‘Hood take you, Korlat. You and the rest. Every one of you.’

‘Here, I will help you.’

‘Your good intentions are killing me. No, not killing. That’s just it, isn’t it—’ She grunted, feebly trying to twist away from Korlat’s hands as the Tiste Andii lifted her effortlessly into a sitting position. ‘Torturing me. Your mercy. Which is anything but. No, look not at my face, Korlat.’ She drew her hood tighter. ‘Lest I grow avid for the pity in your eyes. Where is this bowl? I will eat. Leave me.’

‘I will sit with you, Mhybe,’ Korlat replied. ‘There are two bowls, after all.’

The Rhivi woman stared down at her own wrinkled, pocked, skeletal hands, then at the bowl clutched between them, the watery broth with its slivers of wine-stained meat. ‘See this? The butcher of the goat. The slayer. Did he or she pause at the desperate cries of the animal? Look into its pleading eyes? Hesitate with the knife? In my dreams, I am as that goat. This is what you curse me to.’

‘The slaughterer of the goat was Rhivi,’ Korlat said after a moment. ‘You and I know that ritual well, Mhybe. Propitiation. Calling upon the merciful spirit whose embrace is necessity. You and I both know how that spirit comes upon the goat, or indeed any such creature whose body shall feed your people, whose skin shall clothe you. And so the beast does not cry out, does not plead. I have witnessed ... and wondered, for it is indeed a remarkable thing. Unique to the Rhivi, not in its intent, but in its obvious efficacy. It is as if the ritual’s arriving spirit shows the beast a better future – something beyond the life it’s known to that point—’

‘Lies,’ the Mhybe murmured. ‘The spirit deceives the poor creature. To make the slaying easier.’

Korlat fell silent.

The Mhybe raised the bowl to her lips.

‘Perhaps, even then,’ the Tiste Andii resumed, ‘the deception is a gift... of mercy.’

‘There is no such thing,’ the Mhybe snapped. ‘Words to comfort the killer and his kin and naught else. Dead is dead, as the Bridgeburners are wont to say. Those soldiers know the truth of it. Children of the Malazan Empire hold no illusions. They are not easily charmed.’

‘You seem to know much of them.’

‘Two marines come to visit occasionally. They’ve taken it upon themselves to guard my daughter. And to tell me of her, since no-one else has a mind to, and I cherish them for that.’

‘I did not know this ...’

‘It alarms you? Have terrible secrets been revealed to me? Will you now put a stop to it?’