The Second Collected Tales of Bauchelain & Korbal Broach: Three Short Novels of the Malazan Empire

by Steven Erikson

  Whuffine was halfway to the spines when he saw the other boat, coming in fast.

  Gasping in pain, Spilgit limped up the street. If Feloovil hadn’t stumbled at the last moment, that knife would have found his back instead of his right calf. Shivering with shock, he approached his office. It took a strange person to decide to become a tax collector, and over the past month he had come to the conclusion that maybe he wasn’t cut out for it.

  He thought back to his days in Elin, when he was first apprenticed to the trade. Taxation in a city ruled by pirates was a bold notion, to be sure, and its practice was a vicious affair. They’d all trained in weapons and the detection of poison, and a few of his fellow apprentices had indeed plunged into the grey arts. On one day each year, the day that taxes were due, not even the Enclave bodyguards attached to each and every collector could be trusted. Spilgit’s final year in the city had seen almost sixty per cent losses in the Guild, and more than one chest of tax revenue disappeared in the chaos.

  He’d thought this distant posting would be a welcome escape from the horrors of Elin’s Day of Blood and Taxes. He’d displayed few of the necessary talents to imagine a long and prosperous life in Elin as a tax collector. He wasn’t coldhearted enough. He lacked the essential knot of cruelty in his soul, the small-minded descent into arbitrary necessities upon which collectors founded their arguments justifying blatant theft and the bullying and threats essential to successful extortion. Instead, he had revealed a soft ear for sob stories, for terrible tragedies and sudden house fires and mysterious burglaries and missing coin. He wept for the limping man tottering on his stick, for the snotty runts clinging to a destitute mother smelling of wine and sour milk, for the wealthy landowner swearing that he had not a single coin in his purse.

  The worst of it was, he had actually believed that the taxes he collected went to answering worthy needs, and all the necessities of governance and the maintenance of law and order, when in truth most of it filled the war-chests of gouty nobles whose only talent was hoarding.

  No, this journey into the empty wastelands out here in the realm’s dubious borderlands had taught him much, about himself, and about the world in general. Feloovil’s attempted murder would go unpunished. She offered too essential a service in Spendrugle. He, Spilgit, was the unwanted man.

  Pushing open the door to his office, he staggered inside and made his way to the lone chair. The wood-stove still emanated remnants of heat and he fed more scraps of driftwood onto the coals. But that was all before today. I’m not the same man I used to be. I’m not soft anymore. I am now capable of murder, and when I return to Elin, with that idiotic lovely cow in tow, why, I will sell her and feel not a single qualm, since she’ll be blissfully happy.

  And I will be a tax collector. With iron for eyes, a mouth thinned to a dagger’s edge, straight and disinclined to warp into anything resembling a genuine smile. No, this upturn of this here mouth, it signals the delightful pleasure of evil.

  Evil: the way it flows out from the deed, the way it spreads its stain of injustice. Evil: smelling of sweet lies and bitter truths. We own the tax laws. We know every way around them, meaning we never pay up a single sliver of tin, but you do, oh yes, you do.

  He struggled to wrap a cloth around his wounded calf, cursing his numbed fingers. At least, he consoled himself, he had killed the cat. There was no way it could have survived, despite its twitching body, or the way it sank its claws into the wall, spread-eagled as it tried to pull its head free, tail curling like a wood shaving to the flicker of flame. Oh, who was he kidding? The damned thing still lived.

  And if the roads fall into ruin, and the city guards starve without their bribes; and people live on the streets and need to sell their children to make ends meet. And if the judges are all bought off and the jailers sport gold rings, and everything that was once free now costs, why, that’s just how it is, and which side of the wall do I want to be standing on?

  He understood things now. He saw with utter clarity. The world was falling into ruin, but then it was always falling into ruin. Once that was comprehended, why, the evil of every moment – this entire endless realm of now – made perfect sense. He would join the others, all those bloated greed merchants, and ride the venal present, and to Hood with the future, and to Hood with the past. The Lord of Death awaited them all in the end anyway.

  The door scraped open and Spilgit bleated, reaching for his knife.

  ‘It’s just me,’ said Ackle, peering in.

  ‘Gods below!’

  ‘Can I join you? I brought some wood.’

  Spilgit waved him in. ‘Try and close that behind you. Funny you should drop by, Ackle. It occurs to me that we have something in common.’

  ‘Aye, we’re both dead men.’

  Spilgit sighed, and then rubbed at his face. ‘If we stay in Spendrugle all winter, we are.’

  ‘Well, I could stay around. Unless I freeze solid. Then Hordilo will burn me in a pyre and I saw the look in his eyes when he said that. It’s all down to Feloovil being nice to me, and that’s why I’m here, in fact.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, all is forgiven. And if that’s not enough, why, Feloovil has decided to wipe clean your tab. And you still have your room.’

  Spilgit studied the man levelly. ‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Ackle.’

  ‘The dead are beyond shame, Spilgit. That said, I admit to some qualms, but like I said, I need somewhere warm for the winter.’

  ‘She actually expects me to go back to the Heel with you? Arm in arm?’

  ‘Well, it’s hard to say, honestly. She is a bit beside herself at the moment. Poor Felittle is distraught, with what you did to her.’

  ‘I didn’t do anything to her! The cat attacked me and I defended myself.’

  ‘Then it went and attacked Feloovil, too, once it got its head out of the wall. And then the damned thing attacked just about everybody else – all the customers and half the girls, and down in the bar, well, it was chaos. The place is a shambles. Two dead dogs, too, their throats ripped out. I take that bit hard, by the way.’

  Spilgit licked his lips, and then pointed a finger at Ackle. ‘Didn’t I warn them? Didn’t I? Lizard cats can’t be domesticated! They’re vicious, treacherous, foul-tempered and they smell like moulted snakeskin.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware of any smell,’ Ackle said.

  ‘Did they kill it?’

  ‘No, it got away, but Feloovil swore she’d skewer it if it ever tried to come back, which made Felittle burst into tears again, and that got all the girls going, especially when the customers started demanding their money back, or at least compensation for wounded members and such.’

  ‘What was Hordilo doing during all of this?’

  ‘Gone, escorting that manservant up to the keep. He said he’d never seen such a scene since his wife left. Not that he was ever married.’

  ‘Before my time,’ Spilgit muttered, shrugging and looking out the small window, peering through patches in the ice. ‘Anyway, if I go back with you, she’ll kill me.’

  ‘At least it’ll improve her mood.’

  ‘And this is proof of how people just look out for themselves! Which is precisely why they all hate tax collectors. It’s the one time when someone is asking something of you, from you, and you get that murderous look in your eye and start blathering on about theft and extortion and corruption and all the rest. Take any man or woman and squeeze them and they start making the same sounds, the same whimpers and whines, the same wheedling and moaning. They’d rather bleed themselves than give up a coin!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Spilgit, but what’s your point? In any case, it’s not like you can tax me, is it? I’m dead.’

  ‘You’re not dead!’

  ‘Just what a tax collector would say, isn’t it?’

  ‘You think we don’t know that scam? Faking your death to avoid paying? You think we’re all idiots?’

  ‘I’m not faking anything. I was ha
nged. You saw it yourself. Hanged until dead. Now I’m back, maybe to haunt you.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘How many curses do you imagine are hanging over you, Spilgit? How many demons are waiting for you once you die? How many fiery realms and vats of acid? The torment you deliver in this mortal life will be returned upon you a thousandfold, the day you step through Hood’s gate.’

  ‘Rubbish. We sell you that shit so we can get away with whatever we damn well please. “Oh, I’ll get mine in the end!” Utter cat-turd, Ackle. Who do you think invented religion? Tax collectors!’

  ‘I thought religion was invented by the arbitrary hierarchy obsessed with control and power to justify their elite eminence over their enslaved subjects.’

  ‘Same people, Ackle.’

  ‘I don’t see you lording it over any of us here, Spilgit.’

  ‘Because you refuse to accept my authority! And for that I blame Lord Fangatooth Claw!’

  ‘Feloovil says that the manservant’s masters are going to kill him.’

  Spilgit leaned forward. ‘Really? Give me that wood, damn you. Let’s get some heat in here. Tell me more!’

  With Sordid and Bisk Fatter working the oars, Wormlick was up at the prow, studying the beach ahead with narrowed eyes. ‘He’s a comber, I’d say,’ he said in a hoarse growl. ‘No trouble to us, and that’s their boat, pulled up on the strand.’

  There’d be words. There’d be answers, even if Wormlick had to slice open their bellies and pull out their intestines. Most of all, there’d be payback. He scratched vigorously through his heavy beard, probed with light fingertips the small red rings marking his cheeks. He’d have to cut them out again, never a pleasant task, and he never got them all out. The damned worms knew when they were under assault, and spat eggs out in panic, and before too long he’d have more rings on his face, and neck. It was all part of his life, like cutting his hair, or washing out his underclothes. Once a month, every month, for as long as he could remember.

  But getting back the loot stolen from them, why, he could find a proper healer. A Denul healer, who would take his coin and rid him of the worms that had given him his name. Coin could pay for anything, even a return to beauty, and one day, he’d be beautiful again.

  ‘Almost there!’ he called back over his shoulder. The comber had carried a big rock down to one side of the crescent beach, where he’d left it lodged right where the waves thrashed the shore. Now he had walked back to await them, his sheep-skin cloak flapping about in the wind. ‘He’s old, this one. Was a big man once, probably trouble, but that was decades past. Still, let’s keep an eye on him. We’re too close to see it all go awry now.’

  They had pursued the Suncurl since Toll’s Landing. Left to drown only a rope’s throw from the ship, they had seen their comrades, Birds Mottle, Gust Hubb and Heck Urse, looking back on them from the rail, doing nothing, just standing there watching them drown.

  But we didn’t drown, did we? No, we don’t drown easily. We stole the Chanter’s hoard together, with Sater running the plan, only to be betrayed, and now we want our take, and damn me, but we’re going to get it.

  Glancing to his left, he studied the wreckage of the Suncurl. He and his companions weren’t the only ones chasing that doomed, cursed ship. There’d been a clash with the Chanters, but the storm had broken them apart and if the gods were smiling, those Chanters had all gone down to the black world of mud and bones, a thousand fathoms below. In any case, they’d seen no sign of the wretched bastards since the first night of the storm.

  The longboat ground heavily into the sand, jolting them all.

  Sordid rose, sweeping back her flaxen hair, and arched her back before turning round and eyeing the comber. She snorted. ‘Nice hat. I want that hat.’

  ‘Later,’ Bisk Fatter said, pitching himself over the side and wading ashore.

  Wormlick followed.

  Walking towards the comber, Bisk drew out his two-handed sword.

  The man backed up. ‘Please, I’ve done nothing!’

  ‘This is simple,’ Bisk said. ‘So simple you might even live. Heck Urse. Birds Mottle. Gust Hubb. Where are they?’

  ‘Ah.’ The comber gestured to where a trail was cut into the sloped bank above the beach, near a shack. ‘Off to the village, I would think. Spendrugle, upon the mouth of the Blear and beneath Wurms Keep. It is likely they are warming themselves at the King’s Heel, on the High Street.’

  Bisk sheathed his sword and turned to Wormlick and Sordid. ‘We’re back on land,’ he said, ‘and I’m corporal again. I give the orders, understood?’

  Wormlick eyed his companion. Bisk was barely the height of his sword, but he had the build of a rock-ape, and a face to match. Those small eyes so deep in their shadowy, ringed sockets were like the blunted fingernails of a corpse from a man who’d been buried alive in a coffin. When he smiled, which was mercifully infrequently, he revealed thick pointy teeth, stained blue by urlit leaves. In his life he had killed thirty-one men, seven women and one child who’d spat on his boot and then laughed and said, ‘You can’t touch me! It’s the law!’

  Bisk was a man pushed into military service, but then, so were they all, in the days when Toll and most of Stratem were waiting for the invasion. But the Crimson Guard landed only to leave again; and then the Chanters decided to take over everything, and life turned sour.

  All behind them now.

  ‘All right, sir,’ Sordid said with a shrug, standing loose the way she did when she was thinking of stabbing someone in the back. It was a miracle they’d not killed each other, but the deal was a sure one. Get back the loot, and then the blades could clash. But not until then.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Bisk. He pointed at the comber. ‘Good answers. You live.’

  ‘Thank you, good people! Bless you!’

  The three ex-guards of Toll’s City made for the trail.

  Whuffine Gaggs watched the three walk past his shack, leaving it undisturbed. At that, the comber sighed. ‘That could have been trouble, that’s for sure.’ He eyed the fine longboat rocking on the beach, and went to collect up its bowline. The big blow was coming back, like a whore finding a wooden coin, and he wanted to batten things down and be sitting warm and cosy in his shack by the time the furies arrived. This boat was worth a lot, after all, and he wasn’t expecting to see those three fools again.

  But the boat wasn’t the only task awaiting him. Indeed, he had plenty to do before nightfall.

  Whistling under his breath, he tied the bow rope around his chest, looped his right arm under it and then leaned forward. A boat built for twelve was a heavy beast, and this one was solidly constructed besides. Back in his younger days, he’d have no trouble dragging the thing high onto the beach. Now, he had to dig his feet deep into the sand and heave with all his strength.

  Age was a demon, a haunting that slipped into the bones whispering weakness and frailty. It stole his muscles, his agility, and the quickness of his wit. It seemed a miserable reward for surviving, all things told, which was proof enough that life was a fool’s bargain.

  Maybe there was a god out there, somewhere, who’d decided that life was a good thing, and so made it real, like blowing on a spark to keep it going until it was nothing but ash, then sitting back and thinking, Why, that was a worthy thing, wasn’t it? Here, let’s make lots more! But a man’s spark, or a woman’s for that matter, had to be worth more than just a brief flicker of light in the darkness.

  Behind him, as he pushed forward step by step, the boat ground its way up from the waves.

  The muscles remembered younger, bolder days, and the bones could mutter all they wanted to, and if the haunting aches returned on the morrow, well, he would damn that day when it came.

  His back to the sea, working as he was, Whuffine did not see the bloodred sail appear on the southern horizon.

  ‘The challenges of governance,’ said Bauchelain, studying the wine in the crystal goblet he held up to candelight, ‘pose unique travails that few comm
on folk have the intelligence to understand. Would you not agree to this, sir?’

  ‘I have said as much many times,’ Fangatooth replied, glancing over at Coingood. ‘As you have noted in my Tome of Tyranny, Scribe. Do you see, Bauchelain, how he writes down all that we say? I am assembling a book, you see, a work of many parts, and now, with this night, you yourself enter the narrative of my rise to power.’

  ‘How congenial, sir,’ Bauchelain said, raising the goblet in a toast.

  ‘And if your companion would deign to speak, then he too would be rewarded with immortality, there upon the vellum of my virtues – Coingood, note that one! My vellum of virtues! It’s my gift for the turn of phrase, you see, which I am adamant in preserving for posterity. “Preserving for posterity!” Write that, Scribe!’

  ‘Alas,’ said Bauchelain, ‘Korbal Broach’s talents lie elsewhere, and as a dinner guest he is often noted for his modesty, and his evident appreciation of fine food. Is that not so, my friend?’

  Korbal Broach glanced up from his plate. He licked his greasy lips and said, ‘Those bodies I left outside should be frozen by now, don’t you think, Bauchelain?’

  ‘I imagine so,’ Bauchelain replied.

  Grunting, Korbal returned to his meal.

  Fangatooth gestured and a servant refilled his goblet. ‘It always astonishes me,’ he said, ‘that so many common people look with horror and revulsion upon a corpse, when I admit to seeing in its lifeless pose a certain eloquence.’

  ‘A singular statement, yes.’

  ‘Precisely. Flesh in its most artless expression.’

  ‘Which transcends the mundane and becomes art itself, when one considers its ongoing potential.’

  ‘Potential, yes.’ Fangatooth then frowned. ‘What potential do you mean, Bauchelain?’

  ‘Well, take those bodies you suspend upon hooks on your keep wall. Are they not symbolic? Else, why display them at all? The corpse is the purest symbol of authority there is, I would assert. Proof of the power of life over death, and in the face of that, defiance loses all meaning. Resistance becomes a pointless plunge into the lime pit of lost causes.’