They began to check their weapons. The first hunter loaded the crossbow and slipped four extra quarrels in its belt. The second hunter removed each long-knife and cleaned it carefully of sweat and grime.

They heard someone approach from behind, and turned to see their commander.

'He's in the inn,' the second hunter said.

'We'll leave no witnesses to this secret war with the Guild,' the first added.

The commander glanced at the door of the Phoenix Inn. Then, to the hunters, she said, 'No. The wagging tongue of a witness might be useful to our efforts.'

'The runt had help,' the first hunter said meaningfully.

The commander shook her head. 'We return to the fold.'

'Very well.'

The two hunters put away their weapons. The first glanced back at the inn and asked, 'Who protected him, do you think?'

The second hunter snarled. 'Someone with a sense of humour.'

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX

There is a cabal breathing

deeper than the bellows

drawing up the emerald fires

beneath rain-glistened cobbles,

while you may hear the groaning

from the caverns below,

the whisper of sorcery

is less than the dying sigh

of a thief stumbling unwilling

into Darujhistan's secret web ...

Cabal (fragment)

Puddle (b. 1122?)

The splayed tip of her right wing brushed the scarred black rock as Crone climbed the whistling updraughts of Moon's Spawn. From the pocked caves and starlit ledges her restless brothers and sisters called out to her as she passed. 'Do we fly?' they asked. But Crone made no reply. Her glittering black eyes were fixed on heaven's vault. Her enormous wings beat a thundering refrain of taut, unrelenting power. She had no time for the nervous cackling of the younglings; no time for answering their simplistic needs with the wisdom her thousand years of life had earned her.

This night, Crone flew for her lord.

As she rose above the shattered peaks of the Moon's crest a high wind swept her wings, rasping dry and cold along her oily feathers. Around her, thin wisps of shredded smoke rode the currents of night air like lost spirits. Crone circled once, her sharp gaze catching the glimmer of the few remaining fires among the crags below, then she dipped a wing and sailed out on the wind's tide as it rolled northward to Lake Azur.

The featureless expanse of the Dwelling Plain was beneath her, the grass sweeping in grey waves unbroken by house or hill. Directly ahead lay the glittering jewelled cloak that was Darujhistan, casting into the sky a sapphire glow. As she neared the city her unnaturally acute vision detected, here and there among the estates crowding the upper tier, the aquamarine emanation of sorcery.