one, which had some living warders, but not all that patrolled the streets
beyond were alive, and the Shambles suffered horrors and the malicious whimsy of
Roxane’s creatures. “Listen,” Stilcho said, “listen, you don’t understand. He’s
not like the dead when he’s like this. Dead are everywhere. Janni’s tied to one
thing, he’s got an attachment, and he’s like the living in that regard. No good
news for what he’s attached to-But you can’t find him like the rest of the dead.
He’s got place, where applies to him same as you and me-“
“Don’t lump me in your category.” Haught brushed imaginary dust from his cloak.
“I’ve no intention of joining you. And whatever you told the mistress about that
business with the rosebush-“
“Nothing, I told her nothing.”
“Liar. You’d tell anything you were asked, you’d hand her your mother if she
asked-“
“Leave my mother out of this.”
“She down in hell?” Haught wondered, with a sudden wolfish sharpness that sent
another icy chill through Stilcho’s gut. “Maybe she could help.”
Stilcho said nothing. The hate Haught had toward Stepsons was palpable, a joke
most of the time, but not when they were alone. Not when there was something
Haught could hold over him. But Stilcho glared back. He had been a marsh-brat
and a Sanctuary drayman before the Stepsons recruited him, neither occupation
lending itself to bright, sharp acts of courage. He was slow to anger as his
lumbering team had been. But there was a point past which not, the same as there
had been with his plodding horses. The beggar-king who tortured him had found