‘What will they do?’ Coop whispered.

‘I don’t know.’ At first Temper thought they’d come for him, that they’d finally reached his name on the long list Surly kept of her enemies. But now he wondered.

‘What happened?’ he asked Coop.

Out came a cloth and the brewer wiped his glistening jowls and forehead. ‘I blame myself,’ he stuttered. ‘I can’t believe it. They made me send away all the staff. How could I have fallen for that?’

‘For what, man. What?’

Coop blinked at him. ‘Thieves, of course. A pack of damned thieves!’

Temper choked down a laugh. He turned away, tried to catch Corinn’s eye. ‘No, Coop. I think it’s something more than that.’

Corinn met his gaze, but her face remained flat, as if she didn’t know him. He gave the ghost of a nod in response and looked away – straight into Trenech’s eyes. The hulking fellow stared at him, or rather through him. Sweat beaded his brow. His right hand clenched the table in a white-knuckled grip.

Temper had spoken with the fellow only a few times. He thought him slow-witted, like an infant in a giant’s body. Was he terrified by all this, or mindlessly enraged? Temper imagined he ought to say something reassuring but didn’t know what.

Turning his head slightly, he studied the men. The majority, some thirty or so, sat gathered towards the door, voices low as they whispered among themselves. Closer, in the flickering light of the fireplace, Ash, Corinn, and a dozen others sat together at two tables. Of these, Temper guessed the average age to be around the mid-thirties. They adjusted the straps of their armour and weapon belts. Some smoked short clay pipes. None spoke. Temper identified three Wickan tribesmen, moustached, wearing studded boiled-leather hauberks with mailed sleeves; two dark Dal Honese, one with the raised cuts of facial scarification on his cheeks, the other’s right eye a pale milky orb; one Napan, short and thick-set like a stump, his bluish-toned skin faded to a silty green; two dusky men from Seven Cities in mail shirts under long surcoats that they adjusted and belted snug; and the rest probably Quon Talian, in army-standard Malazan hauberks, one with rows of blued steel lozenges riveted over the leather. Every one of them possessed a crossbow, either at his back, on the table, or at the bench beside him. Short swords hung sheathed at belts and shoulder harness. Veterans, and probably all Bridgeburners as well.

The others were the street-sweepings and thugs Temper had identified earlier. Many carried curved short swords sheathed pommel-forward, Jakatan style, while on others Temper identified plain Talian long knives, curved Dal Honese daggers, and on two, long double-edged Untan duelling swords. They wore a mishmash of armour, the heaviest of which amounted to nothing more than boiled-leather vests or padded long shirtings.

Some pulled at their leathers, obviously uncomfortable in them. Temper looked away in disgust: city toughs, not a veteran among them. What could Ash hope to accomplish with these? And Corinn? Head down, she spoke with the sergeant. Temper eyed her hard, hoping to raise her head by the heat of his gaze. He knew she was a mage, but was she really a Bridgeburner cadre mage? He thought they’d all died during the campaigns of Seven Cities and Genabackis.