Precious little more guidance had the ancient yielded, though. When pressed for more the old man had simply peered up at him from where he lay and shaken his head. ‘It is best you do not know these things,’ he had said. ‘It is best for all.’
Ignorance? How could ignorance be best? Jan’s instincts railed against such a claim. Yet he was raised and trained to obey, and so he had submitted. He was Second. It was his duty. Perhaps it was the old man’s tone that had convinced him. Those words had carried in them a crushing grief, a terrible weight of truth that Jan feared he may not be able to endure.
‘You smell that?’ Picker asked. She looked up from where she sat with her feet on a table in the nearly empty common room of K’rul’s bar., chair pushed back, cleaning her nails with a dagger.
Blend, chin in hand at the bar counter, cocked a brow to Duiker in his customary seat. ‘That a comment?’
Picker wrinkled her nose. ‘No – not you. Somethin’ even worse … Somethin’ I ain’t smelt since …’ The chair banged down and she cursed. ‘That hair-shirted puke is back in town!’
Blend straightened, peered around. ‘No …’ She lunged for the door. ‘Get the back!’
The door opened before Blend reached it. She tried to push it shut on a man with a shock of unkempt salt and pepper hair and a weather-darkened grizzled face, wearing a long ragged hair shirt. He managed to squeeze in as she slammed it shut. ‘Good to see you too, Blend,’ he commented, scowling.
Blend flinched away, covering her nose and mouth. ‘Spindle. What in Hood’s dead arse are you doing here?’
Picker ran in from the rear: ‘Back’s locked. There’s no way he can—Oh. Damn.’
A toothy smile from the man. ‘Just like old times.’ He ambled over to sit at Duiker’s table, nodded to the grey-bearded man. ‘Historian. Been awhile.’
The old man’s mouth crooked up just a touch. ‘Nothing seems to keep you Bridgeburners down.’
‘Shit floats,’ Picker muttered from the bar on the far side of the room.
‘So how ’bout a drink then?’ Spindle called loudly. ‘’Less you’re just too damned busy with all your customers an’ all.’
‘We’re out,’ Blend said. ‘Have to try somewhere else. Don’t let us stop you.’
Spindle turned in his chair. ‘Out? What kind of bar has no alcohol?’
‘A very grim one,’ Duiker offered so low no one seemed to hear.
‘Hunh.’ The man pulled on his ragged shirt at its neck as if it were uncomfortable, or too tight. ‘Well, I think maybe I can help you out with that.’
Picker and Blend exchanged sceptical glances and said in unison, ‘Oh?’
‘Sure. Got some work kicked my way. You know, paid work for coin. For drink and food. And to pay the rent.’ Spindle studied Blend more closely. ‘Who do you pay rent to here anyway?’
The women shifted their stances, squinting at the walls. ‘Why us?’ Blend asked suddenly and Picker nodded.
‘They just want people they can count on to keep their damned mouths shut.’
‘People have given up on the assassins’ guild, have they?’ Picker commented.
‘If there’s any of them left …’ Blend added, aside.
Spindle rolled his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Not that kinda work!’
‘What in Fener’s prang is it then?’ Blend demanded.
Sitting back, booted feet straight out before him, the veteran clasped his hands over his belt. He smiled lopsidedly in what Picker imagined to be an effort at ingratiation, but looked more like the leer of a dirty old man. ‘Right up your alley, Blend. Plain ol’ low-profile reconnaissance. Observe and report. Nothin’ more.’
‘How much?’ Picker asked.
‘A gold council per day.’
Blend whistled. ‘Who’s worth that much? Not you, that’s for damned sure.’
Spindle lost his smile. ‘They’re payin’ a lot to make sure the job gets done.’
‘Who’s paying?’ Duiker suddenly asked in a low hoarse voice. ‘Who’s the principal?’
All three regarded the old historian, amazed.
‘Damned straight!’ Blend said.
‘Yeah,’ Picker said. ‘Could be a trap. Fake contract to draw us out.’
Spindle dismissed that with a wave. ‘Ach! You’re soundin’ too much like Antsy.’ He peered around. ‘Where is that lunatic anyway ?’
Blend leaned back to set her elbows on the bar. ‘Went south. Said he was … ah, antsy.’ She scowled. ‘Stop changing the subject! Who’s payin’?’
Spindle just waved again. ‘Never you mind. I know. And I know we can trust ’em.’
‘Them?’ Picker said, arching a brow. ‘Who’re them?’
Spindle threw his hands up. ‘All right, all right! Trusting as Jags, you lot are. Okay!’ He leaned forward and tapped the side of his gashed and battered nose. ‘You could say it’s our old employers.’
If Picker had had something in her hands she would’ve thrown it at the man. ‘You great idjit! We’re deserters!’
He got that knowing smirk once more. ‘Exactly. That makes us free agents, right?’
‘It makes political sense,’ Duiker said, and he brushed a hand across the tabletop. ‘Aragan can’t have the Council accuse him of meddling, or spying.’
Spindle’s brows rose. ‘Aragan? That old dog’s here?’
Blend and Picker both swore aloud. ‘Spindle!’ Blend managed, swallowing more curses. ‘You brick-headed ox! He’s the Oponn-cursed ambassador! You said you knew who you were working for!’
Spindle’s face reddened and he stood, heaving back his chair. ‘Well he hardly stopped me on the damned street, did he!’
The old historian eyed the three veterans glaring each other down across the room. He raised a hand. ‘I’ll mind the shop.’
All three blinked and eased out tensed breaths. Picker gave a curt nod. ‘Okay then.’
‘Where?’ Blend asked.
Spindle was frowning down at the historian. ‘South of the city. The burial fields. People want to know what’s goin’ on there.’
‘Everyone says that’s all tapped out,’ Picker said.
‘The past never goes away – we carry it with us,’ Duiker murmured, as if quoting.
Brows crimped, Spindle scratched a scab on his nose. ‘Yeah. Like the man says.’
Blend was behind the bar. She pulled out a set of scabbarded long-knives wrapped in a belt. ‘We should head out tonight. Before the Ridge Town gate closes.’
A wide sideways grin climbed up Spindle’s mouth. ‘Spot their campfires, hey?’
‘Just like old times.’
They walked the desolate shore of black sands, over coarse volcanic headlands, and along the restless glowing waves of the Sea of Vitr. Beach after beach stretched out in arcs of pulverized glass-like sands.
As they walked one such beach Leoman cleared his throat and motioned to their rear. ‘Do you think he really is what he claims?’
Kiska shrugged her impatience. ‘I don’t even know what it is it claims to be.’
Leoman nodded to that. ‘True enough. Not for the likes of us, perhaps.’ He stretched, easing the muscles of his shoulders and back.
How like a cat, Kiska thought again. With his damned moustache – like whiskers!
‘I had a friend once,’ he said, after a time of walking in silence, ‘who was good at ignoring or putting such questions out of his mind. He simply refused to dwell upon what was out of his control. I always admired that quality in him.’
‘And what came of this admirably reasonable fellow?’ she asked, squinting aside.
The man smiled, brushing his moustache with a finger and thumb. ‘He went off to slay a god.’
Kiska looked to the sky. Oh, Burn deliver me! ‘Are your companions always so extravagant?’
He eyed her sidelong. The edge of his mouth crooked up. ‘Strangely enough, yes.’
Kiska had stridden on ahead to where an eroded cliff blocked the way. They would have
to climb.
At the top Kiska could see far out to the empty sea of shimmering, shifting light. Nothing marred it. Behind, the shadowy figure of Maker had re-joined the sky. The entity had returned to what Kiska mused must be an infinite labour. Was it some kind of curse? Or a thankless calling nobly pursued?
She turned her attention to the next curve of beach and her breath caught.
Leoman found her like that, sitting on her haunches, staring, and drew breath to ask what was the matter, but she raised her chin to the beach ahead. He looked, and grunted a curse.
An immense skeletal corpse lay sprawled across the beach. Half its length narrowed down to the glimmering surf where it disappeared, eaten away by the Vitr.
The corpse of a dragon.
They approached side by side. Leoman clutched his morningstars and Kiska her stave – though she knew neither would help them should the beast prove some sort of undead creature. But no sentience animated the dark sockets of its eyes. The flesh of its great snout, itself of greater length than she or Leoman, was desiccated, curled back from the dark openings of its nostrils. Yellowed curved teeth, an alchemist’s horde, grinned back at them.
Who had this Eleint been in life? Had it been known to humans? Or was this the extent of its life … this one brief titanic struggle to escape the Vitr? The idea made her very sad.
Leoman cleared his throat but said nothing. She nodded, swallowing. As they walked away his hand found hers but she pulled it free. She covered her reaction by walking impatiently ahead to where the beach ended at a tumble of the loose porous volcanic rocks.
After a time, Leoman called after her: ‘There’s no hurry, lass.’
She hung her head, pausing on the uneven rocks jutting out into the glowing waves of the Vitr. She glanced back to the man; he was coming along slowly, taking great care with his footing.
‘We don’t know for certain—’
‘Yes, yes! I know. Now hurry up.’
He came up beside and offered a wink. ‘Wouldn’t do to get yourself killed this close, would it?’
‘This close to what?’
He brushed his moustache. ‘Well, to an answer. One way or t’other.’
‘Leoman,’ she began, slowly, as she hopped from rock to rock, ‘promise me one thing, won’t you? Should I fall into the Vitr and get myself burned to ashes.’
‘And what is that, lass?’
‘That you’ll shave off that idiotic moustache.’ She jumped down on to the black sands of the next long stretch of beach. ‘And stop calling me “lass”.’
He thumped down next to her, ran a finger along the moustache, grinning. ‘I’ll have you know the ladies always love it when I—’
‘I don’t want to know!’ she cut in. ‘Thank you.’
‘So you keep sayin’. But I promise you you’ll—’
Kiska had snapped up a hand. She knelt and he joined her.
Tracks in the sands. Unlike any spoor she’d ever seen, but tracks all the same. When they’d yet to see any at all. Some kind of shuffling awkward walk. She pointed to cliffs inland that the beach climbed to. Leoman nodded. He freed his morningstars to hold them in his hands, the chains gripped to the hafts. Kiska levelled her stave.
They kept to the edge of the rocky headland, slipping inland, keeping an eye on where the beach ended at the cliffs. She saw the dark mouths of a number of caves. She looked at Leoman, pointed. He nodded. Reaching the cliff, she dodged ahead from cover to cover. Behind, a strangled snarl sounded Leoman’s objection. The first opening was narrow and she slipped within, stave held for thrusting. The cramped space was empty. But packed sand floored it, and depressions showed where people, or things, may have sat or lain. A population? Here? Of what nature? A sound raised the hairs on the back of her neck. A high-pitched keening. Leoman’s morningstars, which he could raise to a blurred speed greater than any she had ever seen or heard tell of.
She leapt out of the cave to see the man facing off a crowd of malformed creatures. Daemons, summoned monstrosities, all somehow warped or wounded. They grasped with mangled clawed hands. The faces of some were no more than drooling smears. Some raised limbs far too crippled to be any danger. Leoman held them off, his back to the cave mouth.
‘What do you want?’ she yelled. ‘Speak! Can you understand me?’
Then the ground shook. Kiska tottered, righted herself and peered up. A gigantic creature had joined the crowd. It appeared to have jumped down from the cliff. It straightened to a height greater than that of a Thelomen. Great splayed clawed feet, like those of a bird of prey, dug into the sands. Its broad torso was armoured like that of a river lizard. It brushed aside its smaller kin with wide, blackened, taloned hands. A huge shaggy mane of coarse hair surrounded red blazing eyes and a mouth of misaligned dagger-like teeth.
She sent one quick glance to Leoman, who nodded, and they both leapt backwards into the cave. In the narrow chute of the entrance she took the forefront; there was no room for morningstars.
A shadow occluded the opening. A deep voice of stones grinding rumbled, ‘Who are you, and what do you wish here?’
‘Who are you to attack us!’
‘We did not attack you – you trespass! This is our home.’
‘We didn’t know you lived here …’
‘So. Even when you knew you were the strangers here, you assume we are the interlopers. How very typically human of you.’
Kiska looked at Leoman, who rolled his eyes. A lecture on manners was the last thing she expected. ‘So … this is a misunderstanding? We can come out?’
‘No. Stay within. We do not want your kind here.’
‘What? Now who is being unfriendly?’
‘You have proved yourselves hostile. We must protect ourselves. Stay within. We will discuss your fate.’
‘Let us out!’ Kiska stood still, listening, but no one answered. She edged forward a little and saw a solid wall of the deformed creatures blocking the exit. She slumped back inside against a wall, slid down to the sand.
Leoman eased himself down next to her. He glanced about the narrow cave. ‘Damned familiar, yes?’
Arms draped over her knees, she only grunted her agreement.
‘We could fight our way out,’ he mused.
‘That would only confirm their judgement, wouldn’t it?’
‘I suppose so. I wonder how much time we will have …’
She cocked a brow. ‘Oh?’
‘Because we might as well spend it profitably …’
‘Leoman! Can’t you keep your mind off that for one minute?’
He shrugged expansively. ‘You need to learn to relax when you have no control over a situation. There is nothing you can do, yes? Now I will rub your back.’
She snorted, but fought a rising grin. ‘Leoman … you can rub my back if you promise me one thing …’
Early in the morning Scholar Ebbin approached the main gates of the Eldra Iron Mongers in the west end of Darujhistan. Under the bored eyes of the door guards he waited as wagons and carts came and went, all stopped and inspected by tablet-wielding clerks, their contents counted, itemized and graded. Ebbin stood waiting. Smoke from the foundries belched overhead. A steady rain of soot added to the layers already blackening the helmets, shoulders and faces of the guards.
After waiting what seemed like half the morning – the guards staring ox-like at him the entire time – Ebbin thrust himself forward into the path of one of these soot-smeared scurrying clerks. ‘I’m here to see the master,’ he blurted out.
Sniggering laughs all around from the youthful clerks. ‘Hear that, Ollie?’ the addressed one said, turning his back on Ebbin to examine a wagonload of crates. ‘Here to see the master.’
The fellow Ebbin presumed to be Ollie answered with a mocking laugh. ‘I’ll just summon him then, shall I?’
More laughter answered that. Ebbin pulled a scroll from his shoulder bag. ‘He gave me this.’
The nearest clerk simply continued his tally. Finishing,
he swung an exasperated glare to Ebbin. ‘What’s this then? You’d better not be wasting my time.’ He snatched the scroll from Ebbin’s hand and yanked it open, scanned it. He paused, returned to the top to go through it again, more slowly. After finishing the entire letter he raised his eyes to Ebbin; a kind of guarded resentment now filled them. ‘Follow me,’ said.
With the clerk leading, Ebbin wound his way across the busy yards of the ironworks. They crossed rails guiding wooden cars pulled by soot-blackened sickly mules, past great hangars where smoke billowed and sparks showered like glowing rain. They reached a building that looked to have once been a handsome estate house, but now stood almost entirely black beneath countless years of soot. Dead, or nearly dead, vines clung to its façade, some still bearing leaves thick with ash.
Just within the main doors they met some sort of reception secretary, or higher-ranked clerk. ‘Yes?’ the pale fellow asked without so much as glancing up. In answer Ebbin’s guide shoved the letter in front of him. The receptionist’s lips compressed and he took the now soot-smeared vellum between a forefinger and thumb as if it were a dead animal. He gave it a cursory glance, even in the act of tossing it away, then stopped suddenly and slowly flattened it before him. After reading the letter he said, ‘You may go.’ It was not clear to Ebbin whom the man meant. But the young clerk immediately turned on his heels and left without a word. The man blinked up at Ebbin. ‘Follow me.’
The receptionist led him up a wide set of ornate stairs of polished stone. Soot smeared the balustrade and the steps were black with ground-in dirt and ash. The man knocked at a set of narrow double doors then pushed them open. Here in a slim but very high-roofed room waited another cadaverous fellow just like this one. The receptionist set the vellum sheet on the man’s desk then returned to the doors. He bowed to Ebbin and made a curt gesture that was somewhat like an invitation to enter. Ebbin did so; the man shut the doors behind him.
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 198
