‘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.