It occurred to Saeng that the man was bored with his task and was merely going through the motions for the sake of ritual. A great churning hatred for him overtook her – a hatred she imagined just as strong as his for their downtrodden poverty, their mud-spattered cheap rags, and the responsibilities that took him away from his scheming at the capital deep in the heart of their nation.
He paced a quick inspection of the assembled menfolk then headed back to the cool shade of his palanquin.
Saeng eased out a taut breath of relief; yet again no one had been chosen. Once more their distant dreaded rulers had come, collected their taxation and tribute, examined the males of the village, and marched on never to be seen again until another year turned upon the wheel of their grinding fate.
The representative paused, however. He swung the baton up to tap upon one shoulder next to the fat folds of his shaven neck. He turned and padded back to the assembly where he slowly retraced his steps, once more passing before the men, one by one. When he came abreast of Hanu he paused. The ivory baton, gold-chased, bounced heavily upon his shoulder. He leaned forward as if sniffing her elder brother, then suddenly rocked back as if thrust.
His head turned and his black narrowed eyes scanned the crowd of villagers, Saeng included. Then his thick jowls bunched as he smiled with something like cruel satisfaction and he thrust out his baton to touch Hanu upon the chest. Their mother lurched forward crying out but Saeng caught her arm and held her.
Hanu’s stunned gaze found hers. As the soldiers closed in and tied his arms, he stared, silent, until they urged him onward. Then he twisted to peer back over his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry – I’ll protect you! I swore! I swore!’ he called over and over until the soldiers yanked upon his fetters.
Their mother cried into her arms, but Saeng watched while the soldiers prodded her brother off. She had to watch; she owed him that. The theurgist, whoever he was, some minor bureaucrat of their ruling elite, had returned to his palanquin. Saeng finally lost sight of her brother as he was urged up the track to disappear with the column into the hanging leaves of the jungle as if swallowed whole.
At that moment, as she stood supporting her mother, she vowed her revenge upon them all. Upon their crushing rule, their contempt, and upon the blood-price they exacted from their own people. Who were they to make such demands? To impose such suffering and misery?
She would see them burn. So did she swear.
Yet all the while a quieter voice whispered a suspicion that burned like acid upon her soul: Would he not have been chosen but for your own castings upon him? Was not this all your fault?
* * *
Shimmer happened to be at the waterfront when a battered vessel came limping up to one of the piers of Haven. She sensed something unusual about it, though she was no mage with access to any Warren. Nevertheless, she was of the Avowed of the Crimson Guard, and more than a hundred years ago she had sworn to oppose the Malazan Empire for so long as it should endure. And over the years it seemed that this vow had caused preternatural instincts and strengths to accrue to her. She could now sense things far beyond what she could before. Such as this modest two-masted ship; or rather, those it carried. Something was there. No mere lost coastal traders, or fisherfolk thrown off course. Power walked its deck. Despite wearing only a loose shirt over trousers, belted, with a long-knife at her back, she went down to meet the vessel.
They were certainly foreign. Of no extraction she was familiar with: hair night-black and straight; squat of build, close even to her own petite stature. And dark, varying from a fair nut hue to a sun-darkened earthy brown. Their vessel flew no sigils or heraldry. It appeared to have had a very hard crossing of it. The crew busied themselves readying for docking and though no sailor herself she thought the ship’s company quite lacking in hands. The various lads and lasses who hung about the Haven waterfront took thrown lines and helped in the placement of a wood and rope gangway.
First down was an arresting figure of a woman: shorter even than Shimmer, and painfully lean. Her hair blew in a great midnight cloud about her head and she wore a loose black dress that obscured her feet. Some sort of binding encircled her arms and from each hung bright amulets and charms. More amulets hung on multiple leather thong necklaces to rattle like a forest of baubles.
After running a sceptical eye up and down Shimmer she announced in passable Talian: ‘You are no customs official.’
‘And you’re no ship’s captain.’ Another figure stepped up on to the gangway, yanking Shimmer’s attention away from the woman: a towering man in layered shirts, a curved dirk at his side. He too was dark, like the woman, as the Kanese can be, skin the hue of ironwood rather than the black of Dal Hon. He too wore his hair long, but gathered atop his head by some sort of carved stone clasp. The thick timbers of the gangway groaned and bounced as he descended.
After looking Shimmer up and down, he rumbled, ‘She is of them.’ His gaze was not challenging, yet something of his eyes made her uneasy: the irises glittered as if dusted in gold.
The woman’s gaze sharpened, a sudden wariness touching it. ‘Ah. I see it now. I was fooled – no Isturé would have deigned to appear so … informal.’
Shimmer frowned, and not only at being discussed as if she were not standing right before these two foreigners. And that word … why did it grate like a dull blade across her back?
Yet with Blues gone north she was the acting governor and so she inclined her head, all politeness. ‘I’m sorry, but you have me at a disadvantage. What was that you said?’
‘Isturé. It is our word for you in our lands.’
‘Us …?’
The woman did not even try to disguise her distaste. ‘You Avowed. It translates as something like “undying fiend”.’
Shimmer reflexively retreated a step and her hand went to her long-knife at her back. ‘What do you two want here?’
The woman opened her hands in a gesture of apology. ‘Forgive my ill-temper. I have been set a task that finds in me a reluctant servant. We come with an offer for you Crimson Guard.’
Shimmer relaxed her stance a touch. Behind the two foreigners the sailors climbed the rigging to prepare the ship for the repairs of a port call. They worked barefoot, the soles of their feet black with tar. ‘An offer?’ she answered, doubtful. ‘What would that be?’
‘Employment.’
She understood now, and she shook her head. ‘We are no longer accepting contracts.’
‘Well, perhaps that is for your general to decide. K’azz.’
‘He’s not … seeing potential employers right now.’
‘He will see us.’
‘I doubt that very—’
‘There is an inn, or hostel, here in this hamlet?’
Shimmer gritted her teeth against her annoyance at being interrupted. ‘Perhaps it would be best if you stayed on your vessel …’
‘I think not. I am quite as sick of it as they are of me.’
That I can well understand. ‘If you insist.’ She invited them onward. ‘We have an inn with some few plain rooms … but I cannot guarantee they will take you.’
The woman’s smile was a wolfish flash of needle ivory teeth. ‘Our gold is good, and innkeepers are the same breed everywhere.’
As they climbed the gentle slope up to the hamlet Shimmer introduced herself.
‘Rutana,’ the woman answered. She gestured back to the man who followed with slow deliberate steps. ‘This is Nagal.’
‘And where are you from?’
She snorted a harsh laugh. ‘A land close to this but of which you would never have heard.’
Shimmer’s patience hadn’t been tested like this for some time. ‘Try me,’ she managed to offer lightly.
‘Very well. We come from the land known to some as Jacuruku.’
Despite her irritation Shimmer was impressed. ‘Indeed. I know it. I haven’t been there, but K’azz has.’
‘So I have been told. You will take a message to K’azz for us.�
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Shimmer’s irritation gave way to wonder at the woman’s breathtaking imperiousness. ‘Oh?’ she answered. ‘Will I?’
‘Yes. You will.’
‘And what is that message?’
Rutana stopped. She scowled, as if only now noting something in Shimmer’s tone. She tugged on the tight lacing of the leather straps cinching her left arm and winced as if at an old nagging wound. Shimmer noted that the amulets knotted there were small triangular boxes each of which appeared to contain some sort of tiny carved figurine. ‘Skinner walks our land,’ the woman finally ground out. ‘Tell him that, Isturé. The curse that is Skinner walks our land.’
Later, Shimmer summoned Lor-sinn and Gwynn to discuss their visitors. At table Gwynn maintained his grim and dour demeanour, dressed all in black, saying little and smiling even less. His newly grown shock of white hair stood in all directions. Shimmer could very easily imagine the man spending even his free time sitting stiffly while he glowered into the darkness rather like a corpse presiding gloomily at its own wake. The second of her company mages present, Lor-sinn, was still obviously uncomfortable sitting so close to Shimmer among the seats normally occupied by Blues, Fingers, Shell, or the recently departed Smoky. Having the opportunity to study her more closely now, Shimmer thought that the woman was slowly but steadily losing the plumpness that had endeared her to so many of the company’s males.
As servants brought soup Shimmer turned to Lor. ‘You are continuing to attempt to contact the Fourth in Assail?’
‘Yes, Commander.’
‘Shimmer will do.’
‘Yes, ah, Shimmer.’ She leaned forward over the table, ever eager to discuss her work. ‘My last effort was last week. I could try opening a portal if you wish …’
‘I would not risk that, Lor. Not into Assail. Nothing so drastic as yet. We will see what K’azz thinks.’ She turned to Gwynn. ‘And our friends the First?’
The humourless mage – who only seemed to be getting even gloomier – studied his soup as if it were something unrecognizable. ‘As our visitors claim. Jacuruku still, Commander.’
‘Just Shimmer, please.’
Gwynn bowed his head, then, as if reordering his thoughts, he set down his utensils, sighing. He cradled his chin on his fists. ‘This Rutana is a servant of ancient Ardata. Whom some name the Queen of Witches.’
Shimmer nodded. She tasted the soup and found it pleasant. She set down her spoon. The servants slipped the main entrée of roasted game birds before them. She inhaled the steaming birds’ scent then sat back to meet Gwynn’s glistening steady gaze. ‘Yet you assure me they are enemies of Skinner.’
‘They are.’
‘Then your point?’
‘They are here to draw us into their war. And, Commander, I have been there. I have seen it. And I strongly counsel against this.’
‘I see. Thank you for that blunt appraisal.’ She turned to Lor. ‘And you?’
The mage shrugged her still-rounded shoulders. ‘It remains academic. No one even knows where in the interior K’azz has disappeared to.’
Shimmer lowered her gaze to the small baked game hen. She plucked at the crisp skin. ‘I will send the message through our dead Brethren. They will find him.’
‘He may not bother to reply,’ Gwynn added.
A touch too blunt, Shimmer thought, her lips tightening in irritation. ‘We shall see.’
Much later, Shimmer stood in the centre of her chambers. It was the set of rooms which had once belonged to the old lord and ladies of the dynasty that had ruled this province as one of the petty kingdoms of Stratem before the arrival of the Crimson Guard. Officially it was Blues’, as it was his rotation as governor, and it would be K’azz’s should he be visiting. Not that whichever of the Avowed occupied the room would have altered anything. The furnishings remained sparse: a cot for a bed and a desk for paperwork. That was all. And a travel chest containing Shimmer’s armour. As for her whipsword, it hung in the main hall downstairs.
Studying the empty room, its walls of dressed stone, the dusty old tapestries that dated back to the original dynasty, that hung rotting where the Guard had found them, her thoughts returned to her irritation at dinner. It was not Gwynn and his clumsy manners; no, it was K’azz’s absence. The man was avoiding something and what that might be worried her. At times what personal vanity she had left fancied he was avoiding her. At other times she cursed the man for running away from his responsibilities. It was damned hard work struggling to build a unified nation from the ground up. Roads had to be surveyed, bridges built, settlements planned. Things couldn’t be allowed to fall out haphazardly. And the man had walked away from the dull dreariness of it all – leaving others to clean up the mess. That irresponsibility had lowered her estimation of him a fair bit. She shook herself, frowning at the dark. In any case, he had to be contacted. She summoned the Brethren to her.
Shortly, a ghostly shape coalesced within the room, lean, bandy-legged, right arm gone at the elbow: Stoop, their old siegemaster, recently lost to them. The shade offered a slight inclination of his head. ‘Shimmer,’ he breathed, and she was surprised to actually hear the word pronounced.
‘Stoop. I have a message for K’azz.’
‘I can deliver it,’ the shade of the old man drawled. ‘But I can’t say as whether he’ll respond.’
‘I understand. The message is that visitors have arrived from Jacuruku. Skinner has returned there and they appear to be implying that he is our responsibility.’
‘We sensed those two,’ Stoop murmured. ‘Hardly human, them.’
Shimmer frowned at the observation. ‘You will pass on the message?’
‘Course. Get right on it. Good to see you again, Shimmer.’ The shade headed to the door as if it would open it to exit but passed right through the adzed planks instead. His presence left behind a cloud of dust that wafted to the stone floor.
Puzzled, Shimmer knelt to run a hand through the dust, then straightened, studying her fingers. The man had acted almost as if he were still alive. And never before had she seen one of them gather dust to their form. But then, Stoop quite often appeared as spokesman for the fallen Avowed. She wiped the powder from her hands and returned to the desk.
Shimmer frankly expected no response. K’azz had disavowed Skinner and those who chose to follow him. Thrown them from the ranks more than a year ago. The man’s actions were now his own. The company was in no way answerable for them … no matter what others might insist. These visitors could linger as long as they liked. They would get no satisfaction. Over the next few days she ignored them while approving requests from the local merchants regarding expenses for repairs to their vessel.
Four days later she was therefore quite surprised when Ogilvy, one of the regulars, a recruit of their Third Investment, knocked and entered, pressing a scarred and battered knuckle to an equally scarred, hairless brow. ‘K’azz, ma’am,’ he announced in his hoarse gravelly voice, bowing as if she were some sort of nobility. Countless times she had told him a salute would do, but it seemed the man’s manners were ingrained as he bowed and ma’amed even as she told him not to. Now she just endured it.
Nodding, she dismissed him. She set down her quill and rose to come down. She took a moment to pause before a mirror of polished bronze next to the door and examine herself. Short and dark, her long black hair braided. She happened to be wearing a full-length gown of brocade, slit and laced at the sides, tight across her chest and narrow at the arms all the way down past her wrists where the cloth flared. It hadn’t occurred to her before, but she seemed to have taken the role of acting-governor rather seriously in setting aside her usual plain leathers and quilted aketon. But that face! Always so severe, lass. Nose flattened like some brawling barroom wench, and lips too damned thin.
She scowled at her reflection. Still, not exactly something to run from howling into the night.
And anyway, who gave a damn? She threw open the door, yanked the sheathed dirk hanging there from i
ts peg, and shoved it through the back of her belt as she descended the circular stone staircase.
She found him at the stables running a hand over one of their few mounts. His leathers were travel-stained, with tall moccasins wrapped tight up to his knees. Seen from behind his hair hung wild and unkempt, touched with streaks of grey.
He turned before she reached him and she paused. Again the shock of this man, this youth of her own remembrance, now an old man. He must’ve been living very hard recently as he’d lost even more weight. His keen eyes were sunken and his cheekbones stuck out as sharp as blades. And he’d grown a beard, also touched with grey.
Old. Prematurely old. Prematurely? We’re all old, girl! You’re over a hundred and twenty! Shaking herself, she closed to take both cool hands in hers, giving a light kiss to each cheek. ‘Welcome! What have you been doing?’
‘Picking out routes to Lake Jorrick.’
‘You’re really going to name it after him?’
He smiled behind his beard. ‘Why not? He’s a hero in Genabackis.’
‘Well … I suppose so. Here to stay?’
The bright eyes, which had been searching hers, edged aside. ‘Perhaps. My apologies for leaving all the paperwork to you.’
‘You left it to Blues.’
‘Ah! No wonder he fled. Then I don’t apologize. Any word on them?’
‘They may have reached Korel by now.’
‘So … they merely have to find Bars and rescue him from the Stormwall – should it even be him. They ought to be back soon.’
‘I should’ve gone.’
‘Blues can take care of himself. He’s the best of us.’
‘Well, I miss him. As I miss you …’
The dark wind-burnished skin about the man’s eyes wrinkled then and he glanced down. ‘I miss all of you as well – so, what of these visitors?’
Shimmer headed for the open fortress gates. ‘Gwynn names them servants of Ardata.’
Blood and Bone Page 2