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

  Familiar cold fingers brushed Rallick’s neck. ‘Vorcan’s not interested, Krute,’ he said, his voice flat. ‘As the guild now knows, she has a seat on the Council.’

  ‘That talking shop? Sounds like a front to me.’

  ‘She’s moved on. As have I.’

  The man gave an exaggerated nod. ‘Oh, so you say. So you say.’ He laughed, more like a grunt. ‘There’re some in the guild who say you have moved on – body and soul. Those who hold to the Rallick Nom cult.’ He laughed again, as if at the stupidity of people. ‘And yet … got something to show you.’ He edged his head aside. ‘This way.’

  After a measured glance all round, Rallick followed. To his ears his boots crackling on the gravel and debris of neglect sounded startlingly loud.

  They crossed to the poorest, lowest-lying quarter, bordering on the Marsh district. Here the most squalid of what could hardly be called businesses occupied rotting row-houses and shacks. Rag and bone shops, pawnshops, manure collectors, small family tanneries. In the soggy alley of an open sewer lay two bodies.

  Krute invited him to examine them. ‘What do you think?’

  An eye on the assassin, who backed up a reassuring distance, Rallick bent over the first. ‘Professional work. Straight thrust through the back to the heart. Complete surprise – no twisting or turning in the wound.’ He pushed over the second, hesitated, then studied the neck. ‘First-rate cut. Thin razor blade. Straight side to side. Right-handed, with a slight upward angle – attacker was shorter than victim.’

  An angry grunt from Krute. ‘I missed that.’

  Rallick straightened. ‘What’s your point?’

  ‘What brings two ex-Warden guards down here to this shit-hole street, Rallick? You recognized them, didn’t you?’

  ‘I recognized them.’

  ‘But you didn’t say …’

  A thin shrug from Rallick. ‘You’re inside now, Krute.’

  ‘Dammit, man! I’m doing you a fucking favour! Everyone’s accounted for! Everyone!’ He pulled savagely on his stubbled chin. ‘Who could pad up on two veteran guards, take ’em both without a peep? Without even a struggle? It’s a short list, Rallick. And your name’s on it … along with hers.’

  ‘Like I said already, Krute. What’s your point?’

  The man let out a long tight breath, almost like a growl. ‘Always gotta be the hard way with you, hey, Rallick? Well, okay. Here’s my point – Vorcan’s short.’

  Rallick let his head fall as if studying the rank gutter, was quiet for a time, then began backing off. ‘My advice to your superior is stay away. She’s out of your class.’

  He’d exited the alley, now ripening with something far beyond garbage, when a trick of the acoustics brought Krute’s ghostly voice: ‘Yours too, Rallick. Yours too.’

  Impatient banging brought the new waitress, Jess, lumbering to the doors of the Phoenix Inn. She unlatched the lock to peer out, blinking and wincing, into the glaring morning light. A tall dark figure brushed round her, imperious.

  ‘Not open, sir,’ she said, surprised, still blinking. Then, eyeing the retreating back, she relaxed. ‘Oh.’ And she shuffled to the kitchen to wake up Chud.

  Rallick peered down at the fat man sprawled in his chair, head slung back, snoring. Amazement warred with disgust. Crushed pastries littered the table along with empty bottles, smears of exotic mustards and pâté. The rotund figure snored, mouth slack. Rallick had a good view of the bristles of his unshaven bulging neck and the ridiculous vanity of the scruffy braided rat-tail beard. He gave a table leg a light kick.

  The man snorted, jerking. Pudgy hands patted vested stomach, the ruffles of the silk shirt. The head rolled forward, lips smacking. Beady eyes found Rallick, widened. ‘Aaii! Thought grim graven friend new apparition of death come for modest Kruppe. Most discomfiting and shocking wakening. Kruppe has not yet seen to his toilet.’

  ‘Don’t let me stop you.’

  ‘Friend Rallick is always so civilized.’ A large stained handkerchief appeared in one hand, brushed flakes of pastry from the man’s wide midriff. Then he wound a fold of the cloth round one finger and daubed daintily at the corners of his mouth. ‘Done!’ He sighed contentedly and slipped his hands into the black silk sash that circled his crimson waistcoat. ‘Now Kruppe can only respond in kind.’ He raised his chin: ‘Dearest Jess … We die of famishment! Bring biscuits, tea, Elingarth blood sausages and honeyed bacon, flatbreads and Moranth cloudberry syrup.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Not sure how she’ll fit in, you know.’

  Jess’s voice bellowed from the kitchen. ‘Chud says we ain’t got none o’ that crap!’

  ‘She’ll serve just fine, I think,’ Rallick murmured under his breath.

  The squat man’s brows wrinkled, pained. ‘Oh, dear. I must have been dreaming …’ A quick shrug. ‘Oh well. Biscuits and tea, then. Oh! And a crust of burnt toast for my friend here.’

  Rallick could hear his clenched teeth grinding. ‘Kruppe, I just—’

  A raised hand forestalled him. ‘Explain not, old friend! No need for explanations … please sit!’ Growling, Rallick pulled a chair out with his heel, eased down and leaned back, hands on his thighs. ‘Kruppe understands. Why, it is on everyone’s sighing lips these days, dear friend. The city’s two most deadly killers tamed by love’s soothing embrace!’

  Rallick’s front chair legs struck the floor with a bang. ‘What?’

  ‘Do not worry! Kruppe’s feelings shall recover.’ He peeled a sliver of wrinkled dried fruit from the table, sniffed it, then popped it into his mouth. ‘Sustenance, Jess! We are positively expiring here!’ He shook his head, sighed dreamily. ‘It is an old story, yes, friend? Love is found and old friends are forgotten. Kruppe does not wonder why you have been neglectful of us these last months. The two of you haunt the rooftops in flighty trysts, no doubt. Like bats in love.’

  ‘Kruppe …’ Rallick ground out.

  ‘Soon a brood of baby killers to follow. I see it now. Knives in the crib and garrottes in the playpen.’

  ‘Kruppe!’

  The fat man lifted his eyes to blink innocently up at Rallick. ‘Yes?’

  ‘I just want to know if Cro—Cutter is in town.’

  ‘Kruppe wonders …’ Something strangled the man’s voice and he choked. Pudgy fingers fished in his mouth, emerging with the mangled stringy sliver of fruit, which he then carefully smeared back on to the table. ‘Jess! One need not cross the Cinnamon Wastes for tea!’

  The big woman emerged from the kitchen, tray in hand. Her white linen shirt had been hastily laced, revealing a great deal of flesh. She glared at Kruppe, thumped the tray down, nodded to Rallick. ‘Good to see you, sir.’

  ‘Jess. How’s Meese doing these days?’

  ‘She comes round most evenings.’

  ‘You manage?’

  She pushed back her hair, waved to the empty tables. ‘I’m worked off my feet.’

  Rallick also eyed the empty common room. He frowned as if struck by a new thought. The woman walked back to the kitchen doors, her hips rolling like ships at sea. Rallick cleared his throat. ‘Just who does own this place anyway, Kruppe?’

  ‘Friend Rallick was asking after young Cutter …’

  Rallick slid his gaze back. ‘Yes?’

  Kruppe peered into the depths of the teapot. ‘Kruppe wonders why.’

  Snarling, Rallick stood, pushing back his chair. ‘Is he here or not?’

  Lifting a knife and a biscuit, the little man peered up with a steady gaze. ‘Kruppe assures friend Rallick that equally loved young vagabond is most assuredly not in our fair city.’ He raised the biscuit. ‘Crumpet?’

  Rallick’s chest, which had been clenched in one coiled breath the inspection of certain wounds hours earlier, eased in a long exhalation, and he nodded, ‘Good … good.’

  Kruppe’s eyes had narrowed in their pockets of fat. ‘Again – Kruppe wonders why.’

  But Rallick had turned away. ‘Doesn’t matter.’ He called to the kitchen. ‘Je
ss.’

  Kruppe threw his arms wide. ‘But breakfast has only just arrived!’

  Rallick pushed open the door in a bright wash of sunlight and walked out, the door swinging closed behind.

  Shrugging, the fat man scooped up a smear of jam. ‘And to think Kruppe named impatient friend civilized. Kruppe was egregiously in error!’

  In the harsh morning light Scholar Ebbin trudged up the muddy unpaved street of the pure-gatherers in the Gadrobi district. A dusty leather bag pulled at one shoulder and he wore a wide-brimmed hat yanked down firmly on his head. He stopped at a shuttered storefront of age-gnawed wood on worn stone foundations, banged on the solid door and waited. Across the street, between the cart traffic and crowds of market-goers, he noted the blue uniform of the Wardens. The sight was a surprise to him; while crime was endemic in this district, attention from the Wardens was rare. They had a wagon with them and appeared to be moving something.

  The door vibrated as bars and locks were removed. It grated in its jambs to open a sliver. Darkness lay within. ‘Ah,’ a thin voice breathed, ‘it is you, good scholar. Enter.’

  Ebbin edged in sideways and the door ground shut. In the relative dark he was blind for the moment but he could make out a hunched dark figure securing bars and bolts again. ‘You are ever mindful of thieves, Aman. Yet … rather a barrier to commerce, I would imagine.’

  ‘Darujhistan has fallen very far, good scholar,’ the bent man answered in his breathless voice. ‘Very far indeed. It is not like the old days of peace and strict adherence to the laws of its rulers. As for commerce … I service a select few who know where to find me, yes?’ He chuckled drily.

  The unease that his visits here always engendered within Ebbin was not relieved by these comments. He thought of how his own whispered and circumspect enquiries into the subtleties of wardings, Warren-anchored barriers and the avoidance thereof led him step by step and source by source to this one man and his seemingly unpatronised shop. Yet to maintain appearances he answered genially enough, ‘Of course, Aman. Very select,’ and he laughed modestly as well.

  Aman ushered him into the shop proper, one foot dragging in his crippled walk, back twisted from some accident of birth. His hands too were crippled – malformed and bent as if having been caught within some mangling instrument. He shuffled behind his counter where a raised platform allowed him to peer over it, looming like some sort of gangly bird of prey.

  Ebbin’s vision was now adjusting to the permanent gloom in the shop, and he gently set his satchel on the counter.

  ‘You have something for me?’ Aman asked, cocking a brow already higher than its fellow.

  ‘Yes.’ He untied the leather strapping, eased out a wrapped object. ‘From the lowest I’ve gone so far.’

  Setting the package between them, Ebbin carefully parted the thick felt outer wrappings then a sheer inner layer of silk to reveal what appeared to be nothing more than a fragment of eggshell, albeit one from an egg of impossibly huge dimensions. Aman bent forward even further, his canted nose almost touching the object. Seeing him up close Ebbin was struck by the deformed shape of his knobbly skull beneath its patchy pelt of filmy grey hair. Perhaps sensing his attention, Aman pulled away.

  ‘A magnificent specimen, good scholar. Beautiful.’ The shopkeeper lit a lamp from a wall-sconced lantern, set it on the counter. ‘May I?’ Ebbin gestured an invitation. For all his bent root-like fingers, the man lifted the fragment smoothly, held it before the flame. Ebbin crouched to peer: the flame was visible as a blurred glow through the fragment, which was astonishing enough, but the entire piece had somehow taken up the light and now glowed, warm, soft and luminous, like the dawn in miniature.

  Aman sighed, almost nostalgically it seemed. ‘I invite you to imagine, if you would, good scholar, entire structures of such stone, carved and polished to near pure translucency, glowing with the cold blue flames of the city. A magnificent sight it must have been, yes?’

  ‘Yes. Darujhistan in the great Imperial Age of the Tyrants. At least, so it has been conjectured.’

  The bulbous eyes moved to his, blinked. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Is it treated?’

  Aman returned the piece to its cloths and began rewrapping it. ‘We shall see. It will have to be tested. Should it prove a fragment from a container utilized in certain, ah … esoteric … rituals from that age, then it may be resold for a great deal to those eager to reuse it for their own … well … similar research.’

  Ebbin cleared his throat, uncomfortable. ‘I see.’

  Aman tucked the package under the countertop. ‘And how may I help you, good scholar?’

  ‘I’ve come to a chamber. One still sealed.’

  The shopkeeper’s fingers, which had been tapping the counter like spiders, stilled. ‘In truth?’ he breathed in wonder. ‘Sealed as yet? Astonishing. You must take care, good scholar. The traps these ancients set upon their interred …’ He shook his misshapen head. ‘Deadly.’

  ‘Of course, Aman. I know the risks. I am no amateur.’

  ‘Of course,’ the shopkeeper echoed, smiling to reveal a mouthful of misaligned teeth. ‘The barrier?’

  Ebbin cleared his throat once more. ‘Stone. A flat slab. Unmarked in any way.’

  ‘Unmarked, you say? No sigils of any sort? Not even the faintest of inscriptions?’

  Ebbin frowned, impatient. ‘I know my work. I’ve been excavating for decades.’

  Aman raised his hands. ‘No disrespect intended, good scholar. Please. It is just very … unusual.’

  An uncomfortable shivering took Ebbin then and he rubbed his chest, nodding his agreement. ‘Yes. It is … unusual.’

  ‘An unimportant personage, perhaps. A minor court retainer.’

  Ebbin thought of the figure laid out on its onyx bier at the chamber’s centre. The beaten gold mask with its eerie mocking smile, and the bands of skulls encircling the plinth. Nested councils of death. He nodded, shivering. ‘Yes. My impression exactly.’

  Aman appeared to be studying him somehow, his gaze weighing. Then the man quickly turned away to his shelves. ‘I may have just the tools for you, good scholar. Moranth alchemicals … acids, perhaps? Or chisels. Not your everyday sort of tool, no, not at all. Hardened iron, alloyed with that Malazan mineral otataral. If you give me a few days I will have them for you.’

  ‘You have nothing like that here?’

  A dry laugh from the man. ‘Oh my goodness no. That mineral would have a most deleterious effect upon … upon my wares.’

  Ebbin could only agree. ‘If you say so, sir. A few days then. I have to consult with my backer in any case.’

  ‘Excellent, excellent.’ And he bobbed his head, his knotted fingers tapping incessantly on the counter.

  Once every bolt had been shut and every bar replaced, Aman shuffled back into his shop. Here he found a beautiful young woman, her long black hair braided and coiled atop her head, awaiting him. His mouth tightened into a sour pucker. ‘Your intrusion into my affairs is most ill-advised. Most unwelcome.’

  The girl merely cocked a shapely hip to lean against the counter where she turned the wrapped package in slow circles. ‘Why are we relying on this cretin?’

  ‘We? There is no we. You are deluded. Your uninvited meddling will complicate matters most stressfully.’

  ‘They were watching the shop, Aman.’

  The man hobbled back up on to his platform behind the counter. ‘Watching the shop? Of course they were watching the shop. They are always watching the shop! These agents of my one-time allies have proved most persistent. But because I remain within, and am circumspect … they have been none the wiser.’ He gently touched his fingertips to the wood countertop. ‘Needless to say, said circumspection has now been shattered …’

  ‘They are dead, Aman.’

  The shopkeeper started to speak, caught himself, rubbed his hands over the countertop as if stroking it. He began again, slowly, ‘Yes. However, the one who hired them now knows he, or she, is c
lose to something. Best to have maintained the aura of mystery.’

  The girl’s pale thin shoulders lifted in an unconcerned shrug. She began unwrapping the package. ‘Then I will kill whoever that person is.’

  ‘Ah yes. Speaking of mysteries. No one knows the identity of the circle-breaker. Many poseurs have surfaced pretending to the title, but no one knows for certain. It may have even been one of my old allies – even your mother.’

  The girl’s coquettish gaze hardened. ‘Never mention her to me, Aman.’ She peered up from half-lidded eyes. ‘Anyone, you say? But not you, of course.’

  Aman shook a bent finger. ‘You are learning.’

  She made a face, then indicated the carved fragment. ‘Is this thing really as valuable as you say?’

  He raised it between them, his gaze holding her eyes. ‘Ahh … beautiful, yes? Slender, striking. A magnificent specimen. On the outside. But within, flawed. Worthless. A piece of useless trash.’ He crushed it in his hand.

  The girl flinched away as if slapped, bumping something in the dark. Her full lips tightened to a pale slash and a molten light blazed within her eyes. The man studied her quite calmly, his head cocked, fingertips lightly touching together. The golden light faded from her eyes as she stood quivering in suppressed rage. She drew a shuddering breath and raised her chin in defiance. ‘You are quite finished, I hope?’

  He bowed. ‘Quite.’

  ‘And what is this monstrosity?’ she demanded, waving at the tall figure she’d struck.

  Aman raised the lamp, revealing an armoured statue. The light reflected green and blue from an inlay of semi-precious stones. ‘Magnificent, is it not? From distant Jacuruku. One of their stone soldiers.’

  She peered closer in an almost professional evaluation. ‘An automaton? ’

  ‘Not … quite.’ He set the lamp on the counter. ‘In any case, m’lady, since you have returned, I suggest you make yourself useful and shadow our friend. Nothing untoward must happen to him. Be ready to intervene. He is close, Taya. Very close.’