Was she looking forward to making her acquaintance?
It was possible.
The day beckoned and she turned away – before she saw too much of the woman she was leaving behind – and set about dressing for the city.
‘So, you’re the historian who survived the Chain of Dogs.’
The old man sitting at the table looked up and frowned. ‘Actually, I didn’t.’
‘Oh,’ said Scillara, settling down into the chair opposite him – her body felt strange today, as if even fat could be weightless. Granted, she wasn’t getting any heavier, but her bones were wearing plenty and there was a sense of fullness, of roundness, and for some reason all of this was making her feel sexually charged, very nearly brimming over with a slow, sultry indolence. She drew out her pipe and eyed the Malazan opposite. ‘Well, I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘It’s a long story,’ he said.
‘Which you’re relating to that ponytailed bard.’
He grunted. ‘So much for privacy.’
‘Sounds to be a good thing, getting it all out. When he found out I was in Sha’ik’s camp in Raraku, he thought to cajole details out of me. But I was barely conscious most of that time, so I wasn’t much help. I told him about Heboric, though.’
And Duiker slowly straightened, a sudden glint in his eyes burning away all the sadness, all the weariness. ‘Heboric?’
Scillara smiled. ‘Fisher said you might be interested in that.’
‘I am. Or,’ he hesitated, ‘I think I am.’
‘He died, I’m afraid. But I will tell you of it, if you’d like. From the night we fled Sha’ik.’
The light had dimmed in Duiker’s eyes and he looked away. ‘Hood seems determined to leave me the last one standing. All my friends . . .’
‘Old friends, maybe,’ she said, pulling flame into the bowl. ‘Plenty of room for new ones.’
‘That’s a bitter consolation.’
‘We need to walk, I think.’
‘I’m not in the mood—’ ‘But I am and Barathol is gone and your partners are upstairs chewing on conspiracies. Chaur is in the kitchen eating everything in sight and Blend’s fallen in love with me and sure, that’s amusing and even enjoyable for a time, but for me it’s not the real thing. Only she’s not listening.
Anyway, I want an escort and you’re elected.’
‘Really, Scillara—’
‘Being old doesn’t mean you can be rude. I want you to take me to the Phoenix Inn.’
He stared at her for a long moment.
She drew hard on her pipe, swelled her lungs to thrust her ample breasts out and saw how his gaze dropped a fraction or two. ‘I’m looking to embarrass a friend, you see,’ she said, then released the lungful of smoke towards the black-stained rafters.
‘Well,’ he sourly drawled, ‘in that case . . .’
‘Rallick’s furious,’ Cutter said as he sat down, reaching for the brick of cheese to break off a sizeable chunk which he held in his left hand, an apple in his right. A bite from the apple was quickly followed by one from the cheese.
‘Kruppe commiserates. Tragedy of destiny, when destiny is that which one chooses given what one is given. Dear Cutter might have retained original name had he elected a life in, say, Murillio’s shadow. Alas, Cutter in name is cutter in deed.’
Cutter swallowed and said, ‘Hold on. I wasn’t making a point of walking in Rallick’s shadow. Not anybody’s shadow – in fact, the whole idea of “shadow” makes me sick. If one god out there has truly cursed me, it’s Shadowthrone.’
‘Shifty Shadowthrone, he of the sourceless shade, a most conniving, dastardly god indeed! Chill is his shadow, cruel and uncomfortable is his throne, horrid his Hounds, tangled his Rope, sweet and seductive his innocent servants! But!’ And Kruppe held aloft one plump finger. ‘Cutter would not speak of walking in shadows, why, not anyone’s! Even one which sways most swayingly, that cleaves most cleavingly, that flutters in fluttering eyelashes framing depthless dark eyes that are not eyes at all, but pools of unfathomable depth – and is she sorry? By Apsalar she is not!’
‘I hate you sometimes,’ Cutter said in a grumble, eyes on the table, cheese and apple temporarily forgotten in his hands.
‘Poor Cutter. See his heart carved loose from yon chest, flopping down like so much bloodied meat on this tabletop. Kruppe sighs and sighs again in the deep of sympathy and extends, yes, this warm cloak of companionship against the cold harsh light of truth this day and on every other day! Now, kindly pour us more of this herbal concoction which, whilst tasting somewhat reminiscent of the straw and mud used to make bricks, is assured by Meese to aid in all matters of digestion, including bad news.’
Cutter poured, and then took another two bites, apple and cheese. He chewed for a time, then scowled. ‘What bad news?’
‘That which is yet to arrive, of course. Will honey aid this digestive aid? Probably not. It will, one suspects, curdle and recoil. Why is it, Kruppe wonders, that those who claim all healthy amends via rank brews, gritty grey repasts of the raw and unrefined, and unpalatable potions, and this amidst a regime of activities invented solely to erode bone and wear out muscle – all these purveyors of the pure and good life are revealed one and all as wan, parched well nigh bloodless, with vast fists bobbing up and down in the throat and watery eyes savage in righteous smugitude, walking like energized storks and urinating water pure enough to drink all over again? And pass if you please to dear beatific Kruppe, then, that last pastry squatting forlorn and alone on yon pewter plate.’
Cutter blinked. ‘Sorry. Pass what?’
‘Pastry, dear lad! Sweet pleasures to confound the pious worshippers of suffering! How many lives do each of us have, Kruppe wonders rhetorically, to so constrain this one with desultory disciplines so efficacious that Hood himself must bend over convulsed in laughter? This evening, dear friend of Kruppe, you and I will walk the cemetery and wager which buried bones belong to the healthy ones and which to the wild cavorting headlong maniacs who danced bright with smiles each and every day!’
‘The healthy bones would be the ones left by old people, I’d wager.’
‘No doubt no doubt, friend Cutter, a most stolid truth. Why, Kruppe daily encounters ancient folk and delights in their wide smiles and cheery well-mets.’
‘They’re not all miserable, Kruppe.’
‘True, here and there totters a wide-eyed one, wide-eyed because a life of raucous abandon is behind one and the fool went and survived it all! Now what, this creature wonders? Why am I not dead? And you, with your three paltry decades of pristine boredom, why don’t you just go somewhere and die!’
‘Are you being hounded by the aged, Kruppe?’
‘Worse. Dear Murillio moans crabby and toothless and now ponders a life of inactivity. Promise Kruppe this, dear Cutter – when you see this beaming paragon here before you falter, dribble at the mouth, mutter at the clouds, wheeze and fart and trickle and all the rest, do bundle Kruppe up tight in some thick impervious sack of burlap, find a nearby cliff and send him sailing out! Through the air! Down on to the thrashing seas and crashing rocks and filmy foams – Kruppe implores you! And listen, whilst you do so, friend Cutter, sing and laugh, spit into my wake! Do you so promise?’
‘If I’m around, Kruppe, I’ll do precisely as you ask.’
‘Kruppe is relieved, so relieved. Aaii, last pastry revolts in nether gut – more of this tea, then, to yield the bitumen belch of tasteless misery on earth. And then, shortly anon, it will be time for lunch! And see who enters, why, none other than Murillio, newly employed and flush and so eager with generosity!’
Iskaral Pust’s love was pure and perfect, except that his wife kept getting in the way. When he leaned left she leaned right; when he leaned right she leaned left. When he stretched his neck she stretched hers and all he could see was the mangled net of her tangled hair and beneath that those steely black eyes too knowing for her own good and for his, too, come to that.
‘The fo
olish hag,’ he muttered. ‘Can’t she see I’m leaning this way and that and bobbing up and down only because I feel like it and not because the High Priestess is over there amply presenting her deliciously ample backside – knowing well, yes she does, how I squirm and drool, pant and palpitate, the temptress, the wilful vixen! But no! Every angle and this horrid nemesis heaves into view, damning my eyes! Maybe I can cleverly send her off on an errand, now there’s an idea.’ He smiled and leaned forward, all the armour of his charm trembling and creaking in the face of the onslaught of her baleful stare. ‘Sweet raisin crumpet, the mule needs grooming and tender care in the temple stables.’
‘Does it now?’
‘Yes. And since you’re clearly not busy with anything at the moment, you could instead do something useful.’
‘But I am doing something useful, dearest husband.’
‘Oh, and what’s that, tender trollop?’
‘Why, I am sacrificing my time to keep you from making a bigger fool of yourself than is normal, which is quite a challenge, I assure you.’
‘What stupidity is she talking about? Love oyster, whatever are you talking about?’
‘She’s made her concession that you are who you claim to be. And that’s the only thing keeping her from tossing us both out on our scrawny behinds. You and me and the mule and the gibbering bhokarala – assuming she can ever manage to get them out of the cellar. I’m a witch of the spider goddess and the High Priestess back there is not at all happy about that. So I’m telling you, O rotted apple of my eye, if I let you try and jump her we’re all done for.’
‘She talks so much it’s a wonder her teeth don’t fall out. But wait! Most of them already have! Shh, don’t laugh, don’t even smile. Am I smiling? Maybe, but it’s the indulgent kind, the kind that means well or if not well then nothing at all though wives the world over, when seeing it, go into apoplectic rage for no good reason at all, the cute, loveable dearies.’ He sighed and leaned back, trying to peer under her right armpit, but the peripheral vision thing turned that into a hairy nightmare. Flinching, he sighed again and rubbed at his eyes. ‘Go on, wife, the mule is pining and your sweet face is all he longs for – to kick! Hee hee! Shh, don’t laugh! Don’t even smile!’ He looked up. ‘Delicious wrinkled date, why not take a walk, out into the sunshine in the streets? The gutters, more like, hah! The runnels of runny sewage – take a bath! Piss up one of those lamp posts and not a dog in Darujhistan would dare the challenge! Hah! But this smile is the caring kind, yes, see?’
The High Priestess Sordiko Qualm cavorted up to where they sat – this woman didn’t walk, she went as much sideways as forward, a snake of seduction, an enchantress of nonchalance; gods, a man could die just watching! Was that a whimper escaping him? Of course not, more likely Mogora’s armpit coming up for air made that gasping, squelching sound.
‘I would be most pleased,’ the High Priestess said in that well-deep voice that purred like every temptation imaginable all blended into one steaming stew of invitation, ‘if you two indulged in mutual suicide.’
‘I could fake mine,’ Iskaral Pust whispered. ‘Then she’d be out of our way – I know, High Priestess of all my fantasies, I can see how you wage war against your natural desires, your blazing hunger to get your hands on me! Oh, I know I’m not as handsome as some people, but I have power!’
Sighing, Sordiko Qualm cavorted away – but no, from behind it was more a saunter. Approaching was a cavort, leaving was a saunter. ‘Sordiko Saunter Qualm Cavort, she comes and goes but never quite leaves, my love of loves, my better love than that excuse for love I once thought was real love but let’s face it love it wasn’t, not like this love. Why, this love is the big kind, the swollen kind, the towering kind, the rutting gasping pumping exploding kind! Oh, I hurt myself.’
Mogora snorted. ‘You wouldn’t know real love if it bit you in the face.’
‘Keep that armpit away from me, woman!’
‘You’ve turned this temple into a madhouse, Iskaral Pust. You turn every temple you live in into a madhouse! So here we are, contemplating mutual murder, and what does your god want from us? Why, nothing! Nothing but waiting, always waiting! Bah, I’m going shopping!’
‘At last!’ Iskaral crowed.
‘And you’re coming with me, to carry my purchases.’
‘Not a chance. Use the mule.’
‘Stand up or I’ll have my way with you right here.’
‘In the holy vestry? Are you insane?’
‘Rutting blasphemy. Will Shadowthrone be pleased?’
‘Fine! Shopping, then. Only no leash this time.’
‘Then don’t get lost.’
‘I wasn’t lost, you water buffalo, I was escaping.’
‘I’d better get the leash again.’
‘And I’ll get my knife!’
Oh, how marriage got in the way of love! The bonds of mutual contempt drawn tight until the victims squeal, but is it in pain or pleasure? Is there a difference? But that is a question not to be asked of married folk, oh no.
And in the stables the mule winks at the horse and the horse feels breakfast twisting in her gut and the flies, well, they fly from one lump of dung to another, convinced that each is different from the last, fickle creatures that they are, and there is no wisdom among the fickle, only longing and frustration, and the buzz invites the next dubious conquest smelling so fragrant in the damp straw.
Buzz buzz.
Amidst masses of granite and feverish folds of bedrock veined with glittering streaks, the mining operation owned by Humble Measure was an enormous pit facing a cliff gouged with caves and tunnels. Situated equidistant between Darujhistan and Gredfallan Annexe and linked by solid raised roads, the mine and its town-sized settlement had a population of eight hundred. Indentured workers, slaves, prisoners, work chiefs, security guards, cooks, carpenters, potters, rope makers, clothes makers and menders, charcoal makers, cutters and nurses, butchers and bakers – the enterprise seethed with activity. Smoke filled the air. Old women with bleeding hands clambered through the heaps of tailings collecting shreds of slag and low-quality chunks of coal. Gulls and crows danced round these rag-clad, hunched figures.
Not a single tree was left standing anywhere within half a league of the mine. Down on a slope on the lakeside was a humped cemetery in which sat a few hundred shallow graves. The water just offshore was lifeless and stained red, with a muddy bottom bright orange in colour.
Scented cloth held to his face, Gorlas Vidikas observed the operation which he now managed, although perhaps ‘managed’ was the wrong word. The day to day necessities were the responsibility of the camp workmaster, a scarred and pock-faced man in his fifties with decades-old scraps of raw metal still embedded in his hands. He hacked out a cough after every ten words or so, and spat thick yellow mucus down between his bronze-capped boots.
‘The young ‘uns go the fastest, of course.’ Cough, spit. ‘Our moles or so we call ‘em, since they can squeeze inta cracks no grown-up can get through,’ cough, spit, ‘and this way if there’s bad air it’s none of our stronger workers get killed.’ Cough . . . ‘We was havin’ trouble gettin’ enough young ‘uns for a time there, until we started buyin’ ‘em from the poorer fam’lies both in and outa the city – they got too many runts t’feed, ye see? An’ we got special rules for the young ‘uns – nobody gets their hands on ‘em, if you know what I mean.
‘From them it goes on up. A miner lasts maybe five years, barring falls and the like. When they get too sick we move ‘em outa the tunnels, make ‘em shift captains. A few might get old enough for foreman – I was one of them, ye see. Got my hands dirty as a lad and ‘ere I am and if that’s not freedom I don’t know what is, hey?’
This workmaster, Gorlas Vidikas silently predicted, would be dead inside three years. ‘Any trouble with the prisoners?’ he asked.
‘Nah, most don’t live long enough to cause trouble. We make ‘em work the deadlier veins. It’s the arsenic what kills ‘em, mostly –
we’re pullin’ gold out too, you know. Profit’s gone up three thousand per cent in the past year. E’en my share I’m looking at maybe buying a small estate.’
Gorlas glanced across at this odious creature. ‘You married?’
Cough, spit. ‘Not yet,’ and he grinned, ‘but you know what a rich man can buy, hey?’
‘As part of what I am sure will be an exceptional relationship,’ Gorlas said, where I profit from your work, ‘I am prepared to finance you on such an estate. A modest down payment on your part, at low interest . . .’
‘Really? Why, noble sir, that would be fine. Yessy, very fine. We can do that all right.’
And when you kick off with no heirs I acquire yet another property in the Estate District. ‘It is my pleasure,’ he said with a smile. ‘Those of us who have done well in our lives need to help each other whenever we can.’
‘My thoughts too, ‘bout all that. My thoughts exactly.’
Smoke and stenches, voices ringing through dust, oxen lowing as they strained with overloaded wagons. Gorlas Vidikas and the dying workmaster looked down on the scene, feeling very pleased with themselves.
Harllo squirmed his way out from the fissure, the hand holding the candle stretched out in front of him, and felt a calloused grip wrap round his narrow wrist. The candle was taken and then Bainisk was pulling Harllo out, surprisingly tender but that was Bainisk, a wise veteran all of sixteen years old, half his face a streak of shiny scar tissue through which peered the glittering blue of his eyes – both of which had miraculously escaped damage. He was grinning now as he helped Harllo on to his feet.
‘Well, Mole?’
‘Iron, raw and cold and wide across as three of my hands laid flat.’
‘The air?’
‘I’m here, aren’t I?’
Laughing, Bainisk slapped him on the back. ‘You’ve earned the afternoon. Back to Chuffs you go.’