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

  ‘You are leaving us, Fist K’ess?’

  The Fist wiped his hands in a cloth and threw it to the table. His gaze remained exactly where the casting had once stood. ‘My apologies, Lord Mayor,’ he grated. ‘Duty calls me away.’

  ‘We understand.’

  The Fist stalked from the hall, followed by two officers, male and female.

  A woman beside the mayor whispered, fierce: ‘Who is this Legate? Who is he to challenge the Empire?’

  The mayor raised a hand for silence. ‘We will wait and see.’ ‘And if two days pass and we are none the wiser?’

  The mayor shrugged. ‘Then we will agree.’

  ‘And the Malazans?’

  ‘We will tell them we agreed only to buy time.’

  Another guest smiled his approval. ‘Which is true – time to discover which of them is the stronger.’

  The mayor picked up his crystal wine glass, studied the muddy red liquid. ‘Of course.’

  Outside the hall, Fist K’ess turned to the male officer with him. ‘Cancel all furloughs, restrict the troops to garrison. Have we no one capable of raising the Imperial Warren?’

  ‘None.’

  The Fist pulled savagely at his chin. ‘What a gods-awful state of affairs. Going to the dogs, we are. Go!’

  The man saluted, ran off.

  The Fist started walking again, striking a stiff marching pace. The other officer, the woman, hurried after him. ‘Might I remind you we are at half strength, Fist,’ she said. ‘Half went south at Ambassador Aragan’s request. Now we know why.’

  ‘Yes, yes. Your point?’

  ‘We are under strength. In case of an uprising I suggest we withdraw. ’

  The Fist halted. Next to him lay a stretch of buildings still in ruins from the siege of years ago. Squatters now occupied it, living in huts of wood and straw among the fallen stone walls. ‘Withdraw?’ he repeated, outraged. ‘Withdraw to where?’

  ‘West. The mountains.’

  He rubbed his chin. ‘Throw ourselves on the mercy of the Moranth, you mean? Aye, there’s some merit there. I’ll keep it in mind. Until then, no. Too much Malazan blood was spilled taking this city. We’ll not withdraw.’ He started off again, his pace swift.

  Captain Fal-ej, of the Seven Cities, struggled to keep up.

  K’ess barked at her: ‘Send our swiftest rider south, Captain. I want to know from that fat-arse Aragan what in the name of fallen Hood is going on!’

  Captain Fal-ej saluted and ran off.

  K’ess massaged his unshaven throat. He spat aside. ‘What a gods-damned time to choose to quit drinking. Just when things were getting quiet …’ He shook his head and hurried on.

  As was his habit of late, the Warlord spent time in the evening in silent solitary vigil overlooking the valley leading west to the glow of Darujhistan. Yet perhaps his gaze passed over the city, even beyond, to the barrow of Anomander Rake, once Lord of Moon’s Spawn. This evening was dark and close. Thick clouds massed from the north, over Lake Azur and the Tahlyn Mountains beyond.

  Something troubled the Warlord; this everyone spoke of, though none knew what it was. The castings of the shamans hinted at blood and violence to come. Word of war against the Malazan invaders swept like wildfire across the wide plains – though the elders themselves had not raised the White Spear. All this was might have been part of the weight the Warlord carried. For though he was so named, some now whispered that he was too old, too grief-stricken, and perhaps his time had passed.

  He may or may not have been aware of these whispers within the assembly as he stood his solitary evening vigils out upon the hillside. Some said that in truth it was his distaste for it all that drove him from the tents to begin with.

  In either case, late into one such evening the Warlord suddenly knew he was no longer alone. He glanced about to see standing a short distance off a man he’d thought his friend. A single glimpse, however, was enough to convince him that that was no longer the case. He shifted his weight to face the man, slid a hand over the grip of the hammer at his side. ‘Greetings, Baruk. What brings you from the city?’

  The man certainly was Baruk, but not the Baruk the Warlord knew, with that avid hungry light in his fever-bright eyes, the fresh scars that traced a map of pain across his face. ‘The one you called Baruk is gone. Burned away in the cleansing flames of truth. I am Barukanal, restored and reborn.’

  Gossamer flames of power burned like auroras at the man’s hands, where forests of rings now gleamed gold. Caladan’s grip tightened upon his hammer. ‘Truth? Which truth would that be?’

  ‘The truth of power. One I know you are intimately familiar with. The truth that power will always be used. The question only being by whom.’

  ‘Then you know enough not to tempt me.’

  A gleeful mockery of a smile twitched the man’s mouth. ‘I recall enough to know that to be an empty threat, Warlord.’

  In answer Caladan’s lips pulled back over his prominent canines. ‘Then you presume too much. If the … presence … I sense makes any effort to reach beyond Darujhistan, I will not hesitate to remove the city from the face of the continent.’

  The one he once knew as Baruk gave a sham frown of sorrow. Backing away, he gestured to the west. ‘More deaths, Warlord? How many more must die … ?’ The figure dissipated into the night, leaving Brood to pull his clenched hand from the hammer and massage its stiff knuckles. He let out an animal growl and headed back up the hill to the distant lit tents. Baruk taken, he mused. That one will be a dangerous opponent. Yet he wondered at the constant stream of tears that had glistened on the man’s scarred cheeks. And the eyes – that feyness could just as easily have been torment and horror trapped within.

  Before he reached the tent the flap was pushed aside and a Rhivi elder hurried out. ‘The shamans bring amazing news from the north, Warlord.’

  Something in Caladan’s expression caused the elder to flinch aside. ‘Why am I not surprised?’ Brood rumbled as he stalked past.

  It was the most difficult act he had ever had to force himself to commit. Every step deliberate, stiff, reluctant, he approached the squat, ominous house that stood alone in the woods of Coll’s estate. Every beat of Rallick’s pounding heart screamed at him to flee. For not so long ago, when the Jaghut Tyrant Raest returned to the city only to be entombed here in this Azath construct, so too was he. And perhaps the house would not give him up a second time.

  But he did not flee. He understood necessity. He alone in this city seemed to understand that there were things that simply had to be done. Reaching the door he paused, hand outstretched. Someone had been digging in the yard. A trail of dirt led across the grounds. He knelt to study the spoor. Two sets of tracks. One in rotted leather sandals. The other naked bony feet. Very bony, and very definitely inhuman in shape. Shedding dirt as they came.

  While he crouched there before the door it opened and Rallick found himself staring up at the grim, emaciated figure of the ancient Jaghut Tyrant Raest, prisoner to the house, and now its … guardian? Or perhaps more accurately its interpreter or spokesman. Or doorman.

  ‘Not even if you beg,’ the Jag breathed, his inflection completely dead.

  Rallick straightened. ‘May I speak to you?’

  The unsettling vertical-pupils of the eyes rose to encompass the night sky over the estate district; narrowed. ‘We already have a boarder. I am not taking in more. No matter how awful it will get.’

  A shiver ran its fingers down Rallick’s spine. He clenched and unclenched his sweaty hands. ‘That is the last thing I would want.’

  The Jag shuffled out of the doorway back up the hall. ‘That is what they all say – then there’s no getting rid of them.’

  Rallick forced himself up the hall. Behind, the door swung shut, enclosing him in almost utter gloom. On one side, in a narrow corridor a large man lay blocking the way, snoring loudly and wetly. Raest passed this strange apparition without comment and Rallick was forced to follow. Murky light shone
ahead; a sort of limpid greenish underwater glow cast down as if from a skylight. Here he found the Jag seated at a table and across from him sat another creature – an Imass. Or at least so Rallick assumed. He was no expert. Half-rotted flesh over bones and those bones stained dark. Battered armour of leather, furs and bone plates. And over all clumps of dried dirt. The entity held wooden slats in ravaged hands of bone and ligament. It raised its empty sockets to regard Rallick for a moment then returned its gaze to the slats in its hands.

  In that brief regard a cold wind had brushed Rallick’s face. He heard it moaning, carrying the call of large animals far in the distance. He shivered again.

  The Jag, Raest, took up his own slats.

  Cards, he realized. They were playing cards. Now. With so much hanging over the city.

  On the table between them sat the corpse of a cat.

  Rallick cleared his throat. ‘What is going on?’

  ‘I am up ten thousand gold bars,’ Raest breathed. ‘My friend here is having troubles with the changes in the rules.’

  The Imass’s voice came as a low creaking of dry sinew: ‘I am better at mechanisms.’

  ‘No,’ Rallick insisted. ‘The city. What’s going on outside?’

  ‘The neighbourhood is fast deteriorating. I am considering a move.’

  ‘A move? You can move?’

  The Tyrant turned his ravaged features to study him wordlessly for a time.

  Rallick swallowed. Ah. I see.

  The Jag laid down one wooden card from his hand.

  The Imass edged its blunt skeletal chin forward to study the card then sat back to return to the contemplation of its own. Rallick also leaned to squint at the face; he saw nothing more than a crudely scratched image he couldn’t make out.

  ‘No,’ the Jag continued, ‘I’ve put too much work into the place.’ Rallick eyed the walls of rotting wood, the hanging roots, the dust sifting down through the cascading starlight. ‘Besides, Fluffy here would be devastated.’

  Fluffy? Please be referring to the cat – my sanity won’t survive otherwise.

  ‘Can you give me any hint of what is to come?’

  ‘I serve the House now. Only it. However, I can tell you what sort of game we are playing.’

  Game?

  From his mangled leathery hand the Imass slowly slid a wooden card on to the table.

  Raest leaned forward to study the image scratched upon its face. He sat back shaking his head. ‘No – not her. She’s out of the game. For now.’ He brushed the card aside. The ligaments of the Imass’s neck creaked as it followed the card to the far edge of the table. It growled.

  Rallick found he was holding his breath. ‘What sort of game … is it?’ he asked, hardly able to speak.

  ‘It’s a game of bluff. Bluff on both sides. Remember that, servant of Hood.’

  ‘Hood is gone.’

  ‘The paths remain.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘Do you? It would be astounding if you did.’

  Rallick clenched his lips. I can’t settle my aim here. He turned his attention to the Imass. Those are not his leg bones. He looked away ‘Is there anything more you can tell me?’

  The Jag remained immobile, his slashed and battered face a mask, long grey hair like iron shavings hanging to his shoulders. ‘I can tell you that you are distracting me from the game. Go away.’

  Rallick decided that he should not wait to be told twice. He edged back out of the room, not turning away from the oddly mismatched, yet so utterly matched, couple.

  He reached the closed door.

  Now for the hardest part of all.

  But the door did open.

  When someone entered his office, Legate Jeshin Lim’s first thought was that a councillor had requested an unscheduled meeting and his staff had ushered him or her through. He was surprised therefore upon peering up from composing his next speech to see the merchant Humble Measure standing before him.

  He stifled the urge to leap from his chair. Burn’s mercy! Who allowed the man in! Someone will lose their position over this. He transformed his twitch of mouth into a rigid, if rather strained, welcoming smile. Well … one can hardly complain. This man’s money allowed me entrance to this office … why not the man himself?

  He stood, smiling, and came round the desk. ‘Humble Measure! This is a surprise!’ He motioned to a chair. ‘Please, sit. May I offer you some tea?’

  The big man sat stiffly and ponderously. ‘None, Legate … thank you.’

  How odd to see him outside the offices at his works. He looks … diminished. Jeshin poured himself a tiny thimbleful of tea and retreated once more behind his desk. ‘What can I do for you, old friend?’

  ‘First,’ the man ground out, ‘congratulations upon the renewal of the ancient honoured position, Legate.’

  Lim waved such formalities aside. ‘It is our victory, Humble. Our shared vision led to this. We achieved it together.’

  Humble inclined his head in acknowledgement. ‘The Legate is too generous. Yet I wonder, then, why, with this victory in your grasp, you have not gone on to move Darujhistan towards the position of pre-eminence we once agreed it deserves?’

  Jeshin frowned, cocking his head. The tea sat forgotten before him. ‘How so?’

  ‘Legate – Darujhistan must have an arsenal. Arms, armour, siege engines. The matériel of war—’ He stopped himself, because the Legate had raised a hand to speak.

  Back to this old argument. Should’ve anticipated it. The man’s a fanatic. ‘Humble … your point is well taken. Arms and armour are needed, yes. Yet look at what we have accomplished! We are in accord on so much. Darujhistan shall be set once more on a course of pre-eminence. We only differ in this one small matter – you believe that putting weapons and armour on every citizen will accomplish this, while I believe the city’s defences must first be addressed. The walls, Humble—’

  The merchant interrupted. ‘Darujhistan has walls, Legate.’

  Jeshin waved this aside. ‘Hardly worth the name. Playgrounds for the city’s children. Neglected and pillaged for centuries. They must be rebuilt, strengthened.’

  ‘It’s not the walls of Darujhistan that must be strengthened, Legate … it is the will.’

  Jeshin stilled, hands pressed to the cool marble surface of his desk. ‘The discussion is closed, Humble. I thank you for your concern. I know I can count on your cooperation in our efforts to bring prestige and influence to our city.’ And he stood, smiling once more. He motioned to the door.

  Humble Measure levered his bulk from the chair. He glowered from under his thick brows. Without a word he turned and lumbered to the door.

  Jeshin watched him go, stiff smile still fixed on his lips. A guard. Guards, today. Unbribable guards. Am I not the damned Legate of this ridiculous city?

  Humble’s closed carriage rocked as he settled his weight within. He sat hunched forward, elbows on knees, as if examining someone seated opposite. The carriage started its twisting way down Majesty Hill. The man’s heavy-lidded eyes were narrowed, almost closed, as he lolled back and forth. Indeed, another passenger might have thought him asleep.

  But he was far from asleep. Like the ponderous presses of his foundry his mind was slowly working, inexorably turning, and with crushing irresistible weight. And the conclusion he reached was that he did not sacrifice so much to put a Legate in charge of this city so that the holder of the position could cower behind walls.

  Fortunately, however, ways exist to resolve this temporary hindrance.

  The Mengal mountains ran as a backbone along the west coast of the Genabackan continent. They were for the most part a dangerous unsettled wilderness. A trader mud track twisted along the skirts of their inland eastward slope, unkept, swept away in places by erosion, crossed by fallen trees. Mule trains, two-wheeled carts and backpacks were the only way to make the trip. And even then in places the track was practically impassable. Far quicker and easier to ship any goods, livestock or people up and down the coas
t by water. But there were always those for whom the up-front expense of such cargo space or berths was unaffordable. For these petty traders, tinkers, travelling smiths, would-be homesteaders, or plain adventurers off to find a new horizon there would always be the mud track through the tall evergreen forest, their breath pluming in the cold wet mist cascading down the slopes, and their own rag-swathed feet and bent, burdened backs.

  And so, too, there were always those who preyed upon them.

  Yusek’s people were out of the east, Bastion way. During the Troubles they’d packed up and headed west. By the time they crossed the Dwelling Plain the way of life had become habit and they just kept on moving. Eventually Yusek raised her head and looked around and realized that all her family’s starving and slogging hadn’t gotten them anywhere worth going. So she packed up everything useful and did the only thing she knew how to do: she moved on.

  She’d fallen in with Orbern’s crew, or rather they’d taken everything she had and given her the choice to join them or starve in the cold. Being young and new they’d tried using her, of course, but she’d grown up defending herself and had discovered early on that she didn’t mind the shedding of blood half as much as those around her. So they made her a scout, or a runner, or whatever you damned well wanted to call it, on account of the fact that she could walk all their fat drunken arses into the ground. And they had no armour worth the name to give her anyway.

  Orbern claimed to be from Darujhistan. From one of the city’s noble families. Kept going on about being cheated of his position, unappreciated, or driven out by idiots, or some such. Not that anyone gave a damn. Fancied himself ‘Lord of the Western Mountains’. Even had a horse, a sickly lonely-looking thing that he insisted on riding through the dense brush. Stupidest spectacle Yusek had ever seen.

  In any case, Orbern ran things because at least he had some kind of claim to an education. Knew how to build. He’d had them put up a palisade across the gorge they occupied. Raised log cabins that didn’t leak. Even got a crude sort of forge up and running for their metalworking needs. It used a big ol’ flat stone as an anvil.