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carnival, and the pickings would be easy. When Kettle offered her the job (she was nestled between him and Gorel at the time) she smiled and said stealing from a god should be exciting. She came as Gorel’s tongue explored her hairless wetness, Kettle like a cloak wrapped over Gorel’s back.
    He took nothing with him but his guns. As he stepped into the city he was wary of guards, but Falang-Et was open, a sprawling expanse of greenery and water. As he came onto the main road a procession was passing, and for a moment he thought it was a carnival parade. Then he realised there was no shouting involved, and turned to look again, and had a shock.
    Behind an arrow-head of mourners, near a large, cumbersome coffin, was the young falang girl he had last seen on the river bank the day he kidnapped the merchant. She was dressed in sombre dark green robes. She was exquisite, like a jade statue. Her eyes met his, and opened wide in recognition. For a moment he froze. The procession moved forward. The girl stepped ahead. Her eyes were still locked on him. She seemed to inch her head as if acknowledging a bond of sorts. Almost directly behind her, carried by six uniformed falang, came a large coffin.
    Did she know him? But of course she did. Would she call him out? He waited, one hand hovering over the butt of his gun. But why should she call? They were complicit, he and her. She would want him gone.
    The girl looked straight ahead, and passed, though she could not, it seemed, resist another, quick glance at him. Young and lovely, and a killer – and when they looked into each other’s eyes, however brief that contact was, they understood each other. Gorel stepped back and let the coffin pass. Goodbye, merchant of the Fifth Pond Lineage. Gorel wondered what it actually meant. Looking at the size and general opulence of the procession, it occurred to him that lineage might have been more significant than he had thought. Which meant the falang may not give up the hunt for the merchant’s killer too quickly. Well. His hand rested reassuringly on the butt of the gun. He would deal with that if and when it happened.
    He did not see the other, the merchant’s apprentice, in the procession. He waited until the last of the mourners passed him. Then he continued on his way. His presence elicited some glances, but not too many – it was the time of carnival, after all, and there were many foreigners in the city, human and Merlangai, Diurnal and Ebong and Duraali, to mingle amongst the native falang, to drink and throw water and deal and trade in matters lawful or otherwise, and wench and drink – and that was what Gorel, too, intended to do, and so he headed away from the main road and into the side-streets, following a dank, scum-covered canal until he reached a long-house with a sign at the entrance that said, The Sorcerer’s Head: the sign further depicted a rather graphic image of a blood-dripping, human head with ethereal fire burning around it. The head was held in a hand possessed of long, green, webbed fingers. What long forgotten war, if any, the name was meant to celebrate Gorel didn’t know. But he appreciated the sentiment all the same. He did not approve of sorcerers.
    He stepped through the open doors onto the long corridor. The long-house sat alongside the scummy canal, but its clientele was not interested in a water-side view, pretty or otherwise. The rooms first – some with their doors closed shut, others standing invitingly open. As he passed some he was aware of the overwhelming surge of stench in the air, a mixture of sweet-smelling smoke, cheap perfume, expensive perfume, cigars, rice whiskey, body sweat, piss, cleaning material, old blood, stale smoke to mix with the fresh one – a vista of smells he found intoxicating. The rooms were private universes, some inviting, some forbidden. In one he saw a Nocturne mistress, swathed in shadows, in her hand a burning whip, and at her feet an Ebong warrior, cowering,