‘Dialogue. Presupposition, yes, of the plural. One with another. Or succession of others, for this dialogue must be ongoing, indeed, eternal.
‘Do I speak of the Master of the Holds? The Master of the Deck? Perhaps – the face of the other is ever turned away – to all but K’rul himself. This is how it must be. The dialogue, then, is the feeding of power. Power unimaginable, power virtually omnipotent, unassailable . . . so long as that other’s face remains ?turned away.
‘From you. From me. From all of us.’
She stared wildly about then, at these tilted ruins, this endless scree of destruction.
‘The dialogue, however, can be sensed if not heard – such is its power. The construction of language, the agreement in principle of meaning and intent, the rules of grammar – Seren Pedac, what did you think Mockra was? If not a game of grammar? Twisting semantics, turning inference, inviting suggestion, reshaping a mind’s internal language to deceive its own senses?
‘Who am I?
‘Why, Seren Pedac, I am Mockra.’
The others were gathered round her now. She found herself on her knees, driven there by revelation – there would be bruises, an appalling softness in the tissue where it pressed against hard pavestone. She registered this, as she stared up at the others. Reproachful communication, between damaged flesh and her mind, between her senses and her brain.
She shunted those words aside, then settled into a sweet, painless calm.
As easy as that.
‘Beware, there is a deadly risk in deceiving oneself. You can blind yourself to your own damage. You can die quickly in that particular game, Seren Pedac. No, if you must . . . experiment . . . then choose another.
‘Corlos would have showed you that, had he the time with you.’
‘So – so he knows you?’
‘Not as intimately as you. There are few so . . . blessed.’
‘But you are not a god, are you?’
‘You need not ask that, Seren Pedac.’
‘You are right. But still, you are alive.’
She heard amusement in the reply. ‘Unless my greatest deceit is the announcement of my own existence! There are rules in language, and language is needed for the stating of the rules. As K’rul understood, the blood flows out, and then it returns. Weak, then enlivened. Round and round. Who then, ask yourself, who then is the enemy?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Not yet, perhaps. You will need to find out, however, Seren Pedac. Before we are through.’
She smiled. ‘You give me a purpose?’
‘Dialogue, my love, must not end.’
‘Ours? Or the other one?’
‘Your companions think you fevered now. Tell me, before we part, which you would choose. For your experiments?’
She blinked up at the half-circle of faces. Expressions of concern, mockery, curiosity, indifference. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It seems . . . cruel.’
‘Power ever is, Seren Pedac.’
‘I won’t decide, then. Not yet.’
‘So be it.’
‘Seren?’ Kettle asked. ‘What is wrong with you?’
She smiled, then pushed herself to her feet, Udinaas – to her astonishment – reaching out to help her regain her balance.
Seeing her wince, he half smiled. ‘You landed hard, Acquitor. Can you walk?’ His smile broadened. ‘Perhaps no faster than the rest of us laggards, now?’
‘You, Udinaas? No, I think not.’
He frowned. ‘Just the two of us right now,’ he said.
Her eyes flickered up to meet his, shied away, then returned again – hard. ‘You heard?’
‘Didn’t need to,’ he replied under his breath as he set the Imass walking stick into her hands. ‘Had Wither sniffing at my heels long before I left the north.’ He shrugged.
Silchas Ruin and Clip had already resumed the journey.
Leaning on the Imass spear, Seren Pedac walked alongside the ex-slave, struggling with a sudden flood of emotion for this broken man. Perhaps, true comrades after all. He and I.
‘Seren Pedac.’
‘Yes?’
‘Stop shifting the pain in your knees into mine, will you?’
Stop – what? Oh.
‘Either that or give me that damned stick back.’
‘If I say “sorry” then, well . . .’
‘You give it away. Well, say it if you mean it, and either way we’ll leave it at that.’
‘Sorry.’
His surprised glance delighted her.
The rising sea level had saturated the ground beneath the village. Anyone with half their wits would have moved to the stony, treed terrace bordering the flood plain, but the sordid remnants of the Shake dwelling here had simply levered their homes onto stilts and raised the slatted walkways, living above fetid, salty bog crawling with the white-backed crabs known as skullcaps.
Yan Tovis, Yedan Derryg and the troop of lancers reined in at Road’s End, the ferry landing and its assorted buildings on their left, a mass of felled trees rotting into the ground on their right. The air was chill, colder than it should have been this late into spring, and tendrils of lowlying fog hid most of the salt marsh beneath the stilts and bridged walkways.
Among the outbuildings of the landing – all situated on higher ground – there was a stone-walled stable fronted by a courtyard of planed logs, and beyond that, facing the village, an inn without a name.
Dismounting, Yan Tovis stood beside her horse for a long moment, her eyes closing. We have been invaded. I should be riding to every garrison on this coast – Errant fend, they must know by now. Truth delivered the hard way. The empire is at war.
But she was now Queen of the Last Blood, Queen of the Shake. Opening her weary eyes she looked upon the decrepit fishing village. My people, Errant help me. Running away had made sense back then. It made even more sense now.
Beside her, Yedan Derryg, her half-brother, loosened the strap of his visored helm, then said, ‘Twilight, what now?’
She glanced over at him, watched the rhythmic bunching of his bearded jaw. She understood the question in all its ramifications. What now? Do the Shake proclaim their independence, rising eager in the chaos of a Malazan-Letherii war? Do we gather our arms, our young whom we would call soldiers? The Shake cry out their liberty, and the sound is devoured by the shore’s rolling surf.
She sighed. ‘I was in command on the Reach, when the Edur came in their ships. We surrendered. I surrendered.’
To do otherwise would have been suicidal. Yedan should have said those words, then. For he knew the truth of them.
Instead, he seemed to chew again for a moment, before turning to squint at the flat, broad ferry. ‘That’s not slipped its mooring in some time, I think. The coast north of Awl must be flooded.’
He gives me nothing. ‘We shall make use of it, all the way out to Third Maiden Fort.’
A nod.
‘Before that, however, we must summon the witches and warlocks.’
‘You’ll find most of them huddled in the village yonder, Queen. And Pully and Skwish will have announced your return. Taloned toes are tapping the floorboards, I would wager.’
‘Go down there,’ she commanded, facing the inn. ‘Escort them back here – I will be in the tavern.’
‘And if the tavern is not big enough?’
An odd concern. She began walking towards the entrance. ‘Then they can perch on shoulders like the crows they are, Yedan.’
‘Twilight.’
She half turned.
Yedan was tightening the straps of his helm once again. ‘Do not do it.’
‘Do not do what?’
‘Send us to war, sister.’
She studied him.
But he said nothing more, and a moment later he had turned away and set off down towards the village.
She resumed her walk, while her soldiers led the mounts towards the stable, the beasts’ hoofs slipping on the slick logs of the courtyard. They had
ridden hard, these last horses drawn from a virtually empty garrison fort just north of Tulamesh – reports of bandits had sent the squads into the countryside and they’d yet to return. Yan Tovis believed they would never do so.
At the entranceway she paused, looking down at the slab of stone beneath her boots, on which were carved Shake runes.
‘This Raised Stone honours Teyan Atovis, Rise, who was claimed by the Shore 1113th Year of the Isle. Slain by the Letherii for Debts Unremitted.’
Yan Tovis grunted. One of her kin, no less, dead a thousand years now. ‘Well, Teyan,’ she muttered, ‘you died of drink, and now your stone straddles the threshold of a tavern.’ True, some list of mysterious, crushing debts had invited his ignoble fall to alcohol and misery, but this grand commemoration had taken a slanted view on the hands guiding the man’s fate. And now . . . Brullyg would be Rise. Will you wear the crown as well as Teyan did?
She pushed open the door and strode inside.
The low-ceilinged room was crowded, every face turned to her.
A familiar figure pushed into view, her face a mass of wrinkles twisted into a half-smile.
‘Pully,’ Twilight said, nodding. ‘I have just sent the Watch down to the village to find you.’
‘Be well he’ll find Skwish and a score others. They be well weaving cob to web on th’ close sea beyond the shore, Queen, an’ all the truths writ there. Strangers—’
‘I know,’ Yan Tovis interjected, looking past the old hag and scanning the other witches and warlocks, the Shoulderfolk of the Old Ways. Their eyes glittered in the smoky gloom, and Twilight could now smell these Shake elders – half-unravelled damp wool and patchy sealskin, fish-oil and rank sweat, the breath coming from mouths dark with sickened gums or rotting teeth.
If there was a proprietor to this tavern he or she had fled. Casks had been broached and tankards filled with pungent ale. A huge pot of fish soup steamed on the centre hearth and there were countless gourd-shell bowls scattered on the tables. Large rats waddled about on the filthy floor.
Far more witches than warlocks, she noted. This had been a discernible trend among the demon-kissed – fewer and fewer males born bearing the accepted number of traits; most were far too demonic. More than two hundred of the Shoulderfolk. Gathered here. ‘Queen,’ Pully ventured, ducking her head. ‘Cob to web, all of Shake blood know that you now rule. Barring them that’s on the Isle, who only know that your mother’s dead.’
‘So Brullyg is there, anticipating . . .’
‘Aye, Twilight, that be well he will be Rise, King of the Shake.’
Errant take me. ‘We must sail to the Isle.’
A murmur of agreement amidst the eager quaffing of ale.
‘You intend, this night,’ Yan Tovis said, ‘a ritual.’
‘We are loosening the chains as they say, Queen. There are nets be strung across the path of the world, t’see what we catch.’
‘No.’
Pully’s black eyes narrowed. ‘What’s that?’
‘No. There will be no ritual tonight. Nor tomorrow night, nor the next. Not until we are on the Isle, and perhaps not even then.’
Not a sound in the tavern now.
Pully opened her mouth, shut it, then opened it again.
‘Queen, the shore be alive wi’ voices as they say and the words they are for us. These – these they be the Old Ways, our ways—’
‘And my mother was in the habit of looking away, yes. But I am not.’ She lifted her head and scanned once more the array of faces, seeing the shock, the anger, the growing malice. ‘The Old Ways failed us. Then and now. Your ways,’ she told them in a hard voice, ‘have failed us all. I am Queen. Twilight on the shore. At my side in my rule is the Watch. Brullyg would be Rise – that remains to be seen, for your proclamation is not cause enough, not even close. Rise is chosen by all the Shake. All.’
‘Do not mar us, Queen.’ Pully’s smile was gone. Her face was a mask of venom.
Yan Tovis snorted. ‘Will you send a curse my way, old woman? Do not even think it. I mean to see my people survive, through all that will happen. From all of you, I will need healing, I will need blessing. You rule no longer – no, do not speak to me of my mother. I know better than any of you the depths of her surrender. I am Queen. Obey me.’
They were not happy. They had been the true power for so long – if that pathetic curse-weaving in the shadows could be called power – and Yan Tovis knew that this struggle had but just begun, for all their apparent acquiescence. They will begin planning my downfall. It is to be expected.
Yedan Derryg, never mind watching the shore. You must now watch my back.
Fiddler opened his eyes. Dusk had just begun to settle. Groaning, he rolled onto his back. Too many years of sleeping on hard, cold ground; too many years of a tattered rain cape for a mattress, a single blanket of coarse wool for cover. At least now he was sleeping through the day, easing his old bones with the sun’s warmth.
Sitting up, he looked round the glade. Huddled figures on all sides. Just beyond them was Koryk, the sleep’s last watch, sitting on a tree stump. Aye, woodcutters in this forest.
Not that we’ve seen any.
Three nights since the landing. Ever moving eastward, inland. A strange empire, this. Roads and tracks and the occasional farmstead, barely a handful of towns on the coast that we saw. And where in Hood’s name are these Tiste Edur?
Fiddler climbed to his feet, arching his back to work out the aches and twinges. He’d wanted to be a soldier named Strings, here among the Bonehunters, a different man, a new man. But that hadn’t worked so well. The conceit had fooled no-one. Even worse, he could not convince himself that he had begun anew, that the legacy of past campaigns could be put aside. A life don’t work that way. Dammit. He trudged over to Koryk.
The Seti half-blood glanced up. ‘Some damned war we got ourselves here, Sergeant. I’d even take one of Smiles’s knives in the leg just to get us the smell of blood. Let’s forget these damned Edur and go ahead and start killing Letherii.’
‘Farmers and swineherds, Koryk? We need them on our side, remember?’
‘So far there ain’t been enough of them to muster a damned squad. Least we should show ourselves—’
‘Not yet. Besides, it’s probably been just bad luck we haven’t met the enemy yet. I’d wager other squads have already been in a scrap or two.’
Koryk grunted. ‘I doubt it. All it takes is just one squad to kick the nest and these woods should be swarming. They ain’t.’
Fiddler had nothing to say to that. He scratched himself, then turned away. ‘Shut your eyes for a time now, soldier.
We’ll wake you when breakfast’s ready.’
Do your complainin’ now, Koryk, because when this lets loose we’ll look back on sunsets like this one like it was idyllic paradise. Still, how many times could he make that promise? The legacy of the Bonehunters thus far was nothing to sing songs about. Even Y’Ghatan had been a mess, with them whistling a song while they walked right into a trap. It galled him still, that one. He should have smelled trouble. Same for Gesler – aye, we let them down that day. Badly.
Malaz City had been worse. True, weapons had been drawn. There’d even been a shield-line for a few squads of marines. Against Malazans. An undisciplined mob of our own people. Somehow, somewhere, this army needed to fight for real.
The Adjunct had thrown them onto this coast, like a handful of ticks onto a dog’s back. Sooner or later the beast was going to scratch.
As the others wakened to the coming of night, Fiddler walked over to his pack. Stood studying it for a time. The Deck was in there, waiting. And he was sorely tempted. Just to get a taste of what was coming. Don’t be a fool, Fid. Remember Tattersail. Remember all the good it did her.
‘Bad idea, Sergeant.’
Fiddler glanced over, scowled. ‘Stop reading my mind, Bottle. You’re not as good at it as you think.’
‘You’re like a man who’s sworn off drink but carries a fla
sk in his pouch.’
‘Enough of that, soldier.’
Bottle shrugged, looked round. ‘Where’s Gesler gone?’
‘Probably off fertilizing the trees.’
‘Maybe,’ Bottle said, sounding unconvinced. ‘It’s just that I woke up earlier, and didn’t see him then either.’
Gods below. Waving at midges, Fiddler walked over to the far end of the glade, where the other squad was positioned. He saw Stormy standing like a sleep-addled bear – his red hair and beard a wild mass of twig-filled tangles – repeatedly kicking the side of a loudly snoring Shortnose.
‘Stormy,’ Fiddler called out softly, ‘where’s your sergeant gone to?’
‘No idea,’ the huge man replied. ‘He had last watch on this side, though. Hey, Fid, she wouldn’t have burned the Silanda, would she?’
‘Of course not. Listen, if Gesler ain’t back soon you’re going to have to go looking for him.’
Stormy’s small porcine eyes blinked at him. ‘Might be he’s lost? I didn’t think of that.’
‘Never mind that dimwitted act, Corporal.’
‘Yeah. That Koryk you got, he any good at tracking?’
‘No. Damned near useless in fact, although don’t say that to his face. Bottle—’
‘Oh, him. That one gives me the creeps, Fid. Masturbates like I pick my nose. Now sure, soldiers will do that, but—’
‘He says it’s not him.’
‘Well, if Smiles wants to reach in under the covers—’
‘Smiles? What are you going on about, Stormy?’
‘I mean—’
‘Look, Bottle’s haunted by a damned ghost of some kind – Quick Ben confirmed it, so stop giving me that look. Anyway, that ghost’s, uh, female, and she likes him way too much—’
‘Mages are sick, Fid.’
‘Not a relevant point here, Stormy.’
‘So you say,’ the corporal said, shaking himself then turning away. ‘ “Not a relevant point here,” ‘ he mimicked under his breath.