and yellow glow. Her limbs shook and she bent over, heaving up her stomach. She wiped her arm across her mouth. Burn’s consuming embrace! That had been far too close to be worth it — and worth what, anyway? Saving an old man from a kicking? She sat for a time, sick and angry with herself, then stood. She sheathed her daggers and pulled herself up the fence. She vowed then that would be the last time she ever stuck her neck out for anyone.
Yet here she was, out in the night while her flesh crawled with dread. The town seemed to be changing before her eyes. Shadows moved. Unfamiliar streets and buildings shimmered into view only to waver, dissipate and reappear elsewhere. Even the night sounds seemed distorted. Where was the surf? Kiska had grown up in this port and couldn’t think of a single day empty of the sea’s steady pulse. Now it had vanished. On any other day or night she knew exactly where she stood just by smelling the air and listening to the voice of the waves. But everything was all twisted around and backwards. She couldn’t even be sure in which direction lay Mock’s Hold. Like that night just months ago, this was more than she’d bargained on. That night it had been an attack on her body; tonight she felt much more than mere flesh was at stake. She hated herself for it, but felt she ought to hide here like a rain- damp stray till dawn. Not even the possibility of a hound sniffing at her trail would impel her to move on.
Blinking, wiping away the icy mist on her face, she watched thin clouds flit and roil over the town like angry harrying birds. One roof-hugging tatter of vapour, opalescent silver, darted suddenly between buildings just to her right. As it arced down it took on a semblance of a giant lunging hound, its forepaws outstretched. An instant later an ear-splitting howl shook the walls and sent her jumping as sharply as if a dagger had plunged into her back.
She screamed, her voice melding with those of people locked into their homes beneath her, and she scrambled away, running from roof to roof, oblivious of the rain-slick tiles.
She leapt down onto second-floor balconies, balancing on their rickety stick railings, and threw herself across lanes to ledges and gables opposite. She scampered up clay tiles, the sound of their fall clattering below, over shake-roofed breeze-ways above alleys, and across flat brick and stone-roofed government buildings. From a featureless gable of one building, she jumped over the gap of a lane to land onto a temple dedicated to Fener. Her gloved hand caught a boar’s head gutter funnel. Grunting, she pulled herself up onto the walkway behind and knelt, hands on knees, drawing air deep into her burning lungs.
Surely it couldn’t follow her here. Not into sacred precincts. Certainly now she must be safe. She raised her head to peer over the stone lip. Shadows swirled like wind-swept veils. She looked away, dizzy, pushed back her hair. Probably nothing had been after her, but who would wait to find out?
A man stepped out from an open archway. A priest of Fener, complete with boar’s tusk tattoos curling across his cheeks. He smiled as he saw her. ‘So this is our fearsome invader.’
Kiska backed away around the walkway.
‘Wait! Stay!’
She heard him coming after her and stepped up and out onto another boar’s head finial, where the wind tugged at her wet clothes.
‘Fener’s blood, child. Don’t!’
She pushed off with her legs as strongly as she could. Her outstretched hands slapped against the ledge of the building opposite. One knee cracked into the stone facings and she almost lost her grip at the shooting pain. She heaved herself up, thanked the gods for the crammed cheek-by-jowl housing of the city, as well as the cheapness of her fellow Malazans, too tight-pursed to pull it all down and start over again.
Prostrate on the rain-slick roof, Kiska saw that the priest still watched her, his face wrinkled with concern. She dragged herself to her feet, then waved.
The old man cupped his hands at his mouth, yelled through the gusting wind:
She waved one hand in thanks, and limped on despite the burning of her knee.
The final expanse of roof to cross stopped her. Sucking in gulps of cold night air, she stood at the very lip of a third-storey gable, overlooking the stretch of copses and hilly meadow littered by the ruins everyone called Mossy Tors.
She studied the rooftops behind her. What a fool she’d been! To imagine she’d be safe anywhere out of doors!
As the fear gradually drained away and her heart slowed, she brought her respiration back under control. Dread eased into excitement, a rush such as she’d never known. Her limbs tingled and clenched for action; she felt potent, competent. She could smell the power out there, and she wanted it for herself.
Kiska studied the thinly forested commons. Perhaps her flight hadn’t been as blind as she’d thought. Something was out there, among the trees. She lay down on her stomach alongside the gable. She watched for a time, motionless. Ragged moonlight shone down through the wood; aruscus trunks glowed in the monochrome light as if aflame.
Then movement… what she’d thought to be shadows of branches shifting in the uneven wind resolved themselves into shapes flitting from cover to cover. Grey-clad figures, ghostlike, crawled and darted as they closed on the largest of the moss-covered stone mounds. Through the branches of twin tall cedars a flash glimmered then disappeared — what might have been the faintest reflection of moonlight on polished metal.
Well, these cultists had been following her target earlier, so why not now? After all, how many others could be stupid enough to be out on a night like this, other than herself? Kiska turned to find a route down.
After running across a lane and pushing through thick brush, Kiska edged from tree to tree. Near the middle of the green she stumbled across a body. Whoever this grey — Shadow cultist, she corrected herself — had been, she couldn’t have been much older than herself. Her body slumped to one side, propped up at the base of a lone leafless oak. Kiska knelt to inspect the corpse. The robes were fine-spun linen and from their disarray she guessed the body had been searched. She’d been killed quickly, professionally, by the single thrust of a large weapon from the front. Blood pooled on the girl’s lap, blackening the knotted tree roots beneath her.
Gloves on, Kiska took a handful of the long sandy hair and lifted the head. No one she recognized. But that didn’t mean much if the society was as secret as Agayla claimed. For all Kiska knew, the woman could’ve come all the way from the Free Confederacies said to lie far to the south of Genabackis.
Letting the head loll forward, Kiska glimpsed a discolouration on the woman’s chest. The thin tunic beneath the robes had been torn open. She carefully peeled back the fold of cloth. A tattoo rode high on the woman’s chest: the likeness of a severed bird’s foot. A bird of prey, perhaps a falcon or a hawk. Kiska studied the mark, wondering about its significance. Agayla had mentioned
She sat back on her haunches. Well, well. Some sort of recognition sign? A pass? Why a bird’s foot? The Claws came to mind, but she knew the sign of the Claws and this wasn’t it. Yet another mystery in a night virtually raining mysteries. She’d file this one away for later investigation; it had delayed her long enough.
The oak the body lay under rose from a hollow between two low stone walls, so buried in damp blankets of moss as to appear no more than twin and parallel lumps. The cultist might have been guarding this route because it led to a hillock of blocks that, if memory served, should lie along one side of the main formation. Studying the woods, Kiska realized that the unnerving shadow-shifting had ceased. The night was still now. Either the phenomena came and went, or this area was somehow unaffected. Alternately crouching and crawling, she reached a wall that she thought ought to offer a view of the main ruins. She leaned against it, gathered herself, checked her crossbow, then peeked over the top.
She spotted the one she sought almost instantly. He sat against a stone, legs straight out before him, arms crossed, his hood pulled back. His queue of long black hair hung forward over one shoulder. Raising a dark and lean face towards the night sky, he scowled, not liking what he saw. His four bodyguards occupied positions around him: two hunched behind blocks, two standing edge-on against pillars of vine and moss-encrusted stone. Further out, encircling the ancient mound, waited cloaked shapes as motionless as the rocks. Fifty at least. They’d harried her target here, that much was plain. And now they waited — but for what?
Though she wore gloves, Kiska rubbed a hand on her thigh as if to wipe sweat from her palm. No doubt they
