Urko said, ‘Whatever it was, it could swallow a bhederin in one bite.’
‘How?’ Telorast asked Apsalar in a whisper. ‘It has no head.’
The man heard the question, and he now scowled. ‘You have company. What is it, a familiar or something? I can’t see it, and that I don’t like. Not at all.’
‘A ghost.’
‘You should banish it to Hood,’ he said. ‘Ghosts don’t belong here, that’s why they’re ghosts.’
‘He’s an evil man!’ Telorast hissed. ‘What are those?’
Apsalar could just make out the shade as it drifted towards a long table to the right. On it were smaller versions of the skeletal behemoth, three of them crow-sized, although instead of beaks the creatures possessed long snouts lined with needle-like teeth. The bones had been bound together with gut and the figures were mounted so that they stood upright, like sentry meer-rats.
Urko was studying Apsalar, an odd expression on his blunt, strong-featured face. Then he seemed to start, and said, ‘I have brewed some tea.’
‘That would be nice, thank you.’
He walked over to the modest kitchen area and began a search for cups. ‘It’s not that I don’t want visitors… well, it is. They always bring trouble. Did Dancer have anything else to say?’
‘No. And he now calls himself Cotillion.’
‘I knew that. I’m not surprised he’s the Patron of Assassins. He was the most feared killer in the empire. More than Surly, who was just treacherous. Or Topper, who was just cruel. I suppose those two still think they won. Fools. Who now strides among the gods, eh?’ He brought a clay cup over. ‘Local herbs, mildly toxic but not fatal. Antidote to buther snake bites, which is a good thing, since the bastards infest the area. Turns out I built my tower near a breeding pit.’
One of the small skeletons on the tabletop fell over, then jerkily climbed back upright, the tail jutting out, the torso angling almost horizontal.
‘One of my ghost companions has just possessed that creature,’ Apsalar said. A second one lurched into awkward motion.
‘Gods below,’ whispered Urko. ‘Look how they stand! Of course! It has to be that way. Of course!’ He stared up at the massive fossil skeleton. ‘It’s all wrong! They lean forward – for balance!’
Telorast and Curdle were quickly mastering their new bodies, jaws snapping, hopping about on the tabletop.
‘I suspect they won’t want to relinquish those skeletons,’ Apsalar said.
‘They can have them – as reward for this revelation!’ He paused, looked round, then muttered, ‘I’ll have to knock down a wall…’
Apsalar sighed. ‘I suppose we should be relieved one of them did not decide on the big version.’
Urko looked over at her with slightly wide eyes, then he grunted. ‘Drink your tea – the toxicity gets worse as it cools.’
She sipped. And found her lips and tongue suddenly numb.
Urko smiled. ‘Perfect. This way the conversation stays brief and you can be on your way all the sooner.’
‘Mathard.’
‘It wears off.’ He found a stool and sat down facing her. ‘You’re Dancer’s daughter. You must be, although I see no facial similarities – your mother must have been beautiful. It’s in your walk, and how you stand there. You’re his beget, and he was selfish enough to teach you, his own child, the ways of assassination. I can see how that troubles you. It’s there in your eyes. The legacy haunts you – you’re feeling trapped, caged in. There’s already blood on your hands, isn’t there? Is he proud of that?’ He grimaced, then spat. ‘I should’ve drowned him then and there. Had I been drunk, I would have.’
‘You are wong.’
‘Wong? Wrong, you mean? Am I?’
She nodded, fighting her fury at his trickery. She had come with the need to talk, and he had stolen from her the ability to shape words. ‘Nnnoth th-aughther. Mmothethed.’
He frowned.
Apsalar pointed at the two reptilian skeletons now scuttling about on the stone-littered floor. ‘Mmothethion.’
‘Possession. He possessed you? The god possessed you? Hood pluck his balls and chew slow!’ Urko heaved himself to his feet, hands clenching into fists. ‘Here, hold on, lass. I have an antidote to the antidote.’ He found a dusty beaker, rubbed at it until a patch of the glazed reddish earthenware was visible. ‘This one, aye.’ He found another cup and poured it full. ‘Drink.’
Sickly sweet, the taste then turning bitter and stinging. ‘Oh. That was… fast.’
‘My apologies, Apsalar. I’m a miserable sort most of the time, I admit it. And I’ve talked more since you arrived than I have in years. So I’ll stop now. How can I help you?’
She hesitated, then looked away. ‘You can’t, really. I shouldn’t have come. I still have tasks to complete.’
‘For him?’
She nodded.
‘Why?’
‘Because I gave my word.’
‘You owe him nothing, except maybe a knife in his back.’
‘Once I am done… I wish to disappear.’
He sat down once more. ‘Ah. Yes, well.’
‘I think an accidental drowning won’t hold any longer, Urko.’
A faint grin. ‘It was our joke, you see. We all made the pact… to drown. Nobody got it. Nobody gets it. Probably never will.’
‘I did. Dancer does. Even Shadowthrone, I think.’
‘Not Surly. She never had a sense of humour. Always obsessing on the details. I wonder, are people like that ever happy? Are they even capable of it? What inspires their lives, anyway? Give ’em too much and they complain. Give ’em too little and they complain some more. Do it right and half of them complain it’s too much and the other half too little.’
‘No wonder you gave up consorting with people, Urko.’
‘Aye, I prefer bones these days. People. Too many of them by far, if you ask me.’
She looked round. ‘Dancer wanted you shaken up some. Why?’
The Napan’s eyes shifted away, and he did not answer.
Apsalar felt a tremor of unease. ‘He knows something, doesn’t he? That’s what he’s telling you by that simple greeting.’
‘Assassin or not, I always liked Dancer. Especially the way he could keep his mouth shut.’
The two reptilian skeletons were scrabbling at the door. Apsalar studied them for a moment. ‘Disappearing… from a god.’
‘Aye, that won’t be easy.’
‘He said I could leave, once I’m done. And he won’t come after me.’
‘Believe him, Apsalar. Dancer doesn’t lie, and I suspect even godhood won’t change that.’
I think that is what I needed to hear. ‘Thank you.’ She headed towards the door.
‘So soon?’ Urko asked.
She glanced back at him. ‘Too much or too little?’
He narrowed his gaze, then grunted a laugh. ‘You’re right. It’s about perfect – I need to be mindful about what I’m asking for.’
‘Yes,’ she said. And that is also what Dancer wanted to remind you about, isn’t it?
Urko looked away. ‘Damn him, anyway.’
Smiling, Apsalar opened the door. Telorast and Curdle scurried outside. She followed a moment later.
Thick spit on the palms of the hands, a careful rubbing together, then a sweep back through the hair. The outlawed Gral straightened, kicked sand over the small cookfire, then collected his pack and slung it over his shoulders. He picked up his hunting bow and strung it, then fitted an arrow. A final glance around, and he began walking.
The trail was not hard to follow. Taralack Veed continued scanning the rough, broken scrubland. A hare, a desert grouse, a mamlak lizard, anything would do; he was tired of the sun-dried strips of bhederin and he’d eaten the last date two nights previously. No shortage of tubers, of course, but too much and he’d spend half the day squatting over a hastily dug hole.
The D’ivers demon was closing on its quarry, and it was vital that Taralack
remain in near proximity, so that he could make certain of the outcome. He was being well paid for the task ahead and that was all that mattered. Gold, and with it, the clout to raise a company of mercenaries. Then back to his village, to deliver well-deserved justice upon those who had betrayed him. He would assume the mantle of warleader then, and lead the Gral to glory. His destiny lay before him, and all was well.
Dejim Nebrahl revealed no digressions, no detours in its path. The D’ivers was admirably singular, true to its geas. There would be no deviation, for it lusted for the freedom that was the reward for the task’s completion. This was the proper manner in which to make bargains, and Taralack found himself admiring the Nameless Ones. No matter how dread-filled the tales he had heard of the secret cult, his own dealings with them had been clean, lucrative and straightforward.
It had survived the Malazan conquest, and that was saying something. The old Emperor had displayed uncanny skill at infiltrating the innumerable cults abounding in Seven Cities, then delivering unmitigated slaughter upon the adherents.
That, too, was worthy of admiration.
This distant Empress, however, was proving far less impressive. She made too many mistakes. Taralack could not respect such a creature, and he ritually cursed her name with every dawn and every dusk, with as much vehemence as he cursed the seventy-four other avowed enemies of Taralack Veed.
Sympathy was like water in the desert. Hoarded, reluctantly meted out in the barest of sips. And he, Taralack Veed, could walk a thousand deserts on a single drop.
Such were the world’s demands. He knew himself well enough to recognize that his was a viper’s charm, alluring and mesmerizing and ultimately deadly. A viper made guest in a nest-bundle of meer-rats, how could they curse him for his very nature? He had killed the husband, after all, in service to her heart, a heart that had swallowed him whole. He had never suspected that she would then cast him out, that she would have simply made use of him, that another man had been waiting in the hut’s shadow to ease the tortured spirit of the grieving widow. He had not believed that she too possessed the charms of a viper.
He halted near a boulder, collected a waterskin from his pack and removed the broad fired-clay stopper. Tugging his loincloth down he squatted and peed into the waterskin. There were no rock-springs for fifteen or more leagues in the direction the D’ivers was leading him. That path would eventually converge on a traders’ track, of course, but that was a week or more away. Clearly, the D’ivers Dejim Nebrahl did not suffer the depredations of thirst.
The rewards of singular will, he well knew. Worthy of emulation, as far as was physically possible. He straightened, tugged the loincloth back up. Replacing the stopper, Taralack Veed slung the skin over a shoulder and resumed his measured pursuit.
Beneath glittering stars and a pale smear in the east, Scillara knelt on the hard ground, vomiting the last of her supper and then nothing but bile as heave after heave racked through her. Finally the spasms subsided. Gasping, she crawled away a short distance, then sat with her back to a boulder.
The demon Greyfrog watched from ten paces away, slowly swaying from side to side.
Watching him invited a return of the nausea, so she looked away, pulled out her pipe and began repacking it. ‘It’s been days,’ she muttered. ‘I thought I was past this. Dammit…’
Greyfrog ambled closer, approached the place where she had been sick. It sniffed, then pushed heaps of sand over the offending spot.
With a practised gesture, Scillara struck a quick series of sparks down into the pipe’s bowl with the flint and iron striker. The shredded sweet-grass mixed in with the rustleaf caught, and moments later she was drawing smoke. ‘That’s good, Toad. Cover my trail… it’s a wonder you’ve not told the others. Respecting my privacy?’
Greyfrog, predictably, did not reply.
Scillara ran a hand along the swell of her belly. How could she be getting fatter and fatter when she’d been throwing back one meal in three for weeks? There was something diabolical about this whole pregnancy thing. As if she possessed her own demon, huddled there in her belly. Well, the sooner it was out the quicker she could sell it to some pimp or harem master. There to be fed and raised and to learn the trade of the supplicant.
Most women who bothered stopped at two or three, she knew, and now she understood why. Healers and witches and midwives and sucklers kept the babies healthy enough, and the world remained to teach them its ways.
The misery lay in the bearing, in carrying this growing weight, in its secret demands on her reserves.
And something else was happening as well. Something that proved the child’s innate evil. She’d been finding herself drifting into a dreamy, pleasant state, inviting a senseless smile that, quite simply, horrified Scillara. What was there to be happy about? The world was not pleasant. It did not whisper contentment. No, the poisonous seduction stealing through her sought delusion, blissful stupidity – and she had had enough of that already. As nefarious as durhang, this deadly lure.
Her bulging belly would soon be obvious, she knew. Unless she tried to make herself even fatter. There was something comforting about all that solid bulk – but no, that was the delusional seduction all over again, finding a new path into her brain.
Well, it seemed the nausea was fully past, now. Scillara regained her feet and made her way back to the encampment. A handful of coals in the hearth, drifting threads of smoke, and three recumbent figures wrapped in blankets. Greyfrog appeared in her wake, moving past her to squat near the hearth. It snapped a capemoth out of the air and stuffed it into its broad mouth. Its eyes were a murky green as it studied Scillara.
She refilled her pipe. Why was it just women that had babies, anyway? Surely some ascendant witch could have made some sorcerous adjustment to the inequity by now? Or was it maybe not a flaw at all, but an advantage of some sort? Not that any obvious advantages came to mind. Apart from this strange, suspicious bliss constantly stealing through her. She drew hard on the rustleaf. Bidithal had made the cutting away of pleasure the first ritual among girls in his cult. He had liked the notion of feeling nothing at all, removing the dangerous desire for sensuality. She could not recall if she had ever known such sensations.
Bidithal had inculcated religious rapture, a state of being, she now suspected, infinitely more selfish and self-serving than satisfying one’s own body. Being pregnant whispered of a similar kind of rapture, and that made her uneasy.
A sudden commotion. She turned to see that Cutter had sat up.
‘Something wrong?’ she asked in a low voice.
He faced her, his expression indistinct in the darkness, then sighed shakily. ‘No. A bad dream.’
‘It’s nearing dawn,’ Scillara said.
‘Why are you awake?’
‘No particular reason.’
He shook off the blanket, rose and walked over to the hearth. Crouched, tossing a handful of tinder onto the glowing coals, waited until it flared to life, then began adding dung chips.
‘Cutter, what do you think will happen on Otataral Island?’
‘I’m not sure. That old Malazan’s not exactly clear on the matter, is he?’
‘He is Destriant to the Tiger of Summer.’
Cutter glanced across at her. ‘Reluctantly.’
She added more rustleaf to her pipe. ‘He doesn’t want followers. And if he did, it wouldn’t be us. Well, not me, nor Felisin. We’re not warriors. You,’ she added, ‘would be a more likely candidate.’
He snorted. ‘No, not me, Scillara. It seems I follow another god.’
‘It seems?’
She could just make out his shrug. ‘You fall into things,’ he said.
A woman. Well, that explains a lot. ‘As good a reason as any other,’ she said behind a lungful of smoke.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, I don’t see much reason behind following any god or goddess. If you’re worth their interest, they use you. I know about being used, and most of the
rewards are anything but, even if they look good at the time.’
‘Well,’ he said after a moment, ‘someone’s rewarded you.’
‘Is that what you call it?’
‘Call what? You’re looking so… healthy. Full of life, I mean. And you’re not as skinny as before.’ He paused, then hastily added, ‘Which is good. Half-starved didn’t suit you – doesn’t suit anyone, of course. You, included. Anyway, that’s all.’
She sat, smoking, watching him in the growing light. ‘We are quite a burden to you, aren’t we, Cutter?’
‘No! Not at all! I’m to escort you, a task I happily accepted. And that hasn’t changed.’
‘Don’t you think Greyfrog is sufficient to protect us?’
‘No, I mean, yes, he probably is. Even so, he is a demon, and that complicates things – it’s not as if he can just amble into a village or city, is it? Or negotiate supplies and passage or stuff like that.’
‘Felisin can. So can I, in fact.’
‘Well. You’re saying you don’t want me here?’
‘I’m saying we don’t need you. Which isn’t the same as saying we don’t want you, Cutter. Besides, you’ve done well leading this odd little company, although it’s obvious you’re not used to doing that.’
‘Listen, if you want to take over, that’s fine by me.’
Ah, a woman who wouldn’t follow, then. ‘I see no reason to change anything,’ she said offhandedly.
He was staring at her as she in turn regarded him, her gaze as level and as unperturbed as she could manage. ‘What is the point of all this?’ he demanded.
‘Point? No point. Just making conversation, Cutter. Unless… is there something in particular you would like to talk about?’
She watched him pull back in every way but physically, as he said, ‘No, nothing.’
‘You don’t know me well enough, then, is that it? Well, we’ll have plenty of time.’
‘I know you… I think. I mean, oh, you’re right, I don’t know you at all. I don’t know women, is what I really mean. And how could I? It’s impossible, trying to follow your thoughts, trying to make sense out of what you say, what is hidden behind your words—’
Bonehunters Page 19
