The fisherman drew on the sweater. He shovelled embers from the hearth into a brazier, then filled a short clay pipe and lit it with an ember from the fire.
‘Good-night, love.’ He smiled. ‘Sing for me, won’t you?’
She raised a hand. ‘You know I do. Come back quickly.’
‘I will. Soon as I can.’
She turned her head to listen to the door, heard the wind moaning through the rocks, the ocean heaving itself against the shore with slow, insistent pressure. The door latched shut. She lowered her head and folded her hands in her lap.
The wind blew steady and chill. Clouds raced overhead — the leading banners of a solid front filling the entire south horizon. Beneath the silver eye of the newly risen moon nothing moved among the shacks perched on the barren southern shore of Malaz Isle except the fisherman picking his way down to the wave-pounded shingle. In the lashing wind his brazier flamed like a beacon. For a moment he stopped to listen; he thought he heard the hint of a hound’s bay caught on the wind. Squinting towards the south he grimaced: along the dark horizon of cloud and sea blue-green lights flashed like mast-fire. Lights that sailors claimed lured men to their doom.
He found the surf had risen almost within reach of his beached skiff. He set the brazier into an iron stand at the middle thwart, put his shoulder to the bow, then jerked away as if stung: scaled ice covered the wood like a second skin. He mouthed a curse and laid a hand against the wood. The ice melted, beading to condensation over the age-polished wood and steaming into vapour the wind snatched away. Singing low under his breath, the fisherman shoved against the prow. The skiff skimmed over the stones and he pushed on, wading into the surf up to his thighs, then clambered in.
While he pulled on the thick wood oars, he chanted a song that was old when men and women first set foot upon the island. The humped, time-worn bedrock hills shrank into the distance as if the raging wind itself had swept the island away.
With one oar he turned the skiff amid the waves, then turned around to face the stern, bow to the south. Between the skiff and Malaz, now a dark distant line at the north horizon, the sea rose in slow heavy swells as smooth as the island’s ancient hills. Hail lashed white-capped waves all around, yet none touched the fisherman’s grey hair as it tossed in the wind. Deep ocean surge, tall as any vessel, bore down on him, ice-webbed, frost and spume-topped. But they rolled under his bow as gently as a meadow slope while he crooned to the wind.
Out of the south the storm-front advanced, thickening into a solid line of churning clouds. Driven snow and sleet melted to rain that dissipated long before reaching the skiff. Lightning crackled amid the clouds while beneath emerald and deepest blue flashed like wave-buoyed gemstones. The fisherman saw none of this; facing north, teeth clamped down on his pipe, he droned his chant while the wind snatched the words away.
Kiska soon lost track of the fellow who had popped up so suddenly before her at the wharves. Again, she smelled the Warrens in that, and hoped the possibility of a tail never occurred to him. If it had, he’d be right behind her now, waiting, watching from a path in the Rashan Warren of Darkness or perhaps even Hood’s own demesnes, the Paths of the Dead. Though on a night like this accessing either of those seemed imprudent, even to her.
The trail of her target and his guards led her inland through the warehouse district, continuing on into the poorest quarters of rag shops, bone Tenderers, money lenders, and tanneries. If her quarry kept on in this direction he would soon confront an even fouler neighbourhood, the Mouse — the filthiest, lowest, and most disease-infested locale in the city.
At the first muddy lane bridged by plank walkways, her mark’s trail turned abruptly northward. Kiska was not surprised by the sudden change in direction; she imagined their disgust at the redolent sewage and rotting kitchen refuse awash in stagnant water that percolated from a nearby marsh. She could have pursued them easily enough through the maze of alleys, especially now, as many of the ways were nothing more than glutinous paths through the blackened wreckage left by last summer’s riots. But it was mainly because she’d grown up in this quarter, spent her life clawing out of it, that she was reluctant, always, to enter its ways again.
The trail led on up a gentle grade leading to the wealthy merchant centre. It crossed market lanes and angled more or less straight north, up cobbled arcades past shop fronts, closed and shuttered now against the coming night. Through the cloth merchant district it continued on, climbing hills northwest into the Lightings, the old estate quarter. Most of the manor houses stood vacant behind tall gates. Now they served merely as provincial retreats for the aristocratic families that had transferred their interests north, across the Strait of Winds, to the Imperial court at Unta.
The evening had cooled rapidly. A frigid wind from the south, out of the Sea of Storms, gusted down from the isle’s meagre headlands. The cloud cover remained unbroken, sweeping northward like driven smoke. Her heavy cloak billowed, snagging as she kept to the ivy-choked iron fences that lined the district’s boulevards. One edge of it remained tight against her side, however: the right side, held straight by the crossbow stock disguised inside her cloak.
Kiska paused in the shadow of an ancient pillar, a plinth for the marble statue of a Nacht, the fanged and winged creature once said to have inhabited the island. The streets were deserted. The last souls she’d seen, other than glimpses of her target and escort, were a few stragglers. Hunched under shawls and scarves, they’d hurried home as night lowered.
Tonight. This night of all possible nights. Shadow Moon; All Souls’ Fest; the Night of Shadows. Its titles seemed endless. Kiska had grown up hearing all the old legends, tales so imaginative and fabulous she rolled her eyes whenever her mother dragged them out. That was until a few days ago, when she’d overheard that by some arcane and unspecified means a Shadow Moon was predicted for tonight. Since then she’d eavesdropped on talk that lingered around gruesome stories of monstrous hounds, vengeful shades, and that local haunt, the Deadhouse. Any mention of those precincts brought wardings and whispered hints of even darker legends; tales of fiends so malevolent to have once inhabited it, as if borrowing something of its ancient brooding essence — Kellanved, Dancer, Surly, and the dark heart of the Empire to come.
From the stories she’d overheard, it seemed to her that everyone had an ancestor or relative who’d disappeared during a Shadow Moon. As good a night as any, she figured cynically, to run out on a harridan wife or ne’er-do-well husband.
Right now her own mother was no doubt barricaded in her room, eyes clenched shut, mouthing prayers to Chem — the old local sea cult — for the safety of her and her own. If she’d spoken to her within the last few days, she probably would have attempted to keep her indoors this night, just as Agayla had done during the riots of the Regent’s new laws. But she’d grown up ignoring her mother’s prohibitions on almost everything, so why heed them now? Especially when this was the first Shadow Moon in her lifetime.
Those she followed walked the deserted lanes boldly. For them tonight held no dangers. If they knew of the legends — which was doubtful — they would probably view it as nothing more than a quaint local custom during which souls, monsters, and fiends purportedly took to the streets. Her home’s backwater superstition shamed Kiska. Yet what if she did break off the surveillance? Run to hide in a sacred precinct or temple? If she abandoned the pursuit now she could already imagine the Claw commander’s sneer. After all, what more could one expect of local talent?
Ahead in the distance, flattened by the overcast gloom, her quarry and guards continued to climb the cobbled street. Ground fog rose now, swirling in the wind, as her target rounded a corner and vanished. Kiska kept behind cover. For all she knew they could be waiting just ahead. She could walk right past them and not know until cold iron slid between her ribs. Or, more likely, a knotted silk rope snapped about her neck like a noose.
Kiska tightened her cloak, tried to shake off her dread like the rain from its oiled weave. She would simply have to proceed under the assumption she’d yet to be spotted. Her nerves would rattle to pieces otherwise.
The corner revealed a carriage way, twin gullies pressed into the stones by centuries of wheels. The party had disappeared. Down the way, between tall walls, stood a massive gateway of carved wooden doors. Kiska knew what lay beyond. The E’Karial family manor. Smallish, compared to some of the town’s grander estates, but comfortable, or so it had looked from the outside on her nocturnal wanderings. It was also long abandoned. If this were a meeting, Kiska imagined its participants couldn’t have planned a more isolated location. Of course, it could also be that some massively ill-informed scion of the E’Karial family had arrived to inspect their inheritance.
She took several slow breaths, then crossed the carriage way to the mouth of the lane opposite, where ivy hung so thick she could hardly see through it. At each step her back prickled under imagined dagger-points. But the
