god’s hooded head turned, as if scanning the vicinity, then swung back to face Cutter. ‘Am I your patron now?’ he asked.

He wanted to answer no . He wanted to back away, to flee the question and all his answer would signify. He wanted to unleash vitriol at the suggestion. ‘I believe you might be at that, Cotillion.’