The wizard slowly nodded. ‘Hence this fateful meeting. Sir, Kalam and I, we’ll follow you, now. If you would have us.’

Whiskeyjack grunted. ‘The Emperor will take you from me.’

‘Only if you tell him, Commander.’

‘And Kalam?’ Whiskeyjack glanced back at the assassin.

‘The Claw will be . . . displeased,’ the man rumbled. Then he smiled. ‘Too bad for Surly.’

Grimacing, Whiskeyjack twisted further to survey his soldiers. The array of faces could have been carved from stone. A company, culled from the army’s cast-offs, now a bright, hard core. ‘Gods,’ he whispered under his breath, ‘what have we made here?’

The first blood-letting engagement of the Bridgeburners was the retaking of G’danisban – a mage, an assassin, and seventy soldiers who swept into a rebel stronghold of four hundred desert warriors and crushed them in a single night.

The lantern’s light had burned low, but the tent’s walls revealed the dawn’s gentle birth. The sounds of a camp awakening and preparing for the march slowly rose to fill the silence that followed Whiskeyjack’s tale.

Anomander Rake sighed. ‘Soul-shifting.’

‘Aye.’

‘I have heard of shifting one soul – sending it into a vessel prepared for it. But to shift eleven souls – eleven mages – into the already-occupied body of a twelfth ...’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Brazen, indeed. I see now why Quick Ben requested I probe him no further.’ His eyes lifted. ‘Yet here, this night, you unveil him. I did not ask—’

‘To have asked, Lord, would have been a presumption,’ Whiskeyjack said.

‘Then you understood me.’

‘Instinct,’ the Malazan smiled. ‘I trust mine as well, Anomander Rake.’

The Tiste Andii rose from the chair.

Whiskeyjack followed suit.

‘I was impressed,’ Rake said, ‘when you stood ready to defend the child Silverfox.’

‘And I was in turn impressed when you reined yourself in.’

‘Yes,’ the Knight of Dark muttered, eyes suddenly averted and a faint frown marring his brow. ‘The mystery of the cherub . . .’

‘Excuse me?’

The Tiste Andii smiled. ‘I was recalling my first meeting with the one named Kruppe.’

‘I am afraid, Lord, that Kruppe is one mystery for whom I can offer nothing in way of revelation. Indeed, I think that effort will likely defeat us all.’

‘You may be right in that, Whiskeyjack.’

‘Quick Ben leaves this morning, to join Paran and the Bridgeburners.’

Rake nodded. ‘I shall endeavour to keep my distance, lest he grow nervous.’ After a moment, the Tiste Andii held out his hand.

They locked wrists.

‘A welcome evening just past,’ Rake said.

Whiskeyjack grimaced. ‘I’m not much for spinning entertaining tales. I appreciate your patience.’

‘Perhaps I can redress the balance some other evening – I’ve a few stories of my own.’

‘I’m sure you have,’ Whiskeyjack managed.

They released their grips and the commander turned to the entrance.

Behind him, Rake spoke, ‘One last thing. Silverfox need have nothing to fear from me. More, I will instruct Kallor accordingly.’