Return of the Crimson Guard: A Novel of the Malazan Empire

by Ian C. Esslemont

  The dock rat returned to the window. ‘There's something …’ he began, then fell silent. He jerked backwards a step as if struck. ‘Hood no!’ He gestured and Nait felt the prickling sensation of Warren energies gathering. The hairs of his nape tickled and a wind blew about the hut, raising clouds of dust. Nait covered his eyes. A blow sounded, meaty and final, followed by a gurgle. Nait threw himself into a corner, knife out before him. The wind dispersed. He found himself looking up at the long slim legs of a woman who would have been beautiful if she wasn't covered in filth. Her white hair was matted into tangled locks. A crust of white scale limned her bare muscular arms. A tattered shirt and shorts hung in rags limp on her frame. She had Tinsmith up against one wall, an elbow under his neck, knife to his chin. Hands filled the doorway, two dirks out. Tinsmith waved her down.

  ‘Water…’ the woman croaked through lips swollen and bloodied. Tinsmith glanced aside to a pail. The woman let him fall, grasped the pail and upended it over her head. Hands cocked a questioning look to Tinsmith who waved wait.

  The woman spluttered and gasped, swallowing. Panting, she turned to them. Order your men to stand aside, sergeant, and they won't be harmed. Our argument isn't with you.‘ Tinsmith rubbed his neck and slowly nodded his agreement. ‘Very wise, sergeant.’ She gestured and the wind rose again, raising dust and sand and Nait glanced away, shielding his eyes. When he looked back, she was gone.

  ‘Who the Abyss was that?’ Hands demanded.

  Tinsmith crouched at the side of the dock rat, felt at his neck. The man looked to have been slain by a single thrust. The sergeant returned to the window. ‘So they're back,’ he said as if thinking aloud.

  ‘Who?’ said Hands.

  The Crimson Guard.’

  Nait barked a sneering laugh. ‘A name to frighten children!’

  ‘Pass the word, Corporal. No hostilities. Fight only if attacked.’

  Hands frowned her disapproval, her thick dark brows knotting. But she nodded and withdrew.

  ‘And Corporal!’

  ‘Aye?’

  Put everyone to work readying the chains.’

  Aye, sir.’

  His back to Nait, Tinsmith said, ‘That was Isha. Lieutenant of Cowl.’

  Nait opened his mouth to laugh again but the name Cowl silenced him. Cowl, truly? But he'd been the long-time rival of … Dancer. And Dancer was … gone … as was Kellanved. And Dassem. In fact, no one was left. None who could oppose them. Nait dropped his gaze to his knife; he sheathed it. As the sergeant says, no hostilities.

  Mallick Rell was reclined on a divan enjoying a lunch of Talian grapes and a Seven Cities recipe for spiced roast lamb when a servant entered. ‘The streets are seething with news, sir,’ the servant offered, his voice low.

  ‘Oh, yes? And this news contains specifics?’

  The servant paused, coughed into a fist. ‘Well, sir. They say the Crimson Guard has returned.’

  Mallick chewed a pinch of lamb meat, savouring it. ‘You interrupt my meal to tell me this? A rumour I myself started?’

  ‘Ah, no. Sir. I understand they're here now. In the harbour.’

  Mallick gagged on the meat, spat it to the marble floor. ‘What?’

  ‘That is what some are saying, sir. Reliably.’

  Sitting up, Mallick wiped his face, waved the cloth at the servant. ‘Get out. Now.’

  The servant bowed.

  ‘I said get out of my sight!’

  The servant hurried out. Mallick gulped a glass of wine, straightened his robes. ‘Oryan!’

  A shimmer of heat-rippled air and the old man appeared. He bowed. ‘Yes?’

  ‘The Crimson Guard are here, Oryan?’

  The Seven Cities mage blinked his black stone eyes. ‘Some entities of great potential have entered the harbour, yes.’

  ‘Some entities …’ Mallick reached out as if to strangle the old man. He let his arms fall. ‘That is the Guard.’

  ‘So you say, Master.’

  Mallick's voice was a snake hiss, ‘Yes.’ He snatched up a crystal carafe of red wine, pressed the cold vessel to his brow, sighing. ‘Gods deliver me … At least Korbolo isn't in the city.’

  The old man snorted his scorn. ‘How unfortunate for him.’

  ‘Now, now. So, what steps have you been taking?’

  ‘I have been raising wards, strengthening protections …’

  The carafe slammed cracking to the marble table. ‘What?’

  ‘Strengthening—’

  ‘No!’

  Oryan blinked anew. ‘I'm sorry, Master?’

  ‘No, you fool! You'll only pique Cowl's interest. Drop them. Drop them all then hide.’

  The mage's wrinkled face puckered in consternation. ‘I'm sorry …’

  ‘Hide, Oryan. That's your only hope. Now go.’

  Visibly struggling with his commands, the old man bowed, arms crossed. The air sighed, shifting, and he was gone. For a moment Mallick thought he could detect a sharp spice scent in the air in the man's passing, but it drifted away before he could identify it. He raised the carafe to pour himself another glass but he found it empty, the blood-red wine pooled on the marble flagging; he threw the carafe aside. The fools! They weren't supposed to come here. What could they hope to – Mallick clasped his hands in front of his face as if praying. Of course! ‘Sennit. Sennit!’

  A far door opened, the servant reappeared. ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Ready my carriage. I will travel to the Palace.’

  ‘Sir?’

  ‘The Palace, man! The Palace! We have important guests.’

  * * *

  Shimmer set her mailed feet on the stone wharf and paused to offer up a prayer of gratitude to any of the Gods who had had a hand in their deliverance from Mael's Shoals of the Forgotten. Gods! What a trial. Mael, you have made your point! A third of their force lost to thirst, exhaustion, sickness and those monstrous eels. And how long had it taken to bull their way through the maze of becalmed rotting vessels – some still manned by crews driven insane by their torment? Months? A year? Who knew? Time did not run parallel from Realm to Realm or even Warren to Warren. And that the least of the dangers of daring such short-cuts.

  Yet against all odds they had returned. Once more the Guard faced its true opponent – the entity they had vowed to see negated. The Imperium. She waved Smoky to her. ‘Activity?’

  The mage rubbed the crust of salt and blood from his lips. ‘Negligible,’ he croaked. ‘But he is here.’

  He. The mage who overturned all the comparisons of numbers and strategies. Tayschrenn, their old nemesis. Shimmer adjusted the hang of her mail coat; damned loose, she'd lost a lot of weight. She drank a long pull from a skin of water scavenged from the merchantman they'd taken. ‘He's Cowl's worry. It's the Palace for us.’

  ‘Cowl might not be up to it.’

  ‘Then Skinner will be.’

  Smoky picked at the salt-sores on his forehead, frowned in thought. ‘True.’

  ‘Blades form up!’ Shimmer called, and she started up the wharf. Greymane came to her side.

  ‘I'll take possession of some better vessels, and await your return, if you don't mind?’

  Shimmer eyed the renegade. Ah! Ex-Malazan, of course. ‘Our return you say?’

  The man's glacial-blue eyes shared the humour. ‘If necessary, of course.’

  ‘Very well. You have command.’

  Greymane bowed, waved for a sergeant.

  It had been over half a century since Shimmer had last seen Unta. It looked bigger, more prosperous, as befitted the adopted Imperial capital. Stone jetties and a curved sea-wall of fitted blocks now rose where wood and tossed rubbish once served. Many more towers punched high into the air over the sprawling streets, including those of the tallest, the Palace.

  They formed into column at the mouth of a main thoroughfare leading to Reacher's Square and the government precincts beyond. She and Skinner led; he ordered the silver dragon banner unfurled. As they marched Shimmer watched the gazes of the
citizens who jammed the storefronts and stalls lining the sides of the thoroughfare. She searched their faces hoping to see eager friendliness, even welcome, fearing that she would instead meet hostility and resentment. Yet what she found troubled her even more: open perplexity and confusion. Some even pointed and laughed. One woman called out to ask whether they'd come from Seven Cities. Had none of them any idea who they were? Smoky, at her side, muttered, ‘It's like the goddamned carnival's hit town and we're it.’

  ‘Perhaps we have outlived ourselves …’ And she felt dismay close even more tightly upon her, for the capital was a much larger city than she remembered. The populace lining the street numbered perhaps more than a hundred thousand and it seemed to her that, should they be roused, they could tear them limb from limb. ‘Cowl?’ she asked of Smoky.

  ‘Dancing with the Claws. Right now they're holding off. Seems they're curious too.’

  Shimmer eyed the armoured back of Skinner who had strode ahead with the standard-bearer, Lazar. ‘As am I, Smoky. As am I.’

  * * *

  Guards bowed and opened every sealed door he met, locks clicked and yielded, and wards parted like thinnest cloth before his questings, until Cowl found himself before the final barrier between himself and the innermost sanctum of Tayschrenn's quarters. He reached out to the door then hesitated; why should he have been invited onward? Was it a trap? Yet his every sense told him the High Mage awaited within – he and none other. Alone. As it should be; he and Tay, duelling once again.

  He pushed the door open with a blow that sent it banging from the wall. A bare empty room, lit by open windows, and at its centre wards carved into the very stone of the marble floor and filled with poured and hardened gold and silver filigree in concentric circles surrounding a bowed, cross-legged man, long scraggly hair fallen forward over his face.

  ‘Greetings, Tay.’

  The seated figure did not raise his head. ‘You should not have come, Cowl,’ the man intoned in a rough voice. ‘Yet I knew you could not have stayed away.’

  ‘Getting all mystical in your old age, I see.’ Cowl walked the edge of the craven wards – these he could pass but they would send him to wherever it was Tayschrenn had taken himself off to, and all indications were it was a place he would not wish to be. While Cowl paced the circle Tayschrenn failed to respond, so, impatient with the man's theatrics – some things never change – Cowl said directly, ‘Will you stand aside?’

  ‘If you mean, shall I intervene? The answer is no, I shall not.’

  Cowl did not bother keeping a smile of victory from his face. ‘Wise move, Tay. All alone now, you would fall to my knives.’

  The head rose, greasy lank hair shifting to reveal a haggard strained face, eyes sunken, fevered. ‘Wise?’ the unnerving figure demanded. ‘Do you know the final attainment of absolute power, Cowl?’

  ‘The final what of what?’

  ‘Powerlessness, Cowl. Absolute power diffuses into powerlessness.’

  Cowl stepped away from the warded figure. ‘Is this some kind of elaborate self-justification for cowardice?’

  Tayschrenn continued as if Cowl hadn't spoken, ‘I have stretched myself further than I have ever dared before probing onward ahead into the possibilities of what might come. I have glimpsed things that both terrify and exult. Can you answer this puzzle, Cowl? How can both of these things be?’

  Despite his dismissal of this Hermetic side of Warren manipulation, Cowl found himself responding by rote, ‘Because the future holds everything.’

  ‘Exactly, Cowl. I see that it is possible that you are in fact worthy of the title High Mage. And so, the question then follows, what course of action should I take in the present? Which steps might lead to all that which terrifies, which steps might lead to all that which exults? The answer is of course that I cannot know for certain. Thus I am held back from all choice. Total awareness, my friend, results in paralysis.’ The head sank once more, as if dismissing Cowl, indeed as if dismissing all physical reality.

  Cowl relaxed, let his hands fall from the crossed baldrics and belts beneath his cloak. He had weapons invested and aspected that might just reach the man, but what he'd found here was no threat to anyone. It was now clear to him that the twisted Gnostic innards of theurgy had claimed the mind of the most promising mage of his generation.

  He turned and left the chamber.

  Once Cowl exited the room light shimmered next to the open door revealing a woman with short black hair in ash-hued tunic and trousers and carrying a long slim stave. This she planted with a sharp blow upon the marble flags. ‘He should never have been allowed to get this close.’

  ‘I am beyond his physical reach,’ Tayschrenn answered mildly.

  ‘Yet he is also a formidable mage, so I understand.’

  ‘In certain narrow and sharp applications, yes.’

  The woman swung the stave across her shoulders, draped her arms over it. ‘And now?’

  ‘They will see that nothing can be decided here. It all lies upon Heng's walls, as before. And they will go.’

  ‘Before?’

  Tayschrenn nodded, his eyes closed. ‘Yes. When the Protectress fell to Kellanved and Dancer everyone realized that no one was safe from them – all proceeded logically from that.’

  The woman stood still for some time, head cocked as if listening. Tayschrenn's head sank lower, his breathing shallowed to imperceptibility. She stepped to the open door. ‘Do not involve yourself,’ announced the motionless Tayschrenn.

  The woman froze, mouthed a silent curse. She set the stave against the wall. ‘Just going to keep an eye on things.’ She waited a time for an answer but none came. She cursed again and left.

  * * *

  Leaning against a street-side stall, Possum watched the ragged, exhausted column of Crimson Guardsmen enter the tall bronze doors of the Palace precincts. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry; was this it then? The much vaunted Guard? Had the stories over the years so grown in the telling? And what of Cowl? Had he survived?

  A Hand-commander stopped at his side. One of the second echelon, vice-commanders. Coil was her name. ‘Anand wishes to know if he can count on us cooperating with the barricades.’

  Possum leaned forward blocking one nostril to blow his nose to the street. ‘Yes. Seed the crowds. Tell everyone to keep their distance.’

  ‘Very good.’ Still, the woman did not move. She watched the outer gates swinging ponderously shut.

  ‘Yes, Coil?’

  ‘Hard to believe, yes?’

  Irritated by the familiarity, Possum demanded, ‘What? That they returned? Or the condition in which they did? Or the chances that they should pick this time to show up?’

  Coil did not turn to her head to glance to him. ‘Chance? I don't believe in it. And I don't take them.’

  Which is why, Coil, you'll never stand where I am. ‘You have your orders.’

  Coil glanced to him with her half-lidded hard eyes. ‘And these orders – from the Empress?’

  The Hand-commander's tone quickened Possum's pulse. By the Queen's Mysteries, was she challenging his authority? ‘Immaterial. You've just heard them from me.’

  Smiling, Coil inclined her head in the shallowest of bows, and sauntered away. Possum watched her go. Why so bold? No need to advertise what everyone in the ranks understands – that all those beneath you think they can do a better job, and are ever watchful for opportunities to demonstrate such by ousting said superior.

  Blowing his nose once more, Possum dismissed Coil from his mind. She'd been merely angling for news of the Empress. No need to tell her he'd searched the Palace earlier and found no sign of her; sensibly, she'd run off. No point being disappointed about it. What could she be expected to do against some fifty Avowed and seven hundred Guardsmen? Bravely face them only to be captured? Reduced thereafter to a hostage or mere bargaining chip? What would be the sense in that? No, to Possum's way of thinking she'd done the wise thing. Let the Guard blunder like clod-footed fools through
the Palace. What did they expect? To just sit on the throne and be obeyed? No, this whole episode was the shabby and frankly rather embarrassing final chapter to what had once been a noble career. Possum wiped his nose. Yes, thinking about it, he realized that he was quite disappointed by the whole thing and more than a little resentful that they'd bothered showing up at all; they'd ruined the legend for him and for everyone.