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ear: ‘Lazar would’ve sliced you open like a pig.’
    Hands and arms clasped around Temper. They yanked, urged. The guards shouted but Temper wasn’t listening. Larkin threw back his head and roared. Then Temper released him and he stumbled backwards onto the flagged stone floor and sat cradling his arm. The guards pulled Temper into the hall where they whispered their amazement, watching him warily. One slipped a truncheon back into its mounting on the wall.
    After a few minutes one came out with Temper’s rolled cloak. He heard them whisper how they’d never seen anything like it, but was preoccupied by the awful consequences of what he’d just done. Standing over the table, he’d seen droplets of blood spatter the Bones.
    Soldier, Maiden, King, and the rune of the Obelisk. For damn sure that meant a boat full of bad luck about to cross his bow.
     
    As far as Kiska could tell the crew of the message cutter acted as expected during docking: stowing gear, securing the ship against the first chill storm of Osserc’s Rule blowing over the island from the south. But details gave them away. Where were the chiding, the complaints, the banter of a crew at port? The eagerness to be ashore? And not one malingered. The hand supposedly doing just that – loitering at the gangway – scanned the wharf with the lazy indifference of a lookout. And she should recognize the pose; she had trained herself in the same posture.
    Flat on the deck of the next ship opposite the pier, Kiska rested her chin in one gloved fist and quietly watched. The slightest drizzle was sifting down, slicking hair to her face, but she didn’t stir. The men were just killing time: re-coiling ropes, strapping down dunnage. Waiting. Waiting on one person, one action. That meant all worked for the same individual.
    Odd. An Imperial message cutter crewed by sailors all of whom appeared to be guards for whoever had commissioned the ship. Kiska had grown up clambering over these wharves. To her such an arrangement smelled of clout, of influence great enough to procure one of these vessels – an accomplishment in itself – topped by the authority to replace the regular crew with his or her own private staff.
    The question was what to do about the discovery? She looked to the mottled seaward wall of Mock’s Hold rearing above the harbour. Report it to the Claws? Why should she go to them after they’d made it so clear they had no use for her?
    She recalled how she’d felt when dawn, just a few days before, had revealed the Imperial warship
Inexorable
anchored in the harbour. It had seemed the most important day of her life, an unlooked-for, and unhoped-for, second chance. But already she felt as if she’d aged a lifetime. No longer the girl who climbed over the tall stone walls enclosing the military wharf; that sneaked up onto the flat roof of a government warehouse to watch the docks. Had she lost something that child possessed? Or gained? A knowledge seared into everyone at some point in their life.
    That morning she had watched while the first skiff returned from the ship burdened by seven hooded figures. Imperial officers from the capital, she was sure. From where else could they have come but Unta, across the straits? They clambered to the dock and drew off their travelling cloaks, folding them over arms and shoulders. At first she’d been disappointed: there were merchants in Malaz who dressed more richly thanthis: plain silk shirts, broad sashes, loose pantaloons. Yet one shorter figure failed to shed its cloak. That one gestured and Kiska thrilled to see the other six spread out. Bodyguards!
    Who was this? A new garrison commander? Or an Imperial inspector dispatched from the capital to take Pell to task? If so, gods pity the Sub-Fist for what the officer would find in Mock’s Hold: chickens cackling in the bailey, pigs rooting in the cracked and empty reservoir. Kiska eased herself to her haunches as the party took the main route inland, up a