‘Midnight meetings like this one should suffice. Come by tomorrow night, and we’ll make of you a new woman.’
‘So long as I smell new.’
‘Don’t worry. I know just the people for the task at hand.’
The thief left by climbing down the outside wall of the building. Tehol stood at the roof’s edge and watched her progress, then, when she had reached the alley below, he permitted himself a roll of the eyes. He turned away and approached his bed.
Only to hear voices down below. Surprised tones from Bugg, but not alarm. And loud enough to warn Tehol in case Shurq had lingered.
Tehol sighed. Life had been better—simpler—only a few weeks ago. When he’d been without plans, schemes, goals. Without, in short, purpose. A modest stir, and now everyone wanted to see him.
Creaks from the ladder, then a dark figure climbed into view.
It was a moment before Tehol recognized him, and his brows rose a moment before he stepped forward. ‘Well, this is unexpected.’
‘Your manservant seemed sure that you’d be awake. Why is that?’
‘Dear brother, Bugg’s talents are veritably preternatural.’
Brys walked over to the bed and studied it for a moment. ‘What happens when it rains?’
‘Alas, I am forced to retire to the room below. There to suffer Bugg’s incessant snoring.’
‘Is that what’s driven you to sleeping on the roof?’
Tehol smiled, then realized it was not likely Brys could see that smile in the darkness. Then decided it was all for the best. ‘King’s Champion. I have been remiss in congratulating you. Thus, congratulations.’
Brys was motionless. ‘How often do you visit the crypt? Or do you ever visit?’
Crossing his arms, Tehol swung his gaze to the canal below. A smeared gleam of reflected stars, crawling through the city. ‘It’s been years, Brys.’
‘Since you last visited?’
‘Since they died. We all have different ways of honouring their memory. The family crypt?’ He shrugged. ‘A stone-walled sunken room containing nothing of consequence.’
‘I see. I’m curious, Tehol, how precisely do you honour their memory these days?’
‘You have no idea.’
‘No, I don’t.’
Tehol rubbed at his eyes, only now realizing how tired he was. Thinking was proving a voracious feeder on his energies, leading him to admit he’d been out of practice. Not just thinking, of course. The brain did other things, as well, even more exhausting. The revisiting of siblings, of long-estranged relationships, saw old, burnished armour donned once more, weapons reached for, old stances once believed abandoned proving to have simply been lying dormant. ‘Is this a festive holiday, Brys? Have I missed something? Had we cousins, uncles and aunts, nephews and nieces, we could gather to walk the familiar ruts. Round and round the empty chairs where our mother and father once sat. And we could make our language unspoken in a manner to mimic another truth—that the dead speak in silences and so never leave us in peace—’
‘I need your help, Tehol.’
He glanced up, but could make nothing of his brother’s expression in the gloom.
‘It’s Hull,’ Brys went on. ‘He’s going to get himself killed.’
‘Tell me,’ Tehol said, ‘have you ever wondered why not one of us has found a wife?’
‘I was talking about—’
‘It’s simple, really. Blame our mother, Brys. She was too smart. Errant take us, what an understatement. It wasn’t Father who managed the investments.’
‘And you are her son, Tehol. More than me and Hull, by far. Every time I look at you, every time I listen to you, struggle to follow your lines of thought. But I don’t see how that—’
‘Our expectations reside in the clouds, Brys. Oh, we try. All of us have tried, haven’t we?’
‘Damn it, Tehol, what’s your point?’
‘Hull, of course. That’s who you came here to talk about, isn’t it? Well. He met a woman. As smart as our mother, in her own way. Or, rather, she found him. Hull’s greatest gift, but he didn’t even recognize it for what it was, when it was right there in his hands.’
Brys stepped closer, hands lifting as if about to grasp his brother by the throat. ‘You don’t understand,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion. After a moment his hands fell away. ‘The prince will see him killed. Or, if not the prince, then the First Eunuch—should Hull speak out against the king. But wait!’ He laughed without humour. ‘There’s also Gerun Eberict! Who’ll also be there! Have I left anyone out? I’m not sure. Does it matter? Hull will be at the parley. The only one whose motives are unknown—to anyone. You can’t play your game if a stranger wades in at the last moment, can you?’
‘Calm yourself, brother,’ Tehol said. ‘I was getting to my point.’
‘Well, I can’t see it!’
‘Quietly, please. Hull found her, then lost her. But she’s still there—that much is clear. Seren Pedac, Brys. She’ll protect him—’
Brys snarled and turned away. ‘Like Mother did Father?’
Tehol winced, then sighed. ‘Mitigating circumstances—’
‘And Hull is our father’s son!’
‘You asked, a moment ago, how I honour the memory of our parents. I can tell you this, Brys. When I see you. How you stand. The deadly grace—your skill, taught you by his hand—well, I have no need for memory. He stands before me, right now. More than with Hull. Far more. And, I’d hazard, I am much as you say—like her. Thus,’ he spread his hands helplessly, ‘you ask for help, but will not hear what I tell you. Need there be reminders of the fates of our parents? Need there be memory, Brys? We stand here, you and I, and play out once more the old familial tortures.’
‘You describe, then,’ he said hoarsely, ‘our doom.’
‘She could have saved him, Brys. If not for us. Her fear for us. The whole game of debt, so deftly contrived to snare Father—she would have torn it apart, except that, like me, she could see nothing of the world that would rise from the ashes. And, seeing nothing, she feared.’
‘Without us, then, she would have saved him—kept him from that moment of supreme cowardice?’
Brys was facing him now, his eyes glittering.
‘I think so,’ Tehol answered. ‘And from them, we have drawn our lessons of life. You chose the protection of the King’s Guard, and now the role of Champion. Where debt will never find you. As for Hull, he walked away—from gold, from its deadly traps—and sought honour in saving people. And even when that failed…do you honestly imagine Hull would ever consider killing himself? Our father’s cowardice was betrayal, Brys. Of the worst sort.’
‘And what of you, Tehol? What lesson are you living out right now?’
‘The difference between me and our mother is that I carry no burden. No children. So, brother, I think I will end up achieving the very thing she could not do, despite her love for Father.’
‘By dressing in rags and sleeping on your roof?’
‘Perception enforces expectation, Brys.’ And thought he saw a wry smile from his brother.
‘Even so, Tehol, Gerun Eberict is not as deceived as you might believe. As, I admit, I was.’
‘Until tonight?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Go home, Brys,’ Tehol said. ‘Seren Pedac stands at Hull’s back, and will continue to do so no matter how much she might disagree with whatever he seeks to do. She cannot help herself. Even genius has its flaws.’
Another grin. ‘Even with you, Tehol?’
‘Well, I was generalizing to put you at ease. I never include myself in my own generalizations. I am ever the exception to the rule.’
‘And how do you manage that?’
‘Well, I define the rules, of course. That’s my particular game, brother.’
‘By the Errant, I hate you sometimes, Tehol. Listen. Do not underestimate Gerun Eberict—’
‘I’ll take care of Gerun. Now, presumably you were followed h
ere?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, probably I was. Do you think our voices carried?’
‘Not through the wards Bugg raises every night before he goes to sleep.’
‘Bugg?’
Tehol clapped his brother on the shoulder and guided him towards the hatch. ‘He’s only mostly worthless. We ever seek out hidden talents, an exercise assuring endless amusement. For me, at least.’
‘Did he not embalm our parents? The name—’
‘That was Bugg. That’s where I first met him, and saw immediately his lack of potential. The entrance can be viewed in secret from one place and no other, Brys. Normally, you could make no approach without being detected. And then there’d be a chase, which is messy and likely to fail on your part. You will have to kill the man—Gerun’s, I suspect. And not in a duel. Outright execution, Brys. Are you up to it?’
‘Of course. But you said there was no approach that could not—’
‘Ah, well, I forgot to mention our tunnel.’
Brys paused at the hatch. ‘You have a tunnel.’
‘Keeping Bugg busy is an eternal chore.’
Still five paces from the shadowed section of the warehouse wall that offered the only hiding place with a clear line of sight to the doorway of Tehol’s house, Brys Beddict halted. His eyes were well adjusted, and he could see that no-one was there.
But he could smell blood. Metallic and thick.
Sword drawn, he approached.
No man could have survived such a loss. It was a black pool on the cobbles, reluctant to seep into the cracks between the set stones. A throat opened wide, the wound left to drain before the corpse had been dragged away. And the trail was plain, twin heel tracks alongside the warehouse wall, round a corner and out of sight.
The Finadd considered following it.
Then, upon seeing a single footprint, traced in dried dust on the dust, he changed his mind.
The footprint left by a child. Bared. As it dragged the dead man away.
Every city had its darkness, its denizens who prowled only at night in their own game of predator and prey. Brys knew it was not his world, nor did he wish to hunt down its secrets. These hours belonged to the white crow, and it was welcome to them.
He turned the other way, began his walk back to the palace.
His brother’s formidable mind had not been idle, it seemed. His indifference no more than a feint. Which made Tehol a very dangerous man. Thank the Errant he’s on my side…
He is on my side, isn’t he?
The old palace, soon to be entirely abandoned in favour of the Eternal Domicile, sat on a sunken hill, the building proper a hundred paces in from the river’s seasonally uncertain banks. Sections of a high wall indicated that there had been an enclosure once, extending from the palace to the river, in which an assortment of structures had been effectively isolated from the rest of the city.
Not so much in a proprietary claim to ownership, for the structures in question predated even the founding First Empire. Perhaps, for those original builders, there had been a recognition, of sorts, of something verging on the sacred about these grounds, although, of course, not holy to the colonizers. Another possibility was that the first Letherii were possessors of a more complete arcane knowledge—secrets long since lost—that inspired them to do honour to the Jaghut dwellings and the single, oddly different tower in their midst.
The truth had crumbled along with the enclosure walls, and no answers could be found sifting the dust of crumbled mortar and flakes of exfoliated schist. The area, while no longer sealed, was by habit avoided. The land itself was worthless, by virtue of a royal proclamation six centuries old that prohibited demolition of the ancient structures, and subsequent resettlement. Every legal challenge or, indeed, enquiry regarding that proclamation was summarily dismissed without even so much as recourse to the courts.
All very well. Skilled practitioners of the tiles of the Holds well knew the significance of that squat, square, leaning tower with its rumpled, overgrown grounds. And indeed of the Jaghut dwellings, representative as they were of the Ice Hold. Many held that the Azath tower was the very first true structure of the Azath on this world.
From her new perspective, Shurq Elalle was less sceptical than she might have once been. The grounds surrounding the battered grey stone tower exerted an ominous pull on the dead thief. There were kin there, but not of blood. No, this was the family of the undead, of those unable or unwilling to surrender to oblivion. In the case of those interred in the lumpy, clay-shot earth around the tower, their graves were prisons. The Azath did not give up its children.
She sensed as well that there were living creatures buried there, most of them driven mad by centuries upon centuries snared in ancient roots that held them fast. Others remained ominously silent and motionless, as if awaiting eternity’s end.
The thief approached the forbidden grounds behind the palace. She could see the Azath tower, its third and uppermost storey edging above the curved walls of the Jaghut dwellings. Not one of the structures stood fully upright. All were tilted in some fashion, the subsurface clay squeezing out from beneath their immense weight or lenses of sand washed away by underground runoff. Vines had climbed the sides in chaotic webs, although those that had reached out to the Azath died there, withered against the foundation stones amidst yellowed grasses.
She did not need to see the blood trail in order to follow it. The smell was heavy in the sultry night air, invisible streaks riding the currents, and she pursued its wake until she came to the low, crooked wall surrounding the Azath tower.
Just beyond, at the base of a twisted tree, sat the child Kettle. Nine or ten years old…for ever. Naked, her pale skin smeared, her long hair clotted with coagulating blood. The corpse before her was already half under the earth, being dragged down into the darkness.
To feed the Azath? Or some ravenous denizen? Shurq had no idea. Nor did she care. The grounds swallowed bodies, and that was useful.
Kettle looked up, black eyes dully reflecting starlight. There were moulds that, if left unattended, could blind, and the film was thick over the girl’s dead eyes. She slowly rose and walked over.
‘Why won’t you be my mother?’
‘I’ve already told you, Kettle. I am no-one’s mother.’
‘I followed you tonight.’
‘You’re always following me,’ Shurq said.
‘Just after you left that roof, another man came to the house. A soldier. And he was followed.’
‘And which of the two did you kill?’
‘Why, the one who followed, of course. I’m a good girl. I take care of you. Just as you take care of me—’
‘I take care of no-one, Kettle. You were dead long before I was. Living here in these grounds. I used to bring you bodies.’
‘Never enough.’
‘I don’t like killing. Only when I have no choice. Besides, I wasn’t the only one employing your services.’
‘Yes you were.’
Shurq stared at the girl for a long moment. ‘I was?’
‘Yes. And you wanted to know my story. Everyone else runs from me, just like they run from you now. Except that man on the roof. Is he another one not like everyone else?’
‘I don’t know, Kettle. But I am working for him now.’
‘I am glad. Grown-ups should work. It helps fill their minds. Empty minds are bad. Dangerous. They fill themselves up. With bad things. Nobody’s happy.’
Shurq cocked her head. ‘Who’s not happy?’
Kettle waved one grubby hand at the rumpled yard. ‘Restless. All of them. I don’t know why. The tower sweats all the time now.’
‘I will bring you some salt water,’ Shurq said, ‘for your eyes. You need to wash them out.’
‘I can see easily enough. With more than my eyes now. My skin sees. And tastes. And dreams of light.’
‘What do you mean?’
Kettle pushed bloody strands of hair from her heart-shaped face. ‘Fi
ve of them are trying to get out. I don’t like those five—I don’t like most of them, but especially those five. The roots are dying. I don’t know what to do. They whisper how they’ll tear me to pieces. Soon. I don’t want to be torn to pieces. What should I do?’
Shurq was silent. Then she asked, ‘How much do you sense of the Buried Ones, Kettle?’
‘Most don’t talk to me. They have lost their minds. Others hate me for not helping them. Some beg and plead. They talk through the roots.’
‘Are there any who ask nothing of you?’
‘Some are ever silent.’
‘Talk to them. Find someone else to speak to, Kettle. Someone who might be able to help you.’ Someone else to be your mother…or father. ‘Ask for opinions, on any and all matters. If one remains then who does not seek to please you, who does not attempt to twist your desires so that you free it, and who holds no loyalty to the others, then you will tell me of that one. All that you know. And I will advise you as best I can—not as a mother, but as a comrade.’
‘All right.’
‘Good. Now, I came here for another reason, Kettle. I want to know, how did you kill that spy?’
‘I bit through his throat. It’s the quickest, and I like the blood.’
‘Why do you like the blood?’
‘In my hair, to keep it from my face. And it smells alive, doesn’t it? I like that smell.’
‘How many do you kill?’
‘Lots. The ground needs them.’
‘Why does the ground need them?’
‘Because it’s dying.’
‘Dying? And what would happen if it does die, Kettle?’
‘Everything will get out.’
‘Oh.’
‘I like it here.’
‘Kettle, from now on,’ Shurq said, ‘I will tell you who to kill—don’t worry, there should be plenty.’
‘All right. That’s nice of you.’
Among the hundreds of creatures buried in the grounds of the Azath, only one was capable of listening to the conversation between the two undead on the surface above. The Azath was relinquishing its hold on this denizen, not out of weakness, but out of necessity. The Guardian was anything but ready. Indeed, might never be ready. The choice itself had been flawed, yet another sign of faltering power, of age crawling forward to claim the oldest stone structure in the realm.
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 384