‘Not a chance—’
Throatslitter lunged over the chalked-out field on the deck. Ebron shrieked.
Things got ugly, and Bottle’s rat was lucky to escape unscathed.
Skulldeath sat huddled beneath blankets, staring morosely at the unconscious form of Hellian. She had passed out halfway through their love-making, which probably wasn’t unusual. Another soldier was sitting nearby, studying the Seven Cities prince with a knowing expression on his face.
The young man’s need for comfort and all the rest was not doomed this night, and in a short time he would slide over. It was a good thing that the only thing Hellian was possessive about was her rum and whatnot. She eyed a jug in someone else’s hand with all the fiery jealousy of a jilted lover. In any case, a drunk she might be, but she was no fool when it came to Skulldeath’s confused desires.
No, the real fool in the equation was sitting off to one side. Sergeant Urb, whose love for the woman glittered like the troubled waters of a spring, fed unceasingly from the bedrock of his childlike faith. A faith in the belief that one day her thoughts would clear, enough for her to see what was standing right in front of her. That the seduction of alcohol would suddenly sour.
The man was an idiot. But there were idiots aplenty in the world. An unending supply, in fact.
When Skulldeath finally stirred, Bottle edged out of the rat’s mind. Watching things like that—love-making—was too creepy. Besides, hadn’t his grandmother pounded into him the risk of deadly perversions offered by his talents? Oh, she had, she had indeed.
Skanarow moved up to stand alongside Captain Ruthan Gudd where he leaned on the rail.
‘Dark waters,’ she murmured.
‘It’s night.’
‘You like keeping things simple, don’t you?’
‘It’s because things are, Skanarow. All the complications we suffer through are hatched inside our own skulls.’
‘Really? Doesn’t make them any less real, though. Does it?’
He shrugged. ‘Something you want?’
‘Many things, Ruthan Gudd.’
He looked across at her—seemed startled to find how close she stood, almost as tall as he was, her Kanese eyes dark and gleaming—and then away again. ‘And what makes you think I can help you with any of them?’
She smiled, though the captain was not paying attention, and it was a lovely smile. ‘Who promoted you?’ she asked.
‘A raving lunatic.’
‘Where?’
He raked fingers through his beard, scowled. ‘And all this is in aid of what, precisely?’
‘Kindly was right, you know. We need to work together. You, I want to know more about, Ruthan Gudd.’
‘It’s not worth it.’
She leaned on the railing. ‘You’re hiding, Captain. But that’s all right. I’m good at finding things out. You were among the first list of officers for the Fourteenth. Meaning you were in Malaz City, already commissioned and awaiting attachment. Now, which armies washed up on Malaz Island too torn up to keep intact? The Eighth. The Thirteenth. Both from the Korelri Campaign. Now, the Eighth arrived at about the time the Fourteenth shipped out, but given the slow pace of the military ink-scratchers, it’s not likely you were from the Eighth—besides, Faradan Sort was, and she doesn’t know you. I asked. So, that leaves the Thirteenth. Which is rather . . . interesting. You served under Greymane—’
‘I’m afraid you got it all wrong,’ Ruthan Gudd cut in. ‘I came in on a transfer from Nok’s fleet, Skanarow. Wasn’t even a marine—’
‘Which ship did you serve on?’
‘The Dhenrabi—’
‘Which sank off the Strike Bight—’
‘Aye—’
‘About eighty years ago.’
He eyed her for a long moment. ‘Now, that kind of recall verges on the obsessive, don’t you think?’
‘As opposed to pathological lying, Captain?’
‘That was the first Dhenrabi. The second one slammed into the Wall at five knots. Of the two hundred and seventy-two on board, five of us were dragged out by the Stormguard.’
‘You stood the Wall?’
‘No, I was handed over in a prisoner exchange.’
‘Into the Thirteenth?’
‘Straight back to the fleet, Skanarow. We’d managed to capture four Mare triremes loaded with volunteers for the Wall—aye, hard to believe anyone would volunteer for that. In any case, the Stormguard were desperate for the new blood. So, you can put all your suspicions to rest, Captain. My history is dull and uneventful and far from heroic. Some mysteries, Skanarow, aren’t worth knowing.’
‘All sounds very convincing, I’ll grant you that.’
‘But?’
She gave him another bright smile, and this one he saw. ‘I still think you’re a liar.’
He pushed himself away from the railing. ‘Lots of rats on these barges, I’ve noticed.’
‘We could go hunting.’
Ruthan Gudd paused, combed his beard, and then shrugged. ‘Hardly worth the trouble, I should think.’
When he walked off, the Kanese woman hesitated, and then followed.
‘Gods below,’ Bottle muttered, ‘everyone’s getting it this night.’ He felt a stab somewhere deep within him, an old, familiar one. He’d not been the kind of man that women chased down. He’d had friends who rolled from one bed to the next, every one of those beds soft and warm. He’d had no such fortune. The irony of the thing that visited him in his dreams was that much sharper, in how it mocked the truths of his life.
Not that she’d been appearing of late, not for a month. Maybe she’d grown tired of him. Maybe she’d taken all she needed, whatever that was. But those last few times had been frightening in their desperation, the fear in her unhuman eyes. He’d awaken to the stench of grass fires on the savannah, the sting of smoke in his eyes and the thunder of fleeing herds ringing in his skull. Sickened by the overwhelming sense of dislocation, he would lie shivering beneath his threadbare blankets like a fevered child.
A month of peace, but why then did her absence fill him with foreboding?
The barge opposite had slipped ahead, riding some vagary of the current, and he could now see the eastern shore of the river. A low bank of boulders and reeds and beyond that rolling plains lit a luminous green by the jade slashes in the southern sky. Those grasslands should have been teeming with wildlife. Instead, they were empty.
This continent felt older than Quon Tali, older than Seven Cities. It was a land that had been fed on for too long.
On the western shore, farmland formed narrow strips with one end reaching down to the river and the other, a third of a league inland, debouching on to the network of roads crisscrossing the region. Without these farms, the Letherii would starve. Yet Bottle was troubled by the dilapidated condition of many of the homesteads, the sagging barns and weed-ringed silos. Not a single stand of trees remained; even the stumps had been pulled from the withered earth. The alder and aspen windbreaks surrounding the farm buildings looked skeletal, not parched but perhaps diseased. Broad fans of topsoil formed muddy islands just beyond drainage channels, making that side of the river treacherous. The rich earth was drifting away.
Better indeed, then, to be facing the eastern shoreline, desolate as it was.
Some soldier had been making the circuit, pacing the barge as if it was a cage, and he’d heard the footsteps pass behind him twice since he’d first settled at the railing. This time, those boots came opposite him, hesitated, and then clumped closer.
A midnight-skinned woman arrived on his left, setting hands down on the rail.
Bottle searched frantically for her name, gave up and sighed. ‘You’re one of those Badan Gruk thought drowned, right?’
She glanced over. ‘Sergeant Sinter.’
‘With the beautiful sister—oh, not that you’re not—’
‘With the beautiful sister, aye. Her name’s Kisswhere, which is a kind of knowing wink all on its own, isn’t it? Som
etimes names find you, not the other way round. So it was with my sister.’
‘Not her original name, I take it.’
‘You’re Bottle. Fiddler’s mage, the one he doesn’t talk about—why’s that?’
‘Why doesn’t he talk about me? How should I know? What all you sergeants yak about is no business of mine anyway—so if you’re curious about something Fid’s saying or not saying, why don’t you just ask him?’
‘I would, only he’s not on this barge, is he?’
‘Bad luck.’
‘Bad luck, but then, there’s you. When Fiddler lists his, uh, assets, it’s like you don’t even exist. So, I’m wondering, is it that he doesn’t trust us? Or maybe it’s you he doesn’t trust? Two possibilities, two directions—unless you can think of another one?’
‘Fid’s been my only sergeant,’ Bottle said. ‘If he didn’t trust me, he’d have long since got rid of me, don’t you think?’
‘So it’s us he doesn’t trust.’
‘I don’t think trust has anything to do with it, Sergeant.’
‘Shaved knuckle, are you?’
‘Not much of one, I’m afraid. But I suppose I’m all he’s got. In his squad, I mean.’
She’d chopped short her hair, probably to cut down on the lice and whatnot—spending a few months in a foul cell had a way of making survivors neurotic about hygiene—and she now ran the fingers of both hands across her scalp. Her profile, Bottle noted with a start, was pretty much . . . perfect.
‘Anyway,’ Bottle said, even as his throat tightened, ‘when you first showed up, I thought you were your sister.’ And then he waited.
After a moment, she snorted. ‘Well now, that took some work, I’d wager. Feeling lonely, huh?’
He tried to think of something to say that wouldn’t sound pathetic. Came up with nothing. It all sounded pathetic.
Sinter leaned back down on the rail. She sighed. ‘The first raiding parties us Dal Honese assembled—long before we were conquered—were always a mess. Suicidal, in fact. You see, no way was a woman going to give up the chance to join in, so it was always both men and women forming the group. But then, all the marriages and betrothals started making for trouble—husbands and wives didn’t always join the same parties; sometimes one of them didn’t even go. But a week or two on a raid, well, fighting and lust suckle from the same tit, right? So, rather than the whole village tearing itself apart in feuds, jealous rages and all that, it was decided that once a warrior—male or female, married or betrothed—left the village on a raid, all pre-existing ties no longer applied.’
‘Ah. Seems a reasonable solution, I suppose.’
‘That depends. Before you knew it, ten or twelve raiding parties would set out all at once. Leaving the village mostly empty. With the choice between living inside rules—even comfortable ones—and escaping them for a time, well, what would you choose? And even worse, once word reached the other tribes and they all adopted the same practice, well, all those raiding parties started bumping into each other. We had our first full-scale war on our hands. Why be a miserable farmer or herder with one wife or one husband, when you can be a warrior drumming a new partner every night? The entire Dal Hon confederacy almost self-destructed.’
‘What saved it?’
‘Two things. Exhaustion—oh, well, three things, now that I think on it. Exhaustion. Another was the ugly fact that even free stuff isn’t for free. And finally, apart from imminent starvation, there were all those squalling babies showing up nine months later—a population explosion, in fact.’
Bottle was frowning. ‘Sinter, you could have just said “no”, you know. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that word.’
‘I gave up the Dal Honese life, Bottle, when I joined the Malazan marines.’
‘Are you deliberately trying to confuse me?’
‘No. Just saying that I’m being tugged two ways—I already got a man chasing me, but he’s a bad swimmer and who knows which barge he’s on right now. And I don’t think I made any special promises. But then, back at the stern—where all the fun is—there’s this soldier, a heavy, who looks like a marble statue—you know, the ones that show up at low tide off the Kanese coast. Like a god, but without all the seaweed—’
‘All right, Sergeant, I see where you’re going, or going back to, I mean. I’m no match for that, and if he’s offering—’
‘He is, but then, a drum with him might complicate things. I mean, I might get possessive.’
‘But that’s not likely with me.’
‘Just my thinking.’
Bottle eyed the dark waters roiling past below, wondering how fast he’d sink, and how long it took to drown when one wasn’t fighting it.
‘Oh,’ she murmured, ‘I guess that was a rather deflating invitation, wasn’t it?’
‘Well put, Sergeant.’
‘Okay, there’s more.’
‘More of what?’ He could always open his wrists before plunging in. Cut down on the panic and such.
‘I got senses about things, and sometimes people, too. Feelings. Curiosity. And I’ve learned it pays to follow up on that when I can. So, with you, I’m thinking it’s worth my while to get to know you better. Because you’re more than you first seem, and that’s why Fid’s not talking.’
‘Very generous, Sergeant. Tell you what, how about we share a meal or two over the next few days, and leave it at that. At least for now.’
‘I’ve made a mess of this, haven’t I? All right, we’ve got lots of time. See you later, Bottle.’
Paralt poison, maybe a vial’s worth, and then a knife to the heart to go with the slitted wrists, and then the drop over the side. Drowning? Nothing to it. He listened to the boots clump off, wondering if she’d pause at some point to wipe off what was left of him from her soles.
Some women were just out of reach. It was a fact. There were ones a man could get to, and then others he could only look at. And they in turn could do the calculations in the span of the barest flutter of an eye—walk up or walk over, or, if need be, run away from.
Apes did the same damned thing. And monkeys and parrots and flare snakes: the world was nothing but matches and mismatches, posturing and poses, the endless weighing of fitness. It’s a wonder the useless ones among us ever breed at all.
A roofed enclosure provided accommodation for the Adjunct and her staff of one, Lostara Yil, as well as her dubious guest, the once-priest Banaschar. Screened from the insects, cool in the heat of the day and warm at night when the mists lifted from the water. One room functioned as a mobile headquarters, although in truth there was little need for administration whilst the army traversed the river. The single table bore the tacked maps—sketchy as they were—for the Wastelands and a few scraps marking out the scattered territories of Kolanse. These latter ones were renditions of coastlines for the most part, pilot surveys made in the interests of trade. The vast gap in knowledge lay between the Wastelands and those distant coasts.
Banaschar made a point of studying the maps when no one else was in the room. He wasn’t interested in company, and conversations simply left him weary, often despondent. He could see the Adjunct’s growing impatience, the flicker in her eyes that might be desperation. She was in a hurry, and Banaschar thought he knew why, but sympathy was too rich a sentiment to muster, even for her and the Bonehunters who blindly followed her. Lostara Yil was perhaps more interesting. Certainly physically, not that he had any chance there. But it was the haunted shadow in her face that drew him to her, the stains of old guilt, the bitter flavours of regret and grievous loss. Such desires, of course, brought him face to face with his own perversions, his attraction to dissolution, the allure of the fallen. He would then tell himself that there was value in self-recognition. The challenge then was in measuring that value. A stack of gold coins? Three stacks? A handful of gems? A dusty burlap sack filled with dung? Value indeed, these unblinking eyes and their not-too-steady regard.
Fortunately, Lostara had little inte
rest in him, relegating his hidden hungers to harmless imaginings, where the illusions served to gloss over the wretched realities. Dissolution palled in the details, even as blazing health and vigour could not but make a realist—like him—choke on irony. Death, after all, played against the odds with a cheating hand. It was a serious struggle to find righteous moralities in who lived and who died. He often thought of the bottle he reached for, and told himself: Well, at least I know what will kill me. What about that paragon of perfect living, cut down by a mole on his back he couldn’t even see? What about the glorious young giant who trips on his own sword in his first battle, bleeding out from a cut artery still thirty paces from the enemy? The idiot who falls down the stairs? Odds, don’t talk to me about odds—take a good look at the Hounds’ Toll if you don’t believe me.
Still, she wasn’t eager for his company so that conversation would have to wait. Her aversion was disappointing and somewhat baffling. He was educated, wasn’t he? And erudite, when sober and sometimes even when not sober. As capable of a good laugh as any defrocked priest with no future. And as for his own dissolution, well, he wasn’t so far along as to have lost the roguish qualities that accompanied that dissolution, was he?
He could walk the decks, he supposed, but then he would have no choice but to let the miasma of the living swirl over him with all the rank insistence that too many sweaty, unwashed bodies could achieve. Not to mention the snatches of miserable conversation assailing him as he threaded through the prostrate, steaming forms—nothing was uglier, in fact, than soldiers at rest. Nothing was more insipid, more degenerate, or more honest. Who needed reminding that most people were either stupid, lazy or both?
No, ever since the sudden disappearance of Telorast and Curdle—almost a month ago, now—he was better off with these maps, especially the blank places that so beckoned him. They should be feeding his imagination, even his sense of wonder, but that wasn’t why they so obsessed him. The unmarked spans of parchment and hide were like empty promises. The end of questions, the failure of the pursuit of knowledge. They were like forgotten dreams, ambitions abandoned to the pyres so long ago not a single fleck of ash remained.
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