Down a long hallway, dusty paintings on one wall, dusty windows in the other. All the way the back of Ferro's neck prickled, waiting for the black masks to come boiling out of the shadows. But nothing came besides the echoing footsteps up ahead, the mindless droning of the old men's voices.

'This place has changed,' Yulwei was saying. 'Since that day we fought Kanedias. The day the Old Time ended. It rained, then.'

'I remember it.'

'I lay wounded on the bridge, in the rain. I saw them fall, the Maker and his daughter. From on high, they tumbled down. Hard to believe, that I smiled to see it, then. Vengeance is a fleeting thrill. The doubts, we carry to our graves.' Ferro sneered at that. If she could have the vengeance she would live with the doubts.

'Time has brought us both regrets,' muttered Bayaz.

'More of them with every passing year. A strange thing, though. I could have sworn, as I lay there, that it was Kanedias who fell first, and Tolomei second.'

'Memory can tell lies, especially to men who have lived as long as we. The Maker threw down his daughter, then I him. And so the Old Time ended.'

'So it did,' murmured Yulwei. 'So much lost. And now we are come to this…'

Quai's head snapped round and Ferro plastered herself against the wall behind a leaning cabinet. He stood there, for a long moment, frowning towards her. Then he followed the others. Ferro waited, holding her breath, until the three of them turned a corner and passed out of sight.

She caught them up in a crumbling courtyard, choked with dead weeds, littered with broken slates fallen from the roofs above. A man in a stained shirt led them up a long stairway, towards a dark arch high in the high wall of the Agriont. He had a bunch of jingling keys in his gnarled hands, was muttering something about eggs. Once they had passed into the tunnel Ferro padded across the open space and up the steps, pausing near the top.

'We will come back shortly,' she heard Bayaz growling. 'Leave the door ajar.'

'It's always kept locked,' a voice answered. 'That's the rule. It's been kept locked all my life, and I don't plan to—'

'Then wait here until we come back! But go nowhere! I have many better things to do than sit waiting on the wrong side of your locked doors!' Keys turned. Old hinges squealed. Ferro's fingers slid round a loose lump of stone and gripped it tightly.