Whiskeyjack hesitated. He knew the question behind that question. Quick Ben was the squad's brains, but Kalam was their killer. Both made him uneasy with their single-minded devotion to their respective talents. 'Leave her alone,' he said at last. 'For now.'

Kalam and Quick Ben sighed, sharing a grin behind their sergeant's back.

'Just don't get cocky,' Whiskeyjack said drily.

The grins faded.

The sergeant's gaze returned to the wagons entering the city. Two riders approached. 'All right,' he said. 'Mount up. Here comes our reception committee.' The riders were from his squad, Fiddler and Sorry.

'You think the new captain's arrived?' Kalam asked, as he climbed into his saddle. His roan mare turned her head and snapped at him. He growled in return. A moment later the two long-time companions settled down into their mutual mistrust.

Whiskeyjack looked on, amused. 'Probably. Let's head down to them. Anybody up on the wall watching us might be getting antsy.' Then his humour fell away. They had, indeed, just turned the game. And the timing couldn't have been worse. He knew the full extent of their next mission, and in that he knew more than either Quick Ben or Kalam. There was no point in complicating things even further, though. They'll find out soon enough.

Tattersail stood half a dozen feet behind High Mage Tayschrenn. The Malazan banners snapped in the wind, the spars creaking above the smoke-stained turret, but here in the shelter of the wall the air was calm. On the western horizon across from her rose the Moranth Mountains, reaching a mangled arm northward to Genabaris. As the range swept southward it joined the Tahlyn in a jagged line stretching a thousand leagues into the east. Off to her right lay the flat yellow-grassed Rhivi Plain.

Tayschrenn leaned on a merlon looking down on the wagons rolling into the city. From below rose the groans of oxen and shouting soldiers. The High Mage hadn't moved or said a word in some minutes. Off to his left waited a small wood table, its surface scarred and pitted and crowded with runes cut deep into the oak. Peculiar dark stains blotted the surface here and there.

Knots of tension throbbed in Tattersail's shoulders. Meeting Bellurdan had shaken her, and she didn't feel up to what was to come.

'Bridgeburners,' the High Mage muttered.

Startled, the sorceress frowned, then stepped up to stand beside Tayschrenn. Descending from a hill off to the right, a hill she knew intimately, rode a party of soldiers. Even from this distance she recognized four of them: Quick Ben, Kalam, Whiskeyjack and that recruit, Sorry. The fifth rider was a short, wiry man, who had sapper written all over him. 'Oh?' she said, feigning lack of interest.