The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

  Buruk the Pale had lifted his head at the commotion, blinking blearily. ‘Who comes?’

  ‘Hull Beddict,’ Seren Pedac answered.

  The merchant licked his lips. ‘The old Sentinel?’

  ‘Yes. Although I advise you not to call him by that title. He returned the King’s Reed long ago.’

  ‘And so betrayed the Letherii, aye.’ Buruk laughed. ‘Poor, honourable fool. Honour demands dishonour, now that is amusing, isn’t it? Ever seen a mountain of ice in the sea? Calving again and again beneath the endless gnawing teeth of salt water. Just so.’ He tilted his bottle back, and Seren watched his throat bob.

  ‘Dishonour makes you thirsty, Buruk?’

  He pulled the bottle down, glaring. Then a loose smile. ‘Parched, Acquitor. Like a drowning man who swallows air.’

  ‘Only it’s not air, it’s water.’

  He shrugged. ‘A momentary surprise.’

  ‘Then you get over it.’

  ‘Aye. And in those last moments, the stars swim unseen currents.’

  Hull Beddict had done as much as he could with the Nerek, and he stepped into the firelight. Almost as tall as an Edur. Swathed in the white fur of the north wolf, his long braided hair nearly as pale. The sun and high winds had darkened his visage to the hue of tanned hide. His eyes were bleached grey, and it seemed the man behind them was ever elsewhere. And, Seren Pedac well knew, that place was not home.

  No, as lost as his flesh and bones, this body standing before us. ‘Take some warmth, Hull Beddict,’ she said.

  He studied her in his distracted way—a seeming contradiction that only he could achieve.

  Buruk the Pale laughed. ‘What’s the point? It’ll never reach him through those furs. Hungry, Beddict? Thirsty? I didn’t think so. How about a woman? I could spare you one of my Nerek half-bloods—the darlings wait in my wagon.’ He drank noisily from his bottle and held it out. ‘Some of this? Oh dear, he hides poorly his disgust.’

  Eyes on the old Sentinel, Seren asked, ‘Have you come down the pass? Are the snows gone?’

  Hull Beddict glanced over at the wagons. When he replied, the words came awkwardly, as if it had been some time since he last spoke. ‘Should do.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  He glanced at her once more. ‘With you.’

  Seren’s brows rose.

  Laughing, Buruk the Pale waved expansively with his bottle—which was empty save for a last few scattering drops that hit the fire with a hiss. ‘Oh, welcome company indeed! By all means! The Nerek will be delighted.’ He tottered upright, weaving perilously close to the fire, then, with a final wave, he stumbled towards his wagon.

  Seren and Hull watched him leave, and Seren saw that the Nerek had returned to their sleeping places, but all sat awake, their eyes glittering with reflected flames as they watched the old Sentinel, who now stepped closer to the fire and slowly sat down. He held out battered hands to the heat.

  They could be softer than they appeared, Seren recalled. The memory did little more than stir long-dead ashes, however, and she tipped another log into the hungry fire before them, watched the sparks leap into the darkness.

  ‘He intends to remain a guest of the Hiroth until the Great Meeting?’

  She shot him a look, then shrugged. ‘I think so. Is that why you’ve decided to accompany us?’

  ‘It will not be like past treaties, this meeting,’ he said. ‘The Edur are no longer divided. The Warlock King rules unchallenged.’

  ‘Everything’s changed, yes.’

  ‘And so Diskanar sends Buruk the Pale.’

  She snorted, kicked back into the flames an errant log that had rolled out. ‘A poor choice. I doubt he’ll remain sober enough to manage much spying.’

  ‘Seven merchant houses and twenty-eight ships have descended upon the Calach beds,’ Hull Beddict said, flexing his fingers.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Diskanar’s delegation will claim the hunting was unsanctioned. They will decry the slaughter. Then use it to argue that the old treaty is flawed, that it needs to be revised. For the lost seals, they will make a magnanimous gesture—by throwing gold at Hannan Mosag’s feet.’

  She said nothing. He was right, after all. Hull Beddict knew better than most King Ezgara Diskanar’s mind—or, rather, that of the Royal Household, which wasn’t always the same thing. ‘There is more to it, I suspect,’ she said after a moment.

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I imagine you have not heard who will be leading the delegation.’

  He grunted sourly. ‘The mountains are silent on such matters.’

  She nodded. ‘Representing the king’s interests, Nifadas.’

  ‘Good. The First Eunuch is no fool.’

  ‘Nifadas will be sharing command with Prince Quillas Diskanar.’

  Hull Beddict slowly turned to face her. ‘She’s risen far, then.’

  ‘She has. And for all the years since you last crossed her son’s path…well, Quillas has changed little. The queen keeps him on a short leash, with the Chancellor close at hand to feed him sweet treats. It’s rumoured that the primary holder of interest in the seven merchant houses that defied the treaty is none other than Queen Janall herself.’

  ‘And the Chancellor dares not leave the palace,’ Hull Beddict said, and she heard the sneer. ‘So he sends Quillas. A mistake. The prince is blind to subtlety. He knows his own ignorance and stupidity so is ever suspicious of others, especially when they say things he does not understand. One cannot negotiate when dragged in the wake of emotions.’

  ‘Hardly a secret,’ Seren Pedac replied. And waited.

  Hull Beddict spat into the fire. ‘They don’t care. The queen’s let him slip the leash. Allowing Quillas to flail about, to deliver clumsy insults in the face of Hannan Mosag. Is this plain arrogance? Or do they truly invite war?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘And Buruk the Pale—whose instructions does he carry?’

  ‘I’m not sure. But he’s not happy.’

  They fell silent then.

  Twelve years past, King Ezgara Diskanar charged his favoured Preda of the Guard, Hull Beddict, with the role of Sentinel. He was to journey to the north borders, then beyond. His task was to study the tribes who still dwelt wild in the mountains and high forests. Talented warrior though he was, Hull Beddict had been naive. What he had embraced as a journey in search of knowledge, the first steps towards peaceful co-existence, had in fact been a prelude to conquest. His detailed reports of tribes such as the Nerek, and the Faraed and the Tarthenal, had been pored over by minions of Chancellor Triban Gnol. Weaknesses had been prised from the descriptions. And then, in a series of campaigns of subjugation, brutally exploited.

  And Hull Beddict, who had forged blood-ties with those fierce tribes, was there to witness all his enthusiasm delivered. Gifts that were not gifts at all, incurring debts, the debts exchanged for land. The deadly maze lined with traders, merchants, seducers of false need, purveyors of destructive poisons. Defiance answered with annihilation. The devouring of pride, independence and self-sufficiency. In all, a war so profoundly cynical in its cold, heartless expediting that no honourable soul could survive witness. Especially when that soul was responsible for it. For all of it.

  And to this day, the Nerek worshipped Hull Beddict. As did the half-dozen indebted beggars who were all that was left of the Faraed. And the scattered remnants of the Tarthenal, huge and shambling and drunk in the pit towns outside the cities to the south, still bore the three bar tattoos beneath their left shoulders—a match to those on Hull’s own back.

  He sat now in silence beside her, his eyes on the ebbing flames of the dying hearth. One of his guards had returned to the capital, bearing the King’s Reed. The Sentinel was Sentinel no longer. Nor would he return to the southlands. He had walked into the mountains.

  She had first met him eight years ago, a day out from High Fort, reduced to little more than a scavenging animal in the wilds.

  And
had brought him back. At least some of the way. Oh, but it was far less noble than it first seemed. Perhaps it would have been. Truly noble. Had I not then made sore use of him.

  She had succumbed to her own selfish needs, and there was nothing glorious in that.

  Seren wondered if he would ever forgive her. She then wondered if she would ever forgive herself.

  ‘Buruk the Pale knows all that I need to learn,’ Hull Beddict said.

  ‘Possibly.’

  ‘He will tell me.’

  Not of his own volition, he won’t. ‘Regardless of his instructions,’ she said, ‘he remains a small player in this game, Hull. Head of a merchant house conveniently placed in Trate, with considerable experience dealing with the Hiroth and Arapay.’ And, through me, legitimate passage into Edur lands.

  ‘Hannan Mosag will send his warriors after those ships,’ Hull Beddict said. ‘The queen’s interest in those merchant houses is about to take a beating.’

  ‘I expect she has anticipated the loss.’

  The man beside her was not the naive youth he had once been. But he was long removed from the intricate schemes and deadly sleight of hand that was so much the lifeblood of the Letherii. She could sense him struggling with the multiplicity of layers of intent and design at work here. ‘I begin to see the path she takes,’ he said after a time, and the bleak despair in his voice was so raw that she looked away, blinking.

  He went on, ‘This is the curse, then, that we are so inclined to look ahead, ever ahead. As if the path before us should be any different from the one behind us.’

  Aye, and it pays to remind me, every time I glance back.

  I really should stop doing that.

  ‘Five wings will buy you a grovel,’ Tehol Beddict muttered from his bed. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered how odd it is? Of course, every god should have a throne, but shouldn’t it also follow that every throne built for a god is actually occupied? And if it isn’t, who in their right mind decided that it was worthwhile to worship an empty throne?’

  Seated on a low three-legged stool at the foot of the bed, Bugg paused in his knitting. He held out and examined the coarse wool shirt he was working on, one eye squeezing into a critical squint.

  Tehol’s gaze flicked down at his servant. ‘I’m fairly certain my left arm is of a length close to, if not identical with, that of my right. Why do you persist in this conceit? You’ve no talent to speak of, in much of anything, come to think of it. Probably why I love you so dearly, Bugg.’

  ‘Not half as much as you love yourself,’ the old man replied, resuming his knitting.

  ‘Well, I see no point in arguing that.’ He sighed, wiggling his toes beneath the threadbare sheet. The wind was freshening, blessedly cool and only faintly reeking of the south shore’s Stink Flats. Bed and stool were the only furniture on the roof of Tehol’s house. Bugg still slept below, despite the sweltering heat, and only came up when his work demanded light enough to see. Saved on lamp oil, Tehol told himself, since oil was getting dreadfully expensive now that the whales were getting scarce.

  He reached down to the half-dozen dried figs on the tarnished plate Bugg had set down beside him. ‘Ah, more figs. Another humiliating trip to the public privies awaits me, then.’ He chewed desultorily, watching the monkey-like clambering of the workers on the dome of the Eternal Domicile. Purely accidental, this exquisitely unobstructed view of the distant palace rising from the heart of Letheras, and all the more satisfying for that, particularly the way the nearby towers and Third Height bridges so neatly framed King Ezgara Diskanar’s conceit. ‘Eternal Domicile indeed. Eternally unfinished.’

  The dome had proved so challenging to the royal architects that four of them had committed suicide in the course of its construction, and one had died tragically—if somewhat mysteriously—trapped inside a drainage pipe. ‘Seventeen years and counting. Looks like they’ve given up entirely on that fifth wing. What do you think, Bugg? I value your expert opinion.’

  Bugg’s expertise amounted to rebuilding the hearth in the kitchen below. Twenty-two fired bricks stacked into a shape very nearly cubic, and indeed it would have been if three of the bricks had not come from a toppled mausoleum at the local cemetery. Grave masons held to peculiar notions of what a brick’s dimensions should be, pious bastards that they were.

  In response to Tehol’s query, Bugg glanced up, squinting with both eyes.

  Five wings to the palace, the dome rising from the centre. Four tiers to those wings, except for the shoreside one, where only two tiers had been built. Work had been suspended when it was discovered that the clay beneath the foundations tended to squeeze out to the sides, like closing a fist on a block of butter. The fifth wing was sinking.

  ‘Gravel,’ Bugg said, returning to his knitting.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Gravel,’ the old man repeated. ‘Drill deep wells down into the clay, every few paces or so, and fill ’em with gravel, packed down with drivers. Cap ’em and build your foundation pillars on top. No weight on the clay means it’s got no reason to squirm.’

  Tehol stared down at his servant. ‘All right. Where in the Errant’s name did you come by that? And don’t tell me you, stumbled onto it trying to keep our hearth from wandering.’

  Bugg shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that heavy. But if it was, that’s what I would’ve done.’

  ‘Bore a hole? How far down?’

  ‘Bedrock, of course. Won’t work otherwise.’

  ‘And fill it with gravel.’

  ‘Pounded down tight, aye.’

  Tehol plucked another fig from the plate, brushed dust from it—Bugg had been harvesting from the market leavings again. Outwitting the rats and dogs. ‘That’d make for an impressive cook hearth.’

  ‘It would at that.’

  ‘You could cook secure and content in the knowledge that the flatstone will never move, barring an earthquake—’

  ‘Oh no, it’ll handle an earthquake too. Gravel, right? Flexible, you see.’

  ‘Extraordinary.’ He spat out a seed. ‘What do you think? Should I get out of bed today, Bugg?’

  ‘Got no reason to—’ The servant stopped short, then cocked his head, thinking. ‘Mind you, maybe you have.’

  ‘Oh? And you’d better not be wasting my time with this.’

  ‘Three women visited this morning.’

  ‘Three women.’ Tehol glanced up at the nearest Third Height bridge, watched people and carts moving across it. ‘I don’t know three women, Bugg. And if I did, all of them arriving simultaneously would be cause for terror, rather than an incidental “oh by the way”.’

  ‘Aye, but you don’t know them. Not even one of them. I don’t think. New faces to me, anyway.’

  ‘New? You’ve never seen them before? Not even in the market? The riverfront?’

  ‘No. Might be from one of the other cities, or maybe a village. Odd accents.’

  ‘And they asked for me by name?’

  ‘Well, not precisely. They wanted to know if this was the house of the man who sleeps on his roof.’

  ‘If they needed to ask that, they are from some toad-squelching village. What else did they want to know? The colour of your hair? What you were wearing while standing there in front of them? Did they want to know their own names as well? Tell me, are they sisters? Do they share a single eyebrow?’

  ‘Not that I noticed. Handsome women, as I recall. Young and meaty. Sounds as though you’re not interested, though.’

  ‘Servants shouldn’t presume. Handsome. Young and meaty. Are you sure they were women?’

  ‘Oh yes, quite certain. Even eunuchs don’t have breasts so large, or perfect, or, indeed, lifted so high the lasses could rest their chins—’

  Tehol found himself standing beside the bed. He wasn’t sure how he got there, but it felt right. ‘You finished that shirt, Bugg?’

  The servant held it out once more. ‘Just roll up the sleeve, I think.’

  ‘Finally, I can go out in public once m
ore. Tie those ends off or whatever it is you do to them and give it here.’

  ‘But I haven’t started yet on the trousers—’

  ‘Never mind that,’ Tehol cut in, wrapping the bed sheet about his waist, once, twice, thrice, then tucking it in at one hip. He then paused, a strange look stealing across his features. ‘Bugg, for Errant’s sake, no more figs for a while, all right? Where are these mountainously endowed sisters, then?’

  ‘Red Lane. Huldo’s.’

  ‘The pits or on the courtyard?’

  ‘Courtyard.’

  ‘That’s something, at least. Do you think Huldo might have forgotten?’

  ‘No. But he’s been spending a lot of time down at the Drownings.’

  Tehol smiled, then began rubbing a finger along his teeth. ‘Winnin’ or losin’?’

  ‘Losing.’

  ‘Hah!’ He ran a hand through his hair and struck a casual pose. ‘How do I look?’

  Bugg handed him the shirt. ‘How you manage to keep those muscles when you do nothing baffles me,’ he said.

  ‘A Beddict trait, dear sad minion of mine. You should see Brys, under all that armour. But even he looks scrawny when compared to Hull. As the middle son, I of course represent the perfect balance. Wit, physical prowess and a multitude of talents to match my natural grace. When combined with my extraordinary ability to waste it all, you see, standing before you, the exquisite culmination.’

  ‘A fine and pathetic speech,’ Bugg said with a nod.

  ‘It was, wasn’t it? I shall be on my way now.’ Tehol gestured as he walked to the ladder. ‘Clean up the place. We might have guests this evening.’

  ‘I will, if I find the time.’

  Tehol paused at the ragged edge of the section of roof that had collapsed. ‘Ah yes, you have trousers to make—have you enough wool for that?’

  ‘Well, I can make one leg down all the way, or I can make both short.’

  ‘How short?’

  ‘Pretty short.’

  ‘Go with the one leg.’

  ‘Aye, master. And then I have to find us something to eat. And drink.’

  Tehol turned, hands on his hips. ‘Haven’t we sold virtually everything, sparing one bed and a lone stool? So, just how much tidying up is required?’