The Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

‘Trust me,’ the corporal replied after taking a deep draught. He belched. ‘Sure, she’s hiding it well, but that woman died some time ago.’

  Balm was hunched over the table, scratching at the tangles of his hair. Flakes drifted down to land like specks of paint on the dark wood. ‘Gods below,’ he whispered. ‘Maybe somebody should…I don’t know…maybe…tell her?’

  Deadsmell’s mostly hairless brows lifted. ‘Excuse me, ma’am, you have a complexion to die for and I guess that’s what you did.’

  Another squawk from Throatslitter.

  The corporal continued, ‘Is it true, ma’am, that perfect hair and expensive make-up can hide anything?’

  A choked squeal from Throatslitter.

  Heads turned.

  Deadsmell drank down another mouthful, warming to the subject. ‘Funny, you don’t look dead.’

  The high-pitched cackle erupted.

  As it died, sudden silence in the main room of the tavern, barring that of a rolling tankard, which then plunged off a tabletop and bounced on the floor.

  Balm glared at Deadsmell. ‘You done that. You just kept pushing and pushing. Another word from you, corporal, and you’ll be deader than she is.’

  ‘What’s that smell?’ Deadsmell asked. ‘Oh right. Essence of putrescence.’

  Balm’s cheeks bulged, his face turning a strange purple shade. His yellowy eyes looked moments from leaping out on their stalks.

  Throatslitter tried squeezing his own eyes shut, but the image of his sergeant’s face burst into his mind. He shrieked behind his hands. Looked round in helpless appeal.

  All attention was fixed on them now, no-one speaking. Even the beautiful woman who’d shipped in with that maimed oaf and the oaf himself – whose one good eye glittered out from the folds of a severe frown – had paused, standing each to one side of the cask of ale the tavernkeeper had brought out. And the keeper himself, staring at Throatslitter with mouth hanging open.

  ‘Well,’ Deadsmell observed, ‘there goes our credit as bad boys. Throaty here’s making mating calls – hope there’s no turkeys on this island. And you, sergeant, your head looks ready to explode like a cusser.’

  Balm hissed, ‘It was your fault, you bastard!’

  ‘Hardly. As you see, I am calm. Although somewhat embarrassed by my company, alas.’

  ‘Fine, we’re shifting you off. Hood knows, Gilani’s a damned sight prettier to look at—’

  ‘Yes, but she happens to be alive, sergeant. Not your type at all.’

  ‘I didn’t know!’

  ‘Now that is a most pathetic admission, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Hold on,’ Throatslitter finally interjected. ‘I couldn’t tell about her either, Deadsmell.’ He jabbed a finger at the corporal. ‘Further proof you’re a damned necromancer. No, forget that shocked look, we ain’t buying no more. You knew she was dead because you can smell ’em, just like your name says you can. In fact, I’d wager that’s why Braven Tooth gave you that name – doesn’t miss a thing, ever, does he?’

  The ambient noise was slowly resurrecting itself, accompanied by more than a few warding gestures, a couple of chairs scraping back through filth as patrons made furtive escapes out of the front door.

  Deadsmell drank more ale. And said nothing.

  The dead woman and her companion headed out, the latter limping as he struggled to balance the cask on one shoulder.

  Balm grunted. ‘There they go. Typical, isn’t it? Just when we’re under strength, too.’

  ‘Nothing to worry about, sergeant,’ Deadsmell said. ‘It’s all in hand. Though if the keeper decides on following…’

  Throatslitter grunted. ‘If he does, he’ll regret it.’ He rose then, adjusting the marine-issue rain cape. ‘Lucky you two, getting to sit here adding fat to your arses. It’s damned cold out there, you know.’

  ‘I’m making note of all this insubordination,’ Balm grumbled. Then tapped his head. ‘In here.’

  ‘Well that’s a relief,’ Throatslitter said. He left the tavern.

  Shake Brullyg, tyrant of Second Maiden Fort, would-be King of the Isle, slouched in the old prison prefect’s high-backed chair and glared from under heavy brows at the two foreigners at the table beside the chamber’s door. They were playing another of their damned games. Knuckle bones, elongated wooden bowl and split crow-feathers.

  ‘Two bounces earns me a sweep,’ one of them said, although Brullyg was not quite sure of that – picking up a language on the sly was no easy thing, but he’d always been good with languages. Shake, Letherii, Tiste Edur, Fent, trader’s tongue and Meckros. And now, spatterings of this…this Malazan.

  Timing. They’d taken it from him, as easily as they’d taken his knife, his war-axe. Foreigners easing into the harbour – not so many aboard as to cause much worry, or so it had seemed. Besides, there had been enough trouble to chew on right then. A sea filled with mountains of ice, bearing down on the Isle, more ominous than any fleet or army. They said they could take care of that – and he’d been a drowning man going down for the last time.

  Would-be King of the Isle, crushed and smeared flat under insensate ice. Face to face with that kind of truth had been like dragon claws through his sail. After all he’d done…

  Timing. He now wondered if these Malazans had brought the ice with them. Sent it spinning down on the season’s wild current, just so they could arrive one step ahead and offer to turn it away. He’d not even believed them, Brullyg recalled, but desperation had spoken with its very own voice. ‘Do that and you’ll be royal guests for as long as you like.’ They’d smiled at that offer.

  I am a fool. And worse.

  And now, two miserable squads ruled over him and every damned resident of this island, and there was not a thing he could do about it. Except keep the truth from everyone else. And that’s getting a whole lot harder with every day that passes.

  ‘Sweep’s in the trough, pluck a knuckle and that about does it,’ said the other soldier.

  Possibly.

  ‘It skidded when you breathed – I saw it, you cheat!’

  ‘I ain’t breathed.’

  ‘Oh right, you’re a Hood-damned corpse, are you?’

  ‘No, I just ain’t breathed when you said I did. Look, it’s in the trough, you deny it?’

  ‘Here, let me take a closer look. Ha, no it isn’t!’

  ‘You just sighed and moved it, damn you!’

  ‘I didn’t sigh.’

  ‘Right, and you’re not losing neither, are ya?’

  ‘Just because I’m losing doesn’t mean I sighed right then. And see, it’s not in the trough.’

  ‘Hold on while I breathe—’

  ‘Then I’ll sigh!’

  ‘Breathing is what winners do. Sighing is what losers do. Therefore, I win.’

  ‘Sure, for you cheating is as natural as breathing, isn’t it?’

  Brullyg slowly shifted his attention from the two at the door, regarded the last soldier in the chamber. By the coven she was a beauty. Such dark, magical skin, and those tilted eyes just glowed with sweet invitation – damn him, all the mysteries of the world were in those eyes. And that mouth! Those lips! If he could just get rid of the other two, and maybe steal away those wicked knives of hers, why then he’d discover those mysteries the way she wanted him to.

  I’m King of the Isle. About to be. One more week, and if none of the dead Queen’s bitch daughters show up before then, it all falls to me. King of the Isle. Almost. Close enough to use the title, sure. And what woman wouldn’t set aside a miserable soldier’s life for the soft, warm bed of a king’s First Concubine? Sure, that is indeed a Letherii way, but as king I can make my own rules. And if the coven doesn’t like it, well, there’re the cliffs.

  One of the Malazans at the table said, ‘Careful, Masan, he’s getting that look again.’

  The woman named Masan Gilani straightened catlike in her chair, lifting her smooth, not-scrawny arms in an arching stretch that transformed her large breasts into roun
d globes, tautening the worn fabric of her shirt. ‘’S long as he keeps thinking with the wrong brain, Lobe, we’re good and easy.’ She then settled back, straightening her perfect legs.

  ‘We should bring him another whore,’ the one named Lobe said as he gathered the knuckle bones into a small leather bag.

  ‘No,’ Masan Gilani said. ‘Deadsmell barely revived the last one.’

  But that’s not the real reason, is it? Brullyg smiled. No, you want me for yourself. Besides, I’m not usually like that. I was taking out some…frustrations. That’s all. His smile faded. They sure do use their hands a lot when talking. Gestures of all sorts. Strange people, these Malazans. He cleared his throat and spoke Letherii in the slow way they seemed to need. ‘I could do with another walk. My legs want exercise.’ A wink towards Masan Gilani, who responded with a knowing smile that lit him up low down, enough to make him shift in the chair. ‘My people need to see me, you understand? If they start getting suspicious – well, if anybody knows what a house arrest looks like, it is the citizens of Second Maiden Fort.’

  In terribly accented Letherii, Lobe said, ‘You get your ale comes today, right? Best want to be waiting here for that. We walk you tonight.’

  Like a Liberty mistress her pampered dog. Isn’t that nice? And when I lift a leg and piss against you, Lobe, what then?

  These soldiers here did not frighten him. It was the other squad, the one still up-island. The one with that scrawny little mute girl. And she had a way of showing up as if from nowhere. From a swirl of light – he wondered what the Shake witches would make of that cute trick. All Lobe needed to do – Lobe, or Masan Gilani, or Galt, any of them – all they needed to do was call her name.

  Sinn.

  A real terror that one, and not a talon showing. He suspected he’d need the whole coven to get rid of her. Preferably with great losses. The coven had a way of crowding the chosen rulers of the Shake. And they’re on their way, like ravens to a carcass, all spit and cackle. Of course, they can’t fly. Can’t even swim. No, they’ll need boats, to take them across the strait – and that’s assuming the Reach isn’t now a jumbled mass of ice, which is how it looks from here.

  The soldier named Galt rose from his chair, wincing at some twinge in his lower back, then ambled over to what had been the prefect’s prize possession, a tapestry that dominated an entire wall. Faded with age – and stained in the lower left corner with dried spatters of the poor prefect’s blood – the hanging depicted the First Landing of the Letherii, although in truth that was not the colonizers’ first landing. The fleet had come within sight of shore somewhere opposite the Reach. Fent canoes had ventured out to establish contact with the strangers. An exchange of gifts had gone awry, resulting in the slaughter of the Fent men and the subsequent enslavement of the women and children in the village. Three more settlements had suffered the same fate. The next four, southward down the coast, had been hastily abandoned.

  The fleet had eventually rounded Sadon Peninsula on the north coast of the Ouster Sea, then sailed past the Lenth Arm and into Gedry Bay. The city of Gedry was founded on the place of the First Landing, at the mouth of the Lether River. This tapestry, easily a thousand years old, was proof enough of that. The general belief these days was that the landing occurred at the site of the capital itself, well up the river. Strange how the past was remade to suit the present. A lesson there Brullyg could use, once he was king. The Shake were a people of failure, fated to know naught but tragedy and pathos. Guardians of the shore, but incapable of guarding it against the sea’s tireless hunger. All of that needed…revising.

  The Letherii had known defeat. Many times. Their history on this land was bloody, rife with their betrayals, their lies, their heartless cruelties. All of which were now seen as triumphant and heroic.

  This is how a people must see itself. As we Shake must. A blinding beacon on this dark shore. When I am king…

  ‘Look at this damned thing,’ Galt said. ‘Here, that writing in the borders – that could be Ehrlii.’

  ‘But it isn’t,’ Lobe muttered. He had dismantled one of his daggers; on the table before him was the pommel, a few rivets and pins, a wooden handle wrapped in leather, a slitted hilt and the tanged blade. It seemed the soldier was now at a loss on how to put it all back together again.

  ‘Some of the letters—’

  ‘Ehrlii and Letherii come from the same language,’ Lobe said.

  Galt’s glare was suspicious. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I don’t, you idiot. It’s just what I was told.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Ebron, I think. Or Shard. What difference does it make? Somebody who knows things, that’s all. Hood, you’re making my brain hurt. And look at this mess.’

  ‘Is that my knife?’

  ‘Was.’

  Brullyg saw Lobe cock his head, then the soldier said, ‘Footsteps bottom of the stairs.’ And with these words, his hands moved in a blur, and even as Galt was walking towards the door, Lobe was twisting home the pommel and flipping the knife into Galt’s path. Where it was caught one-handed – Galt had not even slowed in passing.

  Brullyg settled back in his chair.

  Rising, Masan Gilani loosened from their scabbards the vicious-looking long-bladed knives at her hips. ‘Wish I was with my own squad,’ she said, then drew a step closer to where Brullyg sat.

  ‘Stay put,’ she murmured.

  Mouth dry, he nodded.

  ‘It’s likely the ale delivery,’ Lobe said from one side of the door, while Galt unlocked it and pushed it out wide enough to enable him to peer through the crack.

  ‘Sure, but those boots sound wrong.’

  ‘Not the usual drooling fart and his son?’

  ‘Not even close.’

  ‘All right.’ Lobe reached under the table and lifted into view a crossbow. A truly foreign weapon, constructed entirely of iron – or something very much like Letherii steel. The cord was thick as a man’s thumb, and the quarrel set into the groove was tipped with an x-shaped head that would punch through a Letherii shield as if it was birch bark. The soldier cranked the claw back and somehow locked it in place. Then he moved along the door’s wall to the corner.

  Galt edged back as the footsteps on the stairs drew nearer. He made a series of hand gestures to which Masan Gilani grunted in response and Brullyg heard ripping cloth behind him and a moment later the point of a knife pressed between his shoulder blades – thrust right through the damned chair. She leaned down. ‘Be nice and be stupid, Brullyg. We know these two and we can guess why they’re here.’

  Glancing back at Masan Gilani, nodding once, Galt then moved into the doorway, opening wide the door. ‘Well,’ he drawled in his dreadful Letherii, ‘if it isn’t the captain and her first mate. Run out of money comes too soon? What you making to comes with ale?’

  A heavy growl from beyond. ‘What did he say, Captain?’

  ‘Whatever it was, he said it badly.’ A woman, and that voice – Brullyg frowned. That was a voice he had heard before. The knife tip dug deeper into his spine.

  ‘We’re bringing Shake Brullyg his ale,’ the woman continued.

  ‘That’s nice,’ Galt replied. ‘We see he comes gets it.’

  ‘Shake Brullyg’s an old friend of mine. I want to see him.’

  ‘He’s busy.’

  ‘Doing what?’

  ‘Thinking.’

  ‘Shake Brullyg? I really doubt that – and who in the Errant’s name are you anyway? You’re no Letherii, and you and those friends of yours hanging out at the tavern, well, none of you were prisoners here either. I asked around. You’re from that strange ship anchored in the bay.’

  ‘Why, Captain, it is simple. We comes to goes all the ice. So Brullyg he rewards us. Guests. Royal guests. Now we keep him company. He is smiles nice all the time. We nice too.’

  ‘Nice idiots, I think,’ the man outside – presumably the captain’s first mate – said in a growl. ‘Now, my arm’s getting tired – move
aside and let me deliver this damned thing.’

  Galt glanced back over a shoulder at Masan Gilani, who said in Malazan, ‘Why you looking at me? I’m just here to keep this man’s tongue hanging.’

  Brullyg licked sweat from his lips. So even knowing that, why does it still work? Am I that stupid? ‘Let them in,’ he said in a low voice. ‘So I can ease their minds and send them away.’

  Galt looked at Masan Gilani again, and though she said nothing, some kind of communication must have passed between them, for he shrugged and stepped back. ‘Comes the ale.’

  Brullyg watched as the two figures entered the chamber. The one in the lead was Skorgen Kaban the Pretty. Which meant…yes. The would-be king smiled, ‘Shurq Elalle. You’ve not aged a day since I last saw you. And Skorgen – put the cask down, before you dislocate your shoulder and add lopsided to your list of ailments. Broach the damned thing and we can all have a drink. Oh,’ he added as he watched the two pirates take in the soldiers – Skorgen almost jumping when he saw Lobe in the corner, crossbow now cradled in his arms – ‘these are some of my royal guests. At the door, Galt. In the corner, Lobe, and this lovely here with the one hand behind the back of my chair is Masan Gilani.’

  Shurq Elalle collected one of the chairs near the door and dragged it opposite Brullyg. Sitting, she folded one leg over the other and laced her hands together on her lap. ‘Brullyg, you half-mad cheating miser of a bastard. If you were alone I’d be throttling that flabby neck of yours right now.’

  ‘Can’t say I’m shocked by your animosity,’ Shake Brullyg replied, suddenly comforted by his Malazan bodyguards. ‘But you know, it was never as bad or ugly as you thought it was. You just never gave me the chance to explain—’

  Shurq’s smile was both beautiful and dark. ‘Why, Brullyg, you were never one to explain yourself.’

  ‘A man changes.’

  ‘That’d be a first.’

  Brullyg resisted shrugging, since that would have opened a nasty slit in the flesh of his back. Instead, he lifted his hands, palms up, as he said, ‘Let’s set aside all that history. The Undying Gratitude rests safe and sound in my harbour. Cargo offloaded and plenty of coin in your purse. I imagine you’re itching to leave our blessed isle.’