It had been the first night of the protest, before simple crowd dispersal had degenerated into outright looting, arson and extortion; before Agayla locked her away. She’d watched from the rooftops while unseasoned soldiers ran wild, drunk with their newfound power, behaving like wharf-front thugs. The few veterans seemed unable – or unwilling – to contain them.
She’d turned away, sickened, carefully tracking a rooftop path from the worst of the crash of shop-fronts and roaring fires, when a shout pulled her attention down into the confines of a dark alleyway. Three soldiers baited an old man, grey-haired, whip-lean. A fisherman by the look of his thread-bare shirt and oiled trousers. Laughing, they punched and kicked him while he retreated up the alley. The sight enraged her, and without thinking she’d pried loose the largest roof tile she could find and heaved it down amid the soldiers.
One man fell immediately, dropped by the heavy ceramic. His friends shouted their astonishment and ran from the alley. The old man staggered back. Kiska ran to a roof corner over a grated window and let herself down. From there, holding fast to the window bars, she set her feet atop a fence, then lowered herself to the garbage-strewn pavement.
The soldier lay stunned, perhaps even dead. His friends had vanished. She searched for the old man but found no sign of him. He must have stumbled off while she was climbing down. Shaking her head she turned to go, but discovered that the other two soldiers had not fled as far as she’d expected. They now blocked the only way out – unless she attempted to climb again. And she didn’t believe they’d give her time for that.
A step scraped the stones behind her and she spun to put her back to the wall. It was the fallen soldier, now standing. Blood smeared one side of his face, his leather helmet askew. Fury glistened in his dark staring eyes.
Kiska’s hands flew to her knives but the soldier clamped her arms to her sides in a crushing bear hug.
‘C’mon boys!’ he yelled, laughing. He pushed his blood-slick face against hers, searching for her mouth. He whispered huskily, ‘What a great trade we’ve made.’ He wrenched her wrists together and clasped them in one hand. His other hand squeezed at her chest, tore at the lacing of her shirt beneath her vest. His friends shouted encouragement, while from all around came the roar of the mobs on the streets.
Kiska froze as the full horror of her position suddenly struck home. How could she have done this to herself? She almost opened her mouth to plead, then remembered Agayla’s training. Her arms pinned, she lifted her head back as far as she could, then head-butted the soldier with all her strength. He bellowed, released her and staggered away. She blinked back tears. Stars dazzled her sight.
‘Bitch,’ he snarled, from somewhere close. His voice was barely audible over the surrounding shouts and screams of fighting. Kiska caught the grating of iron clearing a scabbard. She shook her head, blinked back tears and lashed out backhanded with the pommel of one dagger. She caught the man across the wounded side of his head and he fell without a sound.
From the mouth of the alley one of his friends shouted, ‘Goddamned whore!’ Moving fast, he closed on her, arms wide to stop her should she try to run past.
She watched his approach, marvelling. Did he really think she’d just try to run away? Couldn’t the fool see how things had turned? That it was he and his friend who ought to run? She shrank away as if terrified and the fellow immediately stepped in close. She kicked him in the groin. He doubled over while his breath exploded from him in a whoosh. She reversed her dagger and smacked him across the temple and he toppled.
Kiska raised her eyes to the remaining soldier. He stood still, silhouetted from behind at the alley mouth by the glow of torches. Exhilarated, panting, Kiska invited him in with a wave. Come and get some. He ran off like a startled rabbit.
She sat down heavily in the filth of the alley. The noise of the riot seemed to recede, along with its orange and yellow glow. Her limbs shook and she bent over, heaving up her stomach. She wiped her arm across her mouth. Burn’s consuming embrace! That had been far too close to be worth it – and worth what, anyway? Saving an old man from a kicking? She sat for a time, sick and angry with herself, then stood. She sheathed her daggers and pulled herself up the fence. She vowed then that would be the last time she ever stuck her neck out for anyone.
Yet here she was, out in the night while her flesh crawled with dread. The town seemed to be changing before her eyes. Shadows moved. Unfamiliar streets and buildings shimmered into view only to waver, dissipate and reappear elsewhere. Even the night sounds seemed distorted. Where was the surf? Kiska had grown up in this port and couldn’t think of a single day empty of the sea’s steady pulse. Now it had vanished. On any other day or night she knew exactly where she stood just by smelling the air and listening to the voice of the waves. But everything was all twisted around and backwards. She couldn’t even be sure in which direction lay Mock’s Hold. Like that night just months ago, this was more than she’d bargained on. That night it had been an attack on her body; tonight she felt much more than mere flesh was at stake. She hated herself for it, but felt she ought to hide here like a rain-damp stray till dawn. Not even the possibility of a hound sniffing at her trail would impel her to move on.
Blinking, wiping away the icy mist on her face, she watched thin clouds flit and roil over the town like angry harrying birds. One roof-hugging tatter of vapour, opalescent silver, darted suddenly between buildings just to her right. As it arced down it took on a semblance of a giant lunging hound, its forepaws outstretched. An instant later an ear-splitting howl shook the walls and sent her jumping as sharply as if a dagger had plunged into her back.
She screamed, her voice melding with those of people locked into their homes beneath her, and she scrambled away, running from roof to roof, oblivious of the rain-slick tiles.
She leapt down onto second-floor balconies, balancing on their rickety stick railings, and threw herself across lanes to ledges and gables opposite. She scampered up clay tiles, the sound of their fall clattering below, over shake-roofed breezeways above alleys, and across flat brick and stone-roofed government buildings. From a featureless gable of one building, she jumped over the gap of a lane to land onto a temple dedicated to Fener. Her gloved hand caught a boar’s head gutter funnel. Grunting, she pulled herself up onto the walkway behind and knelt, hands on knees, drawing air deep into her burning lungs.
Surely it couldn’t follow her here. Not into sacred precincts. Certainly now she must be safe. She raised her head to peer over the stone lip. Shadows swirled like wind-swept veils. She looked away, dizzy, pushed back her hair. Probably nothing had been after her, but who would wait to find out?
A man stepped out from an open archway. A priest of Fener, complete with boar’s tusk tattoos curling across his cheeks. He smiled as he saw her. ‘So this is our fearsome invader.’
Kiska backed away around the walkway. ‘Wait! Stay!’
She heard him coming after her and stepped up and out onto another boar’s head finial, where the wind tugged at her wet clothes.
‘Fener’s blood, child. Don’t!’
She pushed off with her legs as strongly as she could. Her outstretched hands slapped against the ledge of the building opposite. One knee cracked into the stone facings and she almost lost her grip at the shooting pain. She heaved herself up, thanked the gods for the crammed cheek-by-jowl housing of the city, as well as the cheapness of her fellow Malazans, too tight-pursed to pull it all down and start over again.
Prostrate on the rain-slick roof, Kiska saw that the priest still watched her, his face wrinkled with concern. She dragged herself to her feet, then waved.
The old man cupped his hands at his mouth, yelled through the gusting wind: ‘I’ll send a prayer after you!’
She waved one hand in thanks, and limped on despite the burning of her knee.
The final expanse of roof to cross stopped her. Sucking in gulps of cold night air, she stood at the very lip of a third-storey gable, overlooking the stre
tch of copses and hilly meadow littered by the ruins everyone called Mossy Tors.
She studied the rooftops behind her. What a fool she’d been! To imagine she’d be safe anywhere out of doors! Gods above. Here was high sorcery such as she’d never dreamed to see. It was like stories of great Imperial engagements, when the Malazan mage cadre smashed the Protectress of Heng; the breaking of the legendary island defences of Kartool; the siege of the Holy Cities; or the massed battles far overseas on the Genabakan continent.
As the fear gradually drained away and her heart slowed, she brought her breath back under control. Dread eased into excitement, a rush such as she’d never known. Her limbs tingled and clenched for action; she felt potent, competent. She could smell the power out there, and she wanted it for herself.
Kiska studied the thinly forested commons. Perhaps her flight hadn’t been as blind as she’d thought. Something was out there, among the trees. She lay down on her stomach alongside the gable. She watched for a time, motionless. Ragged moonlight shone down through the wood; aruscus trunks glowed in the monochrome light as if aflame.
Then movement… what she’d thought to be shadows of branches shifting in the uneven wind resolved themselves into shapes flitting from cover to cover. Grey-clad figures, ghostlike, crawled and darted as they closed on the largest of the moss-covered stone mounds. Through the branches of twin tall cedars a flash glimmered then disappeared – what might have been the faintest reflection of moonlight on polished metal.
Well, these cultists had been following her target earlier, so why not now? After all, how many others could be stupid enough to be out on a night like this, other than herself? Kiska turned to find a route down.
After running across a lane and pushing through thick brush, Kiska edged from tree to tree. Near the middle of the green she stumbled across a body. Whoever this grey – Shadow cultist, she corrected herself – had been, she couldn’t have been much older than herself. Her body slumped to one side, propped up at the base of a lone leafless oak. Kiska knelt to inspect the corpse. The robes were fine-spun linen and from their disarray she guessed the body had been searched. She’d been killed quickly, professionally, by the single thrust of a large weapon from the front. Blood pooled on the girl’s lap, blackening the knotted tree roots beneath her.
Gloves on, Kiska took a handful of the long sandy hair and lifted the head. No one she recognized. But that didn’t mean much if the society was as secret as Agayla claimed. For all Kiska knew, the woman could’ve come all the way from the Free Confederacies said to lie far to the south of Genabackis.
Letting the head loll forward, Kiska glimpsed a discolouration on the woman’s chest. The thin tunic beneath the robes had been torn open. She carefully peeled back the fold of cloth. A tattoo rode high on the woman’s chest: the likeness of a severed bird’s foot. A bird of prey, perhaps a falcon or a hawk. Kiska studied the mark, wondering about its significance. Agayla had mentioned Talons, old rivals to the Claws, but it was the first she’d heard of them. A pocket of wind-driven rain pattered down and droplets fell from her hair. They struck the tattoo and its colours blurred. Fascinated, Kiska rubbed two fingers across the sigil. It smeared into a mess of pigments.
She sat back on her haunches. Well, well. Some sort of recognition sign? A pass? Why a bird’s foot? The Claws came to mind, but she knew the sign of the Claws and this wasn’t it. Yet another mystery in a night virtually raining mysteries. She’d file this one away for later investigation; it had delayed her long enough.
The oak the body lay under rose from a hollow between two low stone walls, so buried in damp blankets of moss as to appear no more than twin and parallel lumps. The cultist might have been guarding this route because it led to a hillock of blocks that, if memory served, should lie along one side of the main formation. Studying the woods, Kiska realized that the unnerving shadow-shifting had ceased. The night was still now. Either the phenomena came and went, or this area was somehow unaffected. Alternately crouching and crawling, she reached a wall that she thought ought to offer a view of the main ruins. She leaned against it, gathered herself, checked her crossbow, then peeked over the top.
She spotted the one she sought almost instantly. He sat against a stone, legs straight out before him, arms crossed, his hood pulled back. His queue of long black hair hung forward over one shoulder. Raising a dark and lean face towards the night sky, he scowled, not liking what he saw. His four bodyguards occupied positions around him: two hunched behind blocks, two standing edge-on against pillars of vine and moss-encrusted stone. Further out, encircling the ancient mound, waited cloaked shapes as motionless as the rocks. Fifty at least. They’d harried her target here, that much was plain. And now they waited – but for what?
Though she wore gloves, Kiska rubbed a hand on her thigh as if to wipe sweat from her palm. No doubt they meant to send the man to their master, just as they’d tried with her. Yet they appeared to be waiting for someone or something… some sign. She damned her luck. Here she was in sight of her quarry, yet he remained as unreachable as if she’d never found him. Damn Fate and the feckless Twins – they played havoc tonight!
The bodyguard with the long tribesman’s moustache and fur cap approached her man, gestured to the north – Mock’s Hold? He nodded, stood, brushed at his loose pants. He pulled his cloak tightly about himself. The guards fell in about him.
Some of the cultists stirred, closing on the outcrop. Kiska counted fifteen. She wanted to hail a warning, but surely the man must know. Then she glanced back over the encirclement and froze. Three extraordinarily tall and thin cultists in ash-pale robes now stood to one side. Where in the Queen’s Mysteries had they come from? It was as if they’d stepped out of the night.
One raised a gloved hand in a negligent gesture and the cultists charged in.
Kiska dashed to new cover to keep her quarry in sight. He and his guards maintained a steady and tight retreat. Cultists darted in, knives flashed, robes twisted and flew, and the man and his companions kept backing off, leaving dead behind. The three commanders, or priests, followed at a distance, observing. Kiska moved parallel to the fight, catching glimpses through the trees: the guards duelling, disengaging, ever edging backwards around her target. Their skill amazed her.
A larger knot of cultists coordinated an attack from all sides. Each guard was engaged by more than one man and Kiska’s heart went to her throat. This was the man Agayla had sent her to find! This was the man Oleg said must act tonight! Here he was, about to be butchered by these assassins and there was nothing she could do about it. She was too late! Kiska fairly screamed her frustration.
While she watched, two of the guards fell and the cultists streamed in on her man. He snapped a hand-gesture and a brilliant flash blinded Kiska. Thunder rolled over her as she blinked and rubbed her eyes. She glanced back. Where a struggling knot of some ten figures had writhed and fought, now only three stood: the man and his two remaining bodyguards. He now faced the three tall cultists. They halted.
The one at the centre raised a hand like a man parting cobwebs blocking his path.
The lesser cultists waited, weapons bared.
Though not a talent, Kiska knew herself to have a feel for such things, and though she stood some hundred yards off, she could feel the forces gathering between the two men. It was like being deep within a ship’s hull, knowing that dark incomprehensible forces churned scarce inches from you, forces that could smash you into non-existence in an instant. She held her breath, waiting for the slightest motion to release the power building between them.
Then a hand in a rough leather gauntlet clamped itself over her mouth, and an arm wrapped around her waist and lifted her away from the stones.
Kiska dropped the crossbow, flailed and kicked her legs. All the while she slowly drew her slimmest knife with her right hand. As the dagger cleared its sheath her head was given a savage wrench. Sparks burst upon her vision and searing currents lanced down her spine.
‘Drop
it, lass,’ a low voice growled, ‘or I’ll snap your neck like a twig.’
Numb, Kiska let the dagger drop to the ground.
The man slung her over his shoulder, limp, her heart fluttering, hiked back down between the parallel ridges, past the dead cultist that Kiska concluded he must have killed. She damned herself for not suspecting the murderer might still be hanging about. And now she was being carried farther and farther from the ruins. She strained to listen for sounds of battle but heard nothing. Once her captor entered thicker woods, two other men rose and joined him. They were either soldiers or plain ruffians. It was hard to tell, though they did carry themselves with the discipline of veterans. One faced her, pulled a black cloth from his belt, while the one holding her removed his hand from her mouth.
‘Quiet,’ he warned.
A gag was snapped over her mouth before she could recover and the cloth, a bag, was tossed over her head. She did try to yell then, stupidly late, and fought while they tied her wrists in front, followed by her ankles.
She was again hefted over a shoulder and hauled like a sack while the man jogged through the woods. She stopped struggling then and burned instead at the indignity of it.
She’d been wrong about one thing. Someone else was stupid enough to be out this night. And she’d become so engrossed in watching the battle she’d completely dropped her guard.
Disgusted, she decided she deserved whatever was to come.
After a fair march she was carried into a room and dumped into a chair, which left her hip smarting. People – men – moved about, muttering. Hands patted her down, found her throwing spikes and daggers. But the search was rushed, missing one throwing knife secreted in a flap of her cloak’s collar. Impatient hands prodded up her sleeves, turned her arms this way then that, pulled open her jerkin, her padded vest, and tore the string ties at the neck of her linen undershirt. Had she not been gagged, Kiska would’ve laughed as she knew exactly what they searched for: tattoos – the real article or fake – of either the severed bird’s foot or a claw.
The Malazan Empire Series: (Night of Knives, Return of the Crimson Guard, Stonewielder, Orb Sceptre Throne, Blood and Bone, Assail) (Novels of the Malazan Empire) Page 11
