Stonewielder

CHAPTER II

Hisname was not Suth, but the Malazan recruiting officer at the station kept open year round just north of the Dal Hon lands shortened it into that and so was he entered into official Malazan rolls. He didn’t care. Names others chose to call one did not matter. People would use whatever forms of address they wished. These were merely terms imposed from without. For Suthahl ’Ani, the only thing that really mattered was what one named oneself.

And perhaps it was this indifference to names and the petty rivalries and contests for status among the new recruits, male and female, that prevented Suth from attracting yet another name — a nickname to be used within the ranks like so many of the recruits’: Dim, Worm, Lard, Roach or Thumbs.

He’d joined because of the stories of great battles up north, but when he got there all the fighting was over. Only the talking remained — too much talking for his liking. Boasting and storytelling. The cheap puffery of those who were cowards on the field, for only those who ran or hid from the fighting could have survived the slaughters they described.

Now he and a handful of recruits had been assigned their squads. After basic training on the march, he, Dim, and Lard ended up in the 17th Squad, 4th Company, 2nd Division, Malazan Fourth Army, encamped in the hills and coastline around the capital city, Unta. He felt privileged; instead of squatting under ponchos or makeshift tents in the rain, the 17th actually inhabited a thatch-roofed fisherman’s cottage, either abandoned, or seized. He wondered if perhaps the reason the squad rated such luxury was the man who met them in the night and beating downpour just outside its doorway.

He wore a battered janzerian cuirass with scaled armoured sleeves. A well-worn longsword hung peace-strapped at his belt. The rain ran down the mail coif under his plain iron helmet. Pale, mild eyes looked them up and down from beneath the dark rim of that helmet.

‘Welcome to the 17th,’ the man said in a surprisingly soft voice. He spoke the common Imperial dialect, Talian, close enough to Suth’s own Dal Hon. ‘I’m your sergeant, Goss. You three are here because you’re classed as heavies, and the 17th has always been a heavy infantry squad.’ He pointed to Lard. ‘What’s your name, soldier?’

‘Weveth Lethall,’ said Lard.

Their sergeant looked the hulking fellow up and down again. ‘You sure? Not Fatty? Or Bhederin? Or Ox?’

‘We call him Lard,’ said Dim, grinning good-naturedly.

‘And you?’

‘Dim.’

‘Right.’ He raised his chin to Suth. ‘You?’

‘Suth.’

‘Suth? What kind of name is that?’

‘It’s a name.’

‘Well, that it is. Okay, you three can sleep inside. I’ll see about getting you kitted out.’ And he remained, motionless, in front of them. It seemed to Suth that the man was waiting for something. Then he remembered his training and he saluted. Dim and Lard followed suit. Goss answered the salute. ‘Right. See you later.’

Their sergeant disappeared into the sheeting rain. Suth, Dim and Lard exchanged glances. Lard shrugged and headed to the open doorway. Suth and Dim followed. Inside, embers glowed in a stone hearth, old straw lay kicked about over a beaten dirt floor. A small, rat-faced fellow sat at a table of adzed planks, smoking a pipe. It was warm and humid and stank of sweat and manure. Lard headed to an inner door.

The little man’s eyes followed him. ‘Un-uh…’ he warned, his small pointy teeth clenched tight on the white clay pipe stem.

‘The sergeant told us to sleep in here,’ Lard said, testy. Suth wiped the rain from his face.

‘I know what he said. You three sleep here.’ He pointed to the floor.

‘What? On the floor? In the dirt?’

‘That or outside.’ He blew smoke from his pinched nose. ‘Your choice.’

‘And who’re you?’

‘Faro’s the name.’

‘Why in Hood’s name should we listen to you?’

‘’Cause it would be smart to play along till you know the rules.’ And he bared his tiny white teeth.

Shrugging, Suth sat next to the hearth and gathered up an armful of straw. Dim sat heavily across from him, grinning. He leaned close: ‘Just like home!’

Suth said nothing, but it was in fact just like home, hugging the firepit for warmth after minding the herd in the rain all day.

Lard sat awkwardly, cursing and grumbling. ‘Gave up a goddamned warm bed for this! Should’ve stayed home. Fucking choices I make.’

Suth lay down facing the glowing hearth, ignoring the stink of his soaked leather jerkin, his itching wool trousers, and heavy sodden rag wraps at his legs. He hoped to all the Dal Hon gods that the man would soon shut up.

A kick woke him to light streaming in the open doorway. He’d managed to sleep despite the scratchy clothes these Malazans had issued him, despite his hunger, and despite the massive passing of gas from his two ox-like companions. Someone was leaning over him, offering something — a beast’s horn.

‘Take it, it’s hot.’ He was an older fellow, a veteran, not their sergeant, his voice dry-sand hoarse.

‘Thanks.’ It was hot. A kind of weak tea. ‘I’m new.’

A tired indulgent smile drew up the man’s lips as if to hint at all the oh-so-smart comments he could make in response to that painfully obvious statement, but that he was far above scoring such easy points. A grey beard, hacked short, surrounded that mouth, and dark eyes peered out of deep wells of hatched lines. ‘Len’s the name. Sapper.’

‘Suth.’

‘Good to have you.’

Suth peered down at his snoring companions. ‘Let ’em rest,’ said Len. ‘Have to brew up more tea.’

The sunlight glare from the door was obscured and Suth shaded his gaze and stared at what he saw there. It was singularly the most unfavoured female he had ever set eyes on. She wore a dirty tattered uniform of a grey jupon over old leathers, was skinny to the point of malnourished, and even the bulging eyes that appeared to look in both directions at once couldn’t draw all attention away from a mouthful of uneven, yellowed teeth. ‘Where’s Hunter?’ she demanded.

‘Out. What’s the word, Urfa?’

The bulging eyes swivelled to focus on Suth; she appeared to ignore Len’s question. ‘More heavies,’ she announced, her mouth drawing down, musing. ‘Heavies and saboteurs is all we got. Hardly any lights or cav. Looks like it’s shaping into an assault on strong fortifications. Maybe south Genabackis.’

‘South Genabackis is a pest hole,’ Len observed. ‘And there ain’t nothin’ there worth assaulting. Not even their women.’

‘There’s Elingarth.’

‘No one’s that stupid.’

‘There’s that island off the coast. Saw it on a chart once. Somethin’ like… “the Island of the Seguleh”.’

Len choked on his own horn of tea. ‘Sure, all fifteen thousand of us might manage to take one fishing village on that island.’

She smiled, showing off her ragged teeth. ‘Just lookin’ on the bright side. Anyways, word is we’re shipping out so pack your bag of tricks and have one last screw with whichever sheep it is you found.’

‘The one better looking than you, Urfa,’ said Len, smiling.

‘Must be that old goat smell on you.’

Grinning, Len saluted and she responded. ‘Tell Hunter,’ she said and left.

Dim grunted then, blinking and smacking his lips.

‘Who was that?’ Suth asked.

‘Lieutenant Urfa. She commands the sappers, the saboteurs, in the company.’

‘Lieutenant?’

‘Aye.’ Len kicked Lard, who grunted. ‘There’s tea to brew,’ he told them. ‘Gotta find Hunter — that’s Goss — the sergeant.’

Suth saluted. Len waved it aside. ‘See you later.’

While Dim and Lard fussed over the pot on the hearth, Suth went out. A heavy low morning mist obscured the hillsides. It mingled with the thick white smoke of the countless fires of an army encamped and burning any wood it could scavenge, all green and unseasoned. In the distance the waters of Unta Bay seemed to lie motionless, dull and grey. A flotilla of ships of all sizes jammed the shallows. Their transport? The damp cold bit at Suth and he rubbed his arms for warmth; it was never this bad on the steppes.

Ox-drawn carts lumbered past, moving materiel down to the shore. Squads of soldiers marched by in that direction as well. One woman approached upslope, against the tide. She was tall — strapping, his father might have said — and she carried loose bundles of gear under her arms. She wore a padded leather shirt and trousers such as might be worn under heavy metal armour. She dropped the bundles on the dry porch of the cottage and nodded to Suth. Her olive complexion and hacked-short night-black hair identified her as Kanese, the only nation able to war with any success against his own Dal Hon league of kingdoms. But the women of Itko Kan were supposed to be tiny demure things. This woman was a giant, fully as tall as he, with the breadth across the shoulders of a heavy sword wielder.

‘Yana,’ she said, introducing herself.

‘Suth.’

‘Suth? That doesn’t sound Dal Honese.’

‘It’s not.’

A grunt of understanding. Dim and Lard staggered out, blinking. Lard turned to the wall, untied the lacing at the front of his trousers and let loose a great stream of piss that hissed against the mud-chinked planking.

‘Next time try the privy out back,’ Yana drawled.

Lard turned, tying up the lacing, and winked. ‘Gonna hold it for me too?’

‘Not even if I could find it.’ She motioned to the bundles. ‘These are for you, armour and weapons.’ Suth knelt at the nearest, began untying the leather strapping. Rolled around the outside was a padded leather and felt undergarment, called an aketon by his people, fully sleeved. When he pulled it over his head it hung down to his knees. Inside the bundle he was amazed to see two halves of a cuirass of banded iron, a hauberk with mailed sleeves, and a sheathed longsword. When he forced his arms through the hauberk and pulled it down, it hung just shorter than the aketon. Next he pulled on the cuirass and began lacing up the open side. He was stunned; among his own people only a king could afford such a set. How the Malazans had acquired such bounty, however, was revealed by the black stain of dried blood on one side and the gap between bands where a broad blade had penetrated.

Lard was holding up his own shirt of scaled armour and scowling. ‘What is this beat-up old shit?’

That comment offended Yana far more than the earlier jibe. She eyed Lard the way he was examining his armour. ‘Goss had to beg and trade all night to pull this gear together so you’d better appreciate it. It’s that or nothing.’ She turned to Dim. ‘What do you say?’

The man actually blushed beneath his tangled dirty-blond hair. ‘Good as Burn’s own blessing.’

‘And you, Suth?’

‘Far more than I was expecting.’

Yana grunted. ‘Damn right. Well, you’re heavies, and of the 17th. So you should at least last the first exchange.’ She raised her chin, peering in past them. ‘Pyke — you still in there?’

A muffled complaint answered.

‘Pack everything up. We’re shipping out.’

‘What am I? The Hood-damned servant?’

‘You’re last, is what you are. As usual. Okay, you three,’ she motioned to equipment piled at one end of the porch, ‘pick that up and come with me.’

Dim saluted but Yana stared, her brown eyes narrowing. ‘What was that for?’

‘You’re not the, ah, corporal?’

‘No. Pyke is.’

Dim hiked up his bundled armour and a roll of gear. ‘But you’re actin’ like it, ’n’ all.’

‘That’s because Pyke’s a worthless lazy bastard, that’s why.’

‘I heard that, you sexless bitch!’ Pyke yelled from within.

Yana ignored the disembodied voice. ‘C’mon, let’s go.’

They followed Yana. Suth adjusted his belt and sheath one-handed, a roped bundle under one arm. Around them the press thickened until they could advance no further and they joined one of many ragged lines of men and women squatting and sitting on the trampled muddy grass among rolls and crates of packed equipment.

‘Where’re we headed?’ Dim asked.

‘They don’t tell us,’ Yana answered mildly, scanning the nearby faces. She nodded and greeted many.

‘A woman came by earlier to talk to Len,’ Suth said. ‘A Lieutenant Urfa.’

Yana grunted. ‘There’s a crazy one. Get us all killed, she will. Sappers an’ their cracked schemes.’

Lard was examining his weapon, a heavy cutlass. ‘There was a guy in the cottage last night. Said his name was Faro.’

The woman was quiet for a time. ‘Faro’s a killer. The kind who’d be executed in peacetime, if you know what I mean. Stay out of his way. He answers only to Goss.’

‘And Goss — his other name is Hunter?’ Suth asked.

She turned to study him. ‘Where’d you hear that?’

‘Urfa said it.’

Yana grunted her understanding. ‘Well, forget it. It’s not a name for you.’

The morning warmed, the mist burning off. Clouds of tiny flies tormented everyone. The cacophony of lowing and complaining animals, shouting men and women, and screeching ungreased cartwheels kept Suth from dozing. He watched all the materiel being carried across long plank walkways laid over the mudflats out to waiting launches. He did not know ships — had only seen the ocean twice — but the vessels anchored in the bay did not seem to have a military cut to them. They looked instead like lumbering, ungainly merchant scows.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but I am so hungry,’ Dim finally announced after sighing and grimacing in vain. ‘We haven’t eaten since yesterday noon.’

Yana grunted again — it seemed her normal way of communicating. She stood. ‘I’ll see what I can roust up. You lot stay here.’

Noon passed and Yana did not return. Suth wondered whether they’d met everyone in their squad; he suspected not. A gang of men and women came and sat among the crates and bundles of equipment piled just ahead of them, then collected it all and began moving off. Suth, Dim, and Lard watched until they started gathering up their own squad’s gear in the process. Lard jumped to his feet. ‘Hey! That’s ours.’

The others froze. ‘Don’t try an’ be smart,’ said one fellow, offended. ‘We left all this here earlier.’

Suth and Dim stood. Lard grabbed one bundle. ‘Well, these ones are ours.’

‘Piss off. It’s all the same, okay?’

‘Then leave it,’ Suth suggested gently.

The gang — a full squad, Suth assumed — set everything down and straightened. Eight against their three. A challenging fight. He began unbuckling his sword belt.

The eight glanced to one another, smiling slyly. ‘Don’t be fools,’ the spokesman said. ‘It ain’t worth it.’

‘As I see it,’ Lard said, ‘you can either leave the gear or take a beating.’ He smiled as well. ‘Your choice.’

The eight began spreading out in a broad circle surrounding them. The spokesman, a scarred squat veteran, remained. He raised his hands, open and empty. ‘All right. You got more than talk?’

‘I got this,’ Lard said, and he swung one great fist.

The spokesman ducked under the wild swing and his fist cracked against Lard’s head. Suth winced at the solid smack of the blow. Lard straightened up to his full considerable height and rubbed his jaw. ‘Good shot.’

A crowd drawn from the nearby lines gathered around. Suth heard bets shouted, and a name, Keth, repeated. Lard swung broadly again, and again Keth, if that was his name, easily evaded the blow to hammer Lard with solid blows to the stomach and head.

But nothing fazed the big man as he relentlessly stalked the quicker fellow. Eventually, Lard caught Keth by one arm and drew him into a great hug, lifted him over his head, and brought him down crashing on top of a crate that collapsed, shattering. Amid a shower of sawdust and cloth rags a handful of small dark green globes rolled out on to the mud.

Immediately, everyone was silenced. Eyes bulged, staring. Suth glanced about, bemused. As quickly as it had come the crowd vanished. Even the other squad picked up their stunned comrade and melted away. Suth and Dim went to Lard who was puffing, winded, wiping at the blood running generously from his split brow and cheek.

‘Dumbass heavies,’ a woman grumbled, and they turned.

Two of the crowd had remained, a woman and the saboteur, Len. Ignoring the three of them, they knelt at the broken crate.

‘This shouldn’t be here,’ the woman said, and her gaze snapped up, glancing about.

‘Lifted,’ Len said, his voice a croak.

The two shared looks that struck Suth as fully the most gleeful and evil he’d seen in a long time. They scrounged blankets and ponchos to quickly cover the wreckage. Suth, Dim and Lard watched, bemused.

Everything covered, Len finally turned to Suth, though his gaze kept darting about the flats. ‘Dim and Lard,’ Suth introduced his companions. ‘Len.’

‘Keri,’ Len said, indicating the woman. She nodded while one by one gently wrapping the globes in rags and packing them into a shoulder bag.

‘I need another bag,’ she told Len, who nodded and began searching among the gear.

‘What’s going on?’ Suth asked.

‘Munitions,’ Len said. He looked up. ‘Know what I mean?’

Suth had heard of them; he nodded. Lard grunted his understanding, even conveying a measure of wonder. Dim just looked confused.

Shortly after Keri and Len had finished packing all the munitions Yana came up with a burlap sack in one hand. This she handed to Suth. ‘Share it out.’ To Len, ‘What happened here?’

The two saboteurs looked as if they were not sure which story to try. Suth said, ‘Some crates got dropped.’ Len shot him a wink.

Yana grunted her disinterest. ‘Clean up and we’ll go. I found Goss. We got our berth assignment. Pick everything up.’ She eyed Lard. ‘What in Soliel’s mercy happened to you?’

The man wiped blood from his mouth, offered a defiant smile. ‘I fell down.’

Their berthing was aboard the converted Cawnese merchant caravel, Lasana.. Here Suth was introduced to the remaining members of the squad, Wess and Pyke, both heavy infantry. In fact, the Lasana was fairly groaning under the weight of heavy infantry. It carried some four hundred men and women of the 4th Company, nearly all heavies, with a sprinkling of saboteurs. It looked to Suth as if Urfa’s predictions were correct; wherever they were headed the Malazans must be counting on an ugly fight. Wess was already asleep in one of the rows of hammocks assigned. It was a mystery to Suth how the man could be sleeping given the shattering chaos of loading. Pyke was a tall lanky veteran who ignored the three newcomers. Everyone shoved their gear into hammocks until Yana told them not to because they’d be sharing them with others rotating in eight-hour shifts. Len motioned to pegs where, like bodies impaled in the dark, kit bags of clothing and pieces of armour swung already.

‘Where’s Goss?’ Yana asked Pyke.

‘Up top.’

‘Okay.’ To everyone: ‘Stow your gear and head up top to keep this area clear.’

Suth pulled off his armour and hung it but Len took it down and handed it back. ‘Clean, repair, and oil it.’

‘I have nothing to use.’

‘I do.’

‘Thank you.’

The old saboteur waved that aside and headed back out to the companionway. Suth followed. He had to hunch almost double to manage the cramped quarters. They found the deck crammed with soldiers. So thick was the press that the sailors found it almost impossible to do their tasks. There was little work for them, however, as departure was delayed and delayed and then delayed some more. It was the night tide before any of the vessels began making their slow, awkward way out of the bay.

Suth and Dim sat with Len, their armour across their laps, as the man educated them in the care of their newfound riches. Half the time, though, Suth listened to the rumours circulating around them. They were headed north to Seven Cities to consolidate its pacification. To north Genabackis to relieve the 5th. East, to central Genabackis to occupy some rich city called Darujhistan. Or on to south Genabackis to initiate a new front.

Finally Suth asked Len, ‘Where are we headed?’

The veteran just frowned over the leathers he was sewing. ‘Doesn’t matter. Everywhere’s the same for us.’

Suth understood the cold reasoning behind that, yet this was a good deal farther than he’d ever imagined his vow to join the Malazans would take him. ‘Where do you think we’re headed?’

Len looked up, squinted into the clouded eastern night sky. ‘Well, it sounds to me like all this speculation on where we might be headed is shying scared from one of the possibilities. The one no one wants to consider.’

‘Which is what, old timer?’ a nearby soldier asked, and he raised a hand to silence his companions.

Len shrugged. ‘That we’re headed south, to Korel lands.’

‘That’s just so much horseshit!’ the soldier yelled. Everyone began talking at once. Suth watched, amazed, as this version became the new rumour, to spread like ripples over the crowded deck, outward to the rear and to the front, raising shouts of alarm and even horror as it went.

‘Go to Hood, old man!’ shouted the soldier who’d asked for Len’s opinion in the first place.

Len merely offered Suth a knowing grin. ‘See how you should always keep your mouth shut? People only want to hear what they want to hear.’

Suth agreed. It had also occurred to him that all the speculation involving Genabackis and some city named Darujhistan seemed to be where the speakers wanted to go more than where they thought they might be going. Everyone wanted to head to overseas postings in Genabackis, or even Seven Cities.

His own personal philosophy on life told him that, therefore, that was exactly where they were not headed. This name, Korel, he’d heard once or twice before. It was always mentioned more as a curse than anything. It was considered the very worst, the ugliest of all the holdings of the far-flung Malazan Empire. Well, he’d joined to be tested, and it looked as though he might be headed into one of the sternest trials of his life. That was good. It would be a waste of his time otherwise.

The street orphans were out playing on the courtyard across the way from the temple. Ella squatted on the threshold, preparing the midday meal while keeping one affectionate eye on them. She could hardly believe that just a few years ago she ran with her own gang of urchins. She saw hardly any of them any more. The Watch beat Harl to death as a probable thief. Peek disappeared entirely; and the pimps took Tillin. That would have been her fate had she not started listening to the priest.

It was here she had run when the trolling party had come for her: hired thugs on a sweep for young girls and boys to feed the brothels and slave markets all across the archipelago. And it was on this threshold that the priest faced them. One unarmed man against seven armed, and they backed down. She pounded the pestle and shook her head. The priest. She still could not understand him. He was like nothing from her experience as a child, abandoned to fend for herself on the streets of Banith. An extremely narrow education, she could admit. A school of casual violence, constant hunger, exploitation, and rape.

Yet not once had the priest indulged in similar practices — the stronger exacting what they wished from the weaker, including sexual gratification. Not that the man was a eunuch. It seemed that he simply refused to accept all the old, traditional ways of doing things. ‘Haven’t got us very far, have they?’ he once told her.

Giggling brought her attention back to her surroundings. A crowd of dirty grinning faces in a half-circle before her. ‘Lunch time, is it?’ Obeying the rules of the street, the feral children said nothing lest they misstep and lose their chance for a meal. They grinned instead, as if happy, and ‘made cute’ as they used to call it in her time. But in their too-bright shining eyes she saw the merciless torment of constant nagging hunger. She reached to the basket at her side, folded back the cloth across it, and distributed the small flatbreads she’d baked earlier that day. Laughing, they snatched their prizes and ran, shoving everything into their mouths before anyone, or anything, could steal it from them.

One young girl remained. Her clothes were finer than the rest, though just as torn and grimed. The bread remained in one hand. She watched Ella with large dark eyes, curiously calm and solemn. Ella returned to preparing the priest’s meal. ‘What is it, child?’ she asked.

‘Is this the house of the foreign holy man?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is it true that he eats babies?’

She stopped her pounding. ‘What?’

‘That’s what everyone says.’

Ella rocked back on her haunches, eyed the crowded square, the small day-market, the touts and hawkers jostling pilgrims just off the boats as they milled, organizing a procession to the Cloister. ‘So that’s what they say…’ she breathed.

‘Yes. They say that at night he changes into a beast and steals babies from houses and eats their hearts.’

‘What do you think?’ Ella asked, strangely unnerved by the child’s grisly imagination.

The girl pushed her tangled hair from her pale brow. Very pale — not of Fist? Fathered by a Malazan occupier perhaps? As she suspected she had been herself? The girl cocked her head, thinking. ‘Oh, I don’t think he does any of those things. I think he’s much more dangerous than that.’

Ella stared anew at this strange child. What an odd thing to say. But the child just smiled, her eyes almost mocking, and twirling a pinch of hair in her fingers, ‘making cute’, she wandered off. Watching her go, Ella was struck most not by the child’s precocious self-possession, her assured manner, or what she’d said. Rather, it was the fact that of the pack of hungry street urchins careering around her, most by far bigger and older, not one attempted to snatch the bread held so casually in one small hand.

Later she was arranging the sauce and boiled fish on a platter for the priest when everything changed out among the crowd in the square. A child of these streets, and sensitive to their moods, she stilled as well. The urchins were gone, as were the older idlers; the shouting of the merchants had quietened, as had the general talk. In the hush Ella heard the approach of a measured tramp of boots. A Malazan patrol.

Even the pilgrims paused in their reverences, hands raised in supplication to the towers of the Cloister. The column entered the square from a side street, marched across the broad open expanse. All eyes followed its progress. A standard preceded them, a black cloth bearing the Imperial sceptre. Their surcoats were a dark grey edged in blood red. As the column tramped past the front of the temple a detachment separated and halted. It was led by a figure familiar to all those of the Banith waterfront, Sergeant Billouth, main extortionist and strong arm of the local commander, Captain Karien’el.

‘The priest here?’ Billouth demanded in accented Roolian.

She bowed. ‘I’ll see…’

‘Yes?’ It was the priest in the doorway, a robe open to his waist showing his thick chest and bulging stomach, both covered in a thick pelt of bristle-like hair and the blue curls of tattooing. Ella looked away; she’d glimpsed before that the marks extended well beyond his face, but never guessed they descended quite so far. ‘What is it?’

‘We’re looking for a man,’ Billouth said, and he crossed his arms over his studded leather hauberk, a pleased smile growing on his lips. ‘A criminal fugitive. A thief. Big fellow. Said to hang out in the neighbourhood.’ He leaned forward, lowering his voice. ‘Know anything that could help us?’

The priest’s expression didn’t change. ‘No.’

Ella lowered her gaze.

‘Really? You wouldn’t be withholding information, would you? Because when we catch this fellow and squeeze him… Well, that would be bad news for you.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Billouth ran the back of a hand over his unshaven jowls. ‘If you say so. But I think we’ll be talking again real soon,’ and he winked. Straightening, the sergeant raised his voice. ‘Thank you very much for all the information, Priest. A lot of locals will end up dancing on the Stormwall thanks to you.’

Ella gaped. But he’d said nothing!

Billouth waved the detachment onward, saluted the priest.

Bastard, the priest mouthed.

Ella stood watching the Malazans march away, their wicked grins at the trouble they’d stirred up, hating them. The priest took the tray from her. ‘Thank you, Ella.’

‘They want you gone.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why don’t they just… you know…’

‘Get rid of me?’

‘Yes.’

His wide frog mouth twisted up. ‘They’ve tried. A number of times. Right now it’s an uneasy truce.’ He shrugged. ‘But why should they bother when they can get the locals to do it for them?’ He ducked inside.

Ella gasped, seeing it now. She followed him inside. ‘Rumours! They’re spreading rumours about you!’

‘Yes. Them and someone else. The priests at the Cloister, I imagine.’ He sat cross-legged on a mat to eat.

‘But why should they do that?’

He shrugged again. ‘They’re on top and I’m an unknown to them. Any possible change is a threat to their position. So their reaction is to suppress.’

Ella rounded on the entrance as if she would march out to confront them all. ‘But why? You let the homeless kids sleep here. You give shelter and food to the debtors.’

‘And I extort money and sex for the privilege, yes?’

She lowered her gaze, feeling her own face heat. ‘I’d heard that one too.’

He nodded thoughtfully, chewing. ‘They might even believe it, seeing as in their hearts they know that’s what they’d do in my place. But that’s not what I’m here for.’

Surprising herself, she asked in a small voice, ‘What are you here for?’

Still nodding, he spoke, his gaze lowered to his food. ‘I’ve seen religion from the top and from the bottom, Ella. I’ve been intimate with faith all my life. And it occurs to me that the transfixion of ecstasy, the transporting feeling of being one with a god, is the same everywhere. It matters not what image or idol is bowed to or hangs on the wall, be it the cowled figure of Hood, or a severed bull’s head. It’s all the same because the sensation, the feeling, is the same as it comes from within all of us. From inside. Not without.’ He looked up, his gaze narrowed. ‘That’s the important point. It is a natural innate emotion, a human quality, that can be exploited. That’s why I’m here.’

At some point Ella had clasped a hand to her throat as if to assure herself that she could still breathe. Taking that deep breath, she bowed to the priest and left the empty room for the cool outside. In the small front court she forced her chest to relax, drawing deep the refreshing air to stop her head from spinning. That eerie child was right. This man was somehow much more dangerous than anyone could possibly suspect.

And the question for her was, dare she follow? She saw how till now her life had been nothing more than a mad scramble to fill her stomach, avoid danger, find shelter. Now something more had been shown her; so much that she’d never even suspected existed in the world. She felt as if she’d been granted a glimpse of something terrifyingly huge, yet also awe-inspiring, impossibly grand. Oddly enough she felt humility in the glimpsing of it rather than the puffed-up self-importance she’d met in those claiming to be filled with the spirit of the gods. Was this sensation what the priest meant? If so, she knew immediately she would follow without hesitation. It felt right. Which, she supposed, was its strength, and its danger.

Ivanr spotted the mounted column when it entered the north cleft of the valley his fields overlooked. He could run, he supposed, abandon his home and all he’d worked so hard to build these last few years. But something prevented him. A kind of obtuse stubbornness that asserted itself always at the most inconvenient of times. Besides, there was a chance that they weren’t after him anyway. So it was that the column of Jourilan cavalry encircled him while he leaned on his hoe amid his field of beans.

Its captain drew off his helmet and the felt cap he wore beneath, then pushed back his matted sweaty hair. He inclined his head in greeting. ‘Ivanr of Antr. We arrest you in the name of the Jourilan Emperor. Will you come peaceably, or must we subdue you?’

He peered around at the encircling cavalry. Twelve armed men. Quite the compliment. He shaded his gaze to study the captain. ‘And the charge?’

Within his cuirass of banded iron the captain offered a shrug of complete indifference. ‘You have been denounced for aiding and abetting the heretic cultists.’

Ivanr nodded, accepting what he knew to have been inevitable. Eventually, he knew, word would have reached the Emperor’s secret police, or the Lady’s priesthood, that he looked the other way while refugees and travellers drank from his well and slept in the lean-to shelters he’d erected in his fields. They’d probably tortured it out of one they’d caught. ‘And should I cooperate? What then?’

‘You will be tried.’

So. A show trial. A very public demonstration that no one was above the law, not even disgraced past grand champions. At the moment, though, he faced twelve armed men and the capital was a long way off. Anything could happen in the intervening time. He dropped his hoe. ‘I’ll make no trouble.’

‘A wise decision, Ivanr.’ The captain motioned to his men. Two dismounted. One took a rope from his saddle. They approached carefully. Ivanr held out his fists together. They bound him at the wrists.

The leather of his saddle creaking, the captain turned to study the surrounding valley slopes. He replaced his helmet. ‘They said you’d lost your fire, Ivanr. That you’d sworn some kind of vow never to take another life. But I couldn’t believe it — I’d seen you fight, after all.’ The trooper tied the rope to his cantle, remounted. The captain shook his head. ‘Hard to believe you’re the same man I saw that afternoon out on the sands, taking on all comers. You were untouchable then.’ He regarded Ivanr for some time from beneath the lip of his helmet, his heavy gaze almost regretful. ‘Better, I think, had you died then.’

He motioned to a nearby tree, bare-limbed, black and grey. ‘That one will do.’

The troop kneed their mounts. The rope snaked taut then yanked Ivanr forward. ‘Captain! You mentioned something about a trial?’

The captain looked back. He reached a gloved hand into a pannier and pulled out a rolled scroll. ‘Didn’t I mention it had already occurred? You were found guilty, by the way. We’re here to fulfil the sentence.’

This, Ivanr told himself acidly, he should have seen coming as well. As the captain said — he was definitely losing his edge. Well, the captain had had his little surprise. Now it was time for his, and quickly. Jogging, he twisted his wrists, testing the rope, and found they’d bound him no more thoroughly than they would have any other prisoner, which was a mistake. Grunting with the effort, and the accompanying pain, he twisted his arms around the binding at the wrists until the rope snapped. Two long paces brought him level with the trooper leading him. Taking a grip on the saddle he pulled himself up to kick the startled man from his seat. He felt ribs snap beneath his heel.

Shouts of alarm all round. The mounts milled, kicking and nervous. ‘Just kill him!’ the captain shouted, disgusted.

Ivanr yanked a levelled spear from one trooper, swung it to slap the rump of a mount that reared, startled, dumping its rider. Ducking under another spear, he jabbed with the butt to knock the breath from a fourth rider, and very possibly rupturing internal organs. The captain charged past, swinging his blade. Ivanr blocked with the spear haft, twisting to whip the iron shank beneath the blade across the back of the man’s neck, pitching him on to his horse’s neck where he hung, seemingly unconscious. Ivanr swung again, knocking aside a number of thrusts, took hold of another spear to yank its wielder backwards off his mount, pulling himself from his feet in the process. That may have saved his life as the blades of two passing troopers hissed over him.

He picked up another fallen spear, kicked a groggy trooper to keep him down. The next two riders he unhorsed with his spear, leaving four to mill about him, swinging. If they’d simply dismounted and surrounded him he knew he’d have faced far worse odds. As it was, they’d given up the main advantage of the mounted troop’s charge. Now they merely impeded one another on their horses. They cut down at him while he ducked and thrust. Kicked-up red dust coated everyone. It stuck in Ivanr’s throat and stung his eyes. Dodging, keeping them in each other’s way, he thrust and jabbed them from their mounts one by one until the dust drifted aside and the last of the riderless horses ran off. Only he was left upright. He kicked two who looked to be rousing then found the captain where he’d fallen from his mount. He pulled the man’s helmet off and cuffed a cheek.

‘Captain?’

The man’s eyelids fluttered. He groaned, wincing. Dirt smeared the side of his face from his fall. The eyes found their focus. ‘I thought you’d sworn some kind of vow,’ he said, accusing.

‘I swore that I’d never kill again — not that I wouldn’t fight. I think you’ll find that none of your men are dead. Though a few might die if you don’t get them attention soon. I suggest back the way you came, to the village of Doun-el. I believe there’s a priest there.’

‘You mean I should do that rather than track you.’

‘It’s up to you.’ Ivanr yanked off the man’s weapon belt. ‘Now I’m going to teach you the proper way to tie someone up.’

‘We will track you,’ the captain swore while Ivanr turned him over and pulled his hands behind his back. ‘Others will be sent. Killers, the Emperor’s executioners.’

‘They are all welcome to try to follow me. Now, must I gag you?’

The captain’s sullen silence told Ivanr that the fellow was smarter than his performance to this point had indicated. He bound the rest of the men — they’d get free soon enough by helping one another. After this he gently gathered up the reins of the nearest horse and mounted. Swinging south, he snatched up the reins of a second for a spare mount, and headed off. He knew he ought to prepare more carefully, take the time to rifle all their packs and gear, but they were struggling and he didn’t know how much more punishment the poor fellows could take.

He made a show of heading south, keeping himself visible for some time to the lower slopes. After two days he swung east.

In the foothills Ivanr passed barley and millet fields still unharvested despite the waning season. The rutted cart paths he followed proved oddly free of traffic, given this time of trade and readying for the coming winter.

He did meet one riderless horse ambling carefree down to warmer climes. From the state of its matted and burr-laced coat he imagined it had been free for some time and this surprised him; horses were rare, and he with two was already a wealthy man. This runaway he did not bother tethering. Though it was friendly enough, nosing his palm for treats, it looked bloated, ill. It had probably eaten a great number of plants it shouldn’t have. Ivanr sent it on its way unmolested. As he crested a hillock his last view of the valley behind was of a vast expanse empty but for the solitary mangy horse walking north.

Past the hillock he came to a farmstead and a hamlet nestled beyond in a forested valley. No smoke rose from the home’s cobblestone chimney. The door stood ajar into darkness. A nearby corral was empty. He considered investigating, but with a flick of the reins decided against. His mount was pushing through the tall untended grasses next to the homestead’s courtyard when a woman’s shrill scream stunned him and shocked his horse into its own panicked rearing shriek. Ivanr ended up on his back, the wind knocked from him, while both mount and spare galloped off.

He straightened to watch the two horses making their way up the track to the hamlet, then turned to search the grasses. ‘Hello? Who’s there?’

A second sudden shriek and an explosion of pink flesh that made him jump as a brood of piglets and its sow burst from cover. Ivanr exhaled to ease his tensed shoulders. What an eerie noise those animals make.

He followed the brood to their old pen, its woven stick walls pushed down. But his grin slowly fell away and his chest clamped even tighter than before; jumbled and trampled bones, hair, and sinew there in the dried mud resolved itself into the remains of several adults and children, all gnawed, consumed by the pigs.

He flinched away, his stomach rising.

All the forgotten gods… what has happened here?

The open house beckoned but he turned away. No, no thank you. Sometimes it is best not to know. Though the silent and still hamlet did nothing to quell his unease, he followed his mounts into town.

No one walked the streets. Doors were barred, window shutters set. It was peaceful enough but a stink hung over the place, a whiff of charnel rot. They were waiting for him at a central dirt square. The men of the hamlet, armed with an assortment of spears, pikes, staves, wood axes, and a few swords. More of the villagers stepped out to bar his way behind.

A young fellow in the dark robes of a priest of the Lady came forward, bowing slightly. ‘Greetings, stranger,’ he called.

Ivanr gave his own wary greeting. ‘There are bodies in the farmstead beyond.’

The priest appeared genuinely shocked, his hand going to his thin black goatee. ‘There are? I am very sorry to hear that.’ His gaze slid aside to narrow on one old man. ‘All the unfortunates were to have been brought together for cleansing.’

This accused villager paled, his hollow unshaven cheeks turning even more sickly, and he bowed and fled.

The slim priest returned his attention to Ivanr. ‘And what of you, stranger? Surely you do not follow any foreign perversions of our one true faith.’

Ivanr gave an easy shrug. ‘Of course I have always been faithful to Our Blessed Lady.’

The priest shared Ivanr’s easy manner. ‘Of course. So, I can assume then that you have no objection to proving your devotion through a trial of fidelity.’

Ivanr eyed the crowd of villagers encircling him; he could easily win through, but where were his mounts? His supplies? ‘And this trial involves…?’

‘Simplicity itself.’ The priest’s lips drew back hungrily over yellowed rotting teeth. ‘A red-hot iron bar is placed in your hands and you must grip it while reciting the Opening Devotional. Naturally, Our Blessed Lady who protects us all will also preserve you — should your faith be pure.’

‘And should it prove… insufficient?’

The priest’s thin lips drew down in regret. ‘There has been a marked lack of purity among the flock of late.’ He gestured Ivanr to follow. ‘Come, I will show you.’

The crowd parted before the priest, who led him to the well at the centre of the commons. The festering stink that had been sickening Ivanr now rose to a choking reek of rotting flesh that made him gag. He covered his nose and mouth with the sleeve of his forearm. The priest nodded his understanding.

‘Offensive, yes, but you get used to it. I know it now as the sweet scent of cleansing.’ He gestured for Ivanr to peer into the well. ‘Come. Do not be afraid. Welcome deliverance unto Our Lady.’

Though he knew exactly what he would see, Ivanr could not help but look down the stone-lined pit. A strange fascination demanded that he bear full witness to what had occurred. Flies in a churning dark mass choked the opening. He waved them aside one-handed and edged forward. At first he saw nothing. Then, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he saw that the well was not nearly so deep as he’d assumed. Something filled it. The dark mass of protruding limbs, heads, and bent torsos of a mass of human bodies stuffed the well to just below its lip. Ivanr flinched away, fighting down the bile clawing at his throat.

‘This is monstrous!’

‘We are doing the Lady’s work.’ The priest raised his voice, shouting to everyone, ‘The faith must be protected! Heretical doctrine must be cleansed!’

‘Heresy? Who says only one god must be worshipped?’

The priest now directed his response to the crowd: ‘And where were these so-called gods when our ancestors were being wiped from the land by the predations of the demon Riders? Where was this ancient sea god some go on about now? This god of healing? Or this earth goddess? All the multitude of others? Where were they then?’

Yet the crowd remained silent, more cowed than enthusiastic. It seemed the priest’s fanatical zealotry did not extend to them. Their faces did not shine with the conviction of true believers. Hunger, exhaustion, and days of constant fear had clawed them into a grey pallor. It seemed to Ivanr that they possessed a sullen suspicion directed more at each other than at him. They are terrified of this man, and their own neighbours. They have woven a bitter existence of constant mutual dread spiked by explosions of bloodletting. He eyed their drawn faces, sweaty grips on makeshift spears, and fevered gazes. Could they have been browbeaten and dominated into believing anything? Following anyone?

‘What is this?’ Ivanr demanded and snapped out a hand to grasp the priest’s robes at his neck. The man squawked and batted at the grip. Ivanr yanked as if tearing something then raised his hand high, a small object dangling there. ‘Look!’ he bellowed. ‘Look what this man wears secretly beneath his robes!’

The object swung on a leather thong. The token given him from the hand of the Priestess herself: the sword symbol of the cult of Dessembrae.

Ivanr felt all eyes shift to the priest. The young man glared back, scornful. ‘Fools! How stupid can you be?’

Wrong tack, my friend.

Faces twisted into masks of rage as long-suppressed anger and resentment found a path to release. Too late the priest realized his position and raised a hand for pause. It was as if that hand had motioned Begin as countless spears and sharpened hafts of broken tools punched into him. Ivanr was shouldered aside, so eager was everyone for a share in the man’s death. With the shafts of their weapons they levered up the still-twitching figure and thrust him over and into the well. Standing back, they raised those wet gleaming tools and looked at one another, amazed by what they had accomplished.

Then all those eyes shifted to him.

Ah… the flaw in the plan.

Squeaking of wood on wood announced the return of the old man into the square. He was pushing a wheelbarrow, a shovel resting in it. He set down the barrow to gape at everyone.

‘And there’s his lackey!’ Ivanr shouted.

With a beast-like throaty snarl the crowd went for the man. He ran, showing a good set of heels for a skinny old fellow. Ivanr found himself all alone in the square.

Now where are my blasted horses…

He tracked them down easily enough; fed and watered in a corral. As he led them through the hamlet complete murderous chaos raged. Neighbour slew neighbour as all past feuds, grudges, and outright hatreds erupted in an orgy of stalking and stabbing. Soothing his mounts, he passed bloodied corpses splayed across thresholds, trampled on the narrow cobbled ways, and slumped against walls. Men, women, even children.

He reflected that there seemed no stopping once all restraint was gone. And that chute was slicked by blood.

As a stranger, and no part of their feuds, Ivanr was ignored. Only once did he stop, and that was before a child, a young boy, standing in a doorway, blood from a gash in his head wet down his shoulder and shirt-front. The solemn regard of the youth’s deep brown eyes shook Ivanr more than all he’d seen. Stooping, he picked up the lad and set him on his spare mount. The boy did not complain; said nothing, in fact. Ivanr’s relief was palpable when they reached the cool breeze of the open pastures above the hamlet. Looking back, he saw black smoke pluming from here and there about the town.

Complete and utter collapse. The natural consequences of religious war? Or something more? Who was to say? It was all new to these lands where the Lady had ruled unquestioned for so many generations. Perhaps the eruption was natural, given how hard the Lady and her priests had clamped down, and how long.

He regarded the youth, who sat awkwardly, his thin legs wide, feet bare and dirty. Probably his first time on a horse. ‘What’s your name?’ But the boy just stared — not sullen, flat rather — emotionless. Am I to have no answers from you either? So be it. Spurn me as Thel half-breed, would they? Then to the Abyss with these Jourilan peoples and lands, and all their gods, new and old, with them. I am done with them.

Ivanr turned his back. The higher slopes of the foothills beckoned, and the snow-sheathed heights of the Iceback range beyond glittered in the slanting amber light of the passing day.

‘It was quick — if that’s any consolation.’

Hiam looked to his Wall Marshal, Quint. The man was staring down at the broken equipment and bodies smashed on the rocks below. The indifference on his scared face troubled Lord Protector Hiam. His callousness again. Was that why the man was passed over for command when the old Lord Protector chose? Turning away, Hiam waved to the Section Marshal, Felis, the only woman he knew of to have risen so high in the order. ‘What happened?’

Felis saluted and drew off her helm, revealing short brown hair that grew low on her forehead, almost to her brows. ‘Witnesses say equipment failure. Old rope. I take full responsibility, of course.’

Shameful. What would his predecessors say to see the order so reduced? ‘The builders?’

‘Theftian labourers. Part of their imbursement.’

Hiam once more peered down the dizzying slope of the curtain wall. A cold wind buffeted him. He examined where the boards and ropes hung tangled, swinging before a long dark rent, a fissure in the face of the set cyclopean blocks of the wall. ‘And that break?’

‘Largest in these three west sections,’ Quint answered.

He saw it in his mind’s eye: the specially sized block being lowered to the workers suspended below on their planks, where they would fit and set it. But something went wrong — the block fell, smashed through the workers to crash to the breakwater. And now there was no time to cut a new one. The frost was already upon them.

The fiends could dig their claws into this gap to pull the wall apart.

The answer came reflexively, as it should. He trusted his instincts. ‘We’ll set the Champion in this section.’

Quint did not disappoint. ‘Hiam! That is, Lord Protector! The centre bears the brunt. It’s always been the champion’s post.’

Hiam offered his deputy, the Wall Marshal, an amused smile. ‘You’re telling me things I don’t know?’

Quint’s bright gaze shifted to the Chosen nearby. His look told Hiam: If we were alone right now… ‘They’ll read something into the change. You mustn’t underestimate them.’

The Lord Protector’s smile broadened: that had always been his message. The Wall Marshal was obviously not above appropriating arguments. Anything to win the skirmish. ‘They might. We’ll watch their patterns, just as usual.’ The Wall Marshal was not appeased, but he did clamp his lips shut — a temporary withdrawal perhaps. The rain that had been long promised by the day’s low-hanging clouds scudding in from the north came spattering down. Hiam pulled his thick cloak higher and tighter. ‘Section Marshal Felis…’ The woman saluted. ‘My apologies that we could not provide you with adequate materiel to sufficiently defend your command. I am sorry.’

Felis appeared stricken to the bone. ‘Sir! I take full responsibility! The inspection-’

‘Was more than thorough, I’m sure. No, do not blame yourself, Marshal. Please convey my regrets to the rest of the Theftian crew and commend them for their efforts.’

The Section Marshal saluted smartly, her eyes fairly shining. ‘Yes, Lord Protector.’

Hiam answered the salute. ‘Dismissed.’ He invited Quint onward. ‘Since we’re here, let’s have a look at the Tower of Ruel’s Tears.’

‘Yes, Lord Protector.’

Wall Marshal Quint walked quietly at the side of his commander. Once more the man had shaken him by his seeming casual disregard for tradition and the hard-won wisdom of their predecessors. Was he not aware that thousands had died for the priceless knowledge of where best to place their defences and how best to deploy for every situation? Yet of course Hiam knew, perhaps better than he did himself; the man was, after all, a student of history. A reader of scrolls and books, unlike him.

He was a man of the spear. He had but two answers for all that existence could possibly throw his way: either the butt or the blade. Nothing need be more complicated than that.

Yet the protectorship had not come to him. Despite five seasons’ seniority. Was he not the Spear of the Wall? Was his service not storied? Now lately he wondered: was there something he lacked? Some quality unfathomable to him? On days such as this Hiam would make him think. That woman, Section Marshal Felis — a woman! Were they in truth that short of men? Yet by his words of support the Lord Protector had won her, helm to sandals. She was his now, would do anything for him. He saw it in her eyes. Hiam could do that with just a word or a glance — what was this the indefinite quality? And most important, was it what was needed by the Chosen at this time?

Or was it the butt or the blade?

They entered the Tower of Ruel’s Tears. Guard chambers on the first floor, beds to double as an infirmary. Up the circular stairs they came to dormitories. Chosen jumped to attention. Hiam and Quint answered their salutes.

‘All well here?’ Hiam asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ the ranking Chosen present responded, a Wall Provost, or sergeant, by the look of him.

Hiam pointed to a guard across the low-ceilinged room. ‘Allan, yes?’

The guard smiled, pleased. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘Ramparts of the Stars, three seasons ago. That was quite the scuffle, yes?’

‘Yes, Lord Protector. A cold one.’

‘Good to see you. Carry on.’ Hiam brought his fist to his heart in salute.

‘Sir!’ rang the shouted response.

They continued up the stairway past further levels of dormitories, these empty, awaiting the arrival of the season’s contingents from abroad. Beyond these they came to an armoury jammed with racks of spears, swords, and a few sets of spare armour — boiled leather cuirasses mainly. At the walls stood barrels of the weapon of last resort: tar, pitch and rare alchemicals for a barrier of flame. Above this the stairs ended at a trapdoor to the uppermost chamber. Hiam pushed it open and stepped up. Quint followed.

Here broad windows faced all directions, all closed now by sturdy wood shutters bracketed in iron. At the centre of the small open chamber stood a stone pillar topped by an iron sleeve that could be raised and lowered by a lever. Hiam bent down, examining it. ‘This was tested this summer?’

‘Yes. Tested and inspected.’

‘Good. If there is one thing we mustn’t stint on, this is it.’

‘Yes.’ Their communication system. An oil flame within could be made to burn exceedingly bright with the addition of certain mineral powders. Raising and lowering the sleeve allowed them to send coded messages up and down the length of the wall. Simple communiques: attack, help, all-clear.

Quint examined his tall commander: grey coming into the beard and in the unkempt mane of thick hair. Yet seemingly young in his mannerisms. Not an outstanding spearman, it had to be said. But there was a certain something about his eyes and expression. Quint had always felt comfortable around the man, though he rarely felt comfortable around anyone. He crossed his arms under his cloak. ‘You didn’t drag me up here to discuss our communication system.’

A wry smile. ‘No. And direct as ever. Reassuring, Quint. You’ve been quiet of late.’ He went to the shuttered window facing north, unlatched it and stood peering out. ‘No, word has come via my ever-efficient Staff Marshal Shool of the Jourilan and Dourkan contingent.’ He turned, leaning back against the window ledge, hands clasping the edges of his thick cloak. ‘They have been halved.’

‘Halved. Halved? Well, what’s the point of that? Do they want to be overrun? They might as well send no one for all the use!’

Hiam raised a hand in agreement. ‘Yes, Quint. Yes. But what’s done is done. We cannot conjure up any further men or women. We can expect only some three thousand spears from Jourilan and Dourkan. That puts our strength for the coming season at some twenty thousand spears of active-service men and women. Twenty-five, if we pressed every possible standing body. Including, I suppose, even our Master Engineer Stimins.’

Despite the news, Quint barked a laugh at that vision. ‘It may be all worth it just to see that. But,’ and he slid a hand up from within his cloak to stroke his gouged chin between thumb and forefinger, ‘as you say, there seems nothing to discuss in all this. What’s done is done.’

‘Yes. There’s nothing to discuss,’ and the Lord Protector’s expression hardened, ‘save how we will respond to the fact that we are now below half-strength for the coming season.’

Quint shrugged easily. ‘Then there is nothing to discuss. We will defend. We are the Chosen, the Stormguard. Ours is a sacred responsibility to defend all the lands.’

Hiam pushed himself from the wall, nodding. ‘Very good, Quint. I knew that would be your answer. I merely wanted to have this out in the open between us. We are in complete agreement. We fight. We defend to the last man and woman. There is no alternative.’ He squeezed Quint’s shoulder, peered about the chamber. ‘You know this tower is named Ruel’s Tears because a millennium ago the Lord Protector of the time, Ruel, was said to have thrown himself from this very window after having been overcome by some terrible vision?’

Quint nodded; he’d heard the legend.

‘Some say his vision was of the ultimate defeat of the Stormguard. Had you heard that?’

Quint could only pinch his chin savagely; he’d heard that whispered a time or two.

Looking off as if he could see beyond the walls of the small chamber, Hiam said softly, ‘I never could understand such a reaction, Quint. All I feel is admiration. I sometimes think that if I were to die of anything, it would be of unbearable pride…’ He smiled then, looking away. ‘Very good, Wall Marshal. We are in accordance.’ And he started down the stairs.

Only later, long after he and Hiam had walked in silence completing the day’s inspection tour, did it occur to Quint that the discussion of Ruel’s Tears in truth had not at all been for Hiam to test his reaction to the news of this season’s shorthandedness; rather, it had been to reassure him, Quint, of Hiam’s own steadfast resolve in the face of such news.

For it was not in Quint’s nature ever to bend or to waver — neither the butt nor the blade allowed for that. However, in the months ahead he may come to wonder on the like determination of his Lord Protector. And Hiam had just neatly anticipated and eliminated any such misgivings on the part of his second in command. As he hung his cloak and sat watching the fire in the common room of the Tower of Kor, it occurred to Quint that perhaps there was more than met the eye to the indefinable quality that made Hiam the Lord Protector.

Rillish was playing with his toddler, Halgin, in the courtyard of his house just outside the hamlet of Halas when a column of Malazan cavalry came up the dirt road from the village. Straightening, he motioned the nanny to take the lad then walked out to meet them. They took their time. The grey dust of west Cawn coated their travelling cloaks and the sweaty flanks of their mounts. As they drew closer Rillish could see by the torc high on the leader’s arm that the commander was a captain, which was unusual for such a small detachment. His wife, Talia, broad with child, appeared at his side. ‘You needn’t come out,’ he told her. ‘It’s nothing, I’m sure.’

‘They wouldn’t be here for nothing,’ she said grimly.

The captain motioned a halt and nodded a greeting. She pulled off her gloves and batted the dust from her cloak. ‘Fist Rillish Jal Keth?’

‘That promotion was honorary only. I’m retired.’

The captain pulled off her helmet and the padded leather hood beneath. She was fair, startlingly so, her long white-blonde hair tightly braided. For the life of him Rillish could not place her background. Few on Quon were so pale, and there was something in her voice, the accent unusual.

‘That retirement was voluntary. Under terms of service you are still in reserve. The Empire, sir, did not let you go.’

‘That fat toad on the throne…’ Talia hissed beneath her breath.

Rillish raised a hand for quiet. ‘I’m sorry, Captain, but there must be some misunderstanding. Firm agreements were made in the terms of my service and retirement. I am finished with the Empire.’

The captain gave a judicious nod. ‘That may be true, sir. But, as I say, the Empire may not be finished with you.’

Talia’s hand found his, hot and sweaty. He squeezed. ‘There is nothing, Captain, that could induce me to return.’

‘Nothing?’ The captain peered about the yard, the modest garden plot, the fields, the paddock of horses, before finally returning to him. ‘Perhaps there is somewhere we can talk, sir?’

Rillish shrugged. ‘Well, we can go for a walk if you wish.’ He released Talia’s hand. ‘But I believe you’ve come a long way to no profit. You may water the mounts, of course, and perhaps we can find something for your troop.’

‘You are kind, sir.’ She turned to the detachment. ‘Stand down. See to the horses.’

Dismounted, the woman was as tall as Rillish, and far older than he’d thought, perhaps close to his own fifty. The lines around the eyes and mouth gave her age away. ‘And you are?’

She saluted. ‘Peleshar is my full name, but I go by Peles. At your service, Fist.’

Rillish let the rank reference pass. ‘Peleshar… an unusual name

…’

She nodded. ‘I am from south Genabackis.’

Rillish was surprised and impressed. ‘You served in One-Arm’s host?’

‘No, sir. I saw action in the Free City campaigns. Then I served in the liaison contingent to the Moranth.’

Even more impressive. A record of service that should warrant a rank far higher than captain. And the Free City campaigns — those went far back indeed. He managed to stop himself from being so gauche as to ask just how far back, and invited the captain to accompany him.

‘I’ll see what we can pull together for the troopers,’ Talia said, her gaze hard on the captain.

Peles bowed. ‘My thanks.’

They stopped at the paddock. Suspicious of the stranger, the horses snorted and edged away. The captain studied them with admiration. ‘Fine mounts. They are Wickan?’

Watching the horses as well, Rillish smiled his affection. ‘Yes. You are in the cavalry?’

A laugh. ‘Fanderay, no. I have had little exposure to horses. My people are not riders. We have other… specialties. I am a commander of marines.’

Rillish nodded, brushed drying bark from the still-green wood of the fence. ‘So, Captain. Why are you here?’

‘I am only the messenger, of course. I was asked to deliver this.’ She held out a slim, tightly bound scroll. ‘I am told it is from Emperor Mallick’s own hand.’

Rillish regarded it without moving. For a moment he feared it was poisoned. Then he mocked himself, thinking, why would the man bother when he could just dispatch his Claw assassins to kill them in their sleep? He took the scroll, broke the seal, and read.

It was a long time before he lowered the short note.

Captain Peles had not moved nor spoken the whole time. She had merely watched the horses, her surprisingly thick forearms resting on the paddock fence. Patient, this one. We might get along at that. Rillish returned the scroll. ‘Very well, Captain. I accept. As he knew I would, no doubt.’

‘Yes, Fist. So I was told.’

Rillish turned to face the yard where his wife and the servants were sharing out bread and cold meats. ‘Now the hard part, Captain.’

She nodded, clearing her throat. ‘I’ll ready my men and women.’

Before he even got close enough to speak, she knew. Her face stiffened and she turned away to enter the house without a word. Rillish followed, but she was gone, fled to some back room. He went to the storeroom where his gear lay rolled in leather. He dug about for his blades, his father’s old Untan two-edged longswords. He found them under the shelves, wrapped in oiled rags. When he straightened she was in the doorway. Tears glistened on her cheeks.

‘What did he offer?’

‘Everything.’

She gestured savagely to the surroundings, the house, the yard. ‘You have everything you need here — don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

She wiped the tears from her face. ‘Isn’t it enough?’

‘Yes.’ He closed to hold her but she backed away. ‘This is all I need, Talia. But he offered to give it all back — everything. How could I refuse?’

Her mouth tightened to a slit and she spat, ‘We don’t want it.’

He lowered his gaze, pulled one blade a short way from its scabbard, then shoved it home. When he looked up she was gone.

Captain Peles had halted her detachment a short way down the dirt road. With the help of his foreman, Rillish saddled his favourite mount, then led it out into the yard. Here Halgin waited with his nanny. When the toddler saw him he broke free to run. Rillish knelt to hold his shoulders. The lad peered up, his gaze as blue and open as the sky. Rillish kissed his forehead. He could hardly find his voice. ‘I’m going away for a time, son. What I’m doing, I’m doing for you, and for little Nil or Nether to come. I want you to know that I love you more than I could ever say. Goodbye for now.’

He straightened but Halgin grabbed his leg and would not let go. In the end the nanny came to pull the howling lad away. Mounting, Rillish searched for Talia but didn’t see her anywhere. That hurt, but he teased the reins to start down the road.

When he reached the detachment, Captain Peles raised her chin to motion back behind him and he turned. She stood there. The captain signed for her detachment to move on.

He watched her. For the longest time they remained unmoving, studying one another over the stretch of dusty dirt road between, she motionless beside the unfinished gate to their little yard hemmed in by the house and paddock. Such a small allotment, hardly enough to get by, let alone prosper. He thought of his family’s many estates in Unta. The largest, hard by the Gris border, a man could not cross in a full day’s riding. All that had been his before the Insurrection, before his choice to side against the Empress’s edicts on the Wickan pogrom had stripped him of it. Now the Emperor offered it all back for his return to active duty — and just where, he believed he knew. And he’d accepted. Not for himself of course, but for Halgin. It would be his legacy now. He hoped his son would have better luck of it than he or his father before him.

He raised a hand in farewell and she answered, slowly. He lowered his arm and turned away.

In the end Kiska had no idea why she agreed to Agayla’s request that she accompany her up-island for a walk among the windswept hills. Perhaps it was the daytime sight of the Deadhouse: if anything even more foreboding in the full glare of the sun and even more unsettling to her senses now than she remembered from her youth.

Could this tomb-like dilapidated hulk really be of the Azath? A mysterious network of dwellings, caves or houses, call them what you would — structures, of some sort — that some claimed pervade creation? All she knew of them was what she had overheard speculated about in Tayschrenn’s presence, and that precious little. In fact, she remembered scholars who had approached Tayschrenn for his knowledge of them and their outrage at his opinion that the Azath were not a matter for human investigation. ‘They are waning,’ she heard him say once. ‘We should let them go in peace.’

She rested a hand on the low wall of piled fieldstones surrounding the house’s grounds and thought of another night, seemingly so long ago, when she had faced the brooding presence last. That night saw the only known successful assault upon an Azath; and that by the most cunning — and probably most insane — mage of their time. The Emperor himself. All other would-be assailants through the ages, human, daemon, Jaghut, now crowded the many mounds humping the dead grounds, enslaved to the house.

Agayla was probably right. Perhaps but for the older woman’s intervention she too would now be rotting within one of those burial mounds. That would have been the most likely outcome. Too perilous a throw by far. She turned away to head to the river road to join Agayla for their walk. She would spend the day with her then say her farewells. Another tack, then, towards finding Tayschrenn. Genabackis, perhaps. The Moranth may be of help.

Leaving, she noticed an old man squatting against a stone wall across the way; his great thick arms hung over his knees, and a white thatching of scars criss-crossed his bald pate. The man’s gaze followed her as she left. She thought he looked vaguely familiar: probably from her youth on the island.

She met Agayla just outside the town proper, where allotments and garden plots widened and irrigation channels of set slate bordered the flint road. The fields were dull now with dead stalks. Low bruised clouds pressed overhead, cast up from the south, the Strait of Storm. The chill winds hinted at worse to come.

Her aunt carried a wicker basket on one arm, a shawl over her shoulders. ‘Remind you of the old days?’ she asked, and brushed wayward strands from her face.

‘I suppose so.’

Agayla headed off without comment in her swift energetic walk that Kiska recalled from those old days. Following, she pulled her thick lined cloak tighter and felt about for her gloves. After a time she called, ‘Mushrooming, are we?’

‘A little late for that. Roots mainly. Some stalks. Like the arrow.’

Kiska wouldn’t know an arrow plant if it jabbed her in the eye.

They climbed inland. Agayla struck off the road, following a narrow dirt path that wound between low brush. Looking back, Kiska caught glimpses of the town and the bay beyond before it was cut from view by an intervening hillock. She began to wonder just how far her aunt intended to take them.

At last she pushed through a dense stand of alder, their limbs cast backwards by the constant sea winds, to find Agayla sitting on a lump of rock before a circle of tall standing stones.

‘There you are!’ her aunt announced, patting the rock next to her. ‘Come sit with me.’

Kiska shrugged within her heavy cloak and came to stand next to her aunt. ‘Agayla,’ she began, awkwardly. ‘This has been… pleasant. But I really must be getting back to town…’

The woman raised a hand for silence. ‘Shh. It’s almost time. Now sit.’ She produced an apple from the basket.

Kiska grudgingly sat. ‘Time for what?’

‘This circle is sacred to many gods. Did you know that?’ Before Kiska could reply, she continued, ‘In the old days people were sacrificed here.’

Kiska eyed her aunt, wondering what the old woman was on about. Her mind wasn’t starting to meander in her old age, was it? She bit into the apple.

‘Ah… here we are.’

But Kiska had felt it too. She stood, dropping the apple, and slipped her hands into her cloak to rest where twin long-knives hung sheathed tightly to her sides. A shimmering was climbing between the stones… a wavering curtain of opalescent light. It fluttered to life around the circle’s full circumference.

‘What is this?’

‘Mind your manners now,’ Agayla said. She was pushing back her hair, adjusting her shawl.

Kiska eyed her, mistrustful. ‘What’s going on?’

Agayla stood before her, looked her up and down then gently laid a hand on her cheek. The palm was warm, smooth, and dry. It seemed as if the woman was examining her face for something and Kiska had no idea what it was she sought. ‘We are about to speak to one of the greatest powers presently at play here in this world,’ she began. ‘No — hush. Many name her a goddess but to me she is more, and I suppose less, than that. Not like Burn or Fanderay or Togg. Not some ancient entity or force that has come to represent what we choose to cast upon it. She remains a real living person whose influence transcends others’ because she is here, now, and can intervene directly as she sees fit.’ She gave Kiska’s chin a squeeze and gently edged her head side to side. ‘So behave yourself. Speak only when you are spoken to. Bow. Show some of those fancy manners you should have learned in Unta.’

The woman released her and Kiska shook her head as if to recover from some spell or blow. Greater influence than the gods’? What could her aunt possibly be on about? She eyed the shimmering barrier. ‘Who then? What mage?’

Agayla laughed. ‘Oh, Kiska. Not some mage or magus. The greatest. The Enchantress. The Mistress of Thyr. The Queen of Dreams.’ And she took her niece’s hand and led her through the curtain of light.

The brilliant glare momentarily blinded Kiska, and as she blinked to clear her vision she slowly became aware of her surroundings. It was the circle of standing stones she knew, but surrounded by a shimmering reflective silver border. And, standing at its centre waiting to meet them, a woman wrapped in loose pale blue cloth that was draped about her in countless folds. Kiska held back, dazzled by the vision of this diminutive, slim, raven-haired beauty. How could this be real? She’d heard that this woman walked with Anomander generations ago. Yet was she not the greatest enchantress of the age? She could appear as she wished and this was her choice; it was up to her, Kiska, to take from it what she would.

Agayla shared no such hesitation. She knelt before the woman, murmured something that sounded close to an invocation. But the Enchantress laughed and raised her up with her hands, saying, ‘Do not kneel before me, Agayla. Surely you of all people have not fallen to the cult of worship.’

Agayla bowed. ‘I give homage where I choose, m’lady.’

The Enchantress turned her glance upon Kiska. ‘So this is the one.’

The force of the woman’s attention struck her like a blow. Kiska found she could not order her thoughts. It was as if she were standing before a titanic waterfall or a storm front at sea; all she could do was stare, awestruck by the vision.

The woman had advanced and taken her hands, one in each of her own. ‘You would follow a perilous trail, Kiska.’ She searched her face as Agayla had and nodded as if having satisfied some unspoken question. Motes of gold seemed to float in her eyes. ‘It is good you do not pursue this out of some sort of infatuation. For I do not see him capable of such feelings. Still…’ She regarded Agayla. ‘For her to travel alone…’

‘I can think of one or two I would trust,’ Agayla said, frowning. ‘But they have taken on other duties.’

‘There is someone I can call upon-’

‘I can take care of myself,’ Kiska blurted out.

Agayla glared her irritation. The Enchantress waved a hand. ‘That is not the question. You must sleep sometime. And a lone traveller is too much of a temptation. Fortunately I have someone in mind…’ and she gestured aside, inviting.

A man stepped through the barrier. He was of middling height but wiry and obviously powerful. Under desert robes he wore armour Kiska recognized as the style of Seven Cities, a mix of boiled leather and mail. His dark flat features and long black moustache sealed his identity as a son of that region. The most ridiculous weapons hung strapped at his belt: two morningstars. ‘Who is this?’ she demanded.

Again her aunt glared for her silence.

The man appeared similarly unimpressed. He indicated Kiska with a lift of his chin but addressed the Enchantress. ‘When we made our deal I told you I was done with protecting.’

‘I do not need anyone’s protection.’

The Enchantress raised a hand. ‘This is… which name would you prefer?’

‘Damn fool comes to mind,’ the man ground out. Yet he bowed. ‘Jheval.’

‘This is Kiska. She is searching for someone. And it is a mission that has my blessing. The man she wishes to locate may be of interest to you, Jheval. He is Tayschrenn, once High Mage of the Malazan Empire.’

The man’s eyes widened and he almost stepped backwards. ‘You would ask me to help find him?’

‘The gratitude of the Empire would no doubt be extraordinary if he could be found and brought back to them.’

Those dark eyes narrowed then within their many wrinkles and a decidedly wolfish grin climbed his lips in a way that Kiska found hardly reassuring. ‘Thank you for your concern… m’lady,’ she said, ‘but I do not need this fellow.’

‘You will fail if you go alone.’

The finality of that pronouncement chilled Kiska.

‘How are we-’ Jheval began, then corrected himself. ‘That is, how is the man to be tracked down?’

The Enchantress gestured to a burlap sack atop the broad stone at the centre of the circle. Kiska could not recall seeing it there before.

‘The Void that took the High Mage opened on to Chaos and there your trail will take you. When you reach its borders open this. The thing within will then lead you on.’

Kiska wrapped the sack in her cloak. It was dirty, as if it had been buried. From what she could glimpse inside all it seemed to contain were broken twigs and a few scraps of cloth.

‘I can send you on your way from here,’ the Enchantress said. ‘Is that acceptable?’

‘Thank you, m’lady,’ Kiska said, bowing.

Jheval grunted his agreement.

Agayla, whom Kiska had thought uncharactisterically quiet all this time, now embraced her, kissing her cheeks. ‘Be careful,’ she whispered. ‘I see in the weave that this search will not be the simple task you believe. You may not know what it is you are really after.’

Kiska would have spoken, but she was silenced by the tears that brimmed in her aunt’s eyes. A moment ago she would have thought such a thing impossible. I never thought of her as old before yet now, suddenly, I see her so. Time is cruel.

The Enchantress motioned aside. ‘You will see hills. Keep them to your left.’ Kiska bowed again and turned away. Jheval followed, his hands tucked into his leather belt.

After the two had gone, the Enchantress gently brushed a hand across Agayla’s face. ‘Do not cry, Weaver.’

‘I fear I have sent the child to her death.’

‘I cannot see into Chaos. But what she has taken as her failure has wounded her to her core. I can only hope she will come to forgive herself.’

‘So much is on its way, T’riss. I see it in the weft. The knots ahead come so thick they may choke the shuttle. The cloth may part.’

‘It may. We can only do our best to see to it that it only tears in certain places.’

Agayla smiled then, perhaps at her fears. ‘Yes. It will be a new order.’

The Queen of Dreams’ face hardened as she looked off into the distance. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice taut with something almost like distaste. ‘Let us hope it will be a better one.’

It took Bakune two months of questioning, searching archives, and squeezing minor city officials to track down the family name and possible current residence of the family of Sister Charity. Whether the woman yet lived remained to be discovered.

He left his offices at noon on foot, wrapped in a plain wool cloak. He took the west road until it exited the town proper and here he turned off the way, down towards the coast where a ghetto of shacks and huts spilled down the slope. Dogs raged at his heels, knowing full well he did not belong. Dirty half-naked children stared at him, many obviously the half-breed by-blows of Roolian mothers and the Malazan occupiers. Young toughs collected in the muddy narrow paths, staring silently at what he imagined must be quite the apparition of a Roolian citizen wandering lost in the maze of their neighbourhood. At every turn round a staked tent or wattle and daub hut the crowd seemed to grow until he faced a solid wall of young men and women, dressed no better than the urchins, many carrying wasted limbs, milky blinded eyes, ugly swellings, and other disfigurements of illnesses — all from the filth of their poverty, no doubt.

‘I’m looking for the Harldeth family,’ he called to one of the young men. ‘Harldeth. Do you know the name?’

Blocking Bakune’s way, the fellow just stared. His mouth was twisted in a harelip and Bakune would have suspected him slow but for the unaccountable hostility simmering in his gaze. ‘Stranger,’ a weak voice called from a nearby hut. Bakune ducked his head to squint into the darkness.

‘Yes?’

‘Enter.’

He had to crouch almost double to slip within. He found an old man cross-legged on a woven mat next to a dead blackened hearth. The man was bare-chested despite the gathering cold of autumn. Bakune introduced himself, and was invited to sit. The stink of smoke and old rotten food made him almost gag; he elected to crouch on his haunches. After the old man had sat regarding him for a time, his night-black eyes unreadable, Bakune prompted again, ‘Yes? You know the Harldeth?’

‘I know the family.’

‘Will you take me to them?’

‘Why do you seek them?’

‘I’m assessing a death. I need to question Lithel Harldeth. She was once a nun in the Cloister. I’m told her family now lives out here.’

The old man cocked his head. ‘So, you are assessing a death… Where is the Watch? Where are their truncheons? Where is your signed confession?’

Bakune pulled away, offended. ‘That’s not how we do things. We assess to apportion the balance of innocence and culpability.’

The old man just gave a sad indulgent smile. ‘You should spend more time out here, Assessor Bakune.’ He struggled to rise, pulling up a tall walking stick, which he held horizontal. ‘Come.’

Outside, the old man made some gesture and the crowd backed away. Bakune looked sharply at him; he wore only dirty trousers and jerkin, his grey hair hung stringy and bedraggled, yet his wiry limbs, dark as stained wood, held an obvious strength. A stone on a thong round his neck was the man’s only decoration other than the old branch he held as a staff. A thin cold rain had begun to fall that the old man ignored, though it chilled Bakune. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked, struck by a sudden vague recollection.

‘No, Assessor. You most certainly do not know me. This way…’

Surprised yells sounded up the mud path the way Bakune had come and the crowd parted there to reveal his two Watch guards, their cloaks pulled back from the shortswords hung at their sides.

‘Who are these?’ the old man asked.

Bakune sighed. Lady-damned fools! They’ll ruin everything! ‘Guards that the Watch captain insists follow me around.’

The old man’s dark eyes slid to Bakune; the indulgent, almost pitying smile returned. ‘Guards, Assessor? Or minders?’ He started off before Bakune could respond.

The path the old man followed was bewilderingly twisted, probably deliberately so. His two guards plodded along behind, hands at their belts. Each muddy trail they took between crowded shacks seemed identical to the last. Everyone ignored Bakune now, going about their daily business, carrying bundled firewood, earthenware pots of water. Women cooked over low smoky fires.

Then the old man stopped abruptly at a wattle and daub hut, no different from any other. He gestured within.

‘Thank you.’

He did not answer, only motioned inside once again.

Within, a family sat eating. Startled, Bakune nearly backed out until the woman present, mother Bakune assumed of the four wide-eyed children, pointed to a woven reed hanging farther within. Bowing, Bakune edged around the staring family and brushed the hanging aside. A thick cloud of smoke blinded him. He had entered what proved to be no more than a tiny nook, and he pressed a fold of his cloak over his nose and mouth. Eventually he made out a low shape hunched before some sort of altar cluttered with burned-down candle stubs, clay lamps, small rudely shaped statues, and stands of smouldering incense sticks.

‘Lithel Harldeth?’

The shape, which had been rocking gently from side to side and crooning to itself, stilled. The head rose, questing. ‘Who is there?’

‘Assessor Bakune. I am investigating the recent death of Sister Prudence. I’m told you knew her well.’

‘So, she is dead. We’ve been waiting many years.’ A gnarled hand went shakily to the altar, pointed to one crude statue. ‘Look here. The Great Mother Goddess. She has had countless names, though Lady is not one.’ The hand moved to another. ‘The Great Sky-Father this one is called, though Light is his aspect. Here, the Great Deceiver would push forward — not realizing that to succeed would spell his dissolution. Here, the Beast of War stirs again — what shall be the final shape of its rising? Here, the Dark Hoarder of Souls. He has my friend now — may both of them come to know peace. And here, the newcomer, the Broken God, watching and scheming from afar.’

Bakune recognized these ancient names and titles from his research into the indigenous peoples of the archipelago — all their old animistic spirits of earth, air, and night. All vaguely similar in character to the foreign Malazan faiths, of which, presumably, they were distant relatives. All the old pagan beliefs that had multiplied indiscriminately before the arrival of the Blessed Lady and the one true faith.

‘What would you call evil, Assessor?’ the old woman suddenly asked.

Bakune was rather startled by the question. Breathing in the heady, dizzying smoke he eased himself down to his knees. Vaguely, he wondered what drugs might be mixed in with the exotic woods and herbs being burned here. He’d already realized that he would get no straight answers from the crone, and could hardly press her. ‘I don’t know. The simple-minded would answer whatever is opposed to them. Whatever current enemy or rival they might face at the time. For my part I believe true evil lies in actions. In deliberate harmful acts.’

‘Spoken as a magistrate. And it must be said that there is some wisdom in your approach. However, can an act not be harmful in the immediate, yet beneficial in the long term? Could such an act be said to be evil?’

Bakune waved the choking coils of smoke from his face. The last thing he expected was to be challenged to a philosophical debate. ‘Again, I do not know. I suppose the harm would have to be weighed against the ultimate benefit accrued.’

The old woman turned her head to regard him directly. Her dirty hair hung like a veil before her face. ‘Exactly. It would have to be… assessed.’

Bakune suddenly felt stricken. ‘What are you getting at, Lithel?’

The woman turned away, rocking. ‘I have meditated long and hard on this vexing question, Assessor. There is really only a small set of final responses. My distillation is a refinement of one of them. True pure evil, Assessor, is waste. It is the blunting of potential, the cutting off of a person’s or a people’s promise, or options, for development. It is, emblematically, the death of a child.’ The old woman’s head sank. ‘Look then, Assessor, to the children.’

‘Lithel? Lithel?’

The old woman once more crooned to herself, and now Bakune could hear the ancient burnished pain in her moaning.

Outside, Bakune straightened, coughing. One of his guards offered a water skin and he took it with gratitude and washed out his mouth.

‘What did you hear?’ the old man asked.

‘Exactly what I did not want to hear.’

The old man’s smile climbed free of any reserve. ‘Good. We are done then. And Assessor…’

‘Yes?’

‘Do not return. Do not try to find this dwelling again. Because you never will.’

Bakune narrowed his gaze on the man. ‘You would threaten a magistrate?’

‘No threat. A fact.’

The guards snorted their disbelief. Bakune shrugged. His gaze caught the stone at the man’s neck. Engraved on it was a circle with a line across its middle like the line of a horizon. The very sigil scratched on the statue Lithel had named the Great Mother Goddess. Bakune motioned to the necklace. ‘The symbol of the old pagan Earth Mother.’

The old man’s hand went to the stone. ‘Yes. The old faith. I am of the Drenn.’

Bakune could not shake a feeling of familiarity. ‘I feel that we have met before.’

‘Perhaps briefly. Now, this way.’

The old man, who once gave his name to the Assessor as Gheven, stopped within the boundary of the shanty town and watched while the magistrate and his minders climbed to the west road. He was surprised, pleased and saddened all at once at having met him again. Surprised by the man’s resilience in keeping to his principles in the face of all that had confronted him for the length of his career; pleased to see him cleaving still to the path to justice — as he interpreted it at any rate — and saddened because he knew what all this would cost the man should he continue along the path as he, Gheven, hoped he would.

It was sad but necessary. Pain would be inflicted but was it not all to the greater good? A thorny question, that. One he did not feel qualified to settle.

Back in his office, Bakune settled into his chair and rested his head in his hands. His guards had drifted away once they’d reached the city centre and the blocks holding the mayoral palace and the courts. He didn’t know whether to be grateful for their dedication or to curse them for it. The old man’s insinuations had slid deep along the paths of his own suspicions. His secretaries appeared at his doorway, thick folders in their hands, but Bakune waved them off.

Rising, he crossed the office and locked the door. He went to a cabinet next to the desk and unlocked it. From the top shelf he pulled out a roll that he laid on his desk. He pulled the ribbon holding the cloth tight and unrolled it. It was a map of Banith that Bakune had ordered drafted years ago. On it, over the years, the Assessor had painstakingly painted in red dots the exact location of every murdered girl and boy he had personally visited, or that he could reliably place. The red dots lay in a thin spread throughout the city; no district was entirely free of their stain. The bright crimson, however, was thickest along the shore, where many bodies were dumped. But not evenly, not randomly. Over the years the marks clumped, observably so, into three main clusters. One to the west, one to the east, and one due south near the centre of the town’s waterfront. Leading more or less straight up from each cluster ran a main road into town. And if one traced each road one’s finger would end up right at the centre of town where lay the holy Cloister of Our Blessed Lady — near which, revealingly enough, not one bloody dot was to be found.

Bakune sat and stared long and hard at the map, his chin nearly touching his chest. Damn you for doing this to me. You’re killing me. Dot by dot, you are surely killing me. Please, won’t you please just stop. Just go away.

He pressed his fingertips to his throbbing temples and sat motionless, staring. By the Blessed Lady, what could he possibly be expected to do?

Around noon the ship’s captain came to talk to Kyle. He was dozing under the shade of an awning, his leg raised and bandaged, when he became vaguely aware that he wasn’t alone any more. Cracking open one eye he saw a wiry fellow gazing down at him, old, grey hair all unkempt, the light dusting of a moustache at the mouth, and a pipe clamped tight between the lips. Multiple gold earrings shone at the lobes and gold bracelets cluttered — her? — wrists. ‘Yes?’ Kyle asked, wary.

‘All comfy, are we?’

‘Yes, thank you. Your bone-mender knows her business.’

A smile of appreciation stretched the thin lips. ‘Speaking of business…’

‘Ah. You are the captain?’

‘Yes. June. Cursed June, they call me.’

‘Kyle. Cursed? May I ask why?’

A rise of the bony shoulders. ‘Had seven husbands is why.’ The woman tilted her head to examine him up and down. ‘Can’t place you, I have to say. There’s something of the Wickan about you with the moustache an’ your dark hue an’ all. But not quite.’

‘Perhaps we’re distantly related.’

‘P’rhaps.’

Kyle took a pouch from his belt and held it out. ‘All I have for transport to your next port of call.’

She hefted it, frowning. ‘Not much…’

‘My companion may have some coin as well.’ A noncommittal grunt. ‘Where are we headed, may I ask?’

‘East to Belid. Five days’ sail.’

‘We’re grateful.’

The woman grunted again, letting loose a stream of smoke. She clearly itched to ask their background and what lay behind their flight, but was also clearly old and canny enough to know she’d get no satisfaction. She nodded instead in a guarded, vaguely welcoming way, and continued on.

The bone-mender, Elia, thumped herself down next to him on the burlap-wrapped cargo tied down on the deck. ‘What think you of our captain, then?’

‘Rare to see a woman captain.’

‘Not at all here in Falar. Curaca ships are all owned and run by the city an’ the city demands profits an’ tight management. Men captains just get drunk or gamble away the margins. Not like the womenfolk. What say you to that?’ The old woman cuffed his shoulder.

‘I’d say that anyone who’d voluntarily go to sea must be addled.’

The woman whooped, laughing. ‘Spoken like a true son of the plains, Kyle.’

He eyed her, wondering whether that was a probe. ‘She said they call her cursed — is that true?’

‘Yes, it’s true. But here’s the kicker… is it true because she’s had seven husbands, or because she’s had seven husbands?’

Kyle could only stare, his brow tight. What in the name of the Hooded Harrower He shook his head. ‘How is… my companion, Orjin?’

‘Oho! Orjin, is it? Sleeping like a whale below. Four of the crew couldn’t move him.’

‘Any wounds?’

‘Nothing serious. And he’s seen his share of Denul rituals.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘I mean that the man’s far older than he looks, and heals far faster than most.’

‘I suppose that’s where his money went,’ Kyle suggested, looking away.

‘I suppose so.’

Three days later, just after dawn, a crewman woke Kyle where he lay in a hammock below. Groggy, rubbing his face, he climbed the short steep stair to the deck. Above, a low cloudbank reflected the gold and pink of sunrise. The waters of the Storm Sea were high, but not choppy. It occurred to him that every region seemed to have its body of rough water or gales, its ‘storm sea’. Forward stood Captain June, the mate, Masul, Elia, and Greymane. He joined them; Greymane gave him a tight, concerned glance.

Captain June pointed to the south-east, just off the bow. ‘Friends of yours?’

Kyle squinted into the light: three dark shapes emerging from the glare of the sunrise. Large vessels, many sails. ‘Who are they?’

‘Malazan men-of-war,’ said June. ‘They seem to be coming on an intercept and we can’t outrun them. We’re no sleek raider.’

‘Wouldn’t suggest you try, Captain.’

‘No?’

‘No,’ affirmed Greymane.

June’s expressive brows rose. She drew heavily on her pipe. ‘Ain’t going to be any hostilities, are there? ’Cause my people won’t participate in anything like that.’

Greymane pushed a hand through his tangled silvery grey hair. ‘No, Captain. No hostilities.’

‘Hunh! All right then.’ She turned to the stern. ‘Steady on!’

‘Steady on, aye!’

Kyle moved until he stood next to Greymane. His eyes on the distant ships, he asked, ‘What’s it going to be?’

The man let go a long growled breath. ‘Don’t want these fellows to suffer. Can’t swim. So, we’ll let them come abreast then board the first and take them one by one.’

‘Not two at a time?’

He glanced sideways at Kyle. A straight smile pulled at his mouth. ‘Let’s not get carried away.’

It was a fleet of Malazan men-of-war, tall and moderately broad for greater stability, commissioned for war at sea. From the soldiers lining the high railings, the stern- and forecastles, Kyle estimated that each of the twenty vessels carried some four hundred marines. Much larger troop transports could be seen in the east, convoyed, lumbering south in long straight columns. Even from this distance something struck him as odd about the vessels: they appeared just too damn huge, and of an odd hue, almost that of the waters they rode.

To Kyle it looked like an invasion assembled to take a continent. ‘Have you ever seen the like?’ he murmured to Greymane, awed.

After a time the man answered, a strange, almost resigned note in his voice. ‘Yes, Kyle. I have.’

No fool, Captain June ordered sails furled. A launch appeared, lowered from the nearest warship. Greymane and Kyle watched while it crossed the distance between the vessels, oared by some eighteen marines.

June ordered a rope ladder thrown over the side. Three officers crowded the launch, including one obvious Moranth Blue. The first pulled himself aboard easily to stand comfortably on deck, hands clasped at his back. An obvious veteran, short and stocky with a bald sun-darkened pate, and a high officer by the hatching on the silver torc on his arm. His mouth was thin and tight and had the look of rarely being opened. ‘Permission to come aboard,’ he asked of no one in particular.

June let out a gust of smoke. ‘Could hardly refuse, now, could I?’

The man’s mouth did not move.

The second officer was a Dal Honese woman in dark silks, a small silver claw sigil at her breast. The sight chilled Kyle even though the woman’s pasty-greyish face and hand clutching the gunwale took somewhat from the power of her presence. The Moranth Blue climbed aboard easily despite the weight of the chitinous plated armour, to stand silent and self-contained. He — or she — nodded a greeting to Captain June.

Greymane broke the protracted silence. ‘I gather I am under arrest.’

The Malazan officer’s hairless brows rose. ‘Under arrest? Not at all, Commander.’

Commander? Kyle wondered.

Greymane shared Kyle’s confusion. He gaze flicked from face to face. ‘Not under arrest?’

‘No.’ The man saluted. ‘Fist Khemet Shul at your service, sir. Leading the convoy.’ He indicated the Claw. ‘Reshal. And this is Halat, liaison for the Moranth Blue Bhuvar — that is Admiral — Swirl.’

The Moranth Blue bowed to Greymane. ‘An honour.’

Greymane’s glacial eyes had narrowed to slits. ‘Why did you call me Commander?’

In answer, Reshal drew a scroll from her shirt and held it out, her left hand supporting her right, and bowed. ‘A missive from Emperor Mallick Rel the Glorious to be delivered personally to your hand.’

Greymane regarded the proffered scroll as one might a bared dagger. Yet, reluctantly, he took it. Kyle waited while the man read. Reshal swallowed hard and straightened, jaws clenched tight and hands pressed to her sides. Kyle thought he’d seen her eyeing him earlier and grinned at her condition. Her answering smile seemed to promise a knife-thrust — later.

Greymane lowered the scroll. He glanced at Kyle, attempting to reassure him with his gaze, which Kyle thought alarmed. ‘Insane, Captain. Utterly insane. Twice it’s been tried and twice the Riders and the Mare galleys destroyed the fleets. This one will manage no better.’

Shul bowed, accepting the point. ‘As you say, Commander. However, this time the Emperor has offered a contract to the Moranth. And they have delivered.’ He looked to Halat. ‘Liaison?’

The Moranth Blue bowed. Aqua hues churned over the polished plates of his armour as he moved. ‘We will break the Mare blockade, Greymane,’ he said, his voice hollow within his masking helm. ‘That is our promise.’

‘You are certain?’

‘Or we will die trying. Such is our word.’

‘Then — I accept the commission.’

Shul saluted crisply. ‘Very good, Fist. Your invasion fleet is assembling off the coast of Kartool.’

‘Are you the insane one?’ Kyle demanded the moment they had time alone in the empty crew quarters. ‘How could you accept — after the way they treated you?’

Squeezed on to a bench, the big man raised an accepting hand. ‘Yes, Kyle. I understand.’ He examined an empty carved wood cup, almost invisible in his wide shovel-like hand. ‘Believe me, I used to feel the same way.’ He took a great breath, turned the cup in small circles on the table before him. ‘But I’m older now. That attack from the Chosen, and the Malazans finding me now… I’ll never be able to hide. And perhaps I shouldn’t have run in the first place. I had people in Korel. People who depended on me. One fellow, Ruthan he was called, he was ready to fight, but I hope he followed my warning. When I was forced to leave… well, it’s always gnawed at me. Like a betrayal. I’ve sometimes found myself wondering — are they still alive?’

Kyle filled Greymane’s cup and one for himself from a jug of watered wine, and, ducking under hammocks, sat. He studied his friend across the table. The man’s long dirty hair, now the hue of iron in this dim light, hung almost to the table. He was unshaven, his wide jowls grey with bristles. Old. The man looks old, and tired. Was this some sort of misguided effort to fix past failures? But from what he understood the failures were not of his making… Still, it was obvious he felt responsibility.

Responsibilities. Duties. Why was it that those who took on such burdens did so of their own accord? Kyle supposed that, in the end, those were the only kind that truly mattered. Like his sitting here now across from his friend. No one had asked. He need not accompany the man. His hand slid to the sword at his side. Burdens willingly taken on, he decided, come to define the bearer.

‘So you are in charge then?’ Kyle finally said into the relative silence of the creaking hull planks and the waves surging past.

‘Of all land operations, yes. Once we arrive — Hood! Should we arrive.’

‘But not the fleet?’

‘No.’

‘Who is?’

Greymane offered a half-smile, his pale sapphire eyes holding a tempered humour. ‘You will have a chance to meet a living legend, Kyle. The name will mean nothing to you seeing as you’re a damned foreigner, but the naval assault will be commanded by Admiral Nok.’

But Greymane was wrong. Kyle had heard of him.

Esslemont, Ian Cameron

Stonewielder