Limestone is just the bones of things once living, Heboric had said their second night in the hovel they'd claimed off Spit Row – before Beneth had moved them to the more privileged neighbourhood behind Bula's Inn. I'd read that theory before and am now myself convinced. So now I'm led to believe that Otataral is not a natural ore.

That's important? Baudin had asked.

If not natural, then what? Heboric grinned. Otataral, the bane of magic, was born of magic. If I was less scrupulous a scholar, I'd write a treatise on that.

What do you mean? Felisin asked.

He means, Baudin said, he'd be inviting alchemists and mages to experiment in making their own Otataral.

Is that a problem?

Those veins we dig, Heboric explained, they're like a layer of once melted fat, a deep river of it sandwiched between layers of limestone. This whole island had to melt to make those veins. Whatever sorcery created Otataral proved beyond controlling. I would not want to be responsible for unleashing such an event all over again.

A single Malazan guard waited at Nearlight's gate. Beyond him stretched the raised road that led into the pit town. At the far end, the sun was just setting beyond the pit's ridge line, leaving Skullcup in its early shadow, a pocket of gloom that brought blessed relief from the day's heat.

The guard was young, resting his vambraced forearms on the cross blades of his pike.

Beneth grunted. 'Where's your mate, Pella?'

'The Dosii pig wandered off, Beneth. Maybe you can tune Sawark's ear – Hood knows he's not hearing us. The Dosii regulars have lost all discipline. They ignore the duty rosters, spend all their time tossing coins at Bula's. There's seventy-five of us and over two hundred of them, Beneth, and all this talk of rebellion ... explain it to Sawark—'

'You don't know your history,' Beneth said. 'The Dosii have been on their knees for three hundred years. They don't know any other way to live. First it was mainlanders, then Falari colonists, now you Malazans. Calm yourself, boy, before you lose face.'

'“History comforts the dull-witted,”' the young Malazan said.

Beneth barked a laugh as he reached the gate. 'And whose words are those, Pella? Not yours.'

The guard's brows rose, then he shrugged. 'I forget you're Korelri sometimes, Beneth. Those words? Emperor Kellanved.' Pella's gaze slid to Felisin with a hint of sharpness. 'Duiker's Imperial Campaigns, Volume One. You're Malazan, Felisin, do you recall what comes next?'

She shook her head, bemused by the young man's veiled intensity. I've learned to read faces – Beneth senses nothing. 'I'm not that familiar with Duiker's works, Pella.'

'Worth learning,' the guard said with a smile.

Sensing Beneth's growing impatience at the gate, Felisin stepped past Pella. 'I doubt there's a single scroll in Skullcup,' she said.

'Maybe you'll find someone's memory worth dragging a net through, eh?'

Felisin glanced back with a frown.

'The boy flirting with you?' Beneth asked from the ramp. 'Be gentle, girl.'

'I'll think on that,' Felisin told Pella in a low voice before resuming her walk through the Twistings Gate. Joining Beneth on the raised road, she smiled up at him. 'I don't like nervous types.'

He laughed. 'That puts me at ease.'

Blessed Queen of Dreams, make that true.

Rubble-filled pits lined the raised road until it joined the other two roads at the Three Fates crossing, a broad fork that was flanked by two squat Dosii guardhouses. North of Twistings Road, and on their right as they approached the forks, was Deep Mine Road; to the south and on their left ran Shaft Road, leading to a worked-out mine where the dead were disposed of each dusk.

The body wagon was nowhere to be seen, meaning it had been held up on its route through the pit town, with more than the usual number of bodies being brought out and tossed onto its bed.

They crossed the fork and continued on to Work Road. Past the north Dosii guardhouse was Sinker Lake, a deep pool of turquoise-coloured water stretching all the way to the north pit wall. It was said the water was cursed and to dive into it was to disappear. Some believed a demon lived in its depths. Heboric asserted that the lack of buoyancy was a quality of the lime-saturated water itself. In any case, few slaves were foolish enough to try an escape in that direction, for the pit wall was as sheer on the north side as it was on the others, forever weeping water over a skin of deposits that glimmered like wet, polished bone.

Heboric had asked Felisin to keep an eye on Sinker Lake's water level in any case, now that the dry season had come, and as they walked Work Road, she studied the far side as best she could in the dim light. A line of crust was visible a hand's span above the surface. The news would please him, though she had no idea why. The notion of escape was absurd. Beyond the pit was lifeless desert and withered rock, with no drinkable water in any direction for days. Those slaves who somehow made it up to the pit edge, and then eluded the patrols on Beetle Road, the track that surrounded the pit, had left their bones in the desert's red sands. Few got that far, and the spikes named Salvation Row on the sheer wall of the Tower at Rust Ramp displayed their failure for all to see. Not a week went past without a new victim appearing on the Tower wall. Most died before the first day was through, but some lingered longer.