The sapper subsided. Remnants of his old unease still clung to him. When she was out of sight, trouble would come from it. When she was out of sight you watched your back. It was still hard to accept that the girl was no longer what she'd been. Besides, if the Patron of Assassins chose once more to possess her, the first warning we'd get would be a knife blade across the throat. He kneaded the taut muscles of his neck, sighing.

Crokus dragged a chair to the table, dropped into it and reached for the wine. 'We're tired of waiting,' he pronounced. 'If we have to cross this damned land, then let's do it. There's a steaming pile of rubbish behind the garden wall, clogging up the sewage gutter. Crawling with rats. The air's hot and so thick with flies you can barely breathe. We'll catch a plague if we stay here much longer.'

'Let's hope it's the bluetongue, then,' Kalam said.

'What's that?'

'Your tongue swells up and turns blue,' Fiddler explained.

'What's so good about that?'

'You can't talk.'

The stars bristled overhead, the moon yet to rise as Kalam made his way towards Jen'rahb. The old ramps climbed to the hill's summit like a giant's stairs, gap-toothed where the chiselled blocks of stone had been removed for use in other parts of Ehrlitan. Tangled scrub filled the gaps, long, wiry roots anchored deep in the slope's fill.

The assassin scrambled lithely over the rubble, staying low so that he would make little outline against the sky, should anyone glance up from the streets below. The city was quiet, its silence unnatural. The few patrols of Malazan soldiery found themselves virtually alone, as if assigned to guard a necropolis, the haunt of ghosts and scant else. Their unease had made them loud as they walked the alleys and Kalam had been able to avoid them with little effort.

He reached the crest, slipping in between two large limestone blocks that had once formed part of the summit's outer wall. He paused, breathing deep the dusty night air, and looked down on the streets of Ehrlitan. The Fist's Keep, once the home of the city's Holy Falah'd, rose dark and misshapen above a well-lit compound, like a clenched hand rising from a bed of coals. Yet within that stone edifice the military governor of the Malazan Empire cowered, shutting his ears to the heated warnings of the Red Blades and whatever Malazan spies and sympathizers had not yet been driven out or murdered. The entire occupying regiment was holed up in the Keep's own barracks, having been called in from the outlying garrison forts strategically placed around Ehrlitan's circumference. The Keep could not accommodate such numbers – the well was already foul, and soldiers slept on the bailey's flagstones under the stars. In the harbour two ancient Falari triremes were moored-off the Malazan mole and a lone undermanned company of marines held the Imperial Docks. The Malazans were under siege with not a hand yet raised against them.

Kalam found within himself conflicting loyalties. By birth he was among the occupied, but he had by choice fought under the standards of the Empire. He'd fought for Emperor Kellanved. And Dassem Ultor, and Whiskeyjack, and Dujek Onearm. But not Laseen. Betrayal cut those bonds long ago. The Emperor would have cut the heart out of this rebellion with its first beat. A short but unremitting bloodbath, followed by a long peace. But Laseen had left the old wounds to fester, and what was coming would silence Hood himself.

Kalam swung back from the hill's crest. The landscape before him was a tumbled maze of shattered limestone and bricks, sinkholes and knotted shrubs. Clouds of insects hovered over black pools. Bats and rhizan darted among them.

Near the centre rose the first three levels of a tower, tilted with roots snaking down from a drought-twisted tree on its top. The maw of a doorway was visible at its base.

Kalam studied it for a time, then finally approached. He was ten paces from the opening when he saw a flicker of light within. The assassin withdrew a knife, tapped the pommel twice against a block, then crossed to the doorway. A voice from its darkness stopped him.

'No closer, Kalam Mekhar.'

Kalam spat loudly. 'Mebra, you think I don't recognize your voice? Vile rhizan like you never wander far from their nest, which is what made you so easy to find, and following you here was even easier.'

'I have important business to attend to,' Mebra growled. 'Why have you returned? What do you want of me? My debt was with the Bridgeburners, but they are no more.'

'Your debt was with me,' Kalam said.

'And when the next Malazan dog with the sigil of a burning bridge finds me, he can claim the debt as well? And the next, and the next after that? Oh no, Kal—'