The short journey from the square to the south gate was surprisingly uneventful, for all the commander’s warnings. Dusk shrouded the streets and smoke from a burning tenement block spread an acrid haze that made breathing tortured. They rode through the silent aftermath of slaughter, when the rage has passed and awareness returns with shock and shame.

The moment was a single indrawn breath in what Fiddler knew would be an ever-burgeoning wildfire. If the Malazan legions had not been withdrawn from nearby Pan’potsun, there would have been the chance of crushing the life from this first spark, with a brutality to match the renegades’. When slaughter is flung back on the perpetrators, the thirst for blood is quickly quenched.

The Emperor would have acted swiftly, decisively. Hood’s breath, he would never have let it slide this far.

Less than a tenth of a bell after leaving the square they passed beneath the smoke-blackened arch of an unguarded south gate. Beyond stretched the Pan’potsun Odhan, flanked to the west by the ridge that divided the Odhan from the Holy Desert Raraku. The night’s first stars flickered alight overhead.

Fiddler broke the long silence. ‘There is a village a little over two leagues to the south. With luck it won’t be a carrion feast. Not yet, anyway.’

Crokus cleared his throat. ‘Fiddler, if Kalam had known ... about Dancer, I mean, Cotillion ...’

The sapper grimaced, glanced at Apsalar. ‘She’d be with him right now.’

Whatever response Crokus intended was interrupted by a squealing, flapping shape that dropped down out of the darkness to collide with the lad’s back. Crokus let out a shout of alarm as the creature gripped his hair and clambered onto his head.

‘It’s just Moby,’ Fiddler said, trying to shake off the jitters the familiar’s arrival had elicited. He squinted. ‘Looks like he’s been in a scrap,’ he observed.

Crokus pulled Moby down into his arms. ‘He’s bleeding everywhere!’

‘Nothing serious, I’d guess,’ Fiddler said.

‘What makes you so sure?’

The sapper grinned. ‘Ever seen bhok’arala mate?’

‘Fiddler,’ Apsalar’s tone was tight. ‘We are pursued.’

Reining in, Fiddler rose in the stirrups and twisted around. In the distant gloom was a cloud of dust. He hissed a curse. ‘The Gral clan.’

‘We ride weary mounts,’ Apsalar said.

‘Aye. Queen grant us there’s fresh horses to be had in New Velar.’

At the base of three converging gorges, Kalam left the false path and carefully guided his horse through a narrow drainage channel. The old memories of the ways into Raraku felt heavy in his bones. Everything’s changed, yet nothing has changed.