'So why are we going there?'

Mayel's expression must have betrayed what he was feeling, because Shandek look one look at him and burst out laughing. 'No, I'm not takin' you to fight them, you fool! Spider said we couldn't lean on them, and I'm not inclined to.' Shandek waved an admonishing finger In Mayel's lace. 'But he didn't say nothin' about talkin' in a friendly manner. We're just going down for a chat see what we can see. It might be that they're just insane and got lucky, hut I doubt it. No, they've got somethin' nasty up their sleeves and I'd be interested to find out what. And of course, there's my golden rule of life-'

'Which is?'

'When someone's got somethin' to hide, there's money to be made. There's somethin' going on there; might be they could find some use of a man with local knowledge, a man who knows how to find things quietly and quickly. Either that, or the authorities might pay to know more about them.'

'And if you make a powerful friend in the process?'

All the better, my lad,' Shandek declared with a chuckle. A new friend warms the heart, that's what I always say.'

The Shambles was a place of dark, narrow alleyways. The two proper streets that cut through the district had been crammed with stalls and carts almost as soon as the cobblestones were laid. The smell was just as Mayel remembered: rotting vegetables, sewage, and meat gone bad in the sun. The gutter down the middle of the street was invariably clogged with b.l.o.o.d.y entrails and what off-cuts were too rancid for even the feral animal population. The area was a warren of tiny houses that brought back a host of memories. This was where Mayel had been born; this place had been his first education. For all the squalor, the sense of community was palpable, and right now he could feel fierce eyes watching him without recognition, resenting the outsider being publicly paraded by the man whose word was law in the shadows of the Shambles.

'Do you want to go by the old house? I rented it to a tanner and his family eight squealin' brats, all a match for you and your sister.'

Mayel shook his head. He didn't trust his voice not to betray the emotion he felt now. The Shambles was smaller to his eyes, ruder and meaner than it had seemed when he'd not known better. Guilt gnawed at him. He'd left with his father, hugging his sister tight so as to not lose her in the crowd of people fleeing the city. Their mother lay on the one bed in the shack they called home, dying of the white plague. With her last breath she urged them to flee. He could still see the blood-flecked foam bubbling from her mouth as she pleaded for them to save themselves.

For some reason his father had decided a life of service to Vellern would save them and perhaps he'd been right, though Mayel had learned at the monastery that the white plague was nowhere near as contagious as the peasants believed it. Whatever the truth, they had set off on their pilgrimage to the Island of Birds. After a week of tramping dirt roads, his sister had stumbled, and never found the strength to get up again. The memory still left a knot in his stomach. He hadn't had the strength to hate his father then, but he'd made up for it later.

'I understand.' Shandek's voice was softer now. He knew the start of the story, and recognised the pain on Mayel's face. 'You never told me what happened to your da'.'

'He died,' Mayel replied flatly. 'After a few months he realised a monastery where they didn't make wine wasn't the place for him. Tried to slip away at night in a small boat. The b.i.t.c.hes took him.'

'The b.i.t.c.hes?'

'The rocks around the island. The monks always claimed that only people who'd fished the lake their whole life are able to navigate through them. They don't even let men from the village sail alone until they've thirty summers. Everyone else ends up smashed against the b.i.t.c.hes.'

'Right.' Shandek lapsed into silence. Sympathy was an underused emotion of his. What could a man say? Pity was a woman's province, and he didn't like to intrude. Instead, he let his eyes wander the familiar lines of his home. After thirty-three summers of walking these streets, he could pick up the slightest change, whether it was a rise in fortunes permitting repairs, or the subtle indications that a man or woman were drinking more than they were working nowadays. Shandek kept an eye out for these people. It didn't do to have utter misery and complete poverty. It was like he always said: make sure the sheep are fat before you fleece them.

The sunken theatre occupied a sudden open s.p.a.ce on the eastern edge of the Shambles, where the busy thoroughfare of Long Walk was an abrupt border to the district; folk tended to emerge blinking in t he newfound light after the narrow alleys of the Shambles. Dodging the carts and sliding through the currents of humanity that flowed back and forth, Shandek led his cousin across to where low stalls and harrows encircled the theatre, unconsciously echoing the barricade of shrines around the Six Temples further north. A pair of willow trees obscured much of the theatre's southern aspect, but Mayel could see building work going on.

'They're adding a tier?'

The sunken theatre was open, with an arched greystone wall running around three sides. At the stage end the ground fell away into a deep pit, within which a building looking like a warehouse had been constructed so its roof was level with the street. It served as both offices and backstage for the theatre. Mayel guessed that was where his so-called friend had died.

The low single-storey wall enclosing this large chunk of ground had flat-roofed rooms all around its interior. It looked small, compared with the s.p.a.ce inside, like a child's toy made out of proportion. Mayel had remembered the theatre as more imposing, even without the wooden palisade now being erected to raise the height of the wall.

As he and Shandek got closer, they could see workmen and scaffolds behind the market carts that were trading as usual, ignoring the commotion behind them.

'Another tier,' Shandek confirmed eventually.

They had stopped by a butcher's stall. The woman who was running it wore a loose-fitting brown dress, low-cut and sleeveless, and Mayel could make out the tiny dark circles of blood dried into the material. He stared at the woman as her eyes drifted, listless and unfocused, over the street ahead. Her pallid skin was stretched tight over bones that looked too big for her body. 'Sign of a nasty habit,' he muttered, more to himself than his cousin.

'Eh? Ah, that one.' Shandek sniffed, though Mayel couldn't tell whether it was mild disgust or embarra.s.sment whoever supplied the woman might well be giving Shandek a cut of the proceeds. 'Been workin' hard on killin' herself slow, that one. Six weeks since her children died in a fire, and she won't see another six.'

As they spoke, the woman jumped at a crash from the scaffold behind. She looked fearfully at the wall a few yards behind her, as if watching it for danger. The wall itself was blank and featureless, yet it was at that she stared, rather than the windows of the new second floor above.

'Folk say she cracked before the fire,' Shandek continued, 'that it was her fault. It's said she'd been jumpin' at shadows, an' talkin' about daemons being after her girls. She set fire to the house to frighten off the shadows. Now she's got nowhere else to live. Either she sleeps in the temples, where the fires burn all night, or she's in the opium dens before nightfall. Her husband will be somewhere about here; she's only good for leavin' at the stall for a short while.'

Shandek fell silent, frowning at the woman for a handful of heartbeats before nudging Mayel into movement, towards the theatre's main entrance. 'What with people runnin' from shadows, and these stories of a dark man walking the night streets, there's somethin' up with this city.'

Mayel didn't reply, but submitted to his larger cousin's urging. Even as they walked away, he kept his eyes on the woman for as long as he could. There was an echo of something in her face that made him shiver. For a moment, he thought he heard screams, and the crackle of flames. Then they pa.s.sed around the corner and the spell was broken.

The main entrance was open, and freshly painted as they turned in to the open gateway Shandek had to check his stride to avoid a man crouching at the right-hand gate, putting the final touches to the elaborate picture.

Mayel stopped and looked, trying to imagine the whole image, while Shandek muttered an apology for his foot clipping the painter's trailing heel. The painting was not what Mayel had expected, not the usual sort of scenes that hinted at the delights awaiting them within.

'The Broken Spear, Five Wives of the Sea even The Triumph of G.o.ds would be a more obvious choice than this one,' Mayel muttered.

Against a granite sky of roiling cloud, the aftermath of a battle on a bowl-shaped plain. In the background, a huge castle crowned by five ma.s.sive towers. One of those towers had been shattered and flames, painted with such skill they seemed real to Mayel, licked at the castle wall. Before the walls towered the varied shapes of the Reapers, Death's violent Aspects, who embodied the ways men feared to die: the emaciated face of the Soldier glared down at the slain around his feet, while the Burning Man stood on a hillock behind him with arms outstretched like a martyr. The Great Wolf was a vague shape in the background, stalking its prey in the blurred shadows, and the Headsman reclined on a distant block of stone with his axe propped on his shoulder. Strangely, it was the Wither Queen who was painted in the greatest detail. Mayel felt her cruel gaze, her pale grey eyes, slice into him. Her lips as thin as dagger-blades were slightly parted, as though she was about to speak his name.

He felt her cold touch on his skin. His mother wasn't the only person Mayel had seen dying of disease; he had known some who had endured agonising months of her cruelty. The Wither Queen robbed her victims of everything, of the person they had once been as much as the life her lord demanded. Though she was a G.o.d, Mayel hated her for what she was.

The detail of the plain below the Reapers was vague; angular shapes hinted at a carpet of slaughtered men and creatures. Somehow the magnitude of the horror was increased by the remoteness. Framing the entire plain was a high ridge of grim rocks the colour of sand. Mayel looked closer and realised that there was the faintest of detail on the rocks, almost like the grain of wood. He shivered, thinking of the pine boxes wealthier folk used to bury their dead in.

'G.o.ds, man,' Shandek exclaimed, 'you've quite a skill there. This is better than any I've seen in my life.'

'Thank you, sir. It's...' The painter's voice tailed off as he looked from Shandek to the painting. A small man with the dark skin that spoke of a western heritage, he wore little more than rags, yet his face was clean and his hair carefully trimmed. His expression was one of dazed bemus.e.m.e.nt, as if he couldn't believe he had been able to produce it. 'It is the best thing I've ever done, by a long way.'

'I didn't know you cared anything about art,' Mayel said to his cousin, unable to tear his eyes from the painting.

'Ah, I've seen a bit in my time.' Shandek grinned.

'When? You're no collector.'

'No, but I've been in plenty of places belongin' to men who are. You have my compliments, friend. Can you tell us where the man in charge is?'

The painter gave a wince and jabbed his brush towards the interior. 'The minstrel will be in one of the boxes. Sitting in shadow. If you go in they'll find you soon enough.'

'They?' wondered Shandek aloud, but the painter had already returned to his work. Shrugging, Shandek stepped through the gates and glanced into the dim, cramped room where the money-collectors would work, counting the copper pieces as folk filed in. It was empty yet, without even a stool or table.

A walkway led off both left and right, to storerooms of no more than two yards' depth on the outer side, and the boxes for the rich folk further in on the inner wall. Ahead was a short flight of steps leading into the theatre itself.

Shandek hopped up these and turned to beckon Mayel to follow. The youth hesitated, still unnerved by the painting on the door. The style reminded him of religious paintings, the ancient and holy images they had been so proud of on the Island of Birds.

Behind him, he felt the presence of Brohm loom close. He'd been shadowing them, and he wasn't going to enter until Mayel had.

'Why did you want me to come here with you?'

'Why?' Shandek puffed his cheeks out in dismissal. 'No great reason, cuz. I wanted to speak to you before I came, thought you might be interested. Also, you got more learnin' than me. These artistic types might say somethin' clever and I wouldn't know whether to agree or stab 'em.'

Mayel sighed and started up the steps. Something nagged at him. I don't want to be here at all, but what am 1 frightened of? Jackdaw won't be here, and what else do I have to be afraid of?

As if in answer, a figure leapt out behind Shandek and grabbed him by his shoulders in a blur of bone-white. Shandek yelped and tried to turn, but his attacker held him tight, pinning his arms back. Mayel saw a white, hairless head and a savage flash of teeth over Shandek's shoulder. His cousin flailed madly as Brohm shoved Mayel aside and ran for the stairs, but before he reached his employer, the albino had jumped backwards and effortlessly tossed Shandek away.

Brohm raised his ma.s.sive fist as he charged, but the albino was quicker. Darting forward, he lunged low and crashed a fist into Brohm's stomach, stopping the larger man in his tracks. Brohm gasped and doubled over, sinking to his knees, only to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and thrown down after his master. Mayel heard the thump of Brohm falling and rolling on the rough paved steps. Then there was silence.

Having despatched both men from his path, the albino paused, hairless head bright in the sunlight. He was dressed in cropped linen trousers and a laced shirt, sleeves cut well short of the wrist. As Mayel took in the albino's malformed face, he wondered whether this was a human at all. It looked as if some G.o.d had formed the albino from white clay, using a detailed description, but without actually seeing the real thing. The features were too smooth, the jaw protruding and thick. Its eyes were over-large, curling almonds of blackness. Meeting the albino's gaze drained the warmth from Mayel's heart, drawing him in to a cold and pitiless place.

He tore his eyes away as the albino continued to inspect him, looking at him as if he were an insect, or a rabbit that had surprised a wolf by not running. He looked down. Its bare feet were split down the middle and Mayel's breath caught when he realised each foot mainly consisted of two great toes, a short talon curled down over the end of each.

'That's enough, I think,' called an unseen man. The albino's head snapped round, but soon dropped its glare. It pointed at Mayel, then retreated with alacrity.

'Please, come out into the light. My guard dog won't hurt you.'

Mayel stared out into the open auditorium, frozen with fear, until a burst of swearing rang out. He scrambled up the steps.

'p.i.s.sin' breath of Karkarn!' his cousin groaned. 'I'll shove that painter's brush so far up his a.r.s.e he'll paint with his tongue from now on.'

'Now, now,' said the voice, and a man dressed as a minstrel came into sight, lounging in a box with his feet up on the barrier. Around his neck was a golden chain, with strange discs, like coins, decorated with jewels. A peac.o.c.k feather sprouted from his hat. 'I am certain the painter will have told you no lies, so you can hardly blame him for the actions of others.'

Shandek hauled himself up. Brohm was sitting upright, clutching his gut. Neither looked badly hurt.

'We jus' came here to talk. Didn't hafta set your wolves on us,' Brohm muttered.

The minstrel gave a sniff. 'They're dogs, not wolves.'

'Look more like wolves to me,' Shandek replied, dusting himself down and walking up to Mayel's side. The albino retreated into the shadow of another box. Mayel scanned the theatre, the empty rows of stone steps surrounded by cramped rooms for the rich, all looking down on the pit, a round area of flattened earth. There were deep shadows at the back, where Mayel thought he glimpsed another white face.

'There is a difference. Wolves do not take orders, wolves are not tamed.'

'You call these tame?' Shandek wondered, rubbing at his temple, where a bruise was starting to colour the skin.

'Certainly. They obey my commands without question and since I have given them instructions to dissuade trespa.s.sers, they are most enthusiastic in the execution of that order. I did not say they were less dangerous than wolves, quite the opposite. Shandek, you should understand that.' The minstrel's voice was low and mocking.

Mayel felt somehow sullied.

'Why should I understand that?' Shandek wondered. 'Never met one of these b.a.s.t.a.r.ds before.'

'You should understand because you own dog-fighting pits,' the minstrel explained. 'The savagery in a dogfight surpa.s.ses anything a wolf would do. It is men that make them dangerous men have corrupted the wolf and created a more dangerous creature in his own image.'

'You sound like you disapprove of the change,' Mayel interjected, 'yet you make use of these dogs and all their savagery.'

'I, disapprove?' The minstrel smiled, showing bright white teeth in his tanned face. 'Not at all. Wolves were made into dogs to serve a purpose, and it is those who control the purpose who are to blame for whatever may happen, not the animal. All things change over the course of time. Those who fight it are shouting without air in their lungs.'

'You mean silent?' Mayel found himself asking, almost hypnotised by the minstrel's voice.

'Drowned.'

Mayel felt himself being drawn into the minstrel's dark, piercing gaze. The minstrel was just a man, from the south somewhere, Mayel guessed, but like his albino, his eyes were devoid of humanity. 'But where did your dogs come from?'

'I have travelled far, even into the Waste. It's a stranger place than folk would like us to believe. Change there is a harsh master. Only the strong have survived.'

'Wait a moment,' Shandek interrupted, 'my name-?'

'How could one not have heard of you?' the minstrel broke in smoothly. 'You are the man who is lord of this manor.'

'Knowin' my name's one thing, recognisin' me's another. As for this bein' my district, that's close enough, and 1 don't like new folk in it who I don't know.'

'Yet you come with only one thug in tow. That young man doesn't look much of a threat.'

'Never mind him. Who're you?'

'I'm sure you know what reception we gave the last man who marched in here. You're being a little demanding, don't you think?' The minstrel slipped his feet off the barrier and stood as though to leave the box, but he remained in the shadows.

'I'm not here to break heads until we get tribute, that's the Spider's domain. I'm just lookin' to see that there's no trouble in my district and per'aps to see whether there's business to be done here.'

'Ah, a man of enterprise. Excellent news. Someone who understands the value of things, of people. In that case, this conversation might just be worth continuing.' The minstrel tipped his peaked hat. 'My name is Rojak. Join me in a drink.'

He produced a fired-clay bottle and set it on the barrier. Mayel noticed the paint was worn and cracked clearly the painter had more menial work to come once he'd finished the magnificent gates. Three small cups, half a finger-length in size, followed the bottle.

Rojak pulled the cork and poured a clear liquid into each cup, then offered one each to Shandek and Mayel. Mayel sniffed: it smelled sharp, a rough-edged brandy laced with something, peach, maybe. The taste was sickly, but he swallowed it down as fast as he could and ignored the sting.

'Wonderful. Now we're friends.'

'It seems we are,' Shandek replied. He cast his eyes around the theatre. 'So, you the owner of the company?'

'The leader. Our owner is, well, here only in spirit.' Rojak gave a sly smile. 'I am the playwright. The actors are engaged in various pursuits in the city until we have prepared the theatre.'

'Commissioned by Siala?'

'Why do you think that?'

'She's just taken control o' the city. Don't sound like the White Circle is so popular as she'd like t'believe. Maybe she's tryin' to get the support of the city, in case the Farlan attack, or somethin'.'

Rojak raised an eyebrow. 'For a man some might describe as a "local criminal", you have an astute mind. We have not, in fact, been commissioned, no.'

'So why Scree?'

'It was felt that our talents could be well employed here.'

'By someone who'd never been here?' snorted Shandek. 'I don't mean to be rude, Master Rojak, but I don't think Scree was the best choice. This city ain't rich or cultured, not compared to some. I hear you're taking the theatre for the rest of the year, but few folk'll pay to see your plays. If it does come to war, things will be even harder for you.'

'Your concern warms my heart. I, however, keep my faith. We have a number of plays to show. Our work will be tested out and refined as the weeks pa.s.s. Once this summer is over, we shall be ready to move on to the rest of the Land.' Rojak's eyes gleamed. He stared straight at Mayel, who recognised that look of contained savagery; he'd seen it in the eyes of one of the brothers at the monastery, a man who'd preyed on the youngest novices. But he thought this was worse: this minstrel was no s...o...b..ring coward, and his avarice was for the whole Land. His pleasure would be in the pain of nations. Amidst the wreckage of civilisation and cowed peoples, that soft smile would grow ever broader. Mayel tried not to shudder visibly.

'A strange time for showin' plays at all,' Shandek said. 'These are dark times, accordin' to what I've been hearin' on the street.'

'Then they will need diversion from the cares of life.'

'Can't see many goin' to the expense. If we war with the Farlan, as I've been hearin', folk'll need every penny just to buy food, and they'll likely get taxed for half of that too. I'd say you'd get better money as soldiers, or bodyguards to a merchant. Your dogs could guard a man as easily as a theatre, and they'd be more willin' to pay.'

'My dogs are as devoted to our art as I am.' Rojak inclined his head towards the albino, hovering in the shadows like a ghost. 'The petty squabbles of the powerful are not our concern. Our place is here, and here we will stay, to spread our message to every man, woman and child of Scree. We will witness the changes that are to come, changes I have foreseen in the fall of coins, when the storm comes to Scree, commissioned by a calling greater than the White Circle.'

Mayel took a tentative step back. The minstrel's voice had risen above a whisper for the first time and his hands, once piously clasped, now flew about, gesticulating sharply. He slipped over the rail.

Rojak's words echoed inside Mayel's head, trembling his bones like the crash of falling tombstones. Alarmed by the minstrel's sudden animation, he cast a look at his cousin, who was equally startled.

And then it was over. Suddenly still once more, fingers again interlocked, Rojak peered down at the ground, as though saying a silent prayer, not blinking, hardly breathing. He appeared oblivious to their presence.