Bugg did not know them, but he knew of them, and clearly they in turn had heard of the services he was prepared to offer, in certain circumstances, free of charge.
A tiny hand reached out to close about his own and the girl led him through the doorway into a corridor where he was forced to crouch beneath the sagging, sloping ceiling. Three paces along and the lower half of another doorway was revealed and, beyond it, a crowded room.
Smelling of death.
Murmured greetings and bowed heads as Bugg entered, his eyes settling on the motionless form lying on a bloody blanket in the room’s centre. After a moment’s study, he glanced up and sought out the gaze of the eldest of the children, a girl of about ten or eleven years of age—though possibly older and stunted by malnutrition, or younger and prematurely aged by the same. Large, hard eyes met his.
‘Where did you find her?’
‘She made it home,’ the girl replied, her tone wooden.
Bugg looked down at the dead grandmother once more. ‘From how far away?’
‘Buried Round, she said.’
‘She spoke, then, before life left her.’ Bugg’s jaw muscles bunched. Buried Round was two, three hundred paces distant. An extraordinary will, in the old woman, to have walked all that distance with two mortal sword-thrusts in her chest. ‘She knew great need, I think.’
‘To tell us who killed her, yes.’
And not to simply disappear, as so many of the destitute do, thus raising the spectre of abandonment—a scar these children could do without.
‘Who, then?’
‘She was crossing the Round, and found herself in the path of an entourage. Seven men and their master, all armed. The master was raging, something about all his spies disappearing. Our grandmother begged for coin. The master lost his mind with anger and ordered his guards to kill her. And so they did.’
‘And is the identity of this master known?’
‘You will find his face on newly minted docks.’
Ah.
Bugg knelt beside the old woman. He laid a hand on her cold, lined forehead, and sought the remnants of her life. ‘Urusan of the Clan known as the Owl. Her strength was born of love. For her grandchildren. She is gone, but she has not gone far.’ He raised his head and met the eyes of each of the six children. ‘I hear the shifting of vast stones, the grinding surrender of a long closed portal. There is cold clay, but it did not embrace her.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I will prepare this flesh for Nerek interment—’
‘We would have your blessing,’ the girl said.
Bugg’s brows lifted. ‘Mine? I am not Nerek, nor even a priest—’
‘We would have your blessing.’
The manservant hesitated, then sighed. ‘As you will. But tell me, how will you live now?’
As if in answer there was a commotion at the doorway, then a huge figure lumbered into the small room, seeming to fill it entirely. He was young, his size and features evincing Tarthenal and Nerek blood both. Small eyes fixed upon Urusan’s corpse, and the whole face darkened.
‘And who is this?’ Bugg asked. A shifting of vast stones—now this…this shoving aside of entire mountains. What begins here?
‘Our cousin,’ the girl said, her eyes wide and adoring and full of pleading as she looked up at the young man. ‘He works on the harbour front. Unn is his name. Unn, this is the man known as Bugg. A dresser of the dead.’
Unn’s voice was so low-pitched it could barely be heard. ‘Who did this?’
Oh, Finadd Gerun Eberict, to your senseless feast of blood you shall have an uninvited guest, and something tells me you will come to regret it.
Selush of the Stinking House was tall and amply proportioned, yet her most notable feature was her hair. Twenty-seven short braids of the thick black hair, projecting in all directions, each wrapped round an antler tine, which meant that the braids curved and twisted in peculiar fashion. She was somewhere between thirty-five and fifty years of age, the obscurity the product of her formidable talent as a disguiser of flaws. Violet eyes, produced by an unusual ink collected from segmented worms that lived deep in the sand of the south island beaches, and lips kept full and red by a mildly toxic snake venom that she painted on every morning.
As she stood before Tehol and Shurq Elalle at the threshold of her modest and unfortunately named abode, she was dressed in skin-tight silks, inviting Tehol against his own sense of decorum to examine her nipples beneath the gilt sheen—and so it was a long moment before he looked up to see the alarm in her eyes.
‘You’re early! I wasn’t expecting you. Oh! Now I’m all nervous. Really, Tehol, you should know better than to do the unexpected! Is this the dead woman?’
‘If not,’ Shurq Elalle replied, ‘then I’m in even deeper trouble, wouldn’t you say?’
Selush stepped closer. ‘This is the worst embalming I’ve ever seen.’
‘I wasn’t embalmed.’
‘Oh! An outrage! How did you die?’
Shurq raised a lifeless brow. ‘I am curious. How often is that question answered by your clients?’
Selush blinked. ‘Enter, if you must. So early!’
‘My dear,’ Tehol said reasonably, ‘it’s less than a couple of hundred heartbeats from the midnight bell.’
‘Precisely! See how flustered you’ve made me? Quickly, inside, I must close the door. There! Oh, the dark streets are so frightening. Now, sweetie, let me look more closely at you. My servant was unusually reticent, I’m afraid.’ She abruptly leaned close until her nose was almost touching Shurq’s lips.
Tehol flinched, but luckily neither woman noticed.
‘You drowned.’
‘Really.’
‘In Quillas Canal. Just downstream of Windlow’s Meatgrinders on the last day of a summer month. Which one? Wanderer’s Month? Watcher’s?’
‘Betrayer’s.’
‘Oh! Windlow must have had unusually good business that month, then. Tell me, do people scream when they see you?’
‘Sometimes.’
‘Me too.’
‘Do you,’ Shurq asked, ‘get compliments on your hair?’
‘Never.’
‘Well, that was pleasing small-talk,’ Tehol said hastily. ‘We haven’t got all night, alas—’
‘Why, yes we have, you silly man,’ Selush said.
‘Oh, right. Sorry. In any case. Shurq was a victim of the Drownings, and, it turned out, an abiding curse.’
‘Isn’t it always the way?’ Selush sighed, turning to walk to the long table along the back wall of the room.
‘Tehol mentioned roses,’ Shurq said, following.
‘Roses? Dear me, no. Cinnamon and patchouli, I would think. But first, we need to do something about all that mould, and the moss in your nostrils. And then there’s the ootooloo—’
‘The what?’ Shurq and Tehol asked in unison.
‘Lives in hot springs in the Bluerose Mountains.’ She swung about and regarded Shurq with raised brows. ‘A secret among women. I’m surprised you’ve never heard of them.’
‘It would seem my education is lacking.’
‘Well, an ootooloo is a small soft-bodied creature that feeds through a crevice, a sort of vertical slit for a mouth. Its skin is covered in cilia with the unusual quality of transmitting sensation. These cilia can take root in membranous flesh—’
‘Hold on a moment,’ Tehol said, aghast, ‘you’re not suggesting—’
‘Most men can’t tell the difference, but it enhances pleasure many times…or so I am led to believe. I have never invited one inside, since the emplacement of an ootooloo is permanent, and it needs, uhm, constant feeding.’
‘How often?’ Shurq demanded, and Tehol heard suitable alarm in her tone.
‘Daily.’
‘But Shurq’s nerves are dead—how can she feel what this ottoolie thing feels?’
‘Not dead, Tehol Beddict, simply unawakened. Besides, before too long, the ootooloo’s cilia will have permeated her entire body, and the healt
hier the organism the brighter and more vigorous her glowing flesh!’
‘I see. And what of my brain? Will these roots grow in it as well?’
‘Well, we can’t have that, can we, lest you live out the remainder of existence drooling in a hot bath. No, we shall infuse your brain with a poison—well, not a true poison, but the exudation of a small creature that shares those hot springs with the ootooloo. Said exudation is unpalatable to the ootooloo. Isn’t nature wonderful?’
Grainy-eyed, Bugg staggered inside his master’s home. It was less than an hour before dawn. He felt drained, more by the blessing he had given than by preparing the old woman’s corpse for burial. Two strides into the single room and he halted.
Seated on the floor and leaning against the wall opposite was Shand. ‘Where is the bastard, Bugg?’
‘Working, although I imagine you are sceptical. I’ve not slept this night and so am unequal to conversation, Shand—’
‘And I care? What kind of work? What’s he doing that has to be done when the rest of the world’s asleep?’
‘Shand, I—’
‘Answer me!’
Bugg walked over to the pot sitting on a grille above the now cool hearth. He dipped a cup into the tepid, stewed tea. ‘Twelve lines of investment, like unseen streams beneath foundations, eating away but yet to reveal a tremor. There are essential trusses to every economy, Shand, upon which all else rests.’
‘You can’t do business in the middle of the night.’
‘Not that kind of business, no. But there are dangers to all this, Shand. Threats. And they need to be met. Anyway, what are you doing out at night without your bodyguard?’
‘Ublala? That oaf? In Rissarh’s bed. Or Hejun’s. Not mine, not tonight, anyway. We take it in turns.’
Bugg stared at her through the gloom. He drank the last of the tea and set the cup down.
‘Is all that true?’ Shand asked after a moment. ‘Those investments?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why isn’t he telling us these things?’
‘Because your investments have to remain separate, disconnected. There can be no comparable pattern. Thus, follow his instructions with precision. It will all come clear eventually.’
‘I hate geniuses.’
‘Understandable. All he does seems to confound, it’s true. One gets used to it.’
‘And how is Bugg’s Construction doing?’
‘Well enough.’
‘What’s the purpose of it, anyway? Just to make money?’
‘No. The intention is to acquire the contract for the Eternal Domicile.’
Shand stared. ‘Why?’
Bugg smiled.
Disinfecting, bleaching, scraping, combing. Fragrant oils rubbed into clothing and skin. Preserving oils rubbed in everywhere else. Scouring flushes of eyes, nose, ears and mouth. Then it was time for the pump.
At which point Tehol staggered outside for some air.
The sky was paling to the east, the city’s less sane denizens already risen and venturing out onto the streets. Clattering carts on the cobbles. Somewhere a rooster crowed, only to have its exuberant cry cut off into strangled silence. A dog barked happily.
Footsteps, halting to Tehol’s right. ‘You still here?’
‘Ah, Selush’s assistant. And how are you this grisly morning, Padderunt?’
The old man’s expression was eternally sour, but at Tehol’s courteous enquiry it seemed to implode into a wrinkled mess. ‘How am I? Sleepless! That’s how I am, y’damned snake! They still in there? It’s a lost cause, I say. A lost cause. Just like you, Tehol Beddict. I knew your mother—what would she say seeing you now?’
‘You knew her corpse, you old fool. Before that we’d never met you.’
‘Think she didn’t tell me all about herself anyway? Think I can’t see what’s there to be seen? The soul inside shapes the flesh. Oh, she talked to me all right.’
Tehol’s brows rose. ‘The soul inside shapes the flesh?’ He stared down at the wrinkled prune face glaring up at him. ‘Oh my.’
‘Oh, that’s a cutting remark, is it? True enough, here’s what happens when a decent man gets no sleep!’
A small clay pot exploded on the cobbles between them, followed by a furious shout from a window in the building opposite.
‘There!’ Padderunt cried, hand to his head as he staggered in circles. ‘Make of our neighbours vicious enemies! You don’t live here, do you?’
‘Calm down,’ Tehol said. ‘I simply asked how you were this morning, in case you’ve forgotten. Your reply was supposed to be equally inane and nondescript. If I’d wanted a list of your ailments—well, I wouldn’t. Who would? Innocuous civility is what was expected, Padderunt. Not foul invective.’
‘Oh really? Well, how am I supposed to know that? Come on, there’s a place nearby makes great grain cakes. And rustleaf tea, which can wake the dead.’
The two made their way down the street.
‘Have you tried it?’ Tehol asked.
‘Tried what?’
‘Waking the dead with rustleaf tea.’
‘Should’ve worked.’
‘But, alas, it didn’t.’
‘Still should’ve. The stuff doubles your heart rate and makes you heave everything in your stomach.’
‘I can’t wait.’
‘Until you get used to it. Makes a fine insect killer, too. Just splash it on the floor and in cracks and such. I can’t recommend it highly enough.’
‘Most people smoke rustleaf, not drink it.’
‘Barbarians. Here we are. You’re buying, right?’
‘With what?’
‘Then it goes on Selush’s account, meaning you just have to pay later.’
‘Fine.’
Shurq Elalle stood in front of the long silver mirror. Instinct had her gauging the worth of all that silver for a moment before she finally focused on the reflected image. A healthy pallor to her skin, her cheeks glowing with vigour. Her hair was clean and had been cut for the first time in years, scented with a hint of patchouli oil. The whites of her eyes were clear, a wet gleam reflecting from her pupils.
The rotted leathers and linen of her clothing had been replaced with black silks beneath a short black calf-hide jacket. A new weapons belt, tanned leggings and high boots. Tight leather gloves. ‘I look like a whore.’
‘Not any old whore, though, right?’ Selush said.
‘True, I’ll take your coin then kill you. That’s how I look.’
‘There are plenty of men out there who’ll go for that, you know.’
‘Getting killed?’
‘Absolutely. In any case, I was led to believe that wasn’t your profession. Although I suppose you might feel inclined to try something new—how does the ootooloo feel, by the way?’
‘Hungry. Can’t I feed it, uh, something else?’
Selush’s eyes sparkled. ‘Experimentation, that’s the spirit!’
Some comments, the undead woman reflected, deserved no response.
Shurq Elalle flexed the muscles that would permit her to draw breath—they were long out of practice, and it was strange to feel the still vague and remote sense of air sliding down her throat and filling her chest. After the pump, there had been infusions. The breath she released smelled of cinnamon and myrrh. Better than river mud any day.
‘Your work is acceptable,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s a relief! It’s nearly dawn, and I’m starving. Shall we test you out, dear? I imagine my assistant and Tehol are at the local establishment, breaking their fast. Let us join them.’
‘I thought I wasn’t supposed to eat or drink.’
‘No, but you can preen and flirt, can’t you?’
Shurq stared at the woman.
Selush smiled. Then her eyelids fluttered and she turned away. ‘Where’s my shawl?’
Kuru Qan had left and returned with two assistants who carried Brys back to the Ceda’s chambers, where he was laid down on a bench and plied with var
ious liquids and food. Even so, strength was slow to return and he was still lying supine, head propped up on a cushion, when the doors opened and First Eunuch Nifadas entered.
His small eyes glittered as he looked down on Brys. ‘King’s Champion, are you well enough to meet your king? He will be here in a moment.’
Brys struggled to sit straighter. ‘This is unfortunate. I am, for the moment, unequal to my responsibilities—’
‘Never mind that, Finadd. Your king seeks only to ensure you will recover from your ordeal. Genuine concern motivates Ezgara Diskanar in this instance. Please, remain where you are. I have never seen you so pale.’
‘Something has fed on his blood,’ Kuru Qan said, ‘but he will not tell me what it was.’
Nifadas pursed his lips as he regarded Brys. ‘I cannot imagine that a god would do such a thing.’
‘Mael was not there, First Eunuch,’ Brys said. ‘The Tiste Edur found something else, and have bound it to their service.’
‘Can you tell us what this thing is?’
‘A forgotten god, but that is the extent of my knowledge. I do not know its nature, nor the full breadth of its power. It is old, older than the ocean itself. Whatever worshipped it was not human.’
A voice spoke from the doorway. ‘I am ever careless with my assets, although the Errant has spared me the cruellest consequence thus far, for which I am thankful.’
Kuru Qan and Nifadas both bowed low as Ezgara Diskanar entered the chamber. In his sixth decade, the king’s features remained surprisingly youthful. He was of average height, slightly on the lean side, his gestures revealing a nervous energy that seemed tireless. The bones beneath his features were prominent and somewhat asymmetrical, the result of a childhood incident with a bad-tempered horse. Right cheekbone and orbital arch sat flatter and higher than their counterparts on the left side of the king’s face, making the eye on that side seem larger and rounder. It was a poorly functioning eye and had a tendency to wander independently when Ezgara was irritated or weary. Healers could have corrected the damage, but the king forbade it—even as a child, he had been obstinate and wilful, and not in the least concerned with outward appearance.
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 391