‘Where are we?’

The old man jabbed her arm with the staff. ‘Are you dense? My tower.’

‘You’re Obo?’

The old man screwed up his mouth in anger and raised his staff.

Kiska snatched it from his hands and threw it to one side.

The old man gaped at her. ‘Why you . . . ! That was my stick!’

Kiska tensed, waiting for a blast of magery or a flesh-rotting curse. Instead, the old man turned sharply around and marched up the stone steps to the tower’s only door.

‘Wait! Hey you – wait!’

The door slammed. Kiska ran up the stairs and beat her fists on the wood. ‘Open up. What am I to do?’

A slit no larger than the palm of a hand opened. ‘You can go away.’

‘But there’s a hound out here! You can’t leave me outside . . .’

One watery eye squinted past her. ‘It’s gone away. Now you go away.’

Kiska waved one hand to the marsh. ‘Go where? There’s nothing out there!’

The old man – Kiska couldn’t bring herself to identify him as the Obo – a legendary name of dread as a sorcerer from ages past. Another favourite of the blood-splashed stories her mother used to tell. He snarled his exasperation. ‘Not here. You don’t belong here. You go back to where you came from.’

She nodded. ‘Good. Yes. That’s what I want.’

‘Then go away and stop bothering me.’ The portal slammed shut.

She backed down the stairs. ‘Okay. I will!’ she shouted, ‘No thanks to you.’

At the low wall she paused and listened. For what, she wasn’t certain. A hound’s call, she supposed. But there was only the wind hissing through the tall grass and the churning of the surf. Lights caught her eye and she turned, staring to the far southern sky. Blue-green flashes played like banners painted in the night. Kiska shivered, remembering legends that the lights were reflections of the Stormriders, rising to drag ships down into their icy sunken realm. Tales she used to laugh at. But now . . . now she didn’t know what to think. She wiped her hands at the thighs of her sodden pants and blew on them. What had the old man meant, ’go back to where you came frond How? What was she to do?

In the gloom she could make out slabs of standing stones, a structure of some sort surrounded by a copse of stunted trees and low mounds. It appeared to stand right on the spot where, in Malaz City . . . Kiska’s breath caught and she backed away. Burn preserve my soul. It stood right where the Deadhouse would stand, or had stood. Only now it was a tomb.

She hugged herself as she shuddered. It wasn’t so much the cold as the shock of recognition. This really was her home, or would be. She felt suddenly very insignificant, even foolish. All her life she’d been so sure things never changed here. She wondered whether she could trust what this fellow hinted – that she would somehow return to the city. But then, what choice did she have?