He glanced over at the man and waved a hand. “Well enough.”
Snarling, Topper spread wide his arms. The Imperial Warren yawned behind him. He stepped back and was gone.
Paran leaned forward, his head in his hands.
It was the Season of Currents and in the port city of Genabaris the heavy Malazan transports rocked and twisted, straining at their ropes like massive beasts. The piers, unused to such gargantuan craft moored alongside them, creaked ominously with every wayward, savage pull on the bollards.
Crates and cloth-wrapped bundles crowded the yards, supplies fresh in from the Seven Cities and destined for the front lines. Supply clerks clambered over them like monkeys, hunting sigils of identification and chattering to each other over the heads of dockmen and soldiers.
The agent leaned against a crate at the foot of the pier, his burly arms crossed and his small, narrow eyes fixed on the officer sitting on a bundle some thirty yards farther down the pier. Neither had moved in the last hour.
The agent was having a hard time convincing himself that this was the man he’d been sent to retrieve. He looked awfully young, and as green as the rancid water of this bay. His uniform still bore its maker’s chalk lines, and the leather grip of his longsword showed not a single sweat-stain. He had the stink of nobility about him like a perfumed cloud. And for the past hour he’d just been sitting there, hands in lap, shoulders hunched, watching like some stupid cow the frenzied activity swirling around him. Though he ranked captain, not a single soldier even bothered to salute him—the stink wasn’t subtle.
The Adjunct must have been knocked on her head during that last assassination attempt on the Empress. It was the only possible explanation for this farce of a man rating the kind of service the agent was about to deliver. In person, yet. These days, he concluded sourly, the whole show was being run by idiots.
With a loud sigh, the agent pushed himself upright and sauntered over to the officer.
The man didn’t even know he had company until the agent stepped in front of him, then he looked up.
The agent did some quick rethinking. Something in this man’s gaze was dangerous. There was a glitter there, buried deep, that made the man’s eyes seem older than the rest of his face. “Name?” The agent’s question was a strained grunt.
“Took your time about it,” the captain said, rising.
A tall bastard, too. The agent scowled. He hated tall bastards. “Who’re you waiting for, Captain?”
The man looked up the pier. “The waiting’s over. Let’s walk. I’ll just take it on faith you know where we’re going.” He reached down and retrieved a duffel bag, then took the lead.
The agent moved up beside the captain. “Fine,” he growled. “Be that way.” They left the pier and the agent turned them up the first street on the right. “A Green Quorl came in last night. You’ll be taken directly to Cloud Forest, and from there a Black will take you into Pale.”
The captain gave the agent a blank stare.
“You never heard of Quorls?”
“No. I assume they’re a means of transportation. Why else would I be removed from a ship a thousand leagues distant from Pale?”
“The Moranth use them, and we’re using the Moranth.” The agent scowled to himself. “Using them a lot, these days. The Green do most of the courier stuff, and moving people around like you and me, but the Black are stationed in Pale, and the different clans don’t like to mix. The Moranth are made up of a bunch of clans, got colors for names, and wear them too. Nobody gets confused that way.”
“And I’m to ride with a Green, on a Quorl?”
“You got it, Captain.”
They headed up a narrow street. Malazan guards milled around every crossing, hands on their weapons.
The captain returned a salute from one such squad. “Having trouble with insurrections?” he asked.
“Insurrections, yeah. Trouble, no.”
“Let’s see if I understand you correctly.” The captain’s tone was stiff. “Instead of delivering me by ship to a point nearest Pale, I’m to ride overland with a bunch of half-human barbarians who smell like grasshoppers and dress like them, too. And this way, no one will notice, especially since it’ll take us a year to get to Pale and by then everything will have gone straight to Hood’s Gate. Correct so far?”
Grinning, the agent shook his head. Despite his hatred for tall men or, rather, men taller than himself, he felt his guard going down. At least this one talked straight—and, for a noble, that was pretty impressive. Maybe Lorn still had the old stuff after all. “You said overland? Well, yes, Captain. Way overland.” He stopped at a nondescript doorway and turned to the man. “Quorls, you see, they fly. They got wings. Four in fact. And you can see right through every one of them, and if you’re of a mind you can poke your finger through one of those wings. Only don’t do it when you’re a quarter-mile up, right? ‘Cause it may be a long way down but it’ll seem awfully fast at the time. You hear me, Captain?” He opened the door. Beyond rose a staircase.
The man’s face had lost its color. “So much for intelligence reports,” he muttered.
The agent’s grin widened. “We see them before you do. Life’s on a need-to-know. Remember that, Captain . . . ?”
The man’s smile was the only answer he gave.
They entered and closed the door behind them.
A young marine intercepted Tattersail as she made her way across the compound in what was now Empire headquarters in Pale. The boy’s face had bewilderment written all over it, and he opened his mouth a few times before any words came out.
“Sorceress?”
She stopped. The thought of having Tayschrenn wait a little longer appealed to her. “What is it, soldier?”
The marine stole a glance over one shoulder, then said, “The guards, Sorceress. They’ve got something of a problem. They sent me to—”
“Who? Which guards? Take me to them.”
“Yes, Sorceress.”
She followed the marine around the nearest corner of the main building, where the compound wall ran close, creating a narrow passage running the building’s length. At the far end knelt a figure, his bare head bowed. Beside him was a large, lumpy burlap sack, covered in brown stains. Clouds of flies swarmed around both the man and the sack.
The marine halted and turned to the sorceress. “He still hasn’t moved. The guards keep getting sick when they patrol through here.”
Tattersail stared at the huddled man, a sudden welling of tears behind her eyes. Ignoring the marine, she strode into the aisle. The stench hit her like a wall. Damn, she thought, he’s been here since the battle. Five days. The sorceress came closer. Though Bellurdan knelt, his head came near to her own height. The Thelomen High Mage still wore what was left of his battle garb, the ragged strips of fur scorched and torn, the rough weave of fragments of tunic stained with blood. As she arrived to stop before him, she saw that his neck and face were covered in burn blisters, and most of his hair was gone.
“You look terrible, Bellurdan,” she said.
The giant’s head slowly turned. Red-rimmed eyes focused on her face. “Ah,” he rumbled. “Tattersail.” His exhausted smile cracked the charred flesh of one cheek. The wound gaped red and dry.
That smile almost broke her down. “You need healing, old friend.” Her gaze flicked to the burlap sack. Its surface crawled with flies. “Come on. Nightchill would bite your head off if she could see you now.” She felt a trembling steal into her, but grimly pressed on. “We’ll take care of her, Bellurdan. You and me. But we’ll need our strength to do that.”
The Thelomen shook his head slowly. “I choose this, Tattersail. The scars without are the scars within.” He drew a deep breath. “I will survive these wounds. And I alone will raise my love’s barrow. But the time is not yet right.” He laid a massive hand on the sack. “Tayschrenn has given me leave to do this. Will you do the same?”
Tattersail was shocked to feel the surge of anger rising u
p in her. “Tayschrenn gave you leave, did he?” To her own ears her voice sounded brutal, a harsh grating of sarcasm. She saw Bellurdan flinch and seem to withdraw, and a part of her wanted to wail, to throw her arms around the giant and weep, but rage possessed her. “That bastard killed Nightchill, Bellurdan! The Moon’s lord had neither the time nor the inclination to raise demons. Think about it! Tayschrenn had the time to prepare—”
“No!” The Thelomen’s voice thundered down the aisle. He surged to his feet and Tattersail stepped back. The giant looked ready to tear down the walls, a desperate fire in his eyes. His hands closed into fists. Then his glare fixed on her. He seemed to freeze. All at once his shoulders slumped, his hands opened, and his eyes dimmed. “No,” he said again, this time in a tone filled with sorrow. “Tayschrenn is our protector. As he has always been, Tattersail. Remember the very beginning? The Emperor was mad, but Tayschrenn stood at his side. He shaped the Empire’s dream and so opposed the Emperor’s nightmare. We underestimated the Lord of Moon’s Spawn, that is all.”
Tattersail stared up at Bellurdan’s ravaged face. The memory of Hairlock’s torn body returned to her. There was an echo there, but she couldn’t quite catch it. “I remember the beginning,” she said softly, doing some searching of her own. The memories remained sharp, but whatever thread there was that connected then to now still eluded her. She wanted desperately to talk to Quick Ben, but she had seen nothing of the Bridgeburners since the day of the battle. They’d left her with Hairlock, and that puppet scared her more and more with every passing day. Particularly now that he’d found a grudge to hold on to—the scene with the Deck of Dragons still smarted—and he worked it by keeping her in the dark. “The Emperor had a knack for gathering the right people around him,” she continued. “But he wasn’t a fool. He knew the betrayal would come from that group. What made us the right people was our power. I remember, Bellurdan.” She shook her head. “The Emperor’s gone, but the power’s still here.”
Tattersail’s breath caught. “And that’s it,” she said, half to herself. “Tayschrenn’s the thread.”
“The Emperor was insane,” Bellurdan said. “Else he would have protected himself better.”
Tattersail frowned at that. The Thelomen had a point. Like she’d just said, that old man wasn’t a fool. So what had happened? “I’m sorry. We must talk later. The High Mage has summoned me. Bellurdan, will we talk later?”
The giant nodded. “As you wish. Soon I will depart to raise Nightchill’s barrow. Far out on the Rhivi Plain, I think.”
Tattersail glanced back up the aisle. The marine still stood there, shifting from one foot to the other. “Bellurdan, would you mind if I cast a sealing spell on her remains?”
His eyes clouded and he looked down at the sack. “The guards are unhappy, it’s true.” He thought for a moment, then said, “Yes, Tattersail. You may do that.”
“It smells bad from here to the throne,” Kalam said, his scarred face twisted with worry. He sat crouched on his haunches, absently scratching the lines of a web on the ground with his dagger, then looked up at his sergeant.
Whiskeyjack eyed Pale’s stained walls, the muscles of his jaw bunching beneath his beard. “The last time I stood on this hill,” he said, his gaze narrowing, “it was crowded with armor. And a mage and a half.” He was silent for a time, then he sighed. “Go on, Corporal.”
Kalam nodded. “I pulled some old threads,” he said, squinting against the harsh morning light. “Somebody high up has us marked. Could be the court itself, or maybe the nobility—there’s rumors they’re back at it behind the scenes.” He grimaced. “And now we’ve got some new captain from Unta eager to get our throats cut. Four captains in the last three years, not one worth his weight in salt.”
Quick Ben stood ten feet away, at the hill’s crest, his arms crossed. He now spoke. “You heard the plan. Come on, Whiskeyjack. That man slid straight out of the palace and into our laps on a stream of—”
“Quiet,” Whiskeyjack muttered. “I’m thinking.”
Kalam and Quick Ben exchanged glances.
A long minute passed. On the road below troop wagons rattled in the ruts leading into the city. Remnants of the 5th and 6th Armies, already battered, almost broken, by Caladan Brood and the Crimson Guard. Whiskeyjack shook his head. The only force intact was the Moranth, and they seemed determined to field only the Black regiments, using the Green for lifts and drops—and where in Hood’s name was the Gold he’d been hearing so much about? Damn those unhuman bastards anyway. Pale’s gutters still ran red from their hour of retribution. Once the burial shifts were through, there’d be a few more hills outside the city’s walls. Big ones.
There would be nothing to mark thirteen hundred dead Bridgeburners, though. The worms didn’t need to travel far to feast on those bodies. What chilled the sergeant to his bones was the fact that, apart from the few survivors, nobody had made a serious effort to save them. Some low-ranking officer had delivered Tayschrenn’s commiserations on those lost in the line of duty, then had unloaded a wagonload of tripe about heroism and sacrifice. His audience of thirty-nine stone-faced soldiers had looked on without a word. The officer was found dead in his room two hours later, expertly garotted. The mood was bad—nobody in the regiment would have even thought of something so ugly five years ago. But now they didn’t blink at the news.
Garotte—sounds like Claw work. Kalam had suggested it was a set-up, an elaborate frame to discredit what was left of the Bridgeburners. Whiskeyjack was skeptical.
He tried to clear his thoughts. If there was a pattern it would be a simple one, simple enough to pass by unnoticed. But exhaustion seeped in like a thick haze behind his eyes. He took a deep lungful of the morning air. “The new recruit?” he asked.
Kalam rose from his haunches with a grunt. A faraway and long-ago look entered his eyes. “Maybe,” he said finally. “Pretty young for a Claw, though.”
“I never believed in pure evil before Sorry showed up,” Quick Ben said. “But you’re right, she’s awfully young. How long are they trained before they’re sent out?”
Kalam shrugged uneasily. “Fifteen years minimum. Mind you, they get them young. Five or six.”
“Could be magery involved, making her look younger than she is,” Quick Ben said. “High-level stuff, but within Tayschrenn’s abilities.”
“Seems too obvious,” Whiskeyjack muttered. “Call it bad upbringing.”
Quick Ben snorted. “Don’t tell me you believe that, Whiskeyjack.”
The sergeant’s face tightened. “The subject’s closed on Sorry. And don’t tell me what I think, Wizard.” He faced Kalam. “All right. You think the Empire’s into killing its own these days. You think Laseen’s cleaning her house, maybe? Or someone close to her? Getting rid of certain people. Fine. Tell me why.”
“The old guard,” Kalam replied immediately. “Everyone still loyal to the Emperor’s memory.”
“Doesn’t wash,” Whiskeyjack said. “We’re all dying off anyway. We don’t need Laseen’s help. Apart from Dujek there’s not a man in this army here who even knows the Emperor’s name, and nobody’d give a damn in any case. He’s dead. Long live the Empress.”
“She ain’t got the patience to wait it out,” Quick Ben said.
Kalam nodded agreement. “She’s losing momentum as it is. Things used to be better—it’s that memory she wants dead.”
“Hairlock’s our snake in the hole,” Quick Ben said with a sharp nod. “It’ll work, Whiskeyjack. I know what I’m doing on this one.”
“We do it the way the Emperor would have,” Kalam added. “We turn the game. We do our own house-cleaning.”
Whiskeyjack raised a hand. “All right. Now be quiet. You’re both sounding too damn rehearsed.” He paused. “It’s a theory. A complicated one. Who’s in the know and who isn’t?” He scowled at Quick Ben’s expression. “Right, that’s Hairlock’s task. But what happens when you come face to face with someone big, powerful, and mean?”
/> “Like Tayschrenn?” The wizard grinned.
“Right. I’m sure you’ve got an answer. Let’s see if I can work it out myself. You look for someone even nastier. You make a deal and you set things up, and if we’re quick enough we’ll come out smelling of roses. Am I close, Wizard?”
Kalam snorted his amusement.
Quick Ben looked away. “Back in the Seven Cities, before the Empire showed up—”
“Back in the Seven Cities is back in the Seven Cities,” Whiskeyjack said. “Hood knows, I led the company chasing you across the desert, remember? I know how you work, Quick. And I know you’re damn good at this. But I also recall that you were the only one of your cabal to come out alive back then. And this time?”
The wizard seemed hurt by Whiskeyjack’s words. His lips thinned to a straight line.
The sergeant sighed. “All right. We go with it. Start things rolling. And pull that sorceress all the way in. We’ll need her if Hairlock breaks his chains.”
“And Sorry?” Kalam asked.
Whiskeyjack hesitated. He knew the question behind that question. Quick Ben was the squad’s brains, but Kalam was their killer. Both made him uneasy with their single-minded devotion to their respective talents. “Leave her alone,” he said at last. “For now.”
Kalam and Quick Ben sighed, sharing a grin behind their sergeant’s back.
“Just don’t get cocky,” Whiskeyjack said dryly.
The grins faded.
The sergeant’s gaze returned to the wagons entering the city. Two riders approached. “All right,” he said. “Mount up. Here comes our reception committee.” The riders were from his squad, Fiddler and Sorry.
“You think the new captain’s arrived?” Kalam asked, as he climbed into his saddle. His roan mare turned her head and snapped at him. He growled in return. A moment later the two longtime companions settled down into their mutual mistrust.
Whiskeyjack looked on, amused. “Probably. Let’s head down to them. Anybody up on the wall watching us might be getting antsy.” Then his humor fell away. They had, indeed, just turned the game. And the timing couldn’t have been worse. He knew the full extent of their next mission, and in that he knew more than either Quick Ben or Kalam. There was no point in complicating things even further, though. They’ll find out soon enough.
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 11