Quai sat on the cart, bent over with his wet hair flapping round his gaunt face, pale lips pressed together into a hard line. Ferro watched him snap the reins, saw he was gripping them so tightly that the tendons stood out stark from the backs of his thin hands. Longfoot stared about him at the endless ruins, eyes and mouth hanging slightly open, rivulets of water occasionally streaking through the stubble on his knobbly skull. For once he had nothing to say—the one small advantage of this place abandoned by God.

Bayaz was trying to look confident, but Ferro knew better. She watched his hand tremble when he took it from the reins to rub the water from his thick brows. She watched his mouth work when they stopped at junctions, watched him squinting into the rain, trying to reckon the right course. She saw his worry and his doubt written in his every movement. He knew as well as she did. This place was not safe.

Click-clank.

It came faint through the rain, like the sound of a hammer on a distant anvil. The sound of weapons being made ready. She stood up in her stirrups, straining to listen.

'Do you hear that?' she snapped at Ninefingers.

He paused, squinting off at nothing, listening. Click-clank. He nodded slowly. 'I hear it.' He slid his sword out from its sheath.

'What?' Luthar stared around wild-eyed, fumbling for his own weapons.

'There's nothing out there,' grumbled Bayaz.

She jabbed her palm at them to stop, slid down from her saddle and crept up to the corner of the next building, nocking an arrow to her bow, back sliding across the rough surface of the huge stone blocks. Clank-dick. She could feel Ninefingers following, moving carefully, a reassuring presence behind her.

She slid round the corner onto one knee, peering across an empty square, pocked with pools and strewn with rubble. There was a high tower at the far corner, leaning over to one side, wide windows hanging open at its summit under a tarnished dome. Something was moving in there, slowly. Something dark, rocking back and forth. She almost smiled to have something she could point an arrow at.

It was a good feeling, having an enemy.

Then she heard hooves and Bayaz rode past, out into the ruined square. 'Ssss!' she hissed at him, but he ignored her.