The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (774 page)

‘Aye, Hellian. Tragic.'

‘That's what Banaschar always said to me, no matter what I was talking about. He'd just look at me, like you did there, and say
tragic
. So what's all that about?' She shook the flask –
still half full, but another mouthful means I'm running it down, so's I'll need to top it up. Gotta be measured about these things, in case something terrible happens and I can't get a fast refill.
‘Come on, it's time to ride.'

‘And if we run into a troop of Letherii?'

Hellian frowned. ‘Then we do as Keneb told us. We talk to 'em.'

‘And if they don't like what we say?'

‘Then we kill 'em, of course.'

‘And we're riding for Letheras?'

She smiled at Urb. Then tapped the side of her slightly numb head with one finger. ‘I memmored th'map – ized, memmized the map. There's towns, Urb. An' the closer we get t'Letheras, the more of them. Wha's in towns, Urb? Taverns. Bars. So, we're not takin' a straight, pre-dic-table route.'

‘We're invading Lether from tavern to tavern?'

‘Aye.'

‘Hellian, I hate to say this, but that's kind of clever.'

‘Aye. And that way we can eat real cooked food, too. It's the civilized way of conductin' war. Hellian's way.'

The bodies joined the lone Letherii in the latrine pit. Half naked, stripped of valuables, they were dumped down into the thick, turgid slop, which proved deeper than anyone had expected, as it swallowed up those corpses, leaving not a trace.

The Malazans threw the polished stones after them.

Then rode off down the dark road.

 

‘That has the look of a way station,' the captain said under her breath.

Beak squinted, then said, ‘I smell horses, sir. That long building over there.'

‘Stables,' Faradan Sort said, nodding. ‘Any Tiste Edur here?'

Beak shook his head. ‘Deepest blue of Rashan – that's their candle, mostly. Not as deep as Kurald Galain. They call it Kurald Emurlahn, but these ones here, well, there's skuzzy foam on that blue, like what sits on waves outside a harbour. That's chaotic power. Sick power. Power like pain if pain was good, maybe even strong. I don't know. I don't like these Edur here.'

‘They're here?'

‘No. I meant this continent, sir. There's just Letherii in there. Four. In that small house beside the road.'

‘No magic?'

‘Just some charms.'

‘I want to steal four horses, Beak. Can you cast a glamour on those Letherii?'

‘The Grey Candle, yes. But they'll find out after we've gone.'

‘True. Any suggestions?'

Beak was happy. He had never been so happy. This captain was asking him things. Asking for suggestions. Advice. And it wasn't just for show neither.
I'm in love with her.
To her question he nodded, then tilted up his skullcap helm to scratch in his hair, and said, ‘Not the usual glamour, sir. Something lots more complicated. Finishing with the Orange Candle—'

‘Which is?'

‘Tellann.'

‘Is this going to be messy?'

‘Not if we take all the horses, Captain.'

He watched her studying him, wondered what she saw. She wasn't much for expressions on that hard but beautiful face. Not even her eyes showed much. He loved her, true, but he was also a little frightened of Faradan Sort.

‘All right, Beak, where do you want me?'

‘In the stables with all the horses ready to leave, and maybe two saddled. Oh, and feed for us to take along.'

‘And I can do all that without an alarm's being raised?'

‘They won't hear a thing, sir. In fact, you could go up right now and knock on their door and they won't hear it.'

Still she hesitated. ‘So I can just walk over to the stables, right out in the open, right now?'

Beak nodded with a broad smile.

‘Gods below,' she muttered, ‘I don't know if I'll ever get used to this.'

‘Mockra has their minds, sir. They've got no defences. They've never been glamoured before, I don't think.'

She set out in a half-crouch, moving quickly, although none of that was necessary, and moments later was inside the stables.

It would take some time, Beak knew, for her to do all that he'd asked –
I just told a captain what to do! And she's doing it! Does that mean she loves me right back?
He shook himself. Not a good idea, letting his mind wander just now. He edged out from the cover of the trees lining this side of the stony road. Crouched to pick up a small rock, which he then spat on and set back down – to hold the Mockra in place – as he closed his eyes and sought out the White Candle.

Hood. Death, a cold, cold place. Even the air was dead. In his mind he looked in on that realm as if peering through a window, the wooden sill thick with melted candle wax, the white candle itself flickering to one side. Beyond, ash-heaped ground strewn with bones of all sorts. He reached through, closed a hand on the shaft of a heavy longbone, and drew it back. Working quickly, Beak pulled as many bones as would fit through the wandering window, always choosing big ones. He had no idea what the beasts had been to which all these bones belonged, but they would do.

When he was satisfied with the white, dusty pile heaped on the road, Beak closed the window and opened his eyes. Glancing across he saw the captain standing at the stables, gesturing at him.

Beak waved back, then turned and showed the bones the Purple Candle. They lifted from the road like feathers on an updraught, and as the mage hurried over to join Faradan Sort the bones followed in his wake, floating waist-high above the ground.

The captain disappeared back inside the stables before Beak arrived, then emerged, leading the horses, just as he padded up to the broad doors.

Grinning, Beak went into the stables, the bones tracking him. Once inside, smelling that wonderful musty smell of horses, leather, dung and piss-damp straw, he scattered the bones, a few into each stall, snuffing out the purple candle when he was done. He walked over to the mound of straw at one end, closed his eyes to awaken the Orange Candle, then spat into the straw.

Rejoining the captain outside he said to her, ‘We can go now.'

‘That's it?'

‘Yes sir. We'll be a thousand paces down the road before the Tellann lights up—'

‘Fire?'

‘Yes sir. A terrible fire – they won't even be able to get close – and it'll burn fast but go nowhere else and by the morning there'll be nothing but ashes.'

‘And charred bones that might belong to horses.'

‘Yes sir.'

‘You've done well tonight, Beak,' Faradan Sort said, swinging up onto one of the saddled horses.

Feeling impossibly light on his feet, Beak leapt onto the other one then looked back, with pride, at the remaining seven beasts. Decent animals, just badly treated. Which made it good that they were stealing them. Malazans knew how to care for their horses, after all.

Then he frowned and looked down at his stirrups.

The captain was doing the same, he saw a moment later, with her own. ‘What is this?' she demanded in a hiss.

‘Broken?' Beak wondered.

‘Not that I can see – and yours are identical to mine. What fool invented these?'

‘Captain,' said Beak, ‘I don't think we have to worry much about Letherii cavalry, do we?'

‘You've that right, Beak. Well, let's ride. If we're lucky, we won't break our necks twenty paces up the road.'

 

The father of the man named Throatslitter used to tell stories of the Emperor's conquest of Li Heng, long before Kellanved was emperor of anywhere. True, he'd usurped Mock on Malaz Island and had proclaimed himself the island's ruler, but since when was Malaz Island anything but a squalid haven for pirates? Few on the mainland took much notice of such things. A new tyrannical criminal in place of the old tyrannical criminal.

The conquest of Li Heng changed all that. There'd been no fleet of ships crowding the river mouth to the south and east of the city; nothing, in fact, to announce the assault. Instead, on a fine spring morning no different from countless other such mornings, Throatslitter's father, along with thousands of other doughty citizens, had, upon a casual glance towards the Inner Focus where stood the Palace of the Protectress, noted the sudden inexplicable presence of strange figures on the walls and battlements. Squat, wide, wearing furs and wielding misshapen swords and axes. Helmed in bone.

What had happened to the vaunted Guard? And why were tendrils of smoke rising from the barracks of the courtyard and parade ground? And was it – was it truly – the Protectress herself who had been seen plunging from the High Tower beside the City Temple at the heart of the cynosure?

Someone had cut off Li Heng's head in the Palace. Undead warriors stood sentinel on the walls and, a short time later, emerged in their thousands from the Inner Focus Gate to occupy the city. Li Heng's standing army – after a half-dozen suicidal skirmishes – capitulated that same day. Kellanved now ruled the city-state, and officers and nobles of the high court knelt in fealty, and the reverberations of this conquest rattled the windows of palaces across the entire mainland of Quon Tali.

‘This, son, was the awakening of the Logros T'lan Imass. The Emperor's undead army. I was there, on the streets, and saw with my own eyes those terrible warriors with their pitted eyeholes, the stretched, torn skin, the wisps of hair bleached of all colour. They say, son, that the Logros were always there, below Reacher's Falls. Maybe in the Crevasse, maybe not. Maybe just the very dust that blew in from the west every damned day and night – who can say? But he woke them, he commanded them, and I tell you after that day every ruler on Quon Tali saw a skull's face in their silver mirror, aye.

‘The fleet of ships came later, under the command of three madmen – Crust, Urko and Nok – but first to step ashore was none other than Surly and you know who she'd become, don't you?'

Didn't he just. Command of the T'lan Imass didn't stop the knife in the back, did it? This detail was the defining revelation of Throatslitter's life. Command thousands, tens of thousands. Command sorcerors and imperial fleets. Hold in your hand the lives of a million citizens. The real power was none of this. The real power was the knife in the hand, the hand at a fool's back.

The egalitarian plunge. There, Father, you old crab, a word you've never heard among the fifty or so you knew about in your long, pointless life. Paint on pots, now there's a useless skill, since pots never survive, and so all those lovely images end up in pieces, on the pebbled beaches, in the fill between walls, on the fields of the farmers. And it's true enough, isn't it, Father, that your private firing of ‘The Coming of the Logros' proved about as popular as a whore's dose of the face-eater?

Eldest son or not, mixing glazes and circling a kiln on firing day was not the future he dreamed about.
But you can paint me, Father, and call it ‘The Coming of the Assassin'. My likeness to adorn funeral urns – those who fell to the knife, of course. Too bad you never understood the world well enough to honour me. My chosen profession. My war against inequity in this miserable, evil existence.

And striking my name from the family line, well now, really, that was uncalled for.

Fourteen years of age, Throatslitter found himself in the company of secretive old men and old women. The why and the how were without relevance, even back then. His future was set out before him, in measured strides, and not even the gods could drive him from this cold path.

He wondered about his old masters from time to time. All dead, of course. Surly had seen to that. Not that death meant failure. Her agents had failed in tracking down Throatslitter, after all, and he doubted he was the only one to evade the Claws. He also wondered if indeed he was still on the path – torn away, as he had been, from the Malazan Empire. But he was a patient man; one in his profession had to be, after all.

Still, the Adjunct has asked for loyalty. For service to an unknown cause. We are to be unwitnessed, she said. That suits me fine. It's how assassins conduct their trade.
So he would go along with her and this Oponn-pushed army of sorry fools. For now.

He stood, arms crossed, shoulders drawn forward as he leaned against the wall, and could feel the occasional touch, light as a mouse's paw, on his chest as he watched, with half-hearted interest, the proceedings in Brullyg's private chamber.

The poor Shake ruler was sweating and no amount of his favoured ale could still the trembling of his hands as he sat huddled in his high-backed chair, eyes on the tankard in his grip rather than on the two armoured women standing before him.

Lostara Yil, Throatslitter considered, was if anything better-looking than T'amber had been. Or at least more closely aligned with his own tastes. The Pardu tattoos were sensuality writ on skin, and the fullness of her figure – unsuccessfully disguised by her armour – moved with a dancer's grace (when she moved, which she wasn't doing now, although the promise of elegance was unmistakable). The Adjunct stood in grim contrast, the poor woman. Like those destined to dwell in the shadows of more attractive friends, she suffered the comparison with every sign of indifference, but Throatslitter – who was skilled at seeing unspoken truths – could read the pain that dull paucity delivered, and this was a human truth, no more or less sordid than all the other human truths. Those without beauty compensated in other ways, the formal but artificial ways of rank and power, and that was just how things were the world over.

Of course when you've finally got that power, it doesn't matter how ugly you are, you can breed with the best.
Maybe this explained Lostara's presence at Tavore's side. But Throatslitter was not entirely sure of that. He didn't think they were lovers. He wasn't even convinced they were friends.