The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (29 page)

As he strode between two slim boles and stepped into the pool of light, the hooded figure turned slowly to study him, its face hidden in shadows despite the fire before it. Though it held its hands in the flame, they withstood the heat, the long, sinuous fingers spread wide.

“I would partake of this warmth,” Kruppe said, with a slight bow. “So rare within Kruppe’s dreams of late.”

“Strangers wander through them,” the figure said, in a thin, oddly accented voice. “Such as I. Have you summoned me, then? It has been a long time since I walked on soil.”

Kruppe’s brows rose. “Summoned? Nay, not Kruppe who is also a victim of his dreams. Imagine, after all, that Kruppe sleeps even now beneath warm blankets secure in his humble room. Yet see me, stranger, for I am cold, nay, chilled.”

The other laughed softly and beckoned Kruppe to the fire. “I seek sensation once again,” it said, “but my hands feel nothing. To be worshiped is to share the supplicant’s pain. I fear my followers are no more.”

Kruppe was silent. He did not like the somber mood of this dream. He held his hands before the fire yet felt little heat. A chill ache had settled into his knees. Finally he looked over the flames to the hooded figure opposite him. “Kruppe thinks you are an Elder God. Have you a name?”

“I am known as K’rul.”

Kruppe stiffened. His guess had been correct. The thought of an Elder God awakened and wandering through his dreams sent his thoughts scampering like frightened rabbits. “How have you come to be here, K’rul?” he asked, a tremor
in his voice. All at once this place seemed too hot. He pulled his handkerchief from his sleeve and mopped sweat from his brow.

K’rul considered before answering, and Kruppe heard doubt in his voice. “Blood has been spilled behind the walls of this glowing city, Kruppe, upon stone once holy in my name. This—this is new to me. Once I reigned in the minds of many mortals, and they fed me well with blood and split bones. Long before the first towers of stone rose to mortal whims, I walked among hunters.” The hood tilted upward and Kruppe felt immortal eyes fixing upon him. “Blood has been spilled again, but that alone is not enough. I believe I am here to await one who will be awakened. One I have known before, long ago.”

Kruppe digested this like sour bile. “And what do you bring Kruppe?”

The Elder God rose abruptly. “An ancient fire that will give you warmth in times of need,” he said. “But I hold you to nothing. Seek the T’lan Imass who will lead the woman. They are the Awakeners. I must prepare for battle, I think. One I will lose.”

Kruppe’s eyes widened with sudden comprehension. “You are being used,” he breathed.

“Perhaps. If so, then the Child Gods have made a grave error. After all,” a ghastly smile seemed to come into his tone, “I will lose a battle. But I will not die.” K’rul turned away from the fire then. His voice drifted back to Kruppe. “Play on, mortal. Every god falls at a mortal’s hands. Such is the only end to immortality.”

The Elder God’s wistfulness was not lost on Kruppe. He suspected that a great truth had been revealed to him with those final words, a truth he was now given leave to use. “And use it Kruppe shall,” he whispered.

The Elder God had left the pool of light, heading northeast across the fields. Kruppe stared at the fire. It licked the wood hungrily, but no ash was born, and though unfed since he’d arrived it did not dim. He shivered.

“In the hands of a child,” he muttered. “This night, Kruppe is truly alone in the world. Alone.”

An hour before dawn Circle Breaker was relieved of his vigil at Despot’s Barbican. This night none had come to rendezvous beneath the gate. Lightning played among the jagged peaks of the Tahlyn Mountains to the north as the man walked in solitude down the winding Charms of Anise Street in the Spice Quarter. Ahead and below glittered the Lakefront, the merchant trader ships from distant Callows, Elingarth, and Kepler’s Spite hunched dark and gloaming between gaslit stone piers.

A cool lake breeze carried to the man the smell of rain, though overhead the stars glistened with startling clarity. He had removed his tabard, folding it into a small leather satchel now slung on one shoulder. Only the plain shortsword strapped at his hip marked him as a soldier, yet a soldier without provenance.

He had divested himself of his official duties, and as he walked down toward the water, the years of service seemed to slough from his spirit. Bright were the
memories of his childhood at these docks, to which he had been ever drawn by the allure of the strange traders as they swung into their berths like weary and weathered heroes returned from some elemental war. In those days it was not uncommon to see the galleys of the Freemen Privateers ease into the bay, sleek and riding low with booty. They hailed from such mysterious ports as Filman Orras, Fort By a Half, Dead Man’s Story, and Exile; names that rang of adventure in the ears of a lad who had never seen his home city from outside its walls.

The man slowed as he reached the foot of the stone pier. The years between him and that lad marched through his mind, a possession of martial images growing ever grimmer. If he searched out the many crossroads he had come to in the past, he saw their skies storm-warped, the lands ragged and wind-torn. The forces of age and experience worked on them now, and whatever choices he had made then seemed fated and almost desperate.

Is it only the young who know desperation? he wondered, as he moved to sit on the pier’s stone sea-wall. Before him rippled the bay’s sooty waters. Twenty feet below, the rock-studded shore lay sheathed in darkness, the glitter of broken glass and crockery here and there winking like stars.

The man turned slightly to face the right. His gaze traveled the slope there as it climbed to the summit, on which loomed the squat bulk of Majesty Hall.
Never reach too far
. A simple lesson of life he had learned long ago on the burning deck of a corsair, its belly filling with the sea as it drifted outside the pinnacle fortifications of a city named Broken Jaw. Hubris, the scholars would call the fiery end of the Freemen Privateers.

Never reach too far. The man’s eyes held on Majesty Hall. The deadlock that had come with the assassination of Councilman Lim still held within those walls. The Council raced aflurry in circles, more precious hours spent on eager speculation and gossip than on the matters of state. Turban Orr, his victory on the voting floor snatched from his hands in the last moment, now flung his hounds down every trail, seeking the spies he was convinced had infiltrated his nest. The councilman was no fool.

Overhead a flock of gray gulls swept lakeward, crying into the night-chilled air. He drew a breath, hunched his shoulders, and pulled his gaze with an effort from Majesty Hall.

Too late to concern himself about reaching too far. Since the day the Eel’s agent had come to him, the man’s future was sealed; to some it would be called treason. And perhaps, in the end, it
was
treason. Who could say what lay in the Eel’s mind? Even his principal agent—the man’s contact—professed ignorance of his master’s plans.

His thoughts returned to Turban Orr. He’d set himself against a cunning man, a man of power. His only defense against Orr lay in anonymity. It wouldn’t last.

He sat on the pier, awaiting the Eel’s agent. And he would deliver into that man’s hands a message for the Eel. How much would change with the delivery of that missive? Was it wrong for him to seek help, to threaten his frail anonymity—the solitude that gave him so much inner strength, that stiffened
his own resolve? Yet, to match wits with Turban Orr—he did not think he could do it alone.

The man reached into his jerkin and withdrew the scroll. A crossroads marked where he now stood, he recognized that much. In answer to his ill-measured fear, he’d written the plea for help on this scroll.

It would be an easy thing to do, to surrender now. He hefted the frail parchment in his hands, feeling its slight weight, the vague oiliness of the coating, the rough weave of its tie-string. An easy, desperate thing to do.

The man lifted his head. The sky had begun to pale, the lake wind picking up the day’s momentum. There would be rain, coming from the north as it often did at this time of year. A cleansing of the city, a freshening of its spice-laden breath. He slipped the string from the scroll and unfurled the parchment.

So easy
.

With slow, deliberate movements, the man tore up the scroll. He let the ragged pieces drift down, scattering into the gloom of the lake’s shadowed shore. The rising waves swept them outward to dot the turgid swells like flecks of ash.

Coming from somewhere in the back of his mind, he thought he heard a coin spinning. It seemed a sad sound.

A few minutes later he left the pier. The Eel’s agent, out on his morning stroll, would in passing note his contact’s absence and simply continue on his way.

He made his way along the Lakefront Street with the summit of Majesty Hill dwindling behind him. As he passed, the first of the silk merchants appeared, laying out their wares on the wide paved walk. Among the silks the man recognized the dyed lavender twists and bolts of Illem, the pale yellows of Setta and Lest—two cities to the southeast he knew had been annexed by the Pannion Seer in the last month—and the heavy bold twists of Sarrokalle. A dwindled sampling: all trade from the north had ended under Malazan dominion.

He turned from the lake at the entry to the Scented Wood and headed into the city. Four streets ahead his single room waited on the second floor of a decaying tenement, gray and silent with the coming dawn, its thin, warped door latched and locked. In that room he allowed no place for memories; nothing to mark him in a wizard’s eye or tell the sharp-witted spy-hunter details of his life. In that room, he remained anonymous even to himself.

The Lady Simtal paced. These last few days too much of her hard-won gold had been spent smoothing the waters. That damn bitch of Lim’s had not let grief get in the way of her greed. Barely two days shrouded in black and then out on the courts hanging on that fop Murillio’s arm, smug as a tart at a ball.

Simtal’s penciled brows knitted slightly. Murillio: that young man had a way of being seen. He might be worth cultivation, all things considered.

She stopped pacing and faced the man sprawled on her bed. “So, you’ve learned nothing.” A hint of contempt had slipped into her tone and she wondered if he’d caught it.

Councilman Turban Orr, his heavily scarred forearm covering his eyes, did not move as he replied, “I’ve told you all this. There’s no knowing where that poisoned quarrel came from, Simtal. Hood’s Breath, poisoned! What assassin uses poison these days? Vorcan’s got them so studded with magic everything else is obsolete.”

“You’re digressing,” she said, satisfied that he’d missed the careless unveiling of her sentiments.

“It’s like I said,” Orr continued. “Lim was involved in more than one, uh, delicate venture. The assassination’s probably unconnected with you. It could have been anyone’s balcony, it just happened to be yours.”

Lady Simtal crossed her arms. “I don’t believe in coincidence, Turban. Tell me, was it coincidence that his death broke your majority—the night before the vote?” She saw the man’s cheek twitch and knew she’d stung him. She smiled and moved to the bed. She sat and ran a hand along his bared thigh. “In any case, have you checked on him lately?”

“Him?”

Simtal scowled, withdrawing her hand and standing. “My beloved dispossessed, you idiot.”

Turban Orr’s mouth curved into a smug smile. “I always keep a check on him for you, my dear. Nothing’s changed in that area. He hasn’t sobered up since you threw him out on his arse.” The man sat up and reached to the bedpost where his clothes hung. He began dressing.

Simtal whirled to him. “What are you doing?” she demanded, her voice strident.

“What’s it look like?” Turban pulled on his breeches. “The debate rages on at Majesty Hall. My influence is required.”

“To do what? Bend yet another councilman to your will?”

He slipped on his silk shirt, still smiling. “That, and other things.”

Simtal rolled her eyes. “Oh, of course—the spy. I’d forgotten about him.”

“Personally,” Orr resumed, “I believe the proclamation of neutrality to the Malazans will go through—perhaps tomorrow or the next day.”

She laughed harshly. “Neutrality! You’re beginning to believe your own propaganda. What you want, Turban Orr, is power, the naked absolute power that comes with being a Malazan High Fist. You think this the first step to paving your road into the Empress’s arms. At the city’s expense, but you don’t give a damn about that!”

Turban sneered up at Simtal. “Stay out of politics, woman. Darujhistan’s fall to the Empire is inevitable. Better a peaceful occupation than a violent one.”

“Peaceful? Are you blind to what happened to Pale’s nobility? Oh, the ravens feasted on delicate flesh for days. This Empire devours noble blood.”

“What happened at Pale isn’t as simple as you make it,” Turban said. “There was a Moranth reckoning involved, a clause in the alliance writ. Such culling will not occur here—and what if it does? We could use it, as far as I’m concerned.” His grin returned. “So much for your heart bleeding to the city’s woes. All that interests you is you. Save the righteous citizen offal for your fawns, Simtal.” He adjusted his leggings.

Simtal stepped to the bedpost, reaching down to touch the silver pommel of Orr’s dueling sword. “You should kill him and be done with it,” she said.

“Back to him again?” The councilman laughed as he rose. “Your brain works with all the subtlety of a malicious child.” He collected his sword and strapped it on. “It’s a wonder you wrested anything from that idiot husband of yours—you were so evenly matched in matters of cunning.”

“The easiest thing to break is a man’s heart,” Simtal said, with a private smile. She lay down on the bed. Stretching her arms and arching her back, she said, “What about Moon’s Spawn? It’s still just hanging there.”

Gazing down at her, his eyes traveling along her body, the councilman replied distractedly, “We’ve yet to work out a way to get a message up there. We’ve set up a tent in its shadow and stationed representatives in it, but that mysterious lord just ignores us.”