He turned and looked again at the furniture against the wall. There was a bed, a clothes press, a basin on a stand, a low stool—all common enough fixtures. Something about the bed looked odd to him, though, and he twitched the cloth back to have a closer look. It was then he saw the manacles bolted to the headboard, and the bloodstains on the straw-filled mattress. He let the cloth go in disgust. Curiosity got the better of him, though, and he lifted the lid of the clothes press.

Inside, instead of the garments he’d expected, he saw trays full of rusted steel implements. He recognized only a few of them—a saw, a hammer, a variety of shears and pincers in various gauges. A great many knives. There was one tool with a watertight leather bulb at one end and a long tube on the other, and something else that resembled a meat hook stretched out long and thin.

He could hardly guess at their purpose, but then something occurred to him. He looked to his left and saw it again as if for the first time. There was one piece of furniture in the room he definitely recognized, from his childhood. The stool. A low three-legged stool about twelve inches high. It was the kind of stool midwives used.

When Malden realized what that meant and where he was, he wanted to close his eyes and just make this all go away. He wanted to jump in the Skrait and drown, because at least then he could die clean.

He was wasting time. He closed the press and pulled the cloth back over the bed exactly as it had been, then went to the door and unwrapped the lock picks hidden in the hilt of his bodkin. The lock on the door was a simple mechanism, easily defeated, and soon he had the door open. Yet as he was stepping back into the hall and closing the door behind him, again a sensation, unbidden and very much unwanted, came to his mind.

Malden had the distinct impression someone was coming up behind him. Was it Cythera, returning from some errand? Or a less welcome intruder? He flattened himself against the wall, knowing his only chance was to hide in the semidarkness of the hall. It was a forlorn hope. The light from the candle was plenty to see by—but his reflexes were such he couldn’t help but try to hide.

It turned out not to matter.

The thing coming up behind him wasn’t human. It was only roughly man-shaped in outline, and seemed to be made of living smoke. It left misty footprints of condensation on the floor where it walked, but it passed Malden without even turning its head—assuming that lump at its top was some kind of head. It walked right past him and into the stairs and then was gone.