'You look surprised. Not as surprised as I was, when instead of taking me in your arms you threw me down from the roof, eh, my love? And why? So that you could keep your secrets? So that you could seem noble?' Quai's long hair had turned white as chalk. It floated now about a woman's face, terribly pale, eyes two bright, black points. Tolomei. The Maker's daughter. A ghost, stepped out of the faded past. A ghost that had walked beside them for months, wearing a stolen shape. Ferro could almost feel her icy breath, cold as death on the air. Her eyes flickered from that pale face to the archway, far away across the floor, caught between wanting to run, and needing to know more.

'I saw you in your grave!' whispered Bayaz. 'I piled the earth over you myself.'

'So you did, and wept when you did, as though you had not been the one to throw me down.' Her black eyes swivelled to Ferro, to where the Seed lay tingling against her belly. 'But I had touched the Other Side. In these two hands I had held it, while my father worked, and it had left me altered. There I lay, in the earth's cold embrace. Between life and death. Until I heard the voices. The voices that Glustrod heard, long ago. They offered me a bargain. My freedom for theirs.'

'You broke the First Law!'

'Laws mean nothing to the buried! When I finally clawed my way from the grasping earth the human part of me was gone. But the other part, the part that belongs to the world below—that cannot die. It stands before you. Now I will complete the work that Glustrod began. I will throw open the doors that my grandfather sealed. This world and the Other Side shall be one. As they were before the Old Time. As they were always meant to be.' She held out her open hand, and a bitter chill flowed from it and sent shivers across Ferro's back to the tips of her fingers. 'Give me the Seed, child. I made a promise to the Tellers of Secrets, and I keep the promises I make.'

'We shall see!' snarled the First of the Magi. Ferro felt the tugging in her stomach, saw the air around Bayaz begin to blur. Tolomei stood ten strides away from him. The next instant she struck him with a sound like a thunderclap. His staff burst apart, splintered wood flying. He gave a shocked splutter as he flew through the darkness, rolled over and over across the cold stone to lie face down in a crumpled heap. Ferro stared as a wave of freezing air washed over her. She felt a sick and terrible fear, all the worse for being unfamiliar. She stood frozen.