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more than a shifting shadow. The clink of glasses, the shrill giggles of chorus girls followed him. He caught more than one glimpse of bare flesh as they flung down their costumes.
    Perfect, my arse . Too much was down to chance. Nothing had been planned. The only way hits like this went was tits up.
    Dame Consilia rounded the corner in front of him, a thin man on one arm, fat man on the other. Both were dressed in lilac togas, and both kept tripping over their own feet due to their eyes never straying from the dame’s flushed face. She wasn’t looking where she was going, either; eyes all teared up, lips pouting, chin quivering.
    “Any news?” she said, loud enough that everyone in the dressing rooms would hear. “Koort. Take me to him.”
    Shadrak brushed past, and if they noticed, they probably took him for one of the freaks from the warm-up act. Just the thought of it fired his blood. If he’d had the time, he’d have knifed them for the slight, imagined or not. Snobbish shogwits.
    “Fellah,” Kadee’s warm voice spoke in his mind. Her presence was fleeting, no more than smoke in the wind. “It’s not them, it’s you.”
    Like you don’t tell me every two minutes . It was all him. Always was. He knew she meant well, but being told you’re a paranoid scut was as helpful as shite on a mop head.
    Course, there was no telling if it was Kadee or just his own shogged up thoughts. His brain hadn’t been right since she died. Maybe the Archon was playing on that. Thanatos! Yeah, right. Chances of her being there, if it even existed, were the same as for him being taken up into Araboth body and soul.
    But the Archon had mentioned the creature—Thanatosian, he’d called it. Not something Sektis Gandaw had cooked up, then. That had been real enough. Shadrak still had an ache in his shoulder to prove it.
    He pushed through the stage door exit onto the street.
    The road was packed with legionaries decked out in bronze galeas with horsehair plumes. They should have been stationed round the gleaming black carriage waiting by the front entrance, but they’d been drawn by the clutch of goons hovering over Koort Morrow’s twitching body. There was a frantic flurry of activity as a man knelt by Morrow’s head, rummaging through a surgeon’s bag. Froth spilled from the guild master’s mouth. His eyes were white and vacant.
    The crowds leaving by the main entrance were ushered to one side as Vatès emerged, a gray-robed aide on either side. They made a beeline for the carriage, and the door was held open for them by a big bald bloke in a leather jerkin. Hired muscle, no doubt, to keep well-wishers and the other sort at bay. Probably, he did a good job of it, normally, but with the commotion caused by Morrow’s poisoning, his eyes weren’t everywhere, like they should have been.
    Shadrak slipped past Morrow’s goons and strode for the carriage as Vatès and his aides climbed inside. Without pausing, he slid out a punch dagger and rammed it into the hired-muscle’s kidney, dropping him like a stone. He rapped on the side of the carriage as he stepped inside. The driver was as distracted as the rest of them, and sent the horses into a trot.
    Four pairs of startled eyes met his entrance.
    He stabbed an aide in the chest, flung a razor star at the second, catching him in the throat. As the man bubbled and foamed at the mouth, Shadrak snapped his kneecap with a kick, then, in one fluid motion, whipped out a dagger and stuck it in his eye.
    Vatès raised his hands and babbled of stream of pleading. Could have been a bribe in there, for all the good it did him.
    Shadrak wrenched his punch dagger from the aide’s chest and stabbed Vatès in the guts. As the senator doubled up, Shadrak ripped his dagger free from the other aide. The eyeball came away with it, skewered like a kebab. Had to wonder if it saw anything as it plunged down into the bald patch atop Vatès’ head and lodged in his brain.
    The carriage rattled and