The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (91 page)

I shall be merciful when killing you
. The creature rushed the barque from directly astern, cutting through the water like a sharp-hulled ship. Its jaws opened wide.

“You were warned,” Fiddler said as he raised the crossbow, aimed and fired. The quarrel sped for the beast's open mouth. Lightning fast, the dhenrabi snapped at the shaft, its thin, saw-edged teeth slicing through the quarrel and shattering the clay ball, releasing to the air the powdery mixture within the ball. The contact resulted in an instantaneous explosion that blew the Soletaken's head apart.

Fragments of skull and gray flesh raked the water on all sides. The incendiary powder continued to burn fiercely all it clung to, sending up hissing steam. Momentum carried the headless body to within four spans of the barque's stern before it dipped down and slid smoothly out of sight even as the last echoes of the detonation faded. Smoke drifted sideways over the waves.

“You picked the wrong fishermen,” Fiddler said, lowering his weapon.

Kalam settled back at the tiller, returning the craft to a southerly course. A strange stillness hung in the air. Fiddler disassembled his crossbow and repacked it in oilcloth. As he resumed his seat amidships, Moby crawled back into his lap. Sighing, he scratched it behind an ear. “Well, Kalam?”

“I'm not sure,” the assassin admitted. “What brought a Soletaken into the Kansu Sea? Why did it want its passage secret?”

“If Quick Ben was here…”

“But he isn't, Fid. It's a mystery we'll have to live with, and hopefully we won't run into any more.”

“Do you think it's related to…?”

Kalam scowled. “No.”

“Related to what?” Crokus demanded. “What are you two going on about?”

“Just musing,” Fiddler said. “The Soletaken was heading south. Like us.”

“So?”

Fiddler shrugged. “So…nothing. Just that.” He spat again over the side and slumped down. “The excitement made me forget my seasickness. Now the excitement's faded, dammit.”

Everyone fell silent, though the frown on the face of Crokus told the sapper that the boy wasn't about to let the issue rest for long.

The gale remained steady, pushing them hard southward. Less than three hours after that Apsalar announced that she could see land ahead, and forty minutes later Kalam directed the craft parallel to the Ehrlitan coastline half a league offshore. They tacked west, following the cedar-lined ridge as the day slowly died.

“I think I see horsemen,” Apsalar said.

Fiddler raised his head, joining the others in studying the line of riders following a coastal track along the ridge.

“I make them six in all,” Kalam said. “Second rider's—”

“Got an Imperial pennon,” Fiddler finished, his face twisting at the taste in his mouth. “Messenger and Lancer guard—”

“Heading for Ehrlitan,” Kalam added.

Fiddler turned in his seat and met his corporal's dark eyes.
Trouble?

Maybe
.

The exchange was silent, a product of years fighting side by side.

Crokus asked, “Something wrong? Kalam? Fiddler?”

The boy's sharp
. “Hard to say,” Fiddler muttered. “They've seen us but what have they seen? Four fisherfolk in a barque, some Skrae family headed into the port for a taste of civilization.”

“There's a village just south of the tree-line,” Kalam said. “Keep an eye out for a creek mouth, Crokus, and a beach with no driftwood—the houses will be tucked leeward of the ridge, meaning inland. How's my memory, Fid?”

“Good enough for a native, which is what you are. How long out of the city?”

“Ten hours on foot.”

“That close?”

“That close.”

Fiddler fell silent. The Imperial messenger and his horse guard had moved out of sight, leaving the ridge as they swung south toward Ehrlitan. The plan had been to sail right into the Holy City's ancient, crowded harbor, arriving anonymously. It was likely that the messenger was delivering information that had nothing to do with them—they'd given nothing away since reaching the Imperial port of Karakarang from Genabackis, arriving on a Moranth Blue trader having paid passage as crew. The overland journey from Karakarang across the Talgai Mountains and down to Rutu Jelba had been on the Tano pilgrim route—a common enough journey. And the week in Rutu Jelba had been spent inconspicuously lying low, with only Kalam making nightly excursions to the wharf district, seeking passage across the Otataral Sea to the mainland.

At worst, a report might have reached someone official, somewhere, that two possible deserters, accompanied by a Genabackan and a woman, had arrived on Malazan territory—hardly news to shake the Imperial wasp nest all the way to Ehrlitan. So, likely Kalam was being his usual paranoid self.

“I see the stream mouth,” Crokus said, pointing to a place on the shore.

Fiddler glanced back at Kalam.
Hostile land, how low do we crawl?

Looking up at grasshoppers, Fid
.

Hood's breath
. He looked back to the shore. “I hate Seven Cities,” he whispered. In his lap, Moby yawned, revealing a mouth bristling with needlelike fangs. Fiddler blanched. “Cuddle up whenever you want, pup,” he said, shivering.

Kalam angled the tiller. Crokus worked the sail, deft enough after a two-month voyage across Seeker's
Deep
to let the barque slip easily into the wind, the tattered sail barely raising a luff. Apsalar shifted on the seat, stretched her arms and flashed Fiddler a smile. The sapper scowled and looked away.
Burn shake me, I've got to keep my jaw from dropping every time she does that. She was another woman, once. A killer, the knife of a god. She did things…Besides, she's with Crokus, ain't she. The boy's got all the luck and the whores in Karakarang looked like poxed sisters from some gigantic poxed family and all those poxed babies on their hips…
He shook himself.
Oh, Fiddler, too long at sea, way too long!

“I don't see any boats,” Crokus said.

“Up the creek,” Fiddler mumbled, dragging a nail through his beard in pursuit of a nit. After a moment he plucked it out and flicked it over the side.
Ten hours on foot, then Ehrlitan, and a bath and a shave and a Kansuan girl with a saw-comb and the whole night free afterward
.

Crokus nudged him. “Getting excited, Fiddler?”

“You don't know the half of it.”

“You were here during the conquest, weren't you? Back when Kalam was fighting for the other side—for the Seven Holy Falah'dan—and the T'lan Imass marched for the Emperor and—”

“Enough,” Fiddler waved a hand. “I don't need reminding, and neither does Kalam. All wars are ugly, but that one was uglier than most.”

“Is it true that you were in the company that chased Quick Ben across the Holy Desert Raraku, and that Kalam was your guide, only he and Quick were planning on betraying you all, but Whiskeyjack had already worked that out—”

Fiddler turned a glare on Kalam. “One night in Rutu Jelba with a jug of Falari rum, and this boy knows more than any Imperial historian still breathing.” He swung back to Crokus. “Listen, son, best you forget everything that drunken lout told you that night. The past is already hunting our tails—no point in making it any easier.”

Crokus ran a hand through his long black hair. “Well,” he said softly, “if Seven Cities is so dangerous, why didn't we just head straight down to Quon Tali, to where Apsalar lived, so we can find her father? Why all this sneaking around—and on the wrong continent at that?”

“It's not that simple,” Kalam growled.

“Why? I thought that was the reason for this whole journey.” Crokus reached for Apsalar's hand and clasped it in both of his, but saved his hard expression for Kalam and Fiddler. “You both said you owed it to her. It wasn't right and you wanted to put it right. But now I'm thinking it's only part of the reason, I'm thinking that you two have something else planned—that taking Apsalar back home was just an excuse to come back to your Empire, even though you're officially outlawed. And whatever it is you're planning, it's meant coming here, to Seven Cities, and it's also meant we have to sneak around, terrified of everything, jumping at shadows, as if the whole Malazan army was after us.” He paused, drew a deep breath, then continued. “We have a right to know the truth, because you're putting us in danger and we don't even know what kind, or why, or anything. So out with it. Now.”

Fiddler leaned back on the gunnel. He looked over at Kalam and raised an eyebrow. “Well, Corporal? It's your call.”

“Give me a list, Fiddler,” Kalam said.

“The Empress wants Darujhistan,” The sapper met Crokus's steady gaze. “Agreed?”

The boy hesitated, then nodded.

Fiddler continued. “What she wants she usually gets sooner or later. Call it precedent. Now, she's tried to take your city once, right, Crokus? And it cost her Adjunct Lorn, two Imperial demons, and High Fist Dujek's loyalty, not to mention the loss of the Bridgeburners. Enough to make anyone sting.”

“Fine. But what's that got to do—”

“Don't interrupt. Corporal said make a list. I'm making it. You've followed me so far? Good. Darujhistan eluded her once—but she'll make certain next time. Assuming there is a next time.”

“Well,” Crokus was scowling, “why wouldn't there be? You said she gets what she wants.”

“And you're loyal to your city, Crokus?”

“Of course—”

“So you'd do anything you could to prevent the Empress from conquering it?”

“Well, yes but—”

“Sir?” Fiddler turned back to Kalam.

The burly black-skinned man looked out over the waves, sighed, then nodded to himself. He faced Crokus. “It's this, lad. Time's come. I'm going after her.”

The Daru boy's expression was blank, but Fiddler saw Apsalar's eyes widen, her face losing its color. She sat back suddenly, then half-smiled—and Fiddler went cold upon seeing it.

“I don't know what you mean,” Crokus said. “After who? The Empress? How?”

“He means,” Apsalar said, still smiling a smile that had belonged to her once, long ago, when she'd been
…someone else
, “that he's going to try and kill her.”

“What?” Crokus stood, almost pitching himself over the side. “You? You and a seasick sapper with a broken fiddle strapped to his back? Do you think we're going to help you in this insane, suicidal—”

“I remember,” Apsalar said suddenly, her eyes narrowing on Kalam.

Crokus turned to her. “Remember what?”

“Kalam. He was a Falah'dan's Dagger, and the Claw gave him command of a Hand. Kalam's a master assassin, Crokus. And Quick Ben—”

“Is three thousand leagues away!” Crokus shouted. “He's a squad mage, for Hood's sake! That's it, a squalid little squad mage!”

“Not quite,” Fiddler said. “And being so far away doesn't mean a thing, son. Quick Ben's our shaved knuckle in the hole.”

“Your what in the where?”

“Shaved knuckle, as in the game of knuckles—a good gambler's usually using a shaved knuckle, as in cheating in the casts, if you know what I mean. As for ‘hole,' that'd be Quick Ben's Warren—the one that can put him at Kalam's side in the space of a heartbeat, no matter how far away he happens to be. So, Crokus, there you have it: Kalam's going to give it a try, but it's going to take some planning, preparation. And that starts here, in Seven Cities. You want Darujhistan free forever more? The Empress Laseen must die.”

Crokus slowly sat back down. “But why Seven Cities? Isn't the Empress in Quon Tali?”

“Because,” Kalam said as he angled the fisherboat into the creek mouth and the oppressive heat of the land rose around them, “because, lad, Seven Cities is about to rise.”

“What do you mean?”

The assassin bared his teeth. “Rebellion.”

Fiddler swung around and scanned the fetid undergrowth lining the banks.
And that
, he said to himself with a chill clutching his stomach,
is the part of this plan that I hate the most. Chasing one of Quick Ben's wild ideas with the whole countryside going up in flames
.

A minute later they rounded a bend and the village appeared, a scattering of wattle-and-daub huts in a broken half-circle facing a line of skiffs pulled onto a sandy beach. Kalam nudged the tiller and the fisherboat drifted toward the strand. As the keel scraped bottom, Fiddler clambered over the gunnel and stepped onto dry land, Moby now awake and clinging with all fours to the front of his tunic. Ignoring the squawking creature, Fiddler slowly straightened. “Well,” he sighed as the first of the village's mongrel dogs announced their arrival, “it's begun.”

The red ochre handprint on the wall was dissolving in the rain, trickling roots down along the mortar between the fired mudbricks. Hunched against the unseasonal downpour, Duiker watched as the print slowly disappeared, wishing that the day had broken dry, that he could have come upon the sign before the rain obscured it, that he could then have gained a sense of the hand that had made its mark here, on the outer wall of the old Falah'd Palace in the heart of Hissar.

The many cultures of Seven Cities seethed with symbols, a secret pictographic language of oblique references that carried portentous weight among the natives. Such symbols formed a complex dialogue that no Malazan could understand. Slowly, during his many months resident here, Duiker had come to realize the danger behind their ignorance. As the Year of Dryjhna approached, such symbols blossomed in chaotic profusion, every wall in every city a scroll of secret code. Wind, sun and rain assured impermanence, wiping clean the slate in readiness for the next exchange.

And it seems they have a lot to say these days
.

 

Duiker shook himself, trying to loosen the tension in his neck and shoulders. His warnings to the High Command seemed to be falling on deaf ears. There were patterns in these symbols, and it seemed that he alone among all the Malazans had any interest in breaking the code, or even in recognizing the risks of maintaining an outsider's indifference.

He pulled his cowl further over his head in an effort to keep his face dry, feeling water trickle on his forearms as the wide cuffs of his telaba cloak briefly opened to the rain. The last of the print had washed away. Duiker pushed himself into motion, resuming his journey.

Water ran in ankle-deep torrents down the cobbled slopes beneath the palace walls, gushing down into the gutters bisecting each alley and causeway in the city. Opposite the immense palace wall, awnings sagged precariously above closet-sized shops. In the chill shadows of the holes that passed for store-fronts, dour-faced merchants watched Duiker as he passed by.

Apart from miserable donkeys and the occasional sway-backed horse, the streets were mostly empty of pedestrian traffic. Even with the rare wayward current from the Sahul Sea, Hissar was a city born of inland drylands and deserts. Though a port and now a central landing for the Empire, the city and its people lived with a spiritual back to the sea.

Duiker left behind the close ring of ancient buildings and narrow alleys surrounding the palace wall, coming to the Dryjhna Colonnade that ran straight as a spear through Hissar's heart. The guldindha trees lining the colonnade's carriage track swam with blurred motion as the rain pelted down on their ochre leaves. Estate gardens, most of them unwalled and open to public admiration, stretched green on either side. The downpour had stripped flowers from their shrubs and dwarf trees, turning the cobbled walkways white, red and pink.

The historian ducked as a gusting wind pressed his cloak tight against his right side. The water on his lips tasted of salt, the only indication of the angry sea a thousand paces to his right. Where the street named after the Storm of the Apocalypse narrowed suddenly, the carriage path became a muddy track of broken cobbles and shattered pottery, the tall, once royal nut trees giving way to desert scrub. The change was so abrupt that Duiker found himself up to his shins in dung-stained water before he realized he'd come to the city's edge. Squinting against the rain, he looked up.

Off to his left, hazy behind the sheets of water, ran the stone wall of the Imperial Compound. Smoke struggled upward from beyond the wall's fortified height. On his right and much closer was a chaotic knot of hide tents, horses and camels and carts—a trader camp, newly arrived from the Sialk Odhan.

Drawing his cloak tighter against the wind, Duiker swung to the right and made for the encampment. The rain was heavy enough to mask the sound of his approach from the tribe's dogs as he entered the narrow, mud-choked pathway between the sprawling tents. Duiker paused at an intersection. Opposite was a large copper-stained tent, its walls profusely cluttered with painted symbols. Smoke drifted from the entrance flap. He crossed the intersection, hesitating only a moment before drawing the flap to one side and entering.

A roar of sound, carried on waves of hot, steam-laden air buffeted the historian as he paused to shake the water from his cloak. Voices shouting, cursing, laughing on all sides, the air filled with durhang smoke and incense, roasting meats, sour wine and sweet ale, closed in around Duiker as he took in the scene. Coins rattled and spun in pots where a score of gamblers had gathered off to his left; in front of him a tapu weaved swiftly through the crowd, a four-foot-long iron skewer of roasted meats and fruit in each hand. Duiker shouted the tapu over, raising a hand to catch the man's eye. The hawker quickly approached.

“Goat, I swear!” the tapu exclaimed in the coastal Debrahl language. “Goat, not dog, Dosii! Smell for yourself, and only a clipping to pay for such delicious fare! Would you pay so little in Dosin Pali?”

Born on the plains of Dal Hon, Duiker's dark skin matched that of the local Debrahl; he was wearing the telaba sea cloak of a merchant trader from the island city of Dosin Pali, and spoke the language without hint of an accent. To the tapu's claim Duiker grinned. “For dog I would, Tapuharal.” He fished out two local crescents—the equivalent of a base “clipping” of the Imperial silver jakata. “And if you imagine the Mezla are freer with their silver on the island, you are a fool and worse!”

Looking nervous, the tapu slid a chunk of dripping meat and two soft amber globes of fruit from one of the skewers, wrapping them in leaves. “Beware Mezla spies, Dosii,” he muttered. “Words can be twisted.”

“Words are their only language,” Duiker replied with contempt as he accepted the food. “Is it true then that a scarred barbarian now commands the Mezla army?”

“A man with a demon's face, Dosii.” The tapu wagged his head. “Even the Mezla fear him.” Pocketing the crescents he moved off, raising the skewers once more over his head. “Goat, not dog!”

Duiker found a tent wall to put his back against and watched the crowd as he ate his meal in local fashion, swiftly, messily.
Every meal is your last
encompassed an entire Seven Cities philosophy. Grease smeared on his face and dripping from his fingers, the historian dropped the leaves to the muddy floor at his feet, then ritually touched his forehead in a now outlawed gesture of gratitude to a Falah'd whose bones were rotting in the silty mud of Hissar Bay. The historian's eyes focused on a ring of old men beyond the gamblers and he walked over to it, wiping his hands on his thighs.

The gathering marked a Circle of Seasons, wherein two seers faced one another and spoke a symbolic language of divination in a complicated dance of gestures. As he pushed into a place among the ring of onlookers, Duiker saw the seers within the circle, an ancient shaman whose silver-barbed, skin-threaded face marked him as from the Semk tribe, far inland, and opposite him a boy of about fifteen. Where the boy's eyes should have been were two gouged pits of badly healed scar tissue. His thin limbs and bloated belly revealed an advanced stage of malnutrition. Duiker realized instinctively that the boy had lost his family during the Malazan conquest and now lived in the alleys and streets of Hissar. He had been found by the Circle's organizers, for it was well known that the gods spoke through such suffering souls.

The tense silence among the onlookers told the historian that there was power in this divination. Though blind, the boy moved to keep himself face to face with the Semk seer, who himself slowly danced across a floor of white sand in absolute silence. They held out their hands toward each other, inscribing patterns in the air between them.

Duiker nudged the man beside him. “What has been foreseen?” he whispered.

The man, a squat local with the scars of an old Hissar regiment poorly obscured by mutilating burns on his cheeks, hissed warningly through his stained teeth. “Nothing less than the spirit of Dryjhna, whose outline was mapped by their hands—a spirit seen by all here, a ghostly promise of fire.”

Duiker sighed. “Would that I had witnessed that…”

“You shall—see? It comes again!”

The historian watched as the weaving hands seemed to contact an invisible figure, leaving a smear of reddish light that flickered in their wake. The glow suggested a human shape, and that shape slowly grew more defined. A woman whose flesh was fire. She raised her arms and something like iron flashed at her wrists and the dancers became three as she spun and writhed between the seers.

The boy suddenly threw back his head, words coming from his throat like the grinding of stones. “Two fountains of raging blood! Face to face. The blood is the same, the two are the same and salty waves shall wash the shores of Raraku. The Holy Desert remembers its past!”

The female apparition vanished. The boy toppled forward, thumping stiff as a board onto the sand. The Semk seer crouched down, resting a hand on the boy's head. “He is returned to his family,” the old shaman said in the silence of the circle. “The mercy of Dryjhna, the rarest of gifts, granted to this child.”

Hardened tribesmen began weeping, others falling to their knees. Shaken, Duiker pulled back as the ring slowly contracted. He blinked sweat from his eyes, sensing that someone was watching him. He looked around. Across from him stood a figure shrouded in black hides, a goat's-head hood pulled up, leaving the face in shadow. A moment later the figure looked away. Duiker quickly moved from the stranger's line of sight.

He made for the tent flap.

Seven Cities was an ancient civilization, steeped in the power of antiquity, where Ascendants once walked on every trader track, every footpath, every lost road between forgotten places. It was said the sands hoarded power within their susurrating currents, that every stone had soaked up sorcery like blood, and that beneath every city lay the ruins of countless other cities, older cities, cities that went back to the First Empire itself. It was said each city rose on the backs of ghosts, the substance of spirits thick like layers of crushed bone; that each city forever wept beneath the streets, forever laughed, shouted, hawked wares and bartered and prayed and drew first breaths that brought life and the last breaths that announced death. Beneath the streets there were dreams, wisdom, foolishness, fears, rage, grief, lust and love and bitter hatred.

The historian stepped outside into the rain, drawing in lungfuls of clean, cool air as he once more wrapped cloak about him.

Conquerors could overrun a city's walls, could kill every living soul within it, fill every estate and every house and every store with its own people, yet rule nothing but the city's thin surface, the skin of the present, and would one day be brought down by the spirits below, until they themselves were but one momentary layer among many.
This is an enemy we can never defeat
, Duiker believed.
Yet history tells the stories of those who would challenge that enemy, again and again. Perhaps victory is not achieved by overcoming that enemy, but by joining it, becoming one with it
.

The Empress has sent a new Fist to batter down the restless centuries of this land. Had she abandoned Coltaine as I'd suggested to Mallick Rel? Or had she just held him back in readiness, like a weapon forged and honed for one specific task?

Duiker left the encampment, once more hunched beneath the driving rain. Ahead loomed the gates of the Imperial Compound. He might well find some answers to his questions within the next hour, as he came face to face with Coltaine of the Crow Clan.

He crossed the rutted track, sloshing through the murky puddles filling the horse and wagon ruts, then ascended the muddy slope toward the gatehouse.

Two cowled guards stepped into view as he reached the gate's narrow side passage.

“No petitions today, Dosii,” one of the Malazan soldiers said. “Try tomorrow.”

Duiker unclasped the cloak, opened it to reveal the Imperial diadem pinned to his tunic. “The Fist has called a council, has he not?”

Both soldiers saluted and stepped back. The one who'd spoken earlier smiled apologetically. “Didn't know you were with the other one,” he said.

“What other one?”

“He came in just a few minutes ago, historian.”

“Yes, of course.” Duiker nodded to the two men, then passed within. The stone floor of the passage bore the muddy tracks of a pair of moccasins. Frowning, he continued on, coming to the inside compound. A roofed causeway followed the wall to his left, leading eventually to the side postern of the squat, unimaginative headquarters building. Already wet, Duiker ignored it, electing to cross the compound directly toward the building's main entrance. In passing he noticed that the man who had preceded him had done the same. The pooled prints of his steps betrayed a bowlegged gait. The historian's frown deepened.

He came to the entrance, where another guard appeared, who directed Duiker to the council room. As he approached the room's double doors, he checked for his predecessor's footprints, but there were none. Evidently he'd gone to some other chamber within the building. Shrugging, Duiker opened the doors.

The council room was low-ceilinged, its stone walls unplastered but washed in white paint. A long marble table dominated, looking strangely incomplete in the absence of chairs. Already present were Mallick Rel, Kulp, Coltaine and another Wickan officer. They all turned at the historian's entrance, Rel's brows lifting in mild surprise. Clearly, he'd been unaware that Coltaine had extended to Duiker an invitation. Had it been the new Fist's intention to unbalance the priest, a deliberate exclusion? After a moment the historian dismissed the thought. More likely the result of a disorganized new command.

The chairs had been specifically removed for this council, as was evident in the tracks their legs had left through the white dust on the floor. The discomfort of not knowing where to stand or how to position oneself was evident in both Mallick Rel and Kulp. The Jhistal priest of Mael was shifting weight from one foot to the other, sweat on his brow reflecting the harsh glare of the lanterns set on the tabletop, his hands folded into his sleeves. Kulp looked in need of a wall to lean against, but was clearly uncertain how the Wickans would view such a casual posture.