Deadhouse Gates/Prologue

What see you in the horizon’s bruised smear
That cannot be blotted out
By your raised hand?

The Bridgeburners
Toc the Younger

1163rd Year of Burn's Sleep
Ninth Year of the Rule of Empress Laseen
Year of the Cull

Unta

Felisin Paran

A cull of the nobility of Unta has started, orchestrated by the Empress Laseen and overseen by her Adjunct Tavore to appease the commoners, letting them take their frustrations out on the Nobility while also getting rid of Laseen's enemies. An acolyte of Hood, totally covered in flies attracted to the blood he smeared all over his body, is moving through the Round where the prisoners are chained, awaiting their punishment, which is to be taken to the Otataral mines and being pressed into forced labor. Felisin Paran is chained in a line with other nobles and political prisoners, those unpopular with Empress Laseen. She worries that the priest is walking towards her. Heboric, a historian and ex-priest of Fener, laughs at her fear, and asserts instead that the priest is moving towards him. Heboric is handless, and otherwise completely covered in a tattoo of a boar, with the head on his face, even down to hooves tattooed on his feet. Once the fly-covered acolyte arrives, Heboric challenges him to return to his temple, but the flies explode outwards causing panic as they dissolve into nothingness, revealing that there was no acolyte inside the flies.

Felisin is called to by Lady Gaesen, a noblewoman further up the line. She appeals to Felisin to “talk to her”, meaning Tavore – Felisin's sister and now Adjunct to the Empress, who hasn't spoken to Felisin in months, even when their father died. The thug between Felisin and Gaesen is introduced as Baudin, who believes very few of the people in the line will survive the approaching walk through Unta, past screaming mobs to the slave ships.

Tavore rides past, accompanied by her aide, T'amber, and a bodyguard of Red Blades, and Felisin reflects on Tavore abandoning House Paran after their brother, Ganoes' disappearance on Genabackis.

The line starts to move forwards through the colonnade, and the mob attacks the line of nobles, consistently getting past the guards holding them back, giving the impression that this butchery of the prisoners is actually being orchestrated. None of the peasants dare attack Heboric however, who protects Felisin as well as he can, and Baudin, who is killing any who come near him. At one point, a large breach of the soldiers occurs, and Baudin beheads a now unconscious or possibly dead Lady Gaesen with part of the chain holding them in order to satiate the bloodlust of the mob, who are horrified by his brutality. They eventually walk to the slave-ships waiting to take them away to the Otataral mines.