all her life had materialized and what has she done? Run away!
The dog rested its head on one of her muddied slippers and peered up at her. Kiska searched her pockets and sheaths. A length of cord and a scarf, needles, cloths soaked in unguents given to her by Agayla. This was all she had left. She unfolded one cloth and pressed it to her knee. She hissed at the pain. Yet who could’ve guessed at the vast difference between hoping for action, and the sight of a man’s head bursting like a melon in the maw of some monster from another realm? No wonder she’d found herself throwing up in a back alley.
That man from the Imperial cutter . . . he hadn’t been afraid to walk the streets. He’d faced down an entire nest of cultists. And he must’ve known what he was walking into. She was certain of that. Yet he had come. Oleg said his message had to get to him, a message he believed vitally important. But he was mad. Agayla, though . . . she’d also sent Kiska after him.
Her hand found the flattened scroll at her chest. This was for him. Had he reached the Hold yet? He must have – but who could be sure on a night like this? And the gatekeeper – Lubben – he would let her know if he had. He might even let her in. If she played it right.
Kiska opened the door. The dog whimpered afresh. Looking back, she saw it still curled on the privy floor, unwilling to even push its nose past the threshold. She bid goodbye and headed for a shortcut she knew to Rampart Way.
The night had turned unearthly still. Even her slippers and the whisper of her breath sounded deafening. Then suddenly, randomly, a hound’s baying shattered the calm, causing her to shrink. But other than these terrifying moments – each of which she was certain would be her last – it was as if the night stood frozen. Only the moon appeared to move, watching her with its silver eye as she made for the waterfront where the shore lapped the cliffs and the oldest wharves ceased at a thatch of rotten piers.
She climbed the slick stones jumbled at the cliff’s base. Salt spray beaded on her shirt and the waves beneath her murmured, unnaturally subdued. Her cord-soled slippers gripped the broken rock, but her hands slid, cut open on its knife-like edges.
Soon she reached the barest lip in the uneven stones – an animal path dating back generations to when wild goats still clambered over the island. The track was long forgotten and invisible to those beneath and above. She fancied it was the mystery behind the phantom departures and arrivals of the island’s pirates.
She carefully edged her way up the slick rock ledges, most no wider than her foot. Thorned brush choked the route, forcing her to ascend behind or over. But she knew the way blindfolded, as she’d often climbed it at night. It led to her favourite spot on the island – after Agayla’s rooms, that is.
The mist closed in like a shroud. The bay, some hundred yards down, lay smothered in low-lying fog. In the southern sky, lights flickered green and pink, reminding Kiska of the legends of the Riders who rose in winter to tow sailors to their doom. She also remembered the tales of ghosts and revenants said to haunt the Hold above. Even these cliffs boasted an entire host of spirits – drowned sailors deceived into drawing too close to the shoals, tricked by her ancestors, wreckers and pirates all. It was said you could still hear their moaning at night, seeking vengeance on their murderers. She’d grown up on such yarns and believed not a one. Including those of a certain demon-haunted Shadow Moon . . .
When her outthrust hand told Kiska she’d reached a depression in the veined granite, she threw herself into the opening she knew awaited ahead. She gasped for air, and not just from the strain of the climb. Her clothes clung to her, heavy and damp. The air retained the rich fetor of rotting humus and bird droppings. Kiska leant against one inward-canted wall to steady her breath. The crevice she stood in couldn’t really be called a cavern: it was more like a ragged cleft in the living rock of the island, a jagged fissure that shot straight into the cliff. Her heel dislodged chips