The Seer crouched lower and touched a fingertip to Toc’s temple. ‘It’s so easy breaking you. All your faiths. One by one. Almost too easy. The only salvation you can hope for is mine, Toc the Younger. You understand that now, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Very good. Pray, then, that there is mercy in my soul. True, I’ve yet to find any myself, though I admit I’ve little searched. But perhaps it exists. Hold to that, my friend.’

‘Yes.’

The Seer straightened. ‘I hear my mother’s cries. Take him back, Seerdomin.’

‘As you command, Holy One.’

Strong arms gathered Toc the Younger, lifted him with ease from the cold floor.

He was carried from the room. In the hallway, the Seerdomin paused.

‘Toc, listen to me, please. She’s chained down below, and the reach does not encompass the entire room. Listen. I will set you down beyond her grasp. I will bring food, water, blankets – the Seer will pay little heed to her cries, for she is always crying these days. Nor will he probe towards her mind – there are matters of far greater import consuming him.’

‘He will have you devoured, Seerdomin.’

‘I was devoured long ago, Malazan.’

‘I – I am sorry for that.’

The man holding him said nothing for a long moment, and when he spoke at last, his voice cracked. ‘You ... you offer compassion. Abyss take me, Toc, I am ever surpassed. Allow to me, please, my small efforts—’

‘With gratitude, Seerdomin.’

‘Thank you.’

He set off once more.

Toc spoke. ‘Tell me, Seerdomin, does the ice still grip the sea?’

‘Not for at least a league, Toc. Some unexpected twist of the currents has cleared the harbour. But the storms still rage over the bay, and the ice out there still thunders and churns like ten thousand demons at war. Can you not hear it?’

‘No.’

‘Aye, I’ll grant you it’s faint from here. From the keep’s causeway, it is a veritable assault.’

‘I – I remember the wind ...’

‘It no longer reaches us. Yet another wayward vagary, for which I am thankful.’

‘In the Matron’s cave,’ Toc said, ‘there is no wind.’

Wood splintered, a sickening sound that trembled through the entire Meckros fragment. Lady Envy paused in her climb towards the street’s ragged, torn end. The slope had grown suddenly steeper, the frost slick on the cobbles underfoot. She hissed in frustration, then drew on a warren and floated to where Lanas Tog stood on the very edge.

The T’lan Imass did not so much as sway on her perilous perch. Wind ripped at her tattered skins and bone-white hair. The swords still impaling her glistened with rime.

Reaching her side, Lady Envy saw more clearly the source of the terrible, snapping sounds. A vast section of ice had collided with them, was grinding its way along the base in a foaming sluice of jetting water and spraying ice.