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

  At least not yet.

  One of the malformed creatures edged up closer before her; it struck her that they were even more wary of her than she of them.

  ‘You are understanding of me?’ it asked.

  ‘Yes. Yes I am.’

  ‘We are decided to allow you go. You go if you wish. Imprisonment is hurtful. We are many victims of cruel imprisonment. We would not impress it upon any other. We are not like you.’

  Kiska thought it rather convenient of them to allow her to leave after she’d already escaped. But she let that pass. Instead she asked, ‘Like me?’

  ‘Yes. Like you. Those who summon us, imprison us, use us cruelly, send us melt among the Vitr. Those like you.’

  Kiska understood. Human mages. Summoners. Theurgical researchers. Her breath caught as she realized: like Tayschrenn.

  Steps behind her and Leoman emerged. ‘Labour problems?’ he asked.

  ‘They are lowering the blockade.’

  The Seven Cities native nodded sagely. ‘Sieges are a test of patience.’

  Kiska didn’t say that she thought these things could easily outwait them if it came to that. She addressed them: ‘I am looking for the one known as Thenaj. Do you know where he is?’

  A flurry of hissing and burbling among the dun-brown creatures answered her. Their spokesman pointed the longer of its blunt limbs. ‘It is as feared. You are come to take him away. You mustn’t! The Great One is much pleased by him. He was very sad all alone for so long.’

  ‘The Great One. You mean Maker?’

  ‘Names are dangerous things. To us he is the Great One.’

  ‘I understand.’ She set her hands on her hips. ‘May we go then?’

  ‘We will not close the way … but we will not help either.’

  Kiska sighed. ‘Fine.’ She waved Leoman forward. ‘Let’s go.’

  They walked in silence for a time. The malformed creatures were left behind at their caves. Leoman, she noted, paced warily, hands on his weapons. ‘You’re nervous?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m wondering how the big one will take this.’

  ‘Sounds like he was outvoted.’

  ‘Ah, voting. Such a political arrangement is fine on paper, or among philosophers. But it tends to break apart upon the rocks of application.’

  Kiska cocked a brow. A revolutionary political philosopher? ‘Oh? How so?’

  ‘Inequity. Disparities in power. For some unknown reason our big friend chooses to play along with the delusion of egalitarianism. But believe me, when the wishes of the powerful are thwarted they will set aside any communal agreements and pursue their own plans regardless. Because they can.’

  ‘You sound bitter.’

  ‘No. Not bitter. Realistic.’ He waved a gloved hand. ‘Oh, because no one likes to think of themselves as a despot they will cloak their actions in high-sounding rhetoric. Announce that he – or she – sees the situation more clearly. That everyone will thank them in the end. That it is for the better. And so on.’

  She eyed him where he walked next to her, hands on the hafts of his weapons, his gaze somewhere else. The Sea of Vitr glimmered ahead. Lazy waves came hissing up the black scoured strand. ‘You sure you’re not bitter?’

  Beneath his moustache the man’s lips curled up in a rueful smile. ‘The curse of an unflinching eye.’ He froze. ‘And here comes the test.’

  Kiska glanced over and tensed. It was the big demon hurrying up to them on its broad ungainly bird’s feet. It stopped a short distance off, glowered down at them. ‘You are out,’ it growled after a time.

  Kiska decided to forgo any sarcastic response. She levelled her stave before her. ‘Yes.’

  It looked over them to the cliff face. ‘I disapprove. But it is their decision.’ It held out an amber-taloned hand and clenched it as if crushing them within. ‘If you hurt anyone you will answer to me.’ And it stalked off.

  Kiska caught Leoman’s bemused gaze. ‘And what do you say to that?’

  He stroked his moustache, frowning thoughtfully. ‘I would say this place seems to have rules of its own.’

  She could not argue with that.

  CHAPTER V

  What is the Deck of Dragons

  But where one bends to look

  For reflections

  Of all things unseen?

  Verse attributed to the Seer of Callows

  SPINDLE COULD NOT SLEEP AFTER HE AND BLEND AND PICKER dragged themselves back to K’rul’s bar. It was dawn in any case, and his nerves were shot. They’d witnessed something they shouldn’t have; they all knew it. No one said a thing all the way back from the base of Majesty Hill – which wasn’t very far in any case, as K’rul’s old temple stood on its own hill in the estate district.

  Blend and Picker thumped up the stairs to their room. Spindle slouched into a booth. The common room was empty. The historian was upstairs asleep. After dozing for a short time, Spindle was driven by a full bladder to shamble out of the rear kitchen exit. Facing the yard, looking out over the chicken coop, the woodpile and the pigsty, he untied his trousers and relieved himself in the chill air.

  In mid-stream he gaped, jerked, traced a warm stream down his leg, then stumbled back inside struggling with his trousers.

  ‘Picker! Blend! Burn’s own tits, would you come and look at this!’

  ‘Shut up!’

  ‘No, really! This is amazin’! You gotta see this.’

  Shambled footsteps sounded from above. Picker’s voice called down: ‘If it’s just you findin’ your little soldier then I’m gonna be real mad.’

  ‘Ha, ha! No. I’m fucking serious here.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ Picker appeared tucking in her shirt and tying her trousers, boots clumping. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Out back. Take a look.’

  ‘What? Has Moon’s Spawn returned?’

  ‘Somethin’ like that.’

  Picker sobered, eyed the man, doubtful. She hiked up her trousers and headed to the kitchen. Spindle followed.

  At the open doorway Picker stopped, peered right, then left. Behind, Spindle hopped from foot to foot, brushed at his wet pants. ‘Do you see it? Do ya?’

  ‘What? The amazin’ chickens? They dancin’? Singin’?’

  ‘No! Not …’ He squeezed his way round her, stared squinting into the distance. ‘But there was …’ He turned back to the big woman, hunched his shoulders. ‘There was this huge dome-like thing there. Over the hilltop …’

  Picker just shook her head in a slow heavy dismissal. She rubbed her arm where scars marked a ring round the flesh, eyed the distance one more. Then she pushed him aside, muttering, ‘Fuckin’ moron. Can’t believe I’m beginnin’ to miss Antsy.’

  Spindle was left alone in the chill air. He turned back to the view across the hills of the Estate district, snorted to himself.

  ‘What did it look like?’ someone asked from behind.

  He spun, jumping. It was Duiker, the old historian. He nodded a greeting. ‘It was pale. Kinda see-through. Big. Like the moon. It looked like the moon.’

  The historian frowned thoughtfully behind his thick grey beard. His gaze fixed on Spindle. ‘You lot been gone days. What happened?’

  ‘I’ll tell you over some hot mulled wine.’

  ‘We don’t have any.’

  Spindle cast another pinched glance over the hilltops. ‘Then I’m gonna go get some.’

  Torvald Nom awoke to a cat’s claws sinking into his chest. He jerked upright with a gasp, heard something ricochet off the shelves under the open window, then sat tensed, limbs trembling with startled awareness.

  ‘What is it?’ Tiserra murmured, still mostly asleep.

  ‘For a moment I thought you’d thrown yourself upon me and sunk your nails into my chest in an ecstasy of passion, dear. But it was the cat.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ she murmured into her pillow.

  Torvald sighed, peered about the shadowed room. ‘Well. I’m up now. Might as well head out.’

  �
��Hmph.’

  ‘Don’t trouble yourself. Don’t bustle about with tea and bread and such for your working man.’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Never mind.’ Torvald got up.

  Passing through the streets on his walk to the estate district it struck him that the city was very quiet this morning. He felt that sense of suspended expectation, the atmosphere that some described as ‘holding one’s breath’. And he had had the strangest dreams just before awakening so very painfully. He did hear one noise that was very out of place indeed. He recognized it only because of his travels so far from this city of his birth. For it was a sound utterly unfamiliar to Darujhistan: the ordered stamp of marching soldiery. He hurried to where the marching echoed, the Second Tier Way.

  He joined a press of Darujhistani citizenry turned out to watch this once in a lifetime sight. The tall cross-piece hanging banner preceding the column declared their allegiance: the white sceptre on a field of black, the sceptre much like an orb clasped in an upright three-toed predatory bird’s foot. The naked clawed grip of the Malazan Empire.

  Elite heavy infantry. Campaign stripes marked them as veterans of every engagement on these, to them, foreign Genabackan lands. They carried broad rectangular shields blackened and edged in burgundy. Shortswords swung belted high at their sides. Crossbows and javelins rode strapped to their backs. The Malazan delegation honour guard, some two hundred strong. Withdrawing?

  ‘What’s goin on?’ he asked one fellow in the crowd.

  ‘The Empire’s invading!’ the man bellowed, half drunk.

  Torvald grimaced at his bad luck. ‘They’re headed in the wrong direction,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Ha ha!’ the drunk yelled. ‘We beat them! Good riddance, y’damned foreigners!’

  Torvald walked away just in case the appropriately feared Malazan mailed fist should make itself felt. The rear of the column came marching up. Mounted officers rode just before a train of wagons and carts and strings of spare mounts. Torvald noted that he did not see the bald and rather fat figure of the ambassador among the officers. He hurried on to bring the news to his employer, the head of his family house and thus councilwoman, Lady Varada.

  Madrun let him into the compound. ‘Captain,’ the man said, bowing. Torvald always listened carefully to this welcome but so far he’d yet to detect even the slightest tinge of insincerity. More than ever he regretted the absence of his old partners, Scorch and Leff, who used to guard these doors.

  At least then he wasn’t the obvious weak link in the estate’s personnel.

  The castellan Studlock met him at the open front doors of the house. ‘I have orders from the mistress,’ he lisped as Torvald hurried in past him.

  ‘Lady Varada?’

  ‘The mistress is … ill,’ Studlock murmured. ‘Yes. That is it. Quite ill.’

  Torvald sniffed the air. ‘What is that I smell? Is something burning? ’

  ‘Just my preparations. The singeing of rare leaves. An infusion gone wrong.’ The strange man crept up close, the tatters and strips of gauzy cloth he wrapped himself in dragged long behind. Torvald flinched away. ‘You appear tired, malnourished,’ Studlock went on. ‘Are you having trouble in your sexual performance? Perhaps a mineral poultice to rebalance your animus?’

  ‘Rebalance my what? Ah, no. Thank you.’

  ‘A pity.’

  ‘Ill, you say? Where is she?’

  ‘The mistress is … indisposed.’

  ‘Indisposed …’

  ‘Yes. Quite. She did however leave detailed instructions regarding you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes. None other.’

  ‘I see. And these instructions?’

  The man edged closer, his watery green eyes narrowed upon Torvald. ‘There is a worrisome choleric tinge to you. Have you evacuated lately?’

  ‘Evacu what?’

  ‘Evacuated. Discharged your bodily wastes.’

  ‘Ah! Yes.’

  ‘And your bowels? How are they?’

  ‘Sacrosanct, thank you.’

  ‘Regretful. How am I to continue my practice?’

  Torvald was surprised. ‘You’re a physicker?’

  The man blinked his confusion. ‘No.’

  Torvald regarded the unnerving hunched figure for a time, cleared his throat. ‘So … these instructions?’

  ‘Yes. You are now head of House Nom. Congratulations.’ The castellan shuffled away.

  Torvald stood motionless in the receiving hall for a long time. Then he ran up the stairs for his employer’s office. He was in the process of ransacking her desk when he looked up to see the gauzy apparition of Studlock before him once again.

  ‘There must be some mistake.’

  ‘None, I assure you.’

  ‘What of Bellam?’

  ‘Young Bellam remains an eventual heir.’

  ‘But … it can’t be official. There has to be paperwork. Certificates and such.’

  The castellan drew a scroll from within the folds of cloth at his chest. ‘I have them here. Sealed and authenticated.’

  He slumped down into the chair. That had been his last hope. He straightened, his brows rising. ‘Aha! I appoint another. Someone else. Anyone else.’

  ‘Rallick Nom will support m’lady’s choice. So then will the majority of the House.’

  Torvald slumped once more. Damn him! He would, too – if only to avoid being appointed himself!

  He set his elbows on the desk, cupped his head in his hands. ‘But this is terrible … Tiserra will kill me! One day I leave for work and when I come home it’s hello dear your husband has a seat on the Council! Rather a shock.’

  The castellan cocked his head. ‘Will she not be pleased?’

  ‘You don’t know her.’

  ‘You are correct. I do not. Are introductions in order? Some tea? My special brew …’

  Torvald threw up his hands. ‘No! No, no thank you. That’s quite all right.’

  Studlock’s shoulders fell. ‘That is regrettable. Who will I test it on?’

  Torvald frowned. ‘So, now what? What do I do?’

  ‘You should register your appointment with the clerk of the Council, I imagine.’

  ‘Ah. Thank you. How very … practical.’

  The castellan bowed. ‘My only wish is to serve.’

  Torvald had never been to Majesty Hill; indeed, had never dreamed he’d have cause. The Wardens at the lowest gate stopped him to have his paperwork inspected. Before him rose the stairs that switched back and forth up the flank of the hill, lined all the way by monuments, family shrines, plaques commemorating victories – real and invented – and other grandiose pronouncements meant to impress the reader with the virtue and generosity of their sponsors. All no more than base self-aggrandizement, Torvald reflected, once you boiled it all down.

  He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked on the worn heels of his old boots. Perhaps such an attitude was precisely what was not welcome on yon prestigious hilltop.

  A clerk bowed as he handed back the scrolled paperwork. ‘Welcome, sir. My apologies for the delay. We do not see many councillors here at the gate.’

  ‘No? You do not? Just what do you see, then?’

  ‘Petitioners mostly. Appellants and other claimants summoned, or hoping, to address the assembly. And minor functionaries, of course.’

  ‘Ah. I see.’ Torvald wondered, vaguely, whether he’d just been insulted in some very sophisticated indirect fashion. Considering where he was headed, he decided that he’d better get used to it. ‘So, just where do the Council members enter?’

  The man bowed – unctuously, it seemed to Torvald. ‘These days most take the carriageway from the south.’

  ‘Ah, well. Perhaps many would benefit from coming in this way occasionally, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, beyond a doubt, sir,’ the man agreed smoothly, his face straight.

  Good at his job, this one, Torvald reflected. This gate must be where most of the squeezing of petit
ioners takes place. A coveted post. He bowed a farewell. ‘I’d best be going then.’

  ‘A sound decision, sir.’

  Torvald walked away, wincing. Damn, drubbed by a bureaucrat. It’s going to be a long day.

  Eventually, after rather a boring walk up an unnecessarily long set of stairs, he entered what appeared to be a main reception hall lined by many doors. It was … deserted. Is the place closed? Yet someone was here: noise reached him, a muted roaring as of many voices shouting. But where was it coming from?

  A door slammed and a robed clerk appeared, sheaf of papers in hand, reading as he scuttled quickly across the hall.

  Torvald cleared his throat. ‘Excuse me – could you tell me …’

  The man disappeared into another side door. Torvald lowered his arm. A gods-damned rabbit warren. He poked his head into that door to see another hall, also lined by doors, albeit far less ornate. It occurred to him that a rather large old friend of his would know exactly what to do to a place like this. The sound of another door opening pulled him away. Another functionary was walking the hall. He planted himself before her.

  The plump woman nearly ran into him before halting to blink up confusedly. ‘Yes?’

  He wordlessly offered his paperwork. She examined it, then bowed. ‘Welcome, House Nom. I shall see to it that these are registered with the proper offices. You are no doubt come for the assembling of the emergency steering committee.’

  It was now his turn to blink his confusion. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘This way. If you would, sir.’

  Torvald followed the woman down the long hall, round a series of turns, to a tall set of double doors. Two city Wardens barred the entrance. From behind the doors came a riotous roaring such as Torvald imagined must prevail before the gates to Hood’s old realm.

  The guards’ hands went to their shortswords. ‘This is a closed emergency session,’ pronounced one in what sounded like a carefully rehearsed line.