Out of the south the storm-front advanced, thickening into a solid line of churning clouds. Driven snow and sleet melted to rain that dissipated long before reaching the skiff. Lightning crackled amid the clouds while beneath emerald and deepest blue flashed like wave-buoyed gemstones. The fisherman saw none of this; facing north, teeth clamped down on his pipe, he droned his chant while the wind snatched the words away.

Kiska soon lost track of the fellow who had popped up so suddenly before her at the wharves. Again, she smelled the Warrens in that, and hoped the possibility of a tail never occurred to him. If it had, he’d be right behind her now, waiting, watching from a path in the Rashan Warren of Darkness or perhaps even Hood’s own demesnes, the Paths of the Dead. Though on a night like this accessing either of those seemed imprudent, even to her.

The trail of her target and his guards led her inland through the warehouse district, continuing on into the poorest quarters of rag shops, bone Tenderers, money lenders, and tanneries. If her quarry kept on in this direction he would soon confront an even fouler neighbourhood, the Mouse – the filthiest, lowest, and most disease-infested locale in the city.

At the first muddy lane bridged by plank walkways, her mark’s trail turned abruptly northward. Kiska was not surprised by the sudden change in direction; she imagined their disgust at the redolent sewage and rotting kitchen refuse awash in stagnant water that percolated from a nearby marsh. She could have pursued them easily enough through the maze of alleys, especially now, as many of the ways were nothing more than glutinous paths through the blackened wreckage left by last summer’s riots. But it was mainly because she’d grown up in this quarter, spent her life clawing out of it, that she was reluctant, always, to enter its ways again.

The trail led on up a gentle grade leading to the wealthy merchant centre. It crossed market lanes and angled more or less straight north, up cobbled arcades past shop fronts, closed and shuttered now against the coming night. Through the cloth merchant district it continued on, climbing hills northwest into the Lightings, the old estate quarter. Most of the manor houses stood vacant behind tall gates. Now they served merely as provincial retreats for the aristocratic families that had transferred their interests north, across the Strait of Winds, to the Imperial court at Unta.

The evening had cooled rapidly. A frigid wind from the south, out of the Sea of Storms, gusted down from the isle’s meagre headlands. The cloud cover remained unbroken, sweeping northward like driven smoke. Her heavy cloak billowed, snagging as she kept to the ivy-choked iron fences that lined the district’s boulevards. One edge of it remained tight against her side, however: the right side, held straight by the crossbow stock disguised inside her cloak.

Kiska paused in the shadow of an ancient pillar, a plinth for the marble statue of a Nacht, the fanged and winged creature once said to have inhabited the island. The streets were deserted. The last souls she’d seen, other than glimpses of her target and escort, were a few stragglers. Hunched under shawls and scarves, they’d hurried home as night lowered.