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

  The woman had advanced and taken her hands, one in each of her own. ‘You would follow a perilous trail, Kiska.’ She searched her face as Agayla had and nodded as if having satisfied some unspoken question. Motes of gold seemed to float in her eyes. ‘It is good you do not pursue this out of some sort of infatuation. For I do not see him capable of such feelings. Still …’ She regarded Agayla. ‘For her to travel alone …’

  ‘I can think of one or two I would trust,’ Agayla said, frowning. ‘But they have taken on other duties.’

  ‘There is someone I can call upon—’

  ‘I can take care of myself,’ Kiska blurted out.

  Agayla glared her irritation. The Enchantress waved a hand. ‘That is not the question. You must sleep sometime. And a lone traveller is too much of a temptation. Fortunately I have someone in mind …’ and she gestured aside, inviting.

  A man stepped through the barrier. He was of middling height but wiry and obviously powerful. Under desert robes he wore armour Kiska recognized as the style of Seven Cities, a mix of boiled leather and mail. His dark flat features and long black moustache sealed his identity as a son of that region. The most ridiculous weapons hung strapped at his belt: two morningstars. ‘Who is this?’ she demanded.

  Again her aunt glared for her silence.

  The man appeared similarly unimpressed. He indicated Kiska with a lift of his chin but addressed the Enchantress. ‘When we made our deal I told you I was done with protecting.’

  ‘I do not need anyone’s protection.’

  The Enchantress raised a hand. ‘This is … which name would you prefer?’

  ‘Damn fool comes to mind,’ the man ground out. Yet he bowed. ‘Jheval.’

  ‘This is Kiska. She is searching for someone. And it is a mission that has my blessing. The man she wishes to locate may be of interest to you, Jheval. He is Tayschrenn, once High Mage of the Malazan Empire.’

  The man’s eyes widened and he almost stepped backwards. ‘You would ask me to help find him?’

  ‘The gratitude of the Empire would no doubt be extraordinary if he could be found and brought back to them.’

  Those dark eyes narrowed then within their many wrinkles and a decidedly wolfish grin climbed his lips in a way that Kiska found hardly reassuring. ‘Thank you for your concern … m’lady,’ she said, ‘but I do not need this fellow.’

  ‘You will fail if you go alone.’

  The finality of that pronouncement chilled Kiska.

  ‘How are we—’ Jheval began, then corrected himself. ‘That is, how is the man to be tracked down?’

  The Enchantress gestured to a burlap sack atop the broad stone at the centre of the circle. Kiska could not recall seeing it there before.

  ‘The Void that took the High Mage opened on to Chaos and there your trail will take you. When you reach its borders open this. The thing within will then lead you on.’

  Kiska wrapped the sack in her cloak. It was dirty, as if it had been buried. From what she could glimpse inside all it seemed to contain were broken twigs and a few scraps of cloth.

  ‘I can send you on your way from here,’ the Enchantress said. ‘Is that acceptable?’

  ‘Thank you, m’lady,’ Kiska said, bowing.

  Jheval grunted his agreement.

  Agayla, whom Kiska had thought uncharactisterically quiet all this time, now embraced her, kissing her cheeks. ‘Be careful,’ she whispered. ‘I see in the weave that this search will not be the simple task you believe. You may not know what it is you are really after.’

  Kiska would have spoken, but she was silenced by the tears that brimmed in her aunt’s eyes. A moment ago she would have thought such a thing impossible. I never thought of her as old before yet now, suddenly, I see her so. Time is cruel.

  The Enchantress motioned aside. ‘You will see hills. Keep them to your left.’ Kiska bowed again and turned away. Jheval followed, his hands tucked into his leather belt.

  After the two had gone, the Enchantress gently brushed a hand across Agayla’s face. ‘Do not cry, Weaver.’

  ‘I fear I have sent the child to her death.’

  ‘I cannot see into Chaos. But what she has taken as her failure has wounded her to her core. I can only hope she will come to forgive herself.’

  ‘So much is on its way, T’riss. I see it in the weft. The knots ahead come so thick they may choke the shuttle. The cloth may part.’

  ‘It may. We can only do our best to see to it that it only tears in certain places.’

  Agayla smiled then, perhaps at her fears. ‘Yes. It will be a new order.’

  The Queen of Dreams’ face hardened as she looked off into the distance. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice taut with something almost like distaste. ‘Let us hope it will be a better one.’

  It took Bakune two months of questioning, searching archives, and squeezing minor city officials to track down the family name and possible current residence of the family of Sister Charity. Whether the woman yet lived remained to be discovered.

  He left his offices at noon on foot, wrapped in a plain wool cloak. He took the west road until it exited the town proper and here he turned off the way, down towards the coast where a ghetto of shacks and huts spilled down the slope. Dogs raged at his heels, knowing full well he did not belong. Dirty half-naked children stared at him, many obviously the half-breed by-blows of Roolian mothers and the Malazan occupiers. Young toughs collected in the muddy narrow paths, staring silently at what he imagined must be quite the apparition of a Roolian citizen wandering lost in the maze of their neighbourhood. At every turn round a staked tent or wattle and daub hut the crowd seemed to grow until he faced a solid wall of young men and women, dressed no better than the urchins, many carrying wasted limbs, milky blinded eyes, ugly swellings, and other disfigurements of illnesses – all from the filth of their poverty, no doubt.

  ‘I’m looking for the Harldeth family,’ he called to one of the young men. ‘Harldeth. Do you know the name?’

  Blocking Bakune’s way, the fellow just stared. His mouth was twisted in a harelip and Bakune would have suspected him slow but for the unaccountable hostility simmering in his gaze. ‘Stranger,’ a weak voice called from a nearby hut. Bakune ducked his head to squint into the darkness.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Enter.’

  He had to crouch almost double to slip within. He found an old man cross-legged on a woven mat next to a dead blackened hearth. The man was bare-chested despite the gathering cold of autumn. Bakune introduced himself, and was invited to sit. The stink of smoke and old rotten food made him almost gag; he elected to crouch on his haunches. After the old man had sat regarding him for a time, his night-black eyes unreadable, Bakune prompted again, ‘Yes? You know the Harldeth?’

  ‘I know the family.’

  ‘Will you take me to them?’

  ‘Why do you seek them?’

  ‘I’m assessing a death. I need to question Lithel Harldeth. She was once a nun in the Cloister. I’m told her family now lives out here.’

  The old man cocked his head. ‘So, you are assessing a death … Where is the Watch? Where are their truncheons? Where is your signed confession?’

  Bakune pulled away, offended. ‘That’s not how we do things. We assess to apportion the balance of innocence and culpability.’

  The old man just gave a sad indulgent smile. ‘You should spend more time out here, Assessor Bakune.’ He struggled to rise, pulling up a tall walking stick, which he held horizontal. ‘Come.’

  Outside, the old man made some gesture and the crowd backed away. Bakune looked sharply at him; he wore only dirty trousers and jerkin, his grey hair hung stringy and bedraggled, yet his wiry limbs, dark as stained wood, held an obvious strength. A stone on a thong round his neck was the man’s only decoration other than the old branch he held as a staff. A thin cold rain had begun to fall that the old man ignored, though it chilled Bakune. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked, struck by a sudden vague recollection.

&nb
sp; ‘No, Assessor. You most certainly do not know me. This way …’

  Surprised yells sounded up the mud path the way Bakune had come and the crowd parted there to reveal his two Watch guards, their cloaks pulled back from the shortswords hung at their sides.

  ‘Who are these?’ the old man asked.

  Bakune sighed. Lady-damned fools! They’ll ruin everything! ‘Guards that the Watch captain insists follow me around.’

  The old man’s dark eyes slid to Bakune; the indulgent, almost pitying smile returned. ‘Guards, Assessor? Or minders?’ He started off before Bakune could respond.

  The path the old man followed was bewilderingly twisted, probably deliberately so. His two guards plodded along behind, hands at their belts. Each muddy trail they took between crowded shacks seemed identical to the last. Everyone ignored Bakune now, going about their daily business, carrying bundled firewood, earthenware pots of water. Women cooked over low smoky fires.

  Then the old man stopped abruptly at a wattle and daub hut, no different from any other. He gestured within.

  ‘Thank you.’

  He did not answer, only motioned inside once again.

  Within, a family sat eating. Startled, Bakune nearly backed out until the woman present, mother Bakune assumed of the four wide-eyed children, pointed to a woven reed hanging farther within. Bowing, Bakune edged around the staring family and brushed the hanging aside. A thick cloud of smoke blinded him. He had entered what proved to be no more than a tiny nook, and he pressed a fold of his cloak over his nose and mouth. Eventually he made out a low shape hunched before some sort of altar cluttered with burned-down candle stubs, clay lamps, small rudely shaped statues, and stands of smouldering incense sticks.

  ‘Lithel Harldeth?’

  The shape, which had been rocking gently from side to side and crooning to itself, stilled. The head rose, questing. ‘Who is there?’

  ‘Assessor Bakune. I am investigating the recent death of Sister Prudence. I’m told you knew her well.’

  ‘So, she is dead. We’ve been waiting many years.’ A gnarled hand went shakily to the altar, pointed to one crude statue. ‘Look here. The Great Mother Goddess. She has had countless names, though Lady is not one.’ The hand moved to another. ‘The Great Sky-Father this one is called, though Light is his aspect. Here, the Great Deceiver would push forward – not realizing that to succeed would spell his dissolution. Here, the Beast of War stirs again – what shall be the final shape of its rising? Here, the Dark Hoarder of Souls. He has my friend now – may both of them come to know peace. And here, the newcomer, the Broken God, watching and scheming from afar.’

  Bakune recognized these ancient names and titles from his research into the indigenous peoples of the archipelago – all their old animistic spirits of earth, air, and night. All vaguely similar in character to the foreign Malazan faiths, of which, presumably, they were distant relatives. All the old pagan beliefs that had multiplied indiscriminately before the arrival of the Blessed Lady and the one true faith.

  ‘What would you call evil, Assessor?’ the old woman suddenly asked.

  Bakune was rather startled by the question. Breathing in the heady, dizzying smoke he eased himself down to his knees. Vaguely, he wondered what drugs might be mixed in with the exotic woods and herbs being burned here. He’d already realized that he would get no straight answers from the crone, and could hardly press her. ‘I don’t know. The simple-minded would answer whatever is opposed to them. Whatever current enemy or rival they might face at the time. For my part I believe true evil lies in actions. In deliberate harmful acts.’

  ‘Spoken as a magistrate. And it must be said that there is some wisdom in your approach. However, can an act not be harmful in the immediate, yet beneficial in the long term? Could such an act be said to be evil?’

  Bakune waved the choking coils of smoke from his face. The last thing he expected was to be challenged to a philosophical debate. ‘Again, I do not know. I suppose the harm would have to be weighed against the ultimate benefit accrued.’

  The old woman turned her head to regard him directly. Her dirty hair hung like a veil before her face. ‘Exactly. It would have to be … assessed.’

  Bakune suddenly felt stricken. ‘What are you getting at, Lithel?’

  The woman turned away, rocking. ‘I have meditated long and hard on this vexing question, Assessor. There is really only a small set of final responses. My distillation is a refinement of one of them. True pure evil, Assessor, is waste. It is the blunting of potential, the cutting off of a person’s or a people’s promise, or options, for development. It is, emblematically, the death of a child.’ The old woman’s head sank. ‘Look then, Assessor, to the children.’

  ‘Lithel? Lithel?’

  The old woman once more crooned to herself, and now Bakune could hear the ancient burnished pain in her moaning.

  Outside, Bakune straightened, coughing. One of his guards offered a water skin and he took it with gratitude and washed out his mouth.

  ‘What did you hear?’ the old man asked.

  ‘Exactly what I did not want to hear.’

  The old man’s smile climbed free of any reserve. ‘Good. We are done then. And Assessor …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Do not return. Do not try to find this dwelling again. Because you never will.’

  Bakune narrowed his gaze on the man. ‘You would threaten a magistrate?’

  ‘No threat. A fact.’

  The guards snorted their disbelief. Bakune shrugged. His gaze caught the stone at the man’s neck. Engraved on it was a circle with a line across its middle like the line of a horizon. The very sigil scratched on the statue Lithel had named the Great Mother Goddess. Bakune motioned to the necklace. ‘The symbol of the old pagan Earth Mother.’

  The old man’s hand went to the stone. ‘Yes. The old faith. I am of the Drenn.’

  Bakune could not shake a feeling of familiarity. ‘I feel that we have met before.’

  ‘Perhaps briefly. Now, this way.’

  The old man, who once gave his name to the Assessor as Gheven, stopped within the boundary of the shanty town and watched while the magistrate and his minders climbed to the west road. He was surprised, pleased and saddened all at once at having met him again. Surprised by the man’s resilience in keeping to his principles in the face of all that had confronted him for the length of his career; pleased to see him cleaving still to the path to justice – as he interpreted it at any rate – and saddened because he knew what all this would cost the man should he continue along the path as he, Gheven, hoped he would.

  It was sad but necessary. Pain would be inflicted but was it not all to the greater good? A thorny question, that. One he did not feel qualified to settle.

  Back in his office, Bakune settled into his chair and rested his head in his hands. His guards had drifted away once they’d reached the city centre and the blocks holding the mayoral palace and the courts. He didn’t know whether to be grateful for their dedication or to curse them for it. The old man’s insinuations had slid deep along the paths of his own suspicions. His secretaries appeared at his doorway, thick folders in their hands, but Bakune waved them off.

  Rising, he crossed the office and locked the door. He went to a cabinet next to the desk and unlocked it. From the top shelf he pulled out a roll that he laid on his desk. He pulled the ribbon holding the cloth tight and unrolled it. It was a map of Banith that Bakune had ordered drafted years ago. On it, over the years, the Assessor had painstakingly painted in red dots the exact location of every murdered girl and boy he had personally visited, or that he could reliably place. The red dots lay in a thin spread throughout the city; no district was entirely free of their stain. The bright crimson, however, was thickest along the shore, where many bodies were dumped. But not evenly, not randomly. Over the years the marks clumped, observably so, into three main clusters. One to the west, one to the east, and one due south near the centre of the town’s waterfront. Leading mo
re or less straight up from each cluster ran a main road into town. And if one traced each road one’s finger would end up right at the centre of town where lay the holy Cloister of Our Blessed Lady – near which, revealingly enough, not one bloody dot was to be found.

  Bakune sat and stared long and hard at the map, his chin nearly touching his chest. Damn you for doing this to me. You’re killing me. Dot by dot, you are surely killing me. Please, won’t you please just stop. Just go away.

  He pressed his fingertips to his throbbing temples and sat motionless, staring. By the Blessed Lady, what could he possibly be expected to do?

  Around noon the ship’s captain came to talk to Kyle. He was dozing under the shade of an awning, his leg raised and bandaged, when he became vaguely aware that he wasn’t alone any more. Cracking open one eye he saw a wiry fellow gazing down at him, old, grey hair all unkempt, the light dusting of a moustache at the mouth, and a pipe clamped tight between the lips. Multiple gold earrings shone at the lobes and gold bracelets cluttered – her? – wrists. ‘Yes?’ Kyle asked, wary.

  ‘All comfy, are we?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Your bone-mender knows her business.’

  A smile of appreciation stretched the thin lips. ‘Speaking of business …’

  ‘Ah. You are the captain?’

  ‘Yes. June. Cursed June, they call me.’

  ‘Kyle. Cursed? May I ask why?’

  A rise of the bony shoulders. ‘Had seven husbands is why.’ The woman tilted her head to examine him up and down. ‘Can’t place you, I have to say. There’s something of the Wickan about you with the moustache an’ your dark hue an’ all. But not quite.’

  ‘Perhaps we’re distantly related.’

  ‘P’rhaps.’

  Kyle took a pouch from his belt and held it out. ‘All I have for transport to your next port of call.’