The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  A voice spoke behind him. ‘I do not welcome company here.’

  The Errant turned. He slowly cocked his head. ‘It’s not often the sight of a woman inspires fear in my soul.’

  She scowled. ‘Am I that ugly, Elder?’

  ‘To the contrary, Menandore. Rather…formidable.’

  ‘You have trespassed into my place of refuge.’ She paused, then asked, ‘Does it so surprise you, that one such as myself needs refuge?’

  ‘I do not know how to answer that,’ he replied.

  ‘You’re a careful one, Errant.’

  ‘I suspect you want a reason to kill me.’

  She walked past him, long black sarong flowing from frayed ends and ragged tears. ‘Abyss below,’ she murmured, ‘am I so transparent? Who but you could have guessed that I require justification for killing?’

  ‘So your sense of sarcasm has survived your solitude, Menandore. It is what I am ever accused of, isn’t it? My…random acts.’

  ‘Oh, I know they’re not random. They only seem that way. You delight in tragic failure, which leads me to wonder what you want with me? We are not well suited, you and I.’

  ‘What have you been up to lately?’ he asked.

  ‘Why should I tell you?’

  ‘Because I have information to impart, which you will find…well suited to your nature. And I seek recompense.’

  ‘If I deny it you will have made this fraught journey for nothing.’

  ‘It will only be fraught if you attempt something untoward, Menandore.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Her unhuman eyes regarded him steadily.

  He waited.

  ‘Sky keeps,’ she said.

  ‘Ah, I see. Has it begun, then?’

  ‘No, but soon.’

  ‘Well, you are not one to act without long preparation, so I am not that surprised. And which side will we, eventually, find you on, Menandore?’

  ‘Why, mine of course.’

  ‘You will be opposed.’

  One thin brow arched.

  The Errant glanced around. ‘A pleasant place. What warren are we in?’

  ‘You would not believe me if I told you.’

  ‘Ah,’ he nodded, ‘that one. Very well, your sisters conspire.’

  ‘Not against me, Errant.’

  ‘Not directly, or, rather, not immediately. Rest assured, however, that the severing of your head from your shoulders is the eventual goal.’

  ‘Has she been freed, then?’

  ‘Imminent.’

  ‘And you will do nothing? What of the others in that fell city?’

  Others? ‘Mael is being…Mael. Who else hides in Letheras, barring your two sisters?’

  ‘Sisters,’ she said, then sneered as she turned away, walked to one edge of the glade, where she crouched and plucked a flower. Facing him once more, she lifted the flower to draw deep its scent.

  From the snapped stem, thick red blood dripped steadily.

  I’ve indeed heard it said that beauty is the thinnest skin.

  She suddenly smiled. ‘Why, no-one. I misspoke.’

  ‘You invite me to a frantic and no doubt time-devouring search to prove your ingenuousness, Menandore. What possible reason could you have to set me on such a trail?’

  She shrugged. ‘Serves you right for infringing upon my place of refuge, Errant. Are we done here?’

  ‘Your flower is bled out,’ he said, as he stepped back, and found himself once more in the empty, flooded corridor of the Eternal Domicile’s fifth wing.

  Others. The bitch.

  As soon as the Errant vanished from the glade, Menandore flung the wilted flower to one side, and two figures emerged from the forest, one from her left, the other from her right.

  Menandore arched her back as she ran both hands through her thick red hair.

  Both figures paused to watch.

  She had known they would. ‘You heard?’ she asked, not caring which one answered.

  Neither did. Menandore dropped her pose and scowled over to the scrawny, shadow-swarmed god to her left. ‘That cane is an absurd affectation, you know.’

  ‘Never mind my absurd affectations, woman. Blood dripping from a flower, for Hood’s sake – oops—’ The god known as Shadowthrone tilted a head towards the tall, cowled figure opposite. ‘Humblest apologies, Reaper.’

  Hood, Lord of Death, seemed to cock his head as if surprised. ‘Yours?’

  ‘Apologies? Naturally not. I but made a declarative statement. Was there a subject attached to it? No. We three fell creatures have met, have spoken, have agreed on scant little, and have concluded that our previous impressions of each other proved far too…generous. Nonetheless, it seems we are agreed, more or less, on the one matter you, Hood, wanted to address. It’s no wonder you’re so ecstatic.’

  Menandore frowned at the Lord of Death, seeking evidence of ecstasy. Finding none, she eyed Shadowthrone once more. ‘Know that I have never accepted your claim.’

  ‘I’m crushed. So your sisters are after you. What a dreadful family you have. Want help?’

  ‘You too? Recall my dismissal of the Errant.’

  Shadowthrone shrugged. ‘Elders think too slowly. My offer is of another magnitude. Think carefully before you reject it.’

  ‘And what do you ask in return?’

  ‘Use of a gate.’

  ‘Which gate?’

  Shadowthrone giggled, then the eerie sound abruptly stopped, and in a serious tone he said, ‘Starvald Demelain.’

  ‘To what end?’

  ‘Why, providing you with assistance, of course.’

  ‘You want my sisters out of the way, too – perhaps more than I do. Squirming on that throne of yours, are you?’

  ‘Convenient convergence of desires, Menandore. Ask Hood about such things, especially now.’

  ‘If I give you access to Starvald Demelain, you will use it more than once.’

  ‘Not I.’

  ‘Do you so vow?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Foolish,’ Hood said in a rasp.

  ‘I hold you to that vow, Shadowthrone,’ Menandore said.

  ‘Then you accept my help?’

  ‘As you do mine in this matter. Convergence of desires, you said.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Shadowthrone said. ‘I retract all notions of “help”. We are mutually assisting one another, as fits said convergence; and once finished with the task at hand, no other obligations exist between us.’

  ‘That is agreeable.’

  ‘You two,’ Hood said, turning away, ‘are worse than advocates. And you don’t want to know what I do with the souls of advocates.’ A heartbeat later and the Lord of Death was gone.

  Menandore frowned. ‘Shadowthrone, what are advocates?’

  ‘A profession devoted to the subversion of laws for profit,’ he replied, his cane inexplicably tapping as he shuffled back into the woods. ‘When I was Emperor, I considered butchering them all.’

  ‘So why didn’t you?’ she asked as he began to fade into a miasma of gloom beneath the trees.

  Faintly came the reply, ‘The Royal Advocate said it’d be a terrible mistake.’

  Menandore was alone once again. She looked around, then grunted. ‘Gods, I hate this place.’ A moment later she too vanished.

  Janall, once Empress of the Lether Empire, was now barely recognizable as a human. Brutally used as a conduit of the chaotic power of the Crippled God, her body had been twisted into a malign nightmare, bones bent, muscles stretched and bunched, and now, huge bulges of fat hung in folds from her malformed body. She could not walk, could not even lift her left arm, and the sorcery had broken her mind, the madness burning from eyes that glittered malevolently in the gloom as Nisall, carrying a lantern, paused in the doorway.

  The chamber was rank with sweat, urine and other suppurations from the countless oozing sores on Janall’s skin; the sweet reek of spoiled food, and another odour, pungent, that reminded the Emperor’s Concubine of rotting te
eth.

  Janall dragged herself forward with a strange, asymmetrical shift of her hips, pivoting on her right arm. The motion made a sodden sound beneath her, and Nisall saw the streams of saliva easing out from the once-beautiful woman’s misshapen mouth. The floor was pooled in the mucus and it was this, she realized, that was the source of the pungent smell.

  Fighting back nausea, the Concubine stepped forward. ‘Empress.’

  ‘No longer!’ The voice was ragged, squeezed out from a deformed throat, and drool spattered with every jerk of her misshapen jaw. ‘I am Queen! Of his House, his honeyed House – oh, we are a contented family, oh yes, and one day, one day soon, you’ll see, that pup on the throne will come here. For me, his Queen. You, whore, you’re nothing – the House is not for you. You blind Rhulad to the truth, but his vision will clear, once,’ her voice dropped to a whisper and she leaned forward, ‘we are rid of you.’

  ‘I came,’ Nisall said, ‘to see if you needed anything—’

  ‘Liar. You came in search of allies. You think to steal him away. From me. From our true master. You will fail! Where’s my son? Where is he?’

  Nisall shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t even know if he’s still alive – there are those in the court who claim he is, whilst others tell me he is long dead. But, Empress, I will seek to find out. And when I do, I will return. With the truth.’

  ‘I don’t believe you. You were never my ally. You were Ezgara’s whore, not mine.’

  ‘Has Turudal Brizad visited you, Empress?’

  For a moment it seemed she would not answer. Then she managed something like a shrug. ‘He does not dare. Master sees through my eyes – tell Rhulad that, and he will understand what must be. Through my eyes – look closer, if you would know a god. The god. The only god that matters now. The rest of them are blind, as blind as you’ve made Rhulad, but they’re all in for a surprise, oh yes. The House is big – bigger than you imagine. The House is all of us, whore, and one day that truth will be proclaimed, so that all will hear. See me? I am on my knees, and that is no accident. Every human shall be on their knees, one day, and they will know me for their Queen. As for the King in Chains,’ she laughed, a sound thick with phlegm, ‘well, the crown is indifferent to whose skull it binds. The pup is failing, you know. Failing. There is…dissatisfaction. I should kill you, now, here. Come closer, whore.’

  Instead, Nisall backed away a step, then two, until she was once more in the doorway. ‘Empress, the Chancellor is the source of Rhulad’s…failings. Your god should know that, lest it make a mistake. If you would kill anyone, it should be Triban Gnol, and, perhaps, Karos Invictad – they plot to usurp the Edur.’

  ‘The Edur?’ She spat. ‘Master’s almost done with them. Almost done.’

  ‘I will send servants down,’ Nisall said. ‘To clean your chamber, Empress.’

  ‘Spies.’

  ‘No, from your own entourage.’

  ‘Turned.’

  ‘Empress, they will take care of you, for their loyalty remains.’

  ‘But I don’t want them!’ Janall hunched lower. ‘I don’t want them…to see me like this.’

  ‘A bed will be sent down. Canopied. You can draw the shroud when they arrive. Pass out the soiled bedding through a part in the curtain.’

  ‘You would do this? I wanted you dead.’

  ‘The past is nothing,’ Nisall said. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Get out,’ Janall rasped, looking away. ‘Master is disgusted with you. Suffering is our natural state. A truth to proclaim, and so I shall, when I win my new throne. Get out, whore, or come closer.’

  ‘Expect your servants within the bell,’ Nisall said, turning and walking from the grisly chamber.

  As the echo of the whore’s footsteps faded, Janall, Queen of the House of Chains, curled up into a ball on the slick, befouled floor. Madness flickered in her eyes, there, then gone, then there once more. Over and over again. She spoke, one voice thick, the other rasping.

  ‘Vulnerable.’

  ‘Until the final war. Watch the army, as it pivots round, entirely round. These sordid games here, the times are almost past, past us all. Oh, when the pain at last ends, then you shall see the truth of me. Dear Queen, my power was once the sweetest kiss. A love that broke nothing.’

  ‘Give me my throne. You promised.’

  ‘Is it worth it?’

  ‘I beg you—’

  ‘They all beg me, and call it prayer. What sour benediction must I swallow from this eternal fount of dread and spite and bald greed? Will you never see? Never understand? I must find the broken ones, just do not expect my reach, my touch. No-one understands, how the gods fear freedom. No-one.’

  ‘You have lied to me.’

  ‘You have lied to yourself. You all do, and call it faith. I am your god. I am what you made me. You all decry my indifference, but I assure you, you would greater decry my attention. No, make no proclamations otherwise. I know what you claim to do in my name. I know your greatest fear is that I will one day call you on it – and that is the real game here, this knuckles of the soul. Watch me, mortal, watch me call you on it. Every one of you.’

  ‘My god is mad.’

  ‘As you would have me, so I am.’

  ‘I want my throne.’

  ‘You always want.’

  ‘Why won’t you give it to me?’

  ‘I answer as a god: if I give you what you want, we all die. Hah, I know – you don’t care! Oh, you humans, you are something else. You make my every breath agony. And my every convulsion is your ecstasy. Very well, mortal, I will answer your prayers. I promise. Just do not ever say I didn’t warn you. Do not. Ever.’

  Janall laughed, spraying spit. ‘We are mad,’ she whispered. ‘Oh yes, quite mad. And we’re climbing into the light…’

  For all the scurrying servants and the motionless, helmed guards at various entrances, Nisall found the more populated areas of the Eternal Domicile in some ways more depressing than the abandoned corridors she’d left behind a third of a bell past. Suspicion soured the air, fear stalked like shadows underfoot between the stanchions of torchlight. The palace’s name had acquired a taint of irony, rife as the Eternal Domicile was with paranoia, intrigue and incipient betrayal. As if humans could manage no better, and were doomed to such sordid existence for all time.

  Clearly, there was nothing satisfying in peace, beyond the freedom it provided to get up to no good. She had been shaken by her visit to the supposedly insane once-empress, Janall. This Crippled God indeed lurked in the woman’s eyes – Nisall had seen it, felt that chilling, unhuman attention fixing on her, calculating, pondering her potential use. She did not want to be part of a god’s plans, especially that god’s. Even more frightening, Janall’s ambitions remained, engorged with visions of supreme power, her tortured, brutalized body notwithstanding. The god was using her as well.

  There were rumours of war hissing like wind in the palace, tales of a belligerent conspiracy of border kingdoms and tribes to the east. The Chancellor’s reports to Rhulad had been anything but simple in their exhortations to raise the stakes. A formal declaration of war, the marching of massed troops over the borders in a pre-emptive campaign of conquest. Far better to spill blood on their lands than on Letherii soil, after all. ‘If the Bolkando-led alliance wants war, we should give it to them.’ The Chancellor’s glittering eyes belied the cool, almost toneless enunciation of those words.

  Rhulad had fidgeted on his throne, muttering his unease – the Edur were too spread out, the K’risnan were overworked. Why did the Bolkandans so dislike him? There had been no list of grievances. He had done nothing to spark this fire to life.

  Triban Gnol had pointed out, quietly, that four agents of the conspiracy had been captured entering Letheras only the other day. Disguised as merchants seeking ivory. Karos Invictad had sent by courier their confessions and would the Emperor like to see them?

  Shaking his head in denial, Rhulad had said nothing, his pain-racked e
yes fixed on the tiles of the dais beyond his slippered feet.

  So lost, this terrible Emperor.

  As she turned onto the corridor leading to her private chambers, she saw a tall figure standing near her door. A Tiste Edur, one of the few who were resident in the palace. She vaguely recalled the warrior’s having something to do with security.

  He tilted his head in greeting as she approached. ‘First Concubine Nisall.’

  ‘Has the Emperor sent you?’ she asked, stepping past and waving him behind her into the chambers. Few men could intimidate her – she knew too well their minds. She was less at ease in the company of women, and the virtually neutered men such as Triban Gnol.

  ‘Alas,’ the warrior said, ‘I am not permitted to speak to my Emperor.’

  She paused and glanced back at him. ‘Are you out of favour?’

  ‘I have no idea.’

  Intrigued now, Nisall regarded the Edur for a moment, then asked, ‘Would you like some wine?’

  ‘No, thank you. Were you aware that a directive has been issued by Invigilator Karos Invictad to compile evidence leading to your arrest for sedition?’

  She grew very still. Sudden heat flashed through her, then she felt cold, beads of sweat like ice against her skin. ‘Are you here,’ she whispered, ‘to arrest me?’

  His brows rose. ‘No, nothing of the sort. The very opposite, in fact.’

  ‘You wish, then, to join in my treason?’

  ‘First Concubine, I do not believe you are engaged in any seditious acts. And if you are, I doubt they are directed against Emperor Rhulad.’

  She frowned. ‘If not the Emperor, then whom? And how could it be considered treasonous if they are not aimed at Rhulad? Do you think I resent the Tiste Edur hegemony? Precisely whom am I conspiring against?’

  ‘If I was forced to hazard a guess…Chancellor Triban Gnol.’

  She said nothing for a moment, then, ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Forgive me. My name is Bruthen Trana. I was appointed to oversee the operations of the Patriotists, although it is likely that the Emperor has since forgotten that detail.’