On the morrow he would put in his first orders for wood, coke, coal, and raw copper, tin and iron.
It was getting late. Barathol straightened from his examination of the ovens and said to Chaur, ‘Leave off now, my friend. We’re grimy, true, but perhaps an outside restaurant would accommodate us, once we show our coin. I don’t know about you, but some chilled beer would sit well right now.’
Looking up, Chaur’s smeared and smudged face split into a wide smile.
The front door was kicked open and both turned as a half-dozen disreputable men pushed in, spreading out. Clubs and mallets in their hands, they began eyeing the equipment. A moment later and a finely dressed woman strode through the milling press, eyes settling on Barathol, upon which she smiled.
‘Dear sir, you are engaged in an illegal activity—’
‘Illegal? That is a reach, I’m sure. Now, before you send your thugs on a rampage of destruction, might I point out that the valves are not only open but the threads have been cut. In other words, for now, the flow of gas from the chambers beneath this structure cannot be stopped. Any sort of damage will result in, well, a ball of fire, probably of sufficient size to incinerate a sizeable area of the district.’ He paused, then added, ‘Such wilful destruction on your part will be viewed by most as, um, illegal. Now, you won’t face any charges since you will be dead, but the Guild that hired you will face dire retribution. The fines alone will bankrupt it.’
The woman’s smile was long gone by now. ‘Oh, aren’t you the clever one. Since we cannot discourage you by dismantling your shop, we have no choice then but to focus our attention on yourselves.’
Barathol walked to the kneading counter and reached into a leather satchel, withdrawing a large round ball of fired clay. He faced the woman and her mob, saw a few expressions drain of blood, and was pleased. ‘Yes, a Moranth grenado. Cusser, the Malazans call this one. Threaten me or my companion here, and I will be delighted to commit suicide – after all, what have we to lose that you would not happily take from us, given the chance?’
‘You have lost your mind.’
‘You are welcome to that opinion. Now, the question is, have you?’
She hesitated, then snarled and spun on her heel. Waving her crew to follow her, out she went.
Sighing, Barathol returned the cusser to the satchel. ‘In every thirteenth crate of twelve cussers each,’ Mallet had told him, ‘there is a thirteenth cusser. Empty. Why? Who knows? The Moranth are strange folk.’
‘It worked this time,’ he said to Chaur, ‘but I doubt it will last. So, the first order of business is to outfit you. Armour, weapons.’
Chaur stared at him as if uncomprehending.
‘Remember the smell of blood, Chaur? Corpses, the dead and dismembered?’
Sudden brightening of expression, and Chaur nodded vigorously.
Sighing again, Barathol said, ‘Let’s climb out over the back wall and find us that beer.’
He took the satchel with him.
Elsewhere in the city, as the tenth bell of the night sounded, a fingerless man set out for a new tavern, murder on his mind. His wife went out to her garden to kneel on stone, which she polished using oiled sand and a thick pad of leather.
A buxom, curvaceous woman – who drew admiring regard along with curdling spite depending on gender and gender preference – walked with one rounded arm hooked in the rather thinner seamed arm of a Malazan historian, who bore an expression wavering between disbelief and dismay. They strolled as lovers would, and since they were not lovers, the historian’s bemusement only grew.
In the High Markets of the Estates District, south of the gallows, sauntered Lady Challice. Bored, stung with longing and possibly despoiled (in her own mind) beyond all hope of redemption, she perused the host of objects and items, none of which were truly needed, and watched as women just like her (though most were trailed by servants who carried whatever was purchased) picked through the expensive and often finely made rubbish eager as jackdaws (and as mindless? Ah, beware cruel assumptions!), and she saw herself as so very different from them. So . . . changed.
Not three hundred paces away from Lady Challice, wandering unmindful of where his steps took him, was Cutter, who had once been a thief named Crokus Younghand, who had once stolen something he shouldn’t have, and, finding that he could not truly give it back, had then confused guilt and sympathy with the bliss of adoration (such errors are common), only to be released in the end by a young woman’s open contempt for his heartfelt, honest admissions.
Well, times and people change, don’t they just.
On a rooftop half a city away, Rallick Nom stood looking out upon the choppy sea of blue lights, at his side Krute of Talient, and they had much to discuss and this meant, given Rallick Nom’s taciturnity, a long session indeed.
Krute had too much to say. Rallick weighed every morsel he fed back, not out of distrust, simply habit.
In a duelling school, long after the last of the young students had toddled out, Murillio sat under moonlight with Stonny Menackis as, weeping, she unburdened herself to this veritable stranger – which perhaps is what made it all so easy – but Stonny had no experience with a man such as Murillio, who understood what it was to listen, to bestow rapt, thorough and most genuine attention solely upon one woman, to draw all of her essence – so pouring out – into his own being, as might a hummingbird drink nectar, or a bat a cow’s ankle blood (although this analogy ill serves the tender moment).
And so between them unseen vapours waft, animal and undeniable, and so much seeps into flesh and bone and self that stunning recognition comes – when it comes – like the unlocking of a door once thought sealed for ever more.
She wept and she wept often, and each time it was somehow easier, somehow more natural, more comfortable and acceptable, no different, truly, from the soft stroke of his fingers through her short hair, the way the tips brushed her cheek to smooth away the tears – and oh, who then could be surprised by all this?
To the present, then, as the blurred moon, now risen, squints down upon three dozen figures gathering on a rooftop. Exchanging hand signals and muttering instructions and advice. Checking weapons. Three dozen, for the targets were tough, mean veterans with foreign ways. And the assault to come, well, it would be brutal, unsubtle, and, without doubt, thorough.
The usual crowd in K’rul’s Bar, a dozen or so denizens choosing to be unmindful of the temple that once was – these quarried stone walls, stained with smoke and mute repositories for human voices generation upon generation, from droning chants and choral music to the howl of drunken laughter and the squeals of pinched women, these walls, then, thick and solid, ever hold to indifference in the face of drama.
Lives play out, lives parcel out portions framed by stone and wood, by tile and rafter, and all of these insensate forms have, in their time, tasted blood.
The vast, low-ceilinged main taproom with its sunken floor was once a transept or perhaps a congregation area. The narrow corridor between inset pillars along the back was once a colonnade bearing niches on which, long ago, stood funerary urns containing the charred, ashen remains of High Priests and Priestesses. The kitchen and the three storerooms behind it had once supplied sustenance to monks and the sanctioned blade-wielders, scribes and acolytes. Now they fed patrons, staff and owners.
Up the steep, saddled, stone steps to the landing on the upper floor, from which ran passages with sharply angled ceilings, three sides of a square with the fourth interrupted by the front façade of the building. Eight cell-like rooms fed off each of these passages, those on the back side projecting inward (supported by the pillars of the main floor colonnade) while the two to either side had their rooms against the building’s outer walls (thus providing windows).
The cells looking out on to the taproom had had inside walls knocked out, so that eight rooms were now three rooms, constituting the offices. The interior windows were now shuttered – no glass or skin – and Picker was in the habit
of throwing them wide open when she sat at her desk, giving her a clear view of the front third of the taproom, including the entranceway.
On this night, there were few guests resident in the inn’s rooms. Barathol and Chaur had not yet returned. Scillara had taken Duiker into the Daru District. The bard was on the low dais in the taproom, plunking some airy, despondent melody that few of the twenty or so patrons listened to with anything approaching attention. A stranger from Pale had taken a corner room on the northeast corner and had retired early after a meagre meal and a single pint of Gredfallan ale.
Picker could see Blend at her station beside the front door, sunk in shadows as she sat, legs outstretched, her hands cradling a mug of hot cider – bizarre tastes, that woman, since it was sultry and steamy this night. People entering rarely even noticed her, marching right past without a glance down. Blend’s talent, aye, and who could say if it was natural or something else.
Antsy was yelling in the kitchen. He’d gone in there to calm down the two cooks – who despised each other – and it turned out as it usually did, with Antsy at war with everyone, including the scullions and the rats cowering beneath the counter. In a short while utensils would start flying and Picker would have to drag herself down there.
Bluepearl was . . . somewhere. It was his habit to wander off, exploring the darker crooks and crannies of the old temple.
A night, then, no different from any other.
Bluepearl found himself in the cellar. Funny how often that happened. He had dragged out the fourth dusty cask from the crawlspace behind the wooden shelves. The first three he had sampled earlier in the week. Two had been vinegar, from which he could manage only a few swallows at a time. The other had been something thick and tarry, smelling of cedar or perhaps pine sap – in any case, he’d done little more than dip a finger in, finding the taste even fouler than the smell.
This time, however, he felt lucky. Broaching the cask, he bent close and tried a few tentative sniffs. Ale? Beer? But of course, neither lasted, did they? Yet this cask bore the sigil of the temple on the thick red wax coating the lid. He sniffed again. Definitely yeasty, but fresh, which meant . . . sorcery. He sniffed a third time.
He’d danced with all kinds of magic as a squad mage in the Bridgeburners. Aye, he had so many stories that even that sour-faced bard upstairs would gape in wonder just to hear half of them. Why, he’d ducked and rolled under the nastiest kinds, the sorceries that ripped flesh from bones, that boiled the blood, that made a man’s balls swell up big as melons – oh, that time had been before he’d joined, hadn’t it? Yah, the witch and the witch’s daughter – never mind. What he was was an old hand.
And this stuff – Bluepearl dipped a finger in and then poked it into his mouth – oh, it was magic indeed. Something elder, hinting of blood (aye, he’d tasted the like before).
‘Is that you, Brother Cuven?’
He twisted round and scowled at the ghost whose head and shoulders lifted into view through the floor. ‘Do I look like Brother Cuven? You’re dead, long dead. It’s all gone, you hear? So why don’t you go and do the same?’
‘I smelled the blade,’ murmured the ghost, beginning to sink back down. ‘I smelled it . . .’
No, Bluepearl decided, it probably wasn’t a good thing to be drinking this stuff. Not before some kind of analysis was made. Could be Mallet might help on that. Now, had he messed it up by opening the cask? Probably it would go bad now. So, he’d better take it upstairs.
Sighing, Bluepearl replaced the wooden stopper and picked up the cask.
In the corner room on the second level, the stranger who’d booked the room for this night finished digging out the last of the bars on the window. He then doused the lantern and moved across to the hallway door, where he crouched down, listening.
From the window behind him the first of the assassins climbed in.
Blend, her eyes half closed, watched as five men came in, moving in a half-drunken clump and arguing loudly about the latest jump in the price of bread, slurred statements punctuated by shoves and buffets, and wasn’t it a wonder, Blend reflected as they staggered into the taproom, how people could complain about very nearly anything as if their lives depended on it.
These ones she didn’t know, meaning they’d probably spied the torchlit sign on their way back from some other place, deciding that this drunk wasn’t drunk enough, and she noted that they were better dressed than most – nobles, most likely, with all the usual bluster and airs of invincibility and all that. Well, they’d be spending coin here and that was what counted.
She took another sip of cider.
*
Antsy had his shortsword out as he crept towards the back of the smallest of the three storerooms. That damned two-headed rat was back. Sure, nobody else believed him except maybe the cooks now since they’d both seen the horrid thing, but the only way to prove it to the others was to kill the bugger and then show it to everyone.
They could then pickle it in a giant jar and make of it a curio for the bar. It would be sure to pull ‘em in. Twoheaded rat caught in the kitchen of K’rul’s Bar! Come see!
Oh, hold on . . . was that the best kind of advertising? He’d have to ask Picker about that.
First, of course, he needed to kill the thing.
He crept closer, eyes fixed on the dark gap behind the last crate to the left.
Kill the thing, aye. Just don’t chop either head off.
Eleven figures crowded the corner room on the upper floor. Three held daggers, including the man crouched at the door. Four cradled crossbows, quarrels set. The last four – big men all – wielded swords and bucklers, and beneath their loose shirts there was fine chain.
The one at the door could now hear the argument in the taproom downstairs, accusations regarding the price of bread – a ridiculous subject, the man thought yet again, given how these ones were dressed like second and third-born nobles – but clearly no one had taken note of the peculiarity. Loud voices, especially drunk-sounding ones, had a way of filling the heads of people around them. Filling them with the wrong things.
So now everyone’s attention was on the loud, obnoxious newcomers, and at least some of the targets were likely to be converging, having it in mind to maybe toss the fools out or at least ask them to tone it down and all that.
Almost time then . . .
*
Sitting on the stool on the dais, the bard let his fingers trail away from the last notes he had played, and slowly leaned back as the nobles now argued over which table to take. There were plenty to choose from so the issue was hardly worth all that energy.
He watched them for a long moment, and then set his instrument down and went over to the pitcher and tankard waiting to one side of the modest stage. He poured himself some ale, and then leaned against the wall, taking sips.
Picker rose from her chair as the door opened behind her. She turned. ‘Mallet, that bunch of idiots who just came in.’
The healer nodded. ‘There’ll be trouble with them. Have you seen Barathol or Chaur? They were supposed to be coming back here – the Guild’s probably caught wind of what he’s up to by now. I’m thinking of maybe heading over, in case—’
Picker held up her hand, two quick signals that silenced Mallet. ‘Listen to them,’ she said, frowning. ‘It’s not sounding right.’
After a moment, Mallet nodded. ‘We’d better head down.’
Picker turned and leaned on the sill, squinting at the shadows where sat Blend – and she saw those outstretched legs slowly draw back. ‘Shit.’
It was an act. That conclusion arrived sudden and cold as a winter wind. Alarmed, Blend rose from her chair, hands slipping beneath her raincape.
As the outside door opened once more.
That damned rat had slipped beneath the door leading to the cellar – Antsy saw its slithery tail wriggle out of sight and swore under his breath. He could catch it on the stairs—
The cellar door swung open and there stood Bluep
earl, carrying a dusty cask as if it was a newborn child.
‘Did you see it?’ Antsy demanded.
‘See what?’
‘The two-headed rat! It just went under the door!’
‘Gods below, Antsy. Please, no more. There’s no twoheaded rat. Move aside, will you? This thing’s heavy.’
And he shouldered past Antsy, out into the kitchen.
Three cloaked figures stepped in from outside K’rul’s Bar, crossbows at the ready. The bolts snapped out. Behind the bar, Skevos, who was handling the shift this night, was driven back as a quarrel thudded into his chest, shattering his sternum. A second quarrel shot up towards the office window where Picker was leaning out and she lunged back, either struck or dodging there was no way to tell. The third quarrel caught Hedry, a serving girl of fifteen years of age, and spun her round, her tray of mugs tumbling over.
From closer to the dais, the five drunks drew knives and swords from beneath their cloaks and fanned out, hacking at everyone within reach.
Shrieks filled the air.
Stepping out from her table, Blend slid like smoke into the midst of the three figures at the doorway. Her knives flickered, slashed, opening the throat of the man directly in front of her, severing the tendons of the nearer arm of the man to her left. Ducking beneath the first man as he toppled forward, she thrust one of her daggers into the chest of the third assassin. The point punched through chain and the blade snapped. She brought the other one forward in an upper cut, stabbing between the man’s legs. As he went down, Blend tore the knife free and spun to slash at the face of the second assassin. Throwing his head back to avoid the blade drove it into a low rafter. There was a heavy crunch and the man sagged on watery knees. Blend stabbed him through an eye.
She heard a fourth crossbow release and something punched her left shoulder, flinging her round. The arm below that shoulder seemed to have vanished – she could feel nothing – and she heard the knife clunk on the floor, even as the assassin who had held back in the doorway now rushed towards her, crossbow discarded and daggers drawn.
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