The Malazan Empire Series: (Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne, Blood and Bone, Assail) (Novels of the Malazan Empire)

by Ian C. Esslemont

  Shool picked up his helmet and turned it in his hands. He seemed to study the blue-dyed leather wrapping and the silver chasing of the Chosen Stormguard. ‘You are expecting an offensive from the Malazans with this new Emperor?’

  ‘I am expecting an offensive, Shool,’ Hiam said levelly, ‘but not from the Malazans.’

  The helmet froze. Shool dropped his head in acquiescence. ‘My apologies, Lord Protector.’

  From a hook next to the window Hiam lifted the heavy layered wool cloak he wore year round, both in the dire biting wind of winter and in the simmering heat of summer. ‘Shall we?’

  Shool stood hastily, bowing. ‘Yes, Lord Protector.’

  They exited the main donjon to step out on to the wide, windswept main marshalling surface of the wall, fifty paces wide. Seaward rose a thinner wall, lined by staircases of stone and topped by a walkway and parapets – the outer machicolations. The grey granite blocks of the wall’s construction glittered dark from a recent rain and pools reflected the overcast sky.

  Distraction, Hiam told himself. These Malazans. Nothing more than a distraction from their true calling – their God-given purpose. Never mind that too many seemed unduly impressed by that Empire’s accomplishments elsewhere. But they were no fleabitten barbarians gawping at the mysteries of ordered infantry, nor decadent citydwellers to be intimidated or bought; they were the Stormguard, the Chosen, defenders of all the lands from its greatest enemy.

  They would not be overborne. They could not.

  A Chosen met them just outside the doorway. He stood wrapped in the thick dark-blue cloak that was their unofficial uniform, crested helmet on his head and wide leaf-bladed spear held tall. Wall Marshal and Quartermaster, Quint of Theft. He bowed to Hiam and his dark, scarred features twisted in what the Lord Protector knew passed as the man’s smile; he inclined his head in acknowledgement.

  As they made their inspection tour, Hiam could not help noting troubling details even as he passed them over without comment: cracked steps in ill-repair; torn baskets that ought to be replaced; thin frayed rope past its best years; the tattered edges of Quint’s cloak and his cracked sandals. Lack of maintenance, lack of equipment. All problems adequate funds could solve. But what monies the Stormguard did pull in through tribute, taxation and levies it poured entirely into acquiring warm bodies to man the wall – in any manner it could.

  And that flow of tribute and taxation was diminishing. Particularly now with the presence of the invaders, the Malazans, emboldening resentful neighbours such as Stygg and Jasston to neglect their ages-old treaties and agreements.

  ‘How go repairs, Marshal?’ Hiam asked.

  Quint’s scarred face – the gift of a Rider’s jagged blade – twisted down even further. Beneath his cloak he shifted his arms, cradling the spear haft. ‘Slow as fastidious whores in a brothel, these labourers. ’

  Hiam could not keep an answering wry smile from his lips. The man had the reputation of being most ferocious Stormguard on the wall. Together they went all the way back to induction, though Quint preceded him. ‘They aren’t volunteers, like the old days.’ Unlike us.

  An answering grunt was all the marshal would allow – an informality none other would dare before the Lord Protector. ‘If they worked a fraction as hard as they complained we’d have every job done by now. You should hear them, Hiam. How they give enough in the winter without having to provide work gangs in the summer. Yet not one man of them has ever stood the wall. We rely more on foreign levies now than on true Korelri. It’s a damned disgrace is what it is. It wouldn’t surprise me …’ His voice trailed away, then he gave a harsh laugh. ‘Well, their song always changes when the snow flies, hey, Hiam?’

  Hiam had glanced up to see Quint’s gaze on Shool’s shocked face. Yes, old friend, we aren’t alone. Going to say you wouldn’t be surprised if Our Lady turned her face from us for our sins, hey? We’re now the old dogs grumbling about how standards have fallen, just as did our instructors and superiors before us.

  Stopping, Hiam nodded to Shool. ‘That’s all. I’ll look at the inventories later.’

  Shool bowed. ‘My lord.’

  Quint watched him go. ‘Too soon from the tit, that one,’ he growled.

  ‘He did his season.’ Quint grunted, unimpressed. ‘So, give it to me straight, Quartermaster. Not your usual sweet-talk.’

  ‘’Sa bloody cock-up, is what it is. We’re behind schedule everywhere. There’s a crack in the facing east of Vor you could shove a man through. But,’ and he bared yellowed uneven teeth, ‘I could say the same thing about a woman I knew from Jourilan.’

  ‘Master Stimins?’

  Quint let go a snort of exasperation. ‘Let me tell you about Master Engineer Stimins. Last week he drags me down the wall behind the fifth tower north of Storm, and he points to a little course of sand in the rocks. The man’s pulling his hair out over some tiny dried-up rivulet while I’m trying to find enough masons to fill gaps!’

  ‘He’s worried about the foundations.’

  ‘Foundation my arse. The wall’s as heavy as a mountain. It can’t fall down. Anyway, it’s just a place to stand – it’s the men and women defending it who count. And we need more of them.’

  ‘Lady bless that, Quint. So, what about the latest crop? How are they shaping up?’

  ‘As useful as eunuchs and seamstresses. But we’ll knock them into line. The usual prison scrapings from Katakan and Theft aren’t worth the food we buy to feed them. The Dourkan and Jourilan contingents are pretty solid, as ever. Mare has sent a shipload of Malazan prisoners. We even have some debtors from Rool – the Malazans continue to allow it, apparently.’

  ‘They get their cut, I’m sure. Speaking of them, how’s the current champion?’

  The quartermaster shook a sour negative. ‘We can’t count on another season out of him. He has the death wish. I’ve seen it before.’

  ‘Too bad. He accomplished some amazing feats.’

  ‘True. ’Cept he laughs like a lunatic every time we call him Malazan.’

  Nodding to himself, Hiam listened to the wind carrying the distant metallic clinks of mallets on stone, the calls of foremen, and the low heartbeat of the quickening autumn surf. His arms were sweaty beneath the sweltering cloak. ‘Very good, Quartermaster. I won’t keep you from your duties any longer.’

  Quint tilted his head suspiciously. ‘Where’re you off to?’

  ‘To find our good Master Engineer.’

  ‘Ha! You’ll likely find him on his hands and knees, sniffing around our foundations like a dog, no doubt.’

  ‘Carry on, Wall Marshal – and stay out of Stimins’ way.’

  ‘With pleasure.’

  It was not until late that afternoon that the Lord Protector finally tracked down Master Engineer Stimins. And – true to Quint’s prediction – the man was sniffing around the base of the wall. By that time Hiam had picked up an escort: two veterans, Stall of Korel and solid Evessa out of Jourilan, whom many suspected of carrying more than a drop of the old blood. They’d arrived care of Quint, whose message was that it was unseemly for the Lord Protector to be wandering about without guards. Hiam did not bother pointing out that it was just as unseemly for Quint to allow the Master Engineer to do so.

  He heard Stimins long before he found him, among the huge tumbled boulders of the slope that graded back from the wall’s rear. ‘You’re a pretty one,’ he heard the old fellow coo, and he didn’t have to wonder what the man was addressing. ‘Very nice, very nice.’ Stumbling along with him, their spears clattering, Stall and Evessa shared a glance and rolled their eyes.

  Hiam wondered if he was stalking a parrot.

  Eventually, circling round a tall boulder, he found the man hunched down on all fours like a pale spider investigating a crevice for food. ‘Master Engineer …’ Hiam began.

  The man jumped, and glared about myopically beneath bushy white brows. ‘Who’s that? Who?’

  ‘It’s Hiam, Stimins.’

  ‘Oh, yo
ung Hiam. What in the Lady’s name are you doing down here?’

  ‘Looking for you,’ Hiam observed tartly.

  ‘Ah! Well, whatever for?’

  Hiam crooked his head to motion away his escort. Bowing, they moved off to lean back amongst the tumbled boulders, arms crossed over the hafts of their spears. ‘Your report.’

  The engineer was fiddling with small rocks in the palm of one hand, turning them round and round. ‘Report? What report?’

  The Lord Protector slapped a hand to the hot gritty side of a boulder. Dried bird guano streaked the stone white and patches of lichen grew green and orange. ‘Your report on the state of the wall!’

  ‘Ah. That report. Well, it’s not conclusive yet. I need to study things further.’

  ‘That’s what you said last year, and the year before that.’

  The snowy brows rose over pale, watery blue eyes. ‘I did? Well, there you go.’

  ‘With all due respect, Master Engineer. We no longer have the time for the luxury of conclusiveness … Your current assessment will have to do.’

  Stimins sniffed his disapproval. ‘That’s the trouble with you younger generations – no patience to do the job right. Things are off to the Abyss in a broken wagon, they are.’

  Hiam crossed his arms, and his cloak fell open to reveal the broad scarred forearms, the dire gouges and deep scrapes in the bronze and leather vambraces. The Master Engineer extended his bony hand, clenched, knuckles knotted in joint-ache. Hiam held his own out, open. Two small stones fell into his palm.

  ‘My report,’ Stimins said.

  Mystified, Hiam studied the two stones. Taking one in each hand he found that they fitted together exactly: two halves of the same piece. ‘What’s this? A broken rock?’

  ‘Shattered cleanly in half, Lord Protector. By the corroding cold itself.’

  Now Hiam regarded his Master Engineer. ‘The cold? How could it do such a thing?’

  Stimins raised his hands for patience. ‘Let me correct myself. By frost. By moisture, freezing suddenly. Explosively.’

  Hiam thought of casks of water left out during the worst of the assaults, how some exploded at the touch of the Riders’ sorceries. ‘I see … I think.’

  ‘All up and down the wall,’ Stimins continued, his voice becoming dreamy, ‘freezing, thawing, year after year. But not the mild slow advance of nature, mind you. The forced unnatural fist of the Riders slamming winter after winter. Pounding the wall to slivers.’

  ‘How—’ Hiam coughed to clear his throat. ‘How long do we have?’

  The old man, his face still unfocused, shrugged his maddening disregard. ‘Who is to say? Another one hundred years – or one.’

  Struggling to contain himself, Hiam threw the stones to clatter among the boulders. ‘Thank you for your report, Master Engineer.’ Though it be utterly useless to our current crisis. ‘And I remind you that such information is to be shared only between you and me.’

  The old man blinked his confusion, his brows crimping. ‘But of course, Lord Protector.’

  ‘Very good. Carry on.’ The Lord Protector left his Master Engineer scratching his thin hair and frowning among the rocks.

  His escort, Stall and Evessa, straightened from where they leaned among the menhir-sized boulders. Stall tossed away a handful of pebbles. ‘Odd noises among these stones, hey, Evessa?’

  ‘The strangest echoes, Stall.’

  Ivanr hacked his farm out of the unsettled far south of Jourilan, hard up against the foothills of the immense mountain chain some named the Iceback range. Wanderers and religious refugees fleeing south from the cities often passed his field. Many claimed that the Priestess was nearby but still Ivanr was surprised when she appeared one day. Her voice startled him as he was bent over weeding his garden and he straightened, blinked the sweat from his eyes.

  ‘Ivanr,’ she said, ‘what is it you fear about me?’

  He studied the slip of a girl-woman in her dirty rags before him. A foreigner come to convert an entire land. He saw a face lined and drawn by a suffering no youth should be asked to endure; limbs emaciated, almost warped by the tasks that had been exacted from them. And yet the undeniable aura of power hovered about her, warning off any who would consider a challenge. Shrugging, he returned to his weeding.

  ‘Priestess, I do not fear you.’

  ‘Yet you resolutely avoid me.’

  He gestured broadly to his field. ‘I have work to do.’

  Dry leaves shushed as she closed. Her bare feet were dirty, her robes no more than mud-smeared tatters. ‘As do I. Could it be, Ivanr, that you fear I may have other work for you?’

  ‘You have plenty of others to choose from.’

  ‘Yet here I am speaking to you.’

  He straightened, towering over her, and she raised her chin to meet his gaze. Her tangled black hair blew about her face like a cowl. He had to flinch from the depths of those compelling eyes. ‘Well, you’re wasting your time.’

  ‘You presume to know what I am doing? They mock you, you know. Call you farmer. Dirt-grubber. Coward.’

  ‘And I grow things called tomatoes, beans, marrow.’ That raised a brief haunted smile. ‘You do not need me. I’m told you have many of the aristocrats. The pure-blooded ruling families.’

  ‘True. Sons and daughters of the highest Jourilan names have marched up to my modest fig tree. “Teach me,” they demand. “Instruct me in this new way we hear of.” Already perhaps they are too far down the wrong path. But I cannot show them that – only you can.’

  He studied his dirt-smeared hands; cut and bloodied, calloused, nails broken. Just as during all those years of training and duelling. ‘They won’t listen to me. I’m … of the wrong background.’

  ‘Ah yes. That taint so shameful to the Jourilan. Mixed blood. Do you know the name of your ancestors, Ivanr?’

  He shrugged, his gaze hooded. ‘My mother said her people were of the Red-Rock tribe of the Thoul-Alai. That is all I know.’

  The Priestess’s voice hardened in sudden outrage. ‘Your people were of the Toblakai, Ivanr! Blessed of the children of the Great Mother! Some of you survive, isolated, in pockets here and there, despite the best efforts of all those who have stolen your lands.’

  ‘Stolen? Strong language for an outlander.’

  Now the Priestess hugged her angular frame, the lines at her mouth deepened in shadow. ‘It is a story not unfamiliar to me.’

  Ivanr stared wonderingly. So, a vulnerable side. An opening up. Careful. Seduction bears many faces. ‘Immaterial. What’s done is done. Nothing can bring back the past.’

  ‘I would never seek that.’ Her words were softer now, her tone closer to that of her true tender age. He felt the wounds that she carried and something within him ached to hold her, to soothe that pain.

  Dangerous indeed.

  ‘The question is how to proceed into the future. You, Ivanr, the warrior champion who defied the call to the Stormwall. I have heard many rumours as to why. But I have my own theory …’

  His gaze found a flight of crows crossing over the face of the distant Jourilan central plateau. Smoke obscured the north horizon; he shielded his eyes, squinting. Burning already – damned early. ‘It was cowardice – leave it at that.’

  ‘No. It would be cowardice to leave it at that.’

  He let his hand fall. She eyed him levelly, almost coolly, and he felt himself shrinking under that steady gaze. Such suffering scoured into that lined hatchet face that should be unmarred! And a haunting glow as well – the lingering hint of the revelation everyone whispers of? Who is he to dare dispute this one’s choices? But surely he must be unworthy! How could he, who once gloried in conflict, possibly serve Dessembrae, the Lord of Tragedy, or any of these foreign gods?

  ‘I couldn’t. I’m not—’

  ‘Not worthy? Not pure enough? Not dedicated enough? Not … certain? None of us is. And none who is certain interests the Lord of Tragedy. Those minds are closed. He requires the mind be open.’
She now seemed to eye him sidelong, almost mockingly. ‘It was your open mind that led you to your conclusion, to that intuitive flash that so changed you, yes?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You saw instinctively, on your own, the uselessness of it all.’

  Gods, this woman was dangerous! How could she know? And yet – wasn’t this the essence of her sermonizing, her own message? He ran a hand across his slick forehead and said, his voice hoarse, ‘Dangerous talk, Priestess. Talk that can get a man, or a woman, put to death.’

  ‘So you are afraid …’

  He offered a half-smile. ‘Of the Jourilan Emperor’s torture pits, yes.’

  ‘They aren’t the enemy. The enemy is ignorance and hate. Aren’t these worth opposing?’

  Pure idealism. Ye gods, where does one begin with such a one? His gaze found the peppers ripening at his feet. ‘Priestess,’ he began, slowly, ‘you don’t really think you’re the first, do you?’ He waved to encompass the fields. ‘The Lady Our Saviour has kept a tight watch on her garden all these generations. She weeds thoroughly. And ruthlessly. No unwelcome invader has been allowed to take hold. I’ve seen it before.’

  The Priestess raised her gaze, and perhaps it was day’s late argent light, or a reflection of some kind, but the eyes flared as if molten.

  ‘Have you not wondered,’ she asked in a low voice, ‘why you must constantly weed in the first place?’

  He cocked his head, uncertain of her tack.

  ‘It is because the weeds are far hardier than the crop you’re trying to raise.’

  Ivanr found that he’d flinched away. He paced the field, stepping between the plants. Damn you, woman! How dare you plague me with such outrageous demands! Haven’t I done enough? But perhaps walking away wasn’t enough. Perhaps walking away was never enough. He stopped his pacing. Turning to her, he could only offer his mute denial.

  She approached gently, as if afraid he would flee, and proffered a hand. ‘Take this. And come to my fig tree. Sit at my side. Listen to the message that has come to me. I believe you are already far down the path.’