They'd done their work, finishing with the coming of dusk just outside Majesty Hall. Until the alliance with the Moranth, the Malazan saboteur had been nothing more than a glorified sapper, a digger of tunnels and breaker of city gates. Moranth alchemy had introduced to the Empire a variety of chemical and powder explosives, most of which detonated when exposed to air. Applying a slow-working acid worm-holed the unfired clay shells. Sabotage had become an art, the precise equation of clay thickness and acid strength was tricky, and few survived to learn from their mistakes.

To Whiskeyjack's mind, Hedge and Fiddler were terrible soldiers. He had trouble recalling the last time they'd unsheathed their shortswords. Whatever discipline that had been part of their basic training had disintegrated through years in the field. Still, when it came to sabotage they had no equals.

Through hooded eyes Whiskeyjack studied the three men sitting at the table. It had been some minutes since any of them had made a move or said a word. One of Fiddler's new games, he decided, the man was forever inventing new ones, improvising the rules whenever they gave him an edge. Despite the endless arguments Fiddler was never short of players.

'And that's what boredom can do,' he said to himself. But, no, it was more than just boredom. Waiting gnawed, especially when it had to do with friends. Quick Ben and Kalam might be face down in some alley for all they knew. And that made it hard.

Whiskeyjack's gaze strayed to one of the beds, on which lay his armour and longsword. Rust stained the hauberk's tattered chain like old blood. The links were missing in some places, torn in others. In his bones and muscles the memory of that damage remained: every cut, every blow now haunted him with aches, greeting him each morning like old comrades. The sword, with its plain leather-wrapped grip and stub hilt, lay in its hide-over-wood scabbard, the belt and straps draped over the bedside.

That weapon had come to him after his first battle, found amid a field of dead. He'd still had the chalk of his father's quarry on his boots then, and a world's promise stretched out before him on the banners of Empire. The sword had come to him shiny, without even so much as a nick in its honed blade, and he had taken it as his own personal standard.

Whiskeyjack's gaze lost its focus. His mind had stepped into the grey, muddy tracks of his youth, where he walked the familiar path, lost and blinded by an unidentifiable sorrow.

The door flew open, carrying into the room a gust of steamy air and then Trotts. The Barghast's coal-dark eyes met the sergeant's.