‘Yeah – right,’ Antsy said, scratching his stubbled jaw, still rather puzzled.
‘We’ll part company here, then.’ Malakai bowed to Orchid. ‘I would wish you luck but I’m afraid your luck will run to the lad’s pull.’
‘We’ll see,’ she answered, firm, having regained her confidence.
‘Farewell then.’ And the man backed away into the darkness to disappear up a narrow side alley. Antsy listened for a time but couldn’t hear one betraying step or scuff. He thought the man had gone but looked to Orchid for confirmation.
‘He’s left,’ she said after a time.
Corien let out a long breath. ‘Thank the gods.’
‘He didn’t ask for any of the water or food,’ Orchid said, surprised.
‘Maybe he knows where he can steal any he needs,’ Antsy said.
‘So what now?’ Corien asked.
Antsy was silent, until it occurred to him that maybe that question had been asked of him. He cleared his throat. ‘Well … I suppose we press on. Keep an eye out.’
‘Good,’ Orchid said, emphatic. ‘I don’t want him to get too far ahead of us.’
Antsy blinked in the dimming light of the lamp. ‘Hunh? What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I mean just that. I don’t trust him. He’s after something. And there are things here on Moon’s Spawn that mustn’t see the light of day.’
As if on cue the lamp guttered then, and went out. After a moment of surprised silence Corien laughed. Even Orchid joined in, though Antsy just swore. ‘Can’t see a damned thing!’ he complained, and started searching through his bags for more oil.
‘Would you like to see then, Red?’ Orchid offered from the dark.
‘Hunh? You can do that? Why didn’t you—’
‘I told you I don’t trust Malakai. I don’t want him to know what I can do. If I can, that is.’
‘Well, gods, yes! If you would.’
She crossed to his side. He heard her skirts rustling over the stones, felt the warmth radiating from her. Her cool dry hands touched his face. The touch pleased him.
‘I’m glad you managed that without violence, Red,’ she whispered. ‘You nudged him just the right way.’
Antsy resisted the urge to shrug, kept his head steady in her hands. ‘He’s been itching to drop us since we landed. I just handed him the moment. Anyway, it was Corien here who sealed the deal.’
‘I just helped out,’ Corien protested.
‘No. How’d you know he’d buy that argument?’
The lad grunted from the dark, sitting down. ‘Well … it’s a touch embarrassing to say, but my guess is that he didn’t want to face you down, Red.’
Antsy jerked his surprise in Orchid’s hands and she let out an impatient hiss. ‘Sorry,’ he murmured. ‘Lad, the man’s a killer. I think he just decided he didn’t want our blood on his hands.’
‘Is he a killer? Think on it, Red. We actually haven’t seen him use all that hardware, have we?’
‘In Pearl Town he knifed plenty.’
‘Certainly – scared unarmed men and women in the dark from behind. But you’re a veteran, Red. You wouldn’t flinch. You may not know it, but you’re a rather intimidating presence.’
Antsy snorted. Me? You haven’t met the scary Bridgeburners, friend.
Orchid’s long-fingered hands tightened on Antsy’s cheeks. ‘If you’ve quite finished?’
‘Sorry.’
‘Fine. Now hold still. Shut your eyes.’
He obeyed. She began speaking, singing really, in that smooth quiet tongue she’d used with the guardian. He was hearing Tiste Andii, he realized, and a sort of shiver ran up his spine. Been hunted too often by those strange people. The language seemed to hold more silence and pauses than sounds. It was as a whispering of a distant wind and seemed so suited to the dark. After a time she stopped, or the sounds drifted away to silence. The hands withdrew, warmed now by the heat of his cheeks. Antsy remained motionless; he felt profoundly relaxed, almost asleep. It reminded him of a trick Mallet used to pull on the wounded. A few low sounds, a steady touch, and the troopers calmed right down.
But nothing happened. A profound depression gripped his chest. Now he was doomed for sure. His last hope lost. How could he be any use, blind, a cripple? Then he realized that he was so relaxed he hadn’t opened his eyes.
He blinked and a world of vision jumped to life before him. He couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t credit his eyes because what he saw was so alien. Monochrome, it was. All shades of deepest blue. As if he was looking at the world through a shard of blue-stained glass. The darkness of deep murky mauve even gathered in the distances, just like true vision. He looked up. There, almost directly overhead, was a stone set in the wall. It was carved in the likeness of an Andii face, feline, almost, and it gave off a lantern-like blue glow. It had been there all this time yet he’d had no idea.
He laughed. It was amazing.
‘So … it worked?’
He looked to Orchid’s anxious, glistening face. The girl had never looked so beautiful to him. He quelled an urge to kiss her. ‘Yeah. Worked just great. It’s just … amazin’.’
‘So you can see me then?’ Corien asked. Antsy turned to where the lad sat slumped higher up on the stairs. He was squinting roughly in their direction.
‘Yeah. It’s like the light of a full moon. You look terrible.’
‘Oh dear. What would they say in Majesty Hall?’
‘Can you do him?’ he asked of Orchid.
‘Yes, I think so.’
Corien raised a gloved hand. ‘No need. Time to see to myself.’ He fumbled at his waist-pouch and withdrew a tiny wooden box. ‘Now we shall see,’ and he chuckled. He pulled off one glove and dipped the tip of a finger into the box. It looked to Antsy as if the man was about to take snuff but the finger went into one eye instead. Corien hissed his pain. After doing the other eye he peered about, blinking comically, eyes watering.
‘Well?’ Antsy asked.
‘Like pressing salt to one’s eyes. I really must talk to my alchemist about this. Tell me, is that face up there really glowing?’
A presence haunted the estate of Lady Varada. It brushed against windows and pressed against locked doors. The two colourfully dressed guards it easily bypassed to enter the main rooms of the manor house. In these empty halls it hovered near door handles and latches to find each and all dusted with a white powder the presence knew to be a rare poison sifted from the pollen of a flower found only in the near-mythical land of Drift Avalii. Other rooms it quickly sped through as if sensing the drifting fumes of scents deadly to any living creature.
Eventually, after much probing and many turnings back at dead ends, it gained access to the lower floors and here the tenebrous drifting presence coiled inwards, firmed and thickened into the figure of a slim young woman in diaphanous white cloth, silver wristlets and anklets tinkling musically on her limbs.
The girl descended a last set of raw granite steps to the deepest chamber to come to a halt where a figure crouched in the middle of the empty room, legs drawn up beneath her stomach, head bowed. The girl pressed a hand to her mouth to cover a smile but her eyes held a savage triumph.
‘Mother,’ she said. ‘You’re looking … poorly.’
The figure raised her head to peer up through tangled black hair like a sweep of night. ‘Taya,’ she answered, her voice tight with suppressed pain. ‘I asked you to stay away.’
‘You sent me away,’ Taya snapped. ‘Why, I now know.’
‘You know nothing,’ the woman snarled. She surged to her knees, revealing fine mesh chains at wrist and ankle that thrummed taut, and she gasped her agony as flames burst into life where the metal of the fetters clasped her flesh.
Taya nodded her appreciation. ‘So that is how you managed. Otataral chains. We’d wondered. Imagine. Vorcan Radok imprisoning herself.’ She pressed a hand to her lips. ‘Dare I say it? How … ironic?’
Vorcan returned to her crouch, pantin
g and hissing her pain. ‘You’ve come. You’ve seen. Now you can go.’
The arm swept down savagely. ‘No, Mother. You do not dismiss me. Not any longer. Now it is I who dismiss you. And seeing you now … like this … I can finally do so.’ She set her hands on her hips, tsking. ‘Look at you. Such a mess. And your so-called guards! I could have slain the lot had I wished.’
Head down, Vorcan half gasped, ‘I would advise you not to draw any weapon on Lazan or Madrun. And Studlock … well, you wouldn’t know where to stick your knife to slay him.’
‘Where is that creature from?’
‘Not even I know.’
Taya’s mouth drew down in the small pout of a frown and she sighed her exaggerated boredom. ‘Well, it has been a treat talking, Mother. But I have a life worth living.’ She raised her hand to her mouth once more, this time blowing a kiss. ‘Thank you. Your wretched failure here frees me of so much. I had come dreaming of killing you but now I see that your suffering pleases me more. Farewell! Think of me often at the court of Darujhistan’s rightful king reinstated. I know I will be thinking of you.’
She backed away, climbing the steps, waving. Vorcan did not raise her head.
Some time later another figure came shambling down the stairs, long tatters of his cloth wrappings trailing behind. Studlock bowed, ‘She is gone, mistress.’
Vorcan nodded heavily. ‘Good. None interfered? Madrun? Lazan?’
‘None. Your instructions were most precise. Only she and the other are to be allowed to pass.’
She sank lower, relaxing, the chains clattering. ‘Good. Good.’
Studlock rubbed his cloth-wrapped hands together, perhaps as a gesture of worry. ‘What shall we do, mistress?’
‘We will wait. Wait and see. His arising will be contested. We will see what form that will take.’
‘But who, mistress? Who will contend?’
‘The same as before.’
The strangely jointed hands fell. ‘Oh dear. Him.’
A short stout man (generous of diameter, thank you!), dapper in waistcoat and frilled sleeves, daintily crosses the mud and open sewer channel of the town of broken hopes west of the dreaming city. And what is this? Does that city now whimper and grimace in its sleep? Does the dream threaten to slide into nightmare? Does a crowned figure stalk the edges of its vision?
And where all the frustrated failed gods take it does this meandering alley lead?
Vexed hero turns aside to a file of washerwomen bent to task at nearby trickle of stream. He pauses, struck breathless for the nonce by glorious vista of said washerwomen’s backsides presented. He mops brow with handkerchief, sighs wistfully. Then, remembering errand, approaches.
‘Good washerwomen! Would you be so kind as to help a poor lost soul?’
The stolid women slow in their hearty slapping of wet garments and muscular wringing of alarmingly wound cloth. ‘Who in Oponn’s poor jest are you?’ one welcomes rather undemurely.
‘I am but a humble petitioner hoping to find my way to a resident of these parts.’
‘Who’s ’at?’ another fine strapping figure of her trade asks, and spits a brown stream of chewing leaf juice.
After hastily shifting silk-slippered foot aside of striking juice our heroic quester bows gallantly. ‘Why, an old woman. Living alone. A widow, truth be told, many times over. Some think her perhaps crazy and ignorantly ascribe to her charges of witchery and hexing … and such …’
Enquirer splutters to silence as all slapping and wringing of cloths cease. All eyes turn narrowed and flashing to the fine generous figure of our innocent searcher – who extends one foot to his rear, poised.
‘Get ’im!’
‘Slimy rat!’
‘The nerve!’
Later that same evening a family of Maiten town was quite mystified to find a fat fellow in black and red silk finery, rather faded, hiding behind their goat pen. ‘Yes?’ the father asked, quite slowly, worried that perhaps the poor man had lost his senses.
The man straightened up, his head coming almost to the shoulders of the father. He adjusted his stained clothes, brushed soapsuds from his lapels, glanced about. ‘Just admiring your handsome animals, good sir. Ah! You wouldn’t by any chance happen to know of an old woman living alone hereabouts, that is about here – one whom the uncaring world unjustly ostracizes with calumny and obloquy?’
The father’s brow furrowed as he attempted to make sense of the question. He motioned upriver. ‘Well, there’s a crazy old witch further along at the edge of town.’
The rotund fellow bowed. ‘My thanks, keeper of such handsome animals.’
Later, after much dodging of roving packs of washerwomen armed with wet laundry, the out-of-breath and by now very hungry wanderer came across a straw-roofed wattle-and-daub hut upon the threshold of which sat a nest-haired old woman, pipe in mouth, busy kneading the mud with her naked toes.
He bowed in a lace-sleeved flourish. ‘Ah! Queen of the dreaming city! What a privilege! I am come to pay my respects.’
The old woman peered up, eyes red and unfocused. A vague smile came and went around her pipe. ‘Slippery ball of fish oil … do you bring offering?’
‘But of course.’ Another flourish and a wrapped object the size of a walnut appeared. He bowed, holding it out.
The old woman snatched it up with a speed that belied her years. She tore the paper and pinched off a piece of the dark gum within and pushed it into her pipe. Fumbling behind her at the hearth fire inside the hut, she found a smouldering stick that she touched to the pipe while pulling in long steady inhalations. After a few breaths the stick glowed and she drew long and hard. Her eyes closed in silky pleasure.
The man clasped his hands behind his back, looked to the sky, lips pursed, rocked back and forth on his muddy heels.
Eventually the woman exhaled, allowing the smoke to drift from her mouth and immediately sucking it in once more by drawing it up through her nose.
The man let out his own long breath and examined his fingernails.
Some time later a satisfied sigh returned the man’s attention to the old woman. He found her peering up at him, eyes dreamy, a wicked smile at the lips. ‘Oily Kruppe – what can this poor nobody do for you?’
‘Nobody! Calumny in truth! You are the secret carrier of my heart! This you have known all these years.’
‘Oiliness indeed …’ But the smile broadened, became rather lascivious. ‘You know my price.’
‘Of course! I am all aquiver. And so, the, ah … objects … are ready then?’
‘Almost now.’
‘Almost. Ah … well. Somehow I must contain myself. More dunkings in handy chilly river for this frustrated suitor.’
‘Come back again – and don’t forget more offering.’
‘Fates forfend! I shall come courting again, queen of my heart. You shall not be rid of me so easily. The siege has hardly begun!’
The woman leaned forward and clutched a clawed hand at the man’s knee. ‘Then don’t forget your battering ram!’
The man shrank back, paling, his arms nearly crossing over his crotch. ‘Earthy princess! Your saltiness is, and will be, a treat … I am sure. But I must go – ceaseless labour, twisty plottings, constant confounding, as you know.’
But the woman merely murmured, smiling dreamily, ‘Almost now.’ She giggled and patted her chest.
‘Er, yes. Farewell! He backed away, bowing, blowing kisses. ‘I shiver in anticipation.’ And he turned and waddled, rather swiftly, up the mud track.
The crowd of washerwomen watched the slimy interloper disappear into the maze of Maiten town. ‘Why let the wretch go?’ one hissed, furious.
‘Why?’ another snarled, turning upon her. ‘Why? Didn’t you see? He’s a friend of that crazy old witch!’
Looking out over the night-time blue-lit streets Ambassador Aragan considered whether the city had ever been this quiet. His gaze rose to the yawning banner of green slicing the night sky and he wondered if per
haps that had much to do with the general reserve. Somehow he didn’t think so.
He was out of the command loop now. The Fists had control. He’d remained as a sort of standing offer of dialogue with … whatever … was gathering power around Majesty Hill. Something that drove the Moranth off just by showing up. And we’re powerless to do anything.
He crossed his arms, leaned against the windowsill. At least the troops will be in a position to withdraw north if need be. Gods! He’d almost prefer a plain old physical threat like the Pannion Domin. Here he felt as if he were pushing against nothing. It was unnerving in the extreme. And he had to say that it reminded him of the way the old Emperor used to operate.
Someone stepped up next to him at the window then, making him jump aside, a hand going to his throat. ‘Gods, man! Don’t do that!’
The newcomer merely offered a slit of a smile, hands clasped behind his back. Aragan took in the green silk shirt, dark green cloak, long thin face and cat-like, openly dismissive eyes. Well, at least Unta is taking things seriously – sending this fellow, of all people. He cleared his throat. ‘So, what word from the capital?’
‘Darujhistan is important to the throne, Ambassador. Whosoever controls this city potentially controls the entire continent. The Empress knew it, as does the Emperor.’
Aragan simply nodded, returning his gaze to the city. ‘My thoughts as well. What will you do?’
‘What I do best, Ambassador. I will watch and wait.’
Not sure what to make of that, Aragan merely grunted, hoping his reaction would be taken as wise agreement.
The tall man turned to him. ‘I understand you have hired someone to gather intelligence already. I’d like to question him, if possible.’
‘Certainly. Dreshen has the particulars.’
‘Very good.’ The man gave the slightest inclination of his head. ‘I will be in touch, Ambassador.’
Aragan nodded, openly relieved that the man was going. ‘Yes, of course. Until later.’
The shadowy figure backed away to cross the room to the door. He quietly shut it behind him. Aragan was rather disappointed; he had expected something much more dramatic. Sulphurous smoke and a clap of thunder, perhaps. Still, shouldn’t be disillusioned. It’s few can boast of having the Master of all the Claw come up behind them out of the dark and live to tell the tale.
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