‘We can get through! Harllo – the tunnel on the other side – it slopes upward!’
‘I can’t—’
‘You have to! The city, Harllo, you have to show it to me – I’d be lost. I need you, Harllo. I need you.’
‘All right, but . . .’ He was about to tell Bainisk the truth. About the city. That it wasn’t the paradise he’d made it out to be. That people starved there. That people did bad things to each other. But no, that could wait. It’d be bad to talk about those things right now. ‘All right, Bainisk.’
They left the lantern. Bainisk uncoiled some of the rope and tied the end about Harllo’s waist, fumbling with numbed hands on the knot. ‘Take a few deep breaths first,’ he said. ‘And then one more, deep as you can.’
The plunge into the dark left Harllo instantly disoriented. The rope round his waist pulled him down and then into the face of the current. He opened his eyes and felt the thrill of shock from the icy flow. Strange glowing streaks flashed past, possibly from the rock itself, or perhaps they were but ghosts lurking behind his eyes. At first he sought to help Bainisk, flailing with his arms and trying to kick, but after a moment he simply went limp.
Either Bainisk would pull them both through, or he wouldn’t. Either way was fine.
His mind began to drift, and he so wanted to take a breath – he couldn’t hold back much longer. His lungs were burning. The water would be cool, cool enough to quench that fire for ever more. Yes, he could do that.
Cold bit into his right hand – what? And then his head was lifted above the surface. And he was sucking in icy lungfuls of air.
Darkness, the rush and gurgle of water flowing past, seeking to pull him back, back and down. But Bainisk was tugging him along, and it was getting shallower as the tunnel widened. The black, dripping ceiling seemed to be sagging, forming a crooked spine overhead. Harllo stared up at it, wondering how he could see at all.
And then he was being dragged across broken stone.
They halted, lying side by side.
Before too long, the shivering began. Racing into Harllo like demonic possession, a spirit that shook through him with rabid glee. His teeth chattered uncontrollably.
Bainisk was plucking at him. Through clacking teeth he said, ‘Venaz won’t stop. He’ll see the lantern – he’ll know. We got to keep going, Harllo. It’s the only way to get warm again, the only way to get away.’
But it was so hard to climb to his feet. His legs still didn’t work properly. Bainisk had to help him and he leaned heavily on the bigger boy as they staggered skidding upslope along the scree-scattered path.
It seemed to Harllo that they walked for ever, into and out of faint light. Sometimes the slope pitched downward, only to slowly climb yet again. Pain throbbed in Harllo’s legs now, but it was welcome – life was returning, filled with its stubborn fire, and now he wanted to live, now it mattered more than anything else.
‘Look!’ Bainisk gasped. ‘At what we’re walking on – Harllo, look!’
Phosphorescent mould limned the walls, and in the faint glow Harllo could make out the vague shapes of the rubble underfoot. Broken pottery. Small fragments of burned bone.
‘It’s got to lead up,’ Bainisk said. ‘To some cave. The Gadrobi used them to bury their ancestors. A cave overlooking the lake. We’re almost there.’
Instead, they reached a cliff ledge.
And stood, silent.
A vertical section of rock had simply plummeted away, leaving a broad gap. The bottom of the fissure was swallowed in black, from which warm air rose in dry gusts. Opposite them, ten or more paces across, a slash of diffuse light revealed the continuation of the tunnel they had been climbing.
‘We’ll climb down,’ said Bainisk, uncoiling the rope and starting to tie a knot at one end. ‘And then back up. We can do this, you’ll see.’
‘What if the rope’s not long enough? I can’t see the bottom, Bainisk.’
‘We’ll just find more handholds.’ Now he was tying a loop at the other end which he then set round a knob-like projection. ‘I’ll throw a snake back up to dislodge this, so we can take the rope with us for the climb up the other side. Now, you go first.’ He tossed the rest of the rope over the edge. They heard it snap out to its full length. Bainisk grunted. ‘Like I said, we can find handholds.’
Harllo worked his way over the side, gripping hard the wet rope – it wanted to slide through, but if that happened he knew he was dead, so he held tight. His feet scrambled, found shallow ledges running at an angle across the cliff-face. Not much, but they eased the strain. He began working his way down.
He was perhaps three body-lengths down when Bainisk began following. The rope began swaying unpredictably, and Harllo found his feet slipping from their scant purchases again and again, each time resulting in a savage tug on his arms.
‘Bainisk!’ he hissed. ‘Wait! Let me go a little farther down first – you’re throwing me about.’
‘Okay. Go on.’
Harllo found purchase again and resumed the descent.
If Bainisk started up again he no longer felt the sways and tugs. The rope was getting wetter, which meant that he was reaching its end – the water was soaking its way down. And then he reached the sodden knot. Sudden panic as he sought to find projections in the wall for his feet. There were very few – the stone was almost sheer.
‘Bainisk! I’m at the knot!’ He craned his neck to look down. Blackness, unrelieved, depthless. ‘Bainisk! Where are you?’
Since Harllo’s first call, Bainisk had not moved. The last thing he wanted to do was accidentally dislodge the boy, not after they’d made it this far. And, truth be told, he was experiencing a growing fear. This wall was too even – no cracks, the strata he could feel little more than ripples at a steeply canted angle. They would never be able to hold on once past the rope – and there was nothing he could use to slip the loop round.
They were, he realized, in trouble.
Upon hearing Harllo’s last call – the boy reaching the knot – he readied himself to resume his descent.
And there was a sharp upward tug on the rope.
He looked up. Vague faces peering over, hands and more hands reaching to close on the rope. Venaz – yes, there he was, grinning.
‘Got you,’ he murmured, low and savage. ‘Got you both, Bainisk.’
Another tug upward.
Bainisk drew his knife one-handed. He reached down to cut the rope beneath him, and then hesitated, looking up once more at Venaz’s face.
Maybe that had been his own, only a few years ago. That face, so eager to take over, to rule the moles. Well, Venaz could have them. He could have it all.
Bainisk reached up with the knife, just above his fist where it held tight. And he sliced through.
*
Dig heels in, it will not help. We must wing back to the present. For everything to be understood, every facet must flash alight at least once. Earlier, the round man begged forgiveness. Now, he pleads for trust. His is a sure hand, even if it trembles. Trust.
A bard sits opposite an historian. At a nearby table in K’rul’s Bar, Blend watches Scillara unfolding coils of smoke from her mouth. There is something avid in that gaze, but every now and then a war erupts in her eyes, when she thinks of the woman lying in a coma upstairs. When she thinks of her, yes. Blend has taken to sleeping in the bed with Picker, has taken to trying all she could think of to awaken sensation once more in her lover. But nothing has worked. Picker’s soul is lost, wandering far from the cool, flaccid flesh.
Blend hates herself now, as she senses her soul ready to move on, to seek the blessing of a new life, a new body to explore and caress, new lips to press upon her own.
But this is silly. Scillara’s amiability was ever casual. She was a woman who preferred a man’s charms, such as they were. And truth be told, Blend had played in that crib more than once herself. So why now has this lust awakened? What made it so wild, so needy?
Loss, my dear. Lo
ss is like a goad, a stinging shove that sets one lunging forward seeking handholds, seeking ecstasy, delicious surrender, even the lure of self-destruction. The bud cut at the stem throws its last energy into one final flowering, one glorious exclamation. The flower defies, to quote in entirety an ancient Tiste Andii poem. Life runs from death. It must, it cannot help it. Life runs, to quote a round man’s epitome of poetic brevity.
Slip into Blend’s mind, ease in behind her eyes, and watch as she watches, feel as she feels, if you dare.
Or try Antsy, there at the counter on which are arrayed seven crossbows, twelve flatpacks of quarrels amounting to one hundred and twenty darts, six shortswords, three throwing axes of Falari design, a Genabarii broadsword and buckler, two local rapiers with fancy quillons – so fancy the weapons were snagged together and Antsy had spent an entire morning trying to separate them, with no luck – and a small sack containing three sharpers. He is trying to decide what to wear.
But the mission they were about to set out on was meant to be peaceful, so he should just wear his shortsword as usual, peace-strapped as usual, everything as usual, in fact. But then there were assassins out there who wanted Antsy’s head on a dagger point, so maybe keeping things usual was in fact suicidal. So he should strap on at least two shortswords, throw a couple of crossbows over his shoulders and hold the broadsword in his right hand and the twin rapiers in his left, with a flatpack tied to each hip, the sharper sack at his belt, and a throwing axe between his teeth – no, that’s ridiculous, he’d break his jaw trying that. Maybe an extra shortsword, but then he might cut his own tongue out the first time he tried saying anything and he was sure to try saying something eventually, wasn’t he?
But he could run the scabbards for all six shortswords through his belt, and end up wearing a skirt of shortswords, but that’d be all right, wouldn’t it? But then, where would he carry the sharpers? One knock against a pommel or hilt and he’d be an expanding cloud of whiskers and weapon bits. And what about the crossbows? He’d need to load them all up but keep everything away from the releases, unless he wanted to end up skewering all his friends with the first stumble.
What if—
What’s that? Back to Blend, please? Flesh against flesh, the weight of full breasts in hands, one knee pushing up between parted thighs, sweat a blending of sweet oils, soft lips trying to merge, tongues dancing eager and slick as—
‘I can’t wear alla this!’
Scillara glanced over. ‘Really, Antsy? Didn’t Blend say that about a bell ago?’
‘What? Who? Her? What does she know?’
To that entirely unselfconscious display of irony, Blend could only raise her brows when she caught Scillara’s eye.
Scillara smiled in response, then drew again on her pipe.
Blend glanced over at the bard, and then said to Antsy, ‘We’re safe out there now, anyway.’
Eyes bulging, Antsy stared at her in disbelief. ‘You’d take the word of some damned minstrel? What does he know?’
‘You keep asking what does anyone know, when it’s obvious that whatever they know you’re not listening to anyway.’
‘What?’
‘Sorry, that so confused me I doubt I could repeat it. The contract’s cancelled – Fisher said so.’
Antsy wagged his head from side to side. ‘Fisher said so!’ He jabbed a finger at the bard. ‘He’s not Fisher – not the famous one, anyway. He’s just stolen the name! If he was famous he wouldn’t be just sittin’ there, would he? Famous people don’t do that.’
‘Really?’ the bard who called himself Fisher asked. ‘What are we supposed to do, Antsy?’
‘Famous people do famous things, alla time. Everybody knows that!’
‘The contract has been bought out,’ the bard said. ‘But if you want to dress as if preparing for a single-handed assault on Moon’s Spawn, you go right ahead.’
‘Rope! Do I need rope? Let me think!’ And to aid in this process Antsy began pacing, moustache twitching.
Blend wanted to pull a boot off and push her foot between Scillara’s thighs. No, she wanted to crawl right in there. Staking a claim. With a hiss of frustration she stood, hesitated, and then went to sit down at the bard’s table. She fixed him with an intense stare, to which he responded with a raised brow.
‘There’re more songs supposedly composed by Fisher than anyone else I’ve ever heard of.’
The man shrugged.
‘Some of them are a hundred years old.’
‘I was a prodigy.’
‘Were you now?’
Duiker spoke. ‘The poet is immortal.’
She turned to face him. ‘Is that some kind of general, ideological statement, Historian? Or are you talking about the man sharing this table with you?’
Antsy cursed suddenly and then said, ‘I don’t need any rope! Who put that into my head? Let’s get going – I’m taking this shortsword and a sharper and anybody gets too close to me or looks suspicious they can eat the sharper for breakfast!’
‘We’ll stay here,’ Duiker said when Blend hesitated. ‘The bard and me. I’ll look in on Picker.’
‘All right. Thanks.’
Antsy, Blend and Scillara set out.
The journey took them from the Estates District and into Daru District, along the Second Tier Wall. The city had fully awakened now, and in places the crowds were thick with the endless machinery of living. Voices and smells and needs and wants, hungers and thirsts, laughter and irritation, misery and joy, and the sunlight fell on everything it could reach and shadows retreated wherever they could.
Temporary barriers blocked the three foreigners here and there – a cart jammed sideways in a narrow street, a carthorse dropped dead with its legs sticking up, half a family pinned under the upended cart. A swarm of people round a small collapsed building, stealing every dislodged brick and shard of lumber, and if anyone had been trapped in it, alas, no one was looking for them.
Scillara walked like a woman bred to be admired. And oh, yes, people noticed. In other circumstances, Blend – being another woman – might have resented that, but then she’d made a career out of not being noticed; and besides, she counted herself among the admirers.
‘Friendly people, these Darujhistanii,’ said Scillara as they finally swung south from the wall, heading for the southwest corner of the district.
‘They’re smiling,’ said Blend, ‘because they want a roll with you. And clearly you haven’t noticed the wives and such, all looking as if they swallowed something sour.’
‘Maybe they did.’
‘Oh they did, all right. The truth that men are men, that’s what they’ve swallowed.’
Antsy snorted. ‘What else would men be but men? Your problem, Blend, is you see too much, even when it’s not there.’
‘Oh, and what have you been noticing, Antsy?’
‘Suspicious people, that’s what.’
‘What suspicious people?’
‘The ones who keep staring at us, of course.’
‘That’s because of Scillara – what do you think we’ve just been talking about?’
‘Maybe they are, maybe they ain’t. Maybe they’re assassins, lookin’ to jump us.’
‘That old man back there who got his ear boxed by his wife was an assassin? What kind of Guild are they running here?’
‘You don’t know she was his wife,’ Antsy retorted. ‘And you don’t know but that was a signal to somebody on a roof. We could be walking right into an ambush!’ ‘Of course,’ agreed Blend, ‘that woman was his mother, because Guild rules state that Ma’s got to come along to make sure he’s got the hand signals down, and that he eats all his lunch and his knives are sharp and he’s tied up his moccasins right so he doesn’t trip in the middle of his murderous lunge at Sergeant Antsy.’
‘I ain’t so lucky he trips,’ Antsy said in a growl. ‘In case you ain’t noticed, Blend, it’s been a run of the Lord’s push for us. Oponn’s got it in for me, especially.’
; ‘Why?’ Scillara asked.
‘Because I don’t believe in the Twins, that’s why. Luck – it’s all bad. Oponn only pulls now to push later. If you’ve been pulled, it don’t end there. Never does. No, you can expect the push to come any time and all you know for sure is it’s gonna come, that push. Every time. In fact, we’re all as good as dead.’
‘Well,’ said Scillara, ‘I can’t argue with that. Sooner or later, Hood takes us all, and that’s the only certainty there is.’
‘Aren’t you two cheerful this morning,’ Blend observed. ‘Look, here we are.’
They had arrived at the Warden Barracks, suitably sombre and foreboding.
Blend saw an annexe fronting the blockish building with barred windows and set out towards it, the other two following.
A guard lounging outside the door watched them approach, and then said, ‘Check your weapons at the front desk. You here to visit someone?’
‘No,’ snorted Antsy, ‘we’ve come to break ‘im out!’ And then he laughed. ‘Haha.’
No one found the joke at all amusing, especially after the sharper was found and correctly identified. Antsy then made the mistake of getting belligerent, in the midst of five or six stern-visaged constabulary, which led to a scuffle and then an arrest.
When all was said and done, Antsy found himself in a lock-up with three drunks, only one of whom was conscious – singing some old Fisher classic in a broken-hearted voice – and a fourth man who seemed to be entirely mad, convinced as he was that everyone he saw was wearing a mask, which was hiding something demonic, horrible, bloodthirsty. He’d been arrested for trying to tear off a merchant’s face and he eyed Antsy speculatively before evidently deciding that the red-whiskered foreigner looked too tough to take on, at least while he was still awake.
The sentence was three days long, provided Antsy proved a model prisoner. Any trouble and it could stretch out some more.
As a result of all this, it was some time before Scillara and Blend managed to gain permission to see Barathol Mekhar. They met him in a holding cell while two guards stood flanking the single door, shortswords drawn.
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