Stonewielder

by Ian Cameron Esslemont

  ‘The tower is—’

  ‘I know the way, Lieutenant.’

  Rillish turned to Captain Peles, who had been standing a discreet distance off, helm under her arm.

  ‘It seems I am for the West Tower.’

  Peles saluted, her bright blue eyes puzzled. ‘You are not to accompany us? We embark with the tide. We and some last elements are to catch up with the fleet.’

  ‘It looks as though they have something else in mind for me.’

  Peles bowed, accepting the capriciousness of orders. Rillish answered the bow. Very much at ease with the chain of command, this one, he reflected.

  Rillish had not even passed through the main entrance to the West Tower when his papers elicited shocked disbelief from the officious-looking woman challenging all comers. ‘You’re late,’ she accused. Knowing the army, Rillish didn’t bother pointing out that he had only accepted the reactivation a few days ago.

  ‘This way.’ Her tone allowed no doubt just how much trouble his existence was causing her.

  She led him down a circular stairway. Rillish had never before been within the Tower of Dust, or beneath the old palace, and the sensation troubled him. Yet this is my birth city. Is it the taint of the old Emperor that seems to hang over these dusty passages?

  They entered a round chamber floored by set stones. Rillish noted graven wards and symbols in silver encircling the floor’s circumference. Black gritty dust lay in heaps kicked aside here and there. Within waited two nondescript cadre mages, a man and a woman, their robes discoloured by the dust. Also waiting was the Fistian mage, Devaleth.

  Rillish bowed to the woman. ‘Why did you not mention …’

  ‘I didn’t know myself,’ she ground out. Clearly she was even more put out than Rillish; her pale round face glistened with sweat even in this cool air, and her hands were clamped to her sides. ‘I have a horror of this,’ she hissed.

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘Warren travel.’

  Now Rillish understood and he felt his mouth crook up in dry irony. ‘I have no fond memories of it myself.’

  The two cadre mages clapped their hands and motioned them aside. Facing one another, they began tracing an intricate series of gestures and motions. While Rillish watched, the space between them darkened. Streaks of grey appeared behind each gesture, as if the mages were painting or slashing the air. Presently, the slashes broadened, thickened, and connected. A great gust of warm dusty air burst into the chamber. Rillish, blinking, hand raised before his face, saw a ragged gap opening on to a dark lifeless plain.

  The two mages stepped within. One impatiently beckoned Rillish and Devaleth to follow. He gingerly stepped through. Almost immediately a gust of air pushed him forward. He peered round to find the four of them all alone in the midst of an ugly landscape of ash and gritty dead soil.

  The two mages headed off without comment. Rillish let Devaleth go ahead. ‘Where are we?’ he asked.

  ‘The Imperial Warren,’ the male cadre mage called back over his shoulder, disgusted.

  Devaleth barked a cutting laugh. The man glared, but said nothing. Presently he turned away, shoulders hunched.

  ‘Pray, what amuses?’ Rillish asked as they walked along. The sandals of the mages and his own riding boots raised small clouds of dust that hung lifeless in the heavy air.

  ‘The Imperial Warren?’ the woman sneered. ‘What arrogance. So may the fleas of a dog name the dog the Fleas’ Dog.’

  The mage’s shoulders flinched even higher.

  ‘You say we are trespassers here?’

  Clearing her throat of the dust, the woman spat. ‘Less than that. Cockroaches invading the abandoned house of a lost god. Maggots wiggling across a corpse and claiming it as theirs …’

  ‘I get the idea,’ Rillish offered, turning away to clear his own throat of the itching dust. Gods, what pleasant companionship. This was to be his cadre mage? ‘So, you are of Fist?’

  ‘Yes. From Mare.’

  Rillish eyed her anew. Mare! A sea-witch of Mare, adept of Ruse! What could possibly have turned her against her own people? ‘I am a veteran of the invasion, you know.’

  ‘Yes. Su told me.’

  ‘And … if I may be so indelicate …’

  The woman eyed him sidelong. ‘Why am I here now with you Malazans?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She shrugged her rounded shoulders. ‘Travel broadens the mind, my Fist.’

  Rillish was about to prod for further clarification but she was staring off into the distance, her mouth tight. He decided to wait, thereby granting the time for her to work through what appeared a natural – and to him understandable – reluctance to speak.

  ‘Having all you know or have ever been taught overturned as a deep pit of lies is a humbling experience,’ she eventually said, still staring away. ‘It is no wonder no one is allowed to travel from our homelands.’ The thick lips turned upwards in a humourless smile. ‘We were told it was because ours was the happiest and richest of all lands, and that anyone leaving would return to corrupt it with inferior ideologies and ways.’ She eyed the dull leaden sky, pensive. ‘And I suppose that is true – at least the half of it.’

  ‘I see.’ The woman’s views agreed with what little intelligence Rillish had gathered from interviewing natives of the archipelago. He hoped he could count on her. She would be an invaluable asset. Though she would not last long once exposed as a traitor. She would be marked for death, just as Greymane was for his heresies against their local cult.

  He glanced to her as she walked along: head down as if studying the dust, hands clasped at her back.

  She knows this far better than I.

  Arrival was an anticlimax, even after the dull monotonous walk. The cadre mages merely re-enacted their ritual then curtly waved them through. No doubt in a hurry themselves to quit this unnerving, enervating realm. They stepped into an empty stone-flagged room, torchlit, disconcertingly similar to the one they’d just left. Rillish’s perplexity was eased by the entrance of an unfamiliar Malazan cadre mage, this one a cadaverous old man.

  ‘Welcome to Kartool, sir,’ the fellow wheezed. ‘The fleet is assembling. You are just in time.’

  ‘My thanks.’ Kartool. Vile place. Never did like it. ‘By any chance, would you know who is commanding the force?’

  The old mage blinked his rheumy eyes, surprised. ‘Why, yes, Fist. Have you not heard? It is all the talk.’

  Rillish waited for the man to continue, then cleared his throat. ‘Yes? Who?’

  ‘Why, the Emperor has pardoned the old High Fist, Greymane. Reinstated him. Is that not amazing news?’

  Rillish was stunned, but he forgot his shock at the grunt of surprise and alarm from Devaleth. The woman had gone white and staggered as if about to faint. Despite his own reeling amazement – his old commander! Whom he had turned his back on! – Rillish caught the woman’s arm, steadying her.

  Devaleth shook him off. ‘My apologies. It is one thing to join the enemy. But it is quite another to find oneself serving under a man condemned as the greatest fiend of the age. The Betrayer, they named him, the Korelri. The Great Betrayer.’

  Betrayer? Gods! Wouldn’t the man regard him, Rillish, as just that? Didn’t they know at Command? No. They couldn’t have, could they? How the Twins must be helpless with laughter. For was it not his own silence that damned him now?

  A mad laugh almost burst from him then as he contemplated the utter ruin he had prepared for himself.

  * * *

  No sooner did one of Bakune’s clerks appear at the door of his office to hurriedly announce, ‘Karien’el, Captain of the Watch,’ than the man himself entered and closed the door gently, but firmly, behind him.

  Bakune sat staring, quill upraised, his surprise painfully obvious. Recovering, the Assessor returned the quill to the inkwell and opened his mouth to invite the man to sit, but the Watch captain thumped down heavily before Bakune could speak.

  Clamping his mouth shut, Bakune nodded
a neutral greeting, which the newcomer ignored, peering about the office, studying the many shelves groaning beneath their burdens of scrolls and heaped files.

  ‘Might I offer some Styggian wine?’ Bakune suggested, motioning to a side table.

  ‘No.’ The man still hadn’t glanced at him. ‘Have anything stronger?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Pity.’ The small hard eyes swung to Bakune. ‘How long have we known each other, Assessor?’

  Oh dear, very bad news. ‘A long time, Captain.’

  Karien’el nodded, his neck bulging. Studying the man, it occurred to Bakune that all those intervening years had not been good to him. He’d put on weight, was unshaven, and generally looked unhealthy, with red-shot narrowed eyes, grey teeth, and a pasty complexion. Drank far too much as well. He, on the other hand, was wasting away with his thinning hair, constant stomach pains, and stiffening of the joints.

  ‘What can I do for you?’

  An amused snort followed by a one-eyed calculating gaze. ‘Ever wonder why you’ve been here at Banith all this time … not one promotion while so many others went on from Homdo or Thol to the capital?’

  Bakune pushed himself back from his desk. ‘I suppose I’m just not one to curry favour or agitate for consideration.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  Bakune could not keep his irritation from tightening his face. ‘What is it you want, Captain?’

  ‘And your wife left you, didn’t she?’

  ‘Captain! I consider this interview finished. Please leave.’

  But the man did not move; he just sat there, his wide blunt hands tucked into his belt at his stomach. He cocked his head aside as if evaluating the effects of his comments. Bakune had a flash of insight that raised the hair on his neck: just as he must when interrogating a suspect.

  Swallowing, Bakune steadied his voice to ask, cautiously, ‘What is this about?’

  A satisfied nod from the captain. ‘Truth be told, Assessor, I really shouldn’t be here at all. I’m here as a favour because of all the years we’ve worked together. It’s about your investigation.’

  ‘And which investigation would that be?’

  The man cocked his gaze to the locked cabinet.

  Dizzied, Bakune felt the blood draining from his face. ‘Your men have searched my office.’

  An indifferent shrug from the captain. ‘Just doing my job.’

  ‘Your job is to enforce the law.’

  The unshaven, pale moon face moved from side to side. ‘No, Assessor. Here is where you have failed to question far enough. I enforce the will of those who decide what is the law.’

  So, there it was. The brutal truth of power. Was this why I failed to question further? A selective self-serving blindness? An inability, or a reluctance, to admit to this unflattering truth behind everything I stood for, or believed in? Or was it simply the everyday pedestrian distaste of peeling back the mask and revealing the ugliness behind?

  ‘In any case,’ Karien’el said, ‘we have our suspect.’

  ‘You do?’

  A slow firm nod. ‘Oh yes. We’ve had our eye on him for some time now. A foreigner, and a priest of one of those degenerate foreign gods as well.’

  Bakune pressed his hands to his cluttered desk. ‘And how long has the man been in the city?’

  Again the man hunched his shoulders in an uncaring shrug. ‘A few years now.’

  Bakune did not have to say that the killings went back decades.

  Sighing, Karien’el straightened, pushed himself to his feet. ‘So, Assessor. You need not continue your investigation. We have our man. As soon as he makes a mistake we’ll bring him in.’

  Meaning when the next body surfaces you’ll arrest him, trot out a few paid witnesses, then execute the man before anyone can pause to think.

  And it occurred to Bakune that for that execution to be enacted he would have to draw up and sign the papers. My name will be the authority behind this execution.

  Bakune hardly noticed Karien’el bow and leave the office, quietly shutting the door behind him. He sat unmoving, staring into the now empty space above the chair, silent.

  And if I refuse? Who would write my name into that blank?

  Would Karien?

  Yes, he would.

  But he does not have the authority.

  Bakune rose, went to the tiny glass-paned window of his office, stared out at the pebbled rippling view of the Banith rooftops to the tall spires and gables of the Cloister beyond. But there was one other in the city who did.

  You, dear Abbot. And you have sent your message by way of Karien. It seems that perhaps I have questioned enough. Come close enough for you to finally act.

  The Assessor’s gaze shifted to the tall locked cabinet and a cold dread coiled in his stomach – that all too familiar pain sank its teeth into his middle. He crossed to the cabinet, the sturdiest piece of furniture in his office, and examined its doors. Unmarred, as far as he could tell. He drew the key from the set at his waist, pushed it in and gave it two turns.

  He swung the doors open and stared within.

  Swirling dust. Torn scraps. Empty shelves.

  Failure.

  A decades-long career of sifted evidence, signed statements, maps, birth certificates, and so many – too many – certificates of death. Affidavits, registries, and witnessed accounts.

  Gone. All gone.

  Bakune fell back into his chair. He hugged himself as the pain in his stomach doubled him over, retching and dry-heaving.

  He wiped his mouth, leaving a smear of blood down his sleeve.

  Damn them. Damn everyone. Damn the Abbot and his damned precious damned Lady.

  * * *

  The soldier was most definitely dead. Limp, looking boneless on the deck of the Lasana, he – and most definitely a he, being naked and such – had died a most ugly and agonizing death.

  ‘Take a good look, soldiers of the 4th!’ Captain Betteries shouted.

  Not that he had to shout. Suth noted how the fish-pale corpse dumped on the decking silenced the constant chatter more surely than any sergeant’s bellow.

  ‘This soldier chose to desert … a crime punishable by death.’

  The soldiers of 4th Company craned their necks, peering round their companions. Betteries, hailing from the archipelago region of Falar, shook his head disgusted, scowling behind his rust-red goatee and moustache.

  ‘But the real mistake this soldier made was trying to desert here and now on the island of Kartool.’ Suth, and everyone else on board, glanced towards the beckoning, oh-so-near, treed and shaded shore of Kartool. ‘Terrible mistake! And why?’

  ‘The spiders,’ everyone repeated on cue, halfheartedly.

  ‘That’s right, boys and girls. The yellow-banded paralt spiders to be exact. You’ve been repeatedly warned! The island’s overrun with them. Look how the poison attacks the nerves and muscles. I’m told the unbearable agony alone can kill.’

  The man’s face was hideously contorted; so much so it was painful just to look at it. Suth didn’t think anyone could even recognize the fellow. And his limbs were twisted as if someone had broken the joints.

  ‘… look at the crotch and neck where the nodes of your clear humours are gathered. They have swollen and burst …’

  Suth’s gaze skittered away from the crotch where – yes – the flesh was horribly mangled by exploded pustules.

  ‘… poor fellow. I almost feel sorry for the bugger. Better a clean sword-thrust, yes? Anyone care for a closer look?’

  No one volunteered. Captain Betteries ordered the corpse be left lying on the boards. In less than one ship’s bell under the glaring sun its stink drove everyone to the stern decking behind the mast. Lard, Suth knew, was on punishment detail for the day. That detail would have to dispose of the body and scour the deck come sundown. Suth could only shake his head; the fool might mutiny.

  Grisly though it was, opinion on board the Lasana was that the company captain’s display had been the hi
ghlight of the month, a welcome relief from the cloying boredom of weeks of confinement waiting like prisoners on board a flotilla of assembled hulks. Shore leave came in rotation once every five days and then strictly within the grounds of the Imperial garrison in Kartool city. And that was a full day of close-order drilling that left everyone wrung out like wet leather.

  Other than more drilling and cleaning details on board the crowded ships, there was little else to do but engage in the soldier’s favourite pastime of out-strategizing Command. Suth was crouched on his haunches next to the ship’s side with his squadmates Dim, Len, Keri, Yana, Pyke and Wess. The two squad saboteurs, Len and Keri, had a line over the side; Dim could sit content to stare at nothing all day; Yana was inspecting her armour; Wess was apparently asleep; and Pyke was holding forth as he usually did.

  ‘Gonna get us all killed, the officers running this circus.’

  Dim roused himself to shade his eyes. ‘Why’s that?’

  The squad corporal gave the big Bloorian recruit a sneer of lazy contempt. ‘Don’t got us any squad mages, do we? Or healers or priests worth the name.’

  ‘Maybe they’re aware of that,’ Yana drawled without looking up from rubbing the rust from the mail of one sleeve.

  A spasm of irritation twisted the man’s face and he glared down from the duffels and crates he reclined on. ‘Then maybe they should do something about it!’

  ‘Maybe they have – why should they tell you?’ she said distractedly, and scoured the mail with a handful of sand she kept in a pouch.

  Pyke just made a face; he narrowed his gaze on Len, who was peering out over the gunwale, line in hand. ‘And what about you, Len? Still think we’re headed for Korel?’

  ‘It’s a good bet,’ the saboteur answered, his voice hushed, as if a fish were close to his bait of old rotting leather.

  ‘Ha! A pail of shit, that’s what that is! Korel! Might as well jump over the side with a stone tied round your neck right now. Save the Marese the trouble of doing it for you later. You lot are fools. No one’s gotten through that blockade.’