Chapter Two

Amid the smoking aftermath outside Pale, Tattersail surveys burnt armor and senses Warrens frayed by catastrophic sorcery. Moranth Black enter the city for sanctioned slaughter. She finds Hairlock halved but clinging to life by magic. Whiskeyjack’s Ninth Squad—Quick Ben, Kalam, and the strange recruit Sorry—arrive, seeking Hairlock.

A flashback recounts the morning’s council: Dujek, Tayschrenn, and the cadre debate assaulting Moon’s Spawn. Hairlock names the Moon’s lord as Anomander Rake. Despite fears, Tayschrenn orders an attack with Nightchill, Bellurdan, and A’Karonys. The ensuing battle is apocalyptic: ravens swarm, Elder Dark sorcery scythes troops, A’Karonys and Nightchill die, Bellurdan survives wounded, and Tayschrenn’s deflections slaughter Malazans on the plain. Calot is incinerated while shielding Tattersail. Moon’s Spawn withdraws; Pale falls.

Back in the present, Tattersail realizes killing waves came from the plain, not the Moon, implicating Tayschrenn. Quick Ben conducts a forbidden rite over a wrapped object while Kalam guards; Hairlock dies to enable a prepared “back door.” Kalam entrusts the object to Tattersail, urging secrecy from Tayschrenn and a shared aim of retribution. Sorry’s eerie awareness unsettles Quick Ben and Whiskeyjack.

Whiskeyjack orders the remnants to resupply and regroup; the Bridgeburners, reduced to a handful, receive new orders toward Darujhistan and suspect the Empire wants them dead. Tattersail returns to her tent through a ghastly camp, torn between outrage and survival. She unwraps the object: Hairlock has soul-shifted into a wooden marionette and demands his Book, binding Tattersail to their clandestine plot against Tayschrenn.

Compelled to read the Deck of Dragons, Tattersail draws Knight of Dark and Oponn, senses peril and chance entwined, and chooses to hold. Hearing the coin’s spin where Hairlock cannot, she departs to the debriefing buoyed by a fragile, fated hope.