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

  Some people just want to be persecuted … it proves they’re right.

  But then, he knew all about persecution. He and his ma together had watched the world succeed in its persecution of his father, uncles, brothers, aunts, sisters and uncounted cousins. ‘Ain’t gonna lose you, little ’un,’ she’d always told him. She repeated it yet again when word came of the loss of his last brother, fallen overboard in rough seas off the coast of Delanss. ‘That’s my sworn vow, that is.’ And he’d looked up from where he sat next to her chair to watch her brushing her hair – hair so long it would drag along the ground behind her should she ever let it down. ‘Hold you in my arms, I will. Bind you up in protection. Keep you safe. Your mama’s gonna keep you safe. You’ll see.’

  He rubbed his shirt over his chest. She was close now. He could feel her next to him the way he could when trouble was coming.

  Been three days and no contact yet from any of the cadre mages. Should’ve been contact by now. Ain’t right.

  ‘You look like a brother,’ someone addressed him in Daru.

  Spindle shaded his eyes to blink up at a young swell-sword all done up in mock Malazan officer gear complete with torcs and Quon-style longsword. On his silk surcoat the lad bore the sword symbol of the cult of Dessembrae. ‘Whazzat? Brother?’

  ‘One of the initiate. The Elite. Recognized by Dessembrae.’

  ‘What in Osserc’s smothering warmth are you going on about?’

  The young man’s ingratiating smile slipped into a stung haughtiness as he looked Spindle up and down. ‘My apology. Clearly I am mistaken. Obviously you not possess the requisite dignity.’

  Spindle hawked up a mouthful of phlegm and spat. ‘Dignity my arse. If he saw you now he wouldn’t know whether to laugh or cry.’

  ‘So those found unworthy may grumble.’

  Spindle considered rousing himself to teach the pup a lesson, but he was feeling at ease on the bench and decided not to let the ignorant fool ruin his day. He waved the lad away. ‘Take your rubbish elsewhere.’

  The aristocratic youth actually tossed his head as he walked off. Spindle snorted at the absurdity of it all, then realized he was no longer alone on the bench. He eyed the fellow sidelong: tall and rangy, wrapped in an old travelling cloak. Long black wavy hair. Looked Talian in profile.

  ‘If that lad knew he was talking to a Bridgeburner he’d have pissed himself,’ the man said.

  Spindle cursed under his breath. ‘Took your own damned time, didn’t you?’ He rubbed his hand over his chest, listening for guidance, heard nothing. This man was no mage. ‘Who are you anyway? Where’s Filless?’

  ‘Filless is no longer with us. Someone’s made a sport of hunting Imperial mages and Claws.’ He turned to address him directly. ‘If I were you I’d keep my head down.’

  ‘Hunh. That’s me. Question still stands. Who’re you?’

  ‘I’m with the Imperial delegation.’

  Spindle snorted again. ‘Military intelligence. Shoulda known.’ ‘We learned long ago not to depend entirely on the Claw.’

  ‘Hood’s cautionary finger to that, my friend.’

  ‘So – your report?’

  ‘Some kinda spook’s entered the city. Drug his arse outta the burial grounds to the south. Wasn’t alone neither. Has servants. And they ain’t entirely human, if you know what I mean.’

  The intelligence officer let out a faint whistle, fingers tapping on his lap. ‘And the Moranth flee … Damned scary, that.’

  ‘As did we. You lot marched out.’

  ‘Just a training exercise,’ the fellow answered, his mind elsewhere. ‘I want you to try to track him, or it, down.’

  Spindle gave him his best glare. The feller tells me to keep my head down, then he has the nerve … He spat again. ‘Not me. Just a bystander, remember?’

  The young officer murmured, ‘Might I remind you the punishment for desertion is still death?’

  Stretching out his legs, Spindle took out a handful of nuts he’d purchased from a street vendor, began cracking them and tossed them one by one into his mouth. ‘Amateurish bluff, lad. I’m the last asset you got left in this whole Queen-damned city.’

  The officer studied his tapping fingers for a time. ‘I wouldn’t count on that. When the Fifth came to this continent an Imperial Sceptre was sent with High Fist Dujek. It’s with us now. Here in the city. And it’s awakened.’

  Spindle missed his mouth with a thrown nut. Gods all around. A line straight to Unta. Anything could be sent through. An army of Claws. A High Mage. He cleared his throat, shrugging. ‘Well, then, you don’t need me.’

  The young intelligence officer pursed his lips eloquently. ‘Until then – we’ll just have to put up with you.’

  Damned Empire ! Never lets you go. Always drags you back in. Sons a bitches.

  Then he squeezed the nuts in his sweaty hand. Oh no. Picker’s gonna kill me!

  Stooped and shuffling, Aman picked his way through his wrecked shop. Taya followed in his wake. Her steps were dainty and soundless against his noisy dragging of boots through the broken wares.

  She wrinkled her nose at the churned-up dust. ‘Revenge?’ she asked. ‘A warning?’

  Aman picked up a relatively whole glass urn, turned it in an errant ray of sunlight that penetrated the shutters he kept locked. ‘No, my dear. Neither.’ He dropped the urn to smash to pieces alongside its fellows. ‘Irrelevant. All too irrelevant.’

  Taya studied his gnarled profile. She blew a hair from her face. ‘Then why are we here?’

  ‘Tone, dear. Watch your tone. Petulant. It is not becoming.’

  She raised her full painted lips in a smirk that was almost a leer. ‘Depends upon what you’re looking for.’

  After a moment Aman tilted his head to acknowledge the point. ‘True. It has served you in the past. But things are changing now. And you must change as well.’

  She snorted her opinion of that. ‘Nothing has changed! Still we skulk in the shadows.’ Her gaze slid sideways to Aman. ‘Perhaps you’re too used to living like rats?’

  He was examining the glittering jade-encrusted statue, running his mangled hands over its strange crusted armour of stone. ‘You are wasting your breath, young one. Too long among those who can so easily be stung. Whereas I possess no vanity to be plucked like a thin rich robe. No fragile self-image so readily chipped or shattered.’ He regarded her, his gaze weighing. ‘No. The die is cast … as they say. We merely wait while the ripples spread outward – if I may be permitted to tweak my metaphors. We must wait for we are yet vulnerable, yes? But soon … soon we shall be unassailable. Never you doubt, child.’ He clasped his hands together under his uneven chin as if praying. ‘So. What happened here?’

  She shrugged her thin bare shoulders. ‘Someone broke in and ransacked the place. Probably offended by your housekeeping.’

  Aman touched his fingertips to his mouth. His mismatched eyes, one brown, the other a sickly yellow, seemed to peer in two directions. ‘No. That is not what happened at all. Observe.’ He indicated the floor next to the statue. Taya looked: near where it stood the floorboards clearly showed the dark outline, free of dust, of its carved stone armoured boots.

  ‘It moved,’ she breathed.

  Aman smiled lopsidedly – the only way he could. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So … it’s alive?’

  He patted the statue’s chest. ‘No. It is not. Makes it even more formidable, truth be told. No, this is what happened. Someone entered undetected, bypassing all my considerable wards, spirit guardians, and Warren-keyed traps. An accomplishment all by itself. He was in the process of examining the premises when the one guardian he did not anticipate acted.’

  ‘And the mess?’

  ‘The clumsy efforts of my foreign friend to corner the pest … who, with breathtaking insolence, continued his search even while being chased.’ He shook his misshapen head, awed. ‘Such effrontery! It will be his downfall.’

  Taya raised an expressive, elegant brow. ‘W
hose downfall?’

  Aman tugged at something clasped in one stone fist. He pulled again, grunting. Cloth tore. He raised a dirty shred of material: a stained handkerchief. ‘An old friend. Slipped greasily away … yet again.’

  CHAPTER VII

  The scholar and traveller Sulerem of Mengal writes in his journals of a distant land to the south where every man and woman is as a sovereign unto themselves. It is a wasteland where in over a hundred years not even one fallen tree has been moved.

  Letters of the Philosophical Society

  Darujhistan

  KISKA HAD LONG LOST TRACK OF HOW MANY LEAGUES OF SHORELINE she and Leoman had walked when, eventually, as she knew he would, the man cleared his throat in a way that told her he had something to say – something she would no doubt not want to hear.

  She stopped on the stretch of black sand, the sun-bright surf brushing up the strand, and turned to regard him. He stood some paces back. His hands were at his weapon belt; his long pale robes hung grimed and ragged at their bottom edge over his chain coat. He was growing a beard to match his moustache and his hair hung long and unkempt from beneath his peaked helmet.

  She knew she must present no prettier a picture. She waved for him to speak. ‘What is it?’

  He gave an uneasy shrug, not meeting her eyes. ‘This is useless, Kiska. If he wanted to be found he’d have come to us long ago.’

  ‘We don’t know that …’

  ‘Stands to reason.’

  ‘And I suppose you have some brilliant alternative?’

  ‘I suggest we strike inland. Perhaps we’ll find something. A way …’ He tailed off, seeing Kiska’s change of expression. She was no longer looking at him, but above and beyond. He turned round. A moment later he cursed softly. She came up to stand next to him. ‘It’s closing,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Definitely smaller.’

  The dark smear in the slate-grey sky that was the Whorl had faded to a fraction of the size it had once been.

  ‘Looks like the Liosan have put an end to it.’

  ‘I suppose so. Two offspring of Osserc ought to be enough.’

  He studied her, his gaze oddly gentle. ‘That could be our way out closing before us.’

  She turned away to keep walking. ‘All the more reason to track him down.’

  ‘Kiska,’ he called, a touch irritated. ‘We could be walking in the wrong direction.’

  ‘Go ahead! I’m not keeping you! I’m sure all the ladies are missing your moustache.’

  She walked on in silence. Part of her wondered whether he’d answer, or whether he was following along at a distance. She refused to glance behind.

  Then his voice came, shouting from far off: ‘What if I told you I could find him?’

  She stopped, let out a long angry breath. Ye gods! Was this all just some sort of game to the fellow? She turned round, eyed him. He was standing as before, hands still at his belt, rocking back and forth on the heels of his boots. Shaking her head, she retraced her tracks back up the stretch of beach and planted herself before him, hands on hips.

  ‘This better be good.’

  His brown eyes held the usual glint of amusement. He brushed at his now enormous untrimmed moustache so very pleased with himself. Like the damned cat that has the mouse.

  ‘You seem to have a soft spot for these local unfortunates, don’t you?’

  She flinched away, eyeing him warily. ‘I’ll not let you harm any of them.’

  The man looked positively pained – or made a great show of it. ‘Never. What do you think I am?’

  A murderous self-interested callous prick? Yet didn’t there seem to be something more to the man? He did appear to have a surprising gentleness. A kind of unpredictable fey compassion. His problem is that he hides it too well. ‘Your point?’

  A nod. ‘My point is that your pity for them seems to have blinded you to how they could be of use in your … well, quest.’

  She felt distaste hardening her mouth. ‘And that is?’

  He sighed, opening his hands. ‘Think, Kiska. There is some kind of connection there. All we need do is keep an eye on them. And eventually …’ He gave an evocative shrug.

  She felt a fool. Yes. Stands to reason. Simple. Elegant. Why didn’t I think of it? Because it was passive. She much preferred action. Yet Leoman was hardly the retiring type. Perhaps it was because he must have grown up hunting and thought like a hunter, whereas she had not. For her, just sitting and waiting for something to happen, well, it grated against all her instincts.

  Yet she had to agree. And so she allowed a curt nod and headed back up the curve of shoreline. Leoman followed at a discreet distance. Perhaps to spare her his supercilious smirk and self-satisfied grooming of his moustache.

  Barathol was slow to answer the loud persistent knocking at his door. It had a suspiciously arrogant and officious sound to it. Finally opening up, he found that he’d been right. A clerk faced him, a great sheaf of scrolls tucked under one arm and another in his hand. Behind him stood three Wardens of the city watch, and behind them stood a wrinkled pinch-faced woman he recognized as a representative of the city blacksmiths’ guild.

  He crossed his thick arms, peered down at the clerk. ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you …’ the young man consulted the scroll he was hiding, ‘the smith known as Barathol Mekhar, a registered foreigner?’

  ‘I’m not foreign where I was born.’

  The clerk blinked up at him. His brows wrinkled as he considered the point. Then he shrugged. ‘Well, Barathol, as a tradesman and a resident you are hereby conscripted to the city’s construction efforts.’

  ‘I’m not a mason.’

  ‘Metalworking is also required,’ the woman observed from the rear.

  Barathol jerked a thumb to her. ‘Then why isn’t she conscripted?’

  ‘Members of the blacksmiths’ guild in good standing are exempt,’ the woman replied, prim and flushed with triumph.

  Barathol nodded. ‘I see.’

  ‘I’ll give you a good exempting,’ Scillara spat from behind Barathol and tried to push past him. He threw an arm across the doorway.

  ‘Is it paid service?’ he asked.

  The clerk allowed the thick paper of the scroll to snap back into a cylinder. ‘It will count as taxation.’

  Barathol had yet to pay any tax whatsoever on any of his income but decided that perhaps it would be best not to raise the point at this time. ‘Starting when?’

  ‘The morrow. Report to the site foreman in the morning.’ The man hurried off, clearly relieved to be done. The woman threw Barathol a haughty glare then hastened in his wake. The three Wardens ambled off, hands tucked into belts. Barathol closed the door.

  ‘How can you go along with that?’ Scillara demanded.

  Barathol peered around the small apartment, which was barely furnished at all. The only domestic touches were those he’d added: a cloth at the table, utensils he’d made. ‘Have to,’ he murmured. ‘No choice.’

  ‘No choice,’ she echoed, disappointed. ‘No choice. I thought I’d picked one with a spine.’

  He flinched, but eased his shoulders. ‘They would arrest me. You’d be on the street.’

  She sniffed, dismissing that. ‘I’ve been there before. I’ll do it again.’

  ‘Not with the little ’un. Not with him. I’ll not see that happen.’

  Scillara gave a great rolling of her eyes. ‘Gods! Back to that. Martyr for the children.’ She waved him off and headed up the stairs. Barathol watched her go.

  Only thing worth martyring for, I’d say.

  ‘You a friend o’ that rat?’

  Rallick looked up from his usual seat in the Phoenix Inn. He blinked, widening his gaze at the astounding apparitions before him. Two men, twins it seemed, embalmed in dust. Clothes ragged and torn. Dirt-pasted faces cadaver hollow. Hair all standing wind-tossed and hardened in grime. ‘What rat might that be?’ he asked, though he sat at the man’s table.

  Each pulled out a chair
and sat, stiffly. One coughed into a fist and managed, croaking, ‘While we hash that out how ’bout standing two thirsty men a drink?’

  Rallick signed to Scurve for a round.

  The two let out long exhalations as if cool cloths had just been pressed to their brows.

  ‘And who are you?’ Rallick asked.

  ‘Leff.’

  ‘Scorch.’

  Ah. In the flesh. He leaned back, nodding. ‘I see. What can I do for you?’

  ‘We’re at the rat’s table but we don’t see no hide nor tail,’ said the one who gave his name as Leff.

  ‘And for the immediate future let’s keep it to rat – shall we?’

  ‘Oh?’ said the other, Scorch, his expression puzzled. Or at least so it looked beneath all the pancaking of dust and grit and untrimmed beard. ‘Why’zat?’

  Subtlety, Rallick decided, would be lost upon these two and so he allowed himself an exaggerated frown and lift of his shoulders. ‘Well … let’s just say that everyone’s name is on a list somewhere …’

  The two stiffened, their gazes flying to one another. One touched a dirty finger to his nose; the other touched a finger just beneath his left eye. Both gave Rallick broad winks.

  ‘From your lips to the gods’ ears, friend,’ said Leff.

  The drinks arrived care of Jess: two tall stoneware tankards of weak beer. The two men stared at them as if they were miraculous visitations from the gods. Each reached out shaking dusty hands to wrap them round a tankard. Each lowered his mouth as if unequal to the task of raising the vessel. Each sniffed in a great lungful then sighed, dreamily. They took first sips by sucking in the top film then coughed, convulsing and gagging. When the fits had subsided they returned to the tankards to rest their noses just above them once more.