The sergeant was now facing them, his expression unreadable.
Tattersail wiped sweat from her brow with a grimy sleeve. «It didn't work, then. You failed to do whatever it was you were trying to do.»
Quick Ben climbed to his feet. Kalam picked up the wrapped object and stepped close to Tattersail. The assassin's eyes were dark, penetrating as they searched her face.
Quick Ben spoke. «Hold on to it, Sorceress. Take it back to your tent and unwrap it there. Above all, don't let Tayschrenn see it.»
Tattersail scowled. «What? just like that?» Her gaze fell on the object.
«I don't even know what I'd be accepting. Whatever it is, I don't like it.»
The girl spoke directly behind her in a voice that was sharp and accusing. «I don't know what you've done, Wizard. I felt you keeping me away. That was unkind.»
Tattersail faced the girl, then glanced back at Quick Ben. What is all this? The black man's expression was glacial, but she saw a flicker around his eyes. Looked like fear.
Whiskeyjack rounded on the girl at her words. «You got something to say about all this, recruit?» His tone was tight.
The girl's dark eyes slid to her sergeant. She shrugged, then walked away.
Kalam offered the object to Tattersail. «Answers,» he said quietly, in a north Seven Cities accent, melodic and round. «We all need answers, Sorceress. The High Mage killed your comrades. Look at us, we're all that's left of the Bridgeburners. Answers aren't easily: attained. Will you pay the price?»
With a final glance at Hairlock's lifeless body-so brutally torn apart-and the lifeless stare of his eyes, she accepted the object. It felt light in her hands. Whatever was within the hide cocoon was slight in size; parts of it moved and against her grip she felt knobs and shafts of something hard. She stared at the assassin's bearish face. «I want,» she said slowly, «to see Tayschrenn get what he deserves.»
«Then we're in agreement,» Kalam said, smiling. «This is where it starts.»
Tattersail felt her stomach jump at that smile. Woman, what's got into you? She sighed. «Done.» As she turned away to descend the slope and make her way back to the main camp, she caught the girl's eye. A chill rippled through her. The sorceress stopped. «You, recruit,» she called. «What's your name?»
The girl smiled as if at a private joke. «Sorry.»
Tattersail grunted. It figured. She tucked the package under an arm and staggered down the slope.
Sergeant Whiskeyjack kicked at a helmet and watched as it tumbled and bounced down the hillside. He spun and glared at Quick Ben. «It's done?»
The wizard's eyes darted to Sorry, then he nodded.
«You will draw unwarranted attention on our squad,» the young girl told Whiskeyjack. «High Mage Tayschrenn will notice.»
The sergeant raised an eyebrow. «Unwarranted attention? What the hell does that mean?»
Sorry made no reply.
Whiskeyjack bit back sharp words. What had Fiddler called her? An uncanny bitch. He'd said it to her face and she'd just stared him down with those dead, stony eyes. As much as he hated to admit it, Whiskeyjack shared the sapper's crude assessment. What made things even more disturbing, this fifteen-year-old girl had Quick Ben scared half out of his wits, and the wizard didn't want to talk about it. What had the Empire sent him?
His gaze swung back to Tattersail. She was crossing the killing field below. The ravens rose screaming from her path, and remained circling overhead, their caws uneasy and frightened. The sergeant felt Kalam's solid presence at his side.
«Hood's Breath,» Whiskeyjack muttered. «That sorceress seems an unholy terror as far as those birds are concerned.»
«Not her,» Kalam said. «It's what she's carrying.»
Whiskeyjack scratched his beard, his eyes narrowing. «This stinks. You sure it's necessary?»
Kalam shrugged.
«Whiskeyjack,» Quick Ben said, behind them, «they kept us in the tunnels. Do you think the High Mage couldn't have guessed what would happen?»
The sergeant faced his wizard. A dozen paces beyond stood Sorry, well within hearing range. Whiskeyjack scowled at her, but said nothing.
After a moment of heavy silence, the sergeant turned his attention to the city. The last of the Moranth legions was marching beneath the West Gate's arch. Columns of black smoke rose from behind the battered, scarred walls. He knew something of the history of grim enmity between the Moranth and the citizens of the once Free City of Pale. Contested trade routes, two mercantile powers at each other's throat. And Pale won more often than not. At long last it seemed that the black-armoured warriors from beyond the western mountains, whose faces remained hidden behind the chitinous visors on their helms and who spoke in clicks and buzzes, were evening the score. Faintly, beyond the cries of carrion birds, came the wail of men, women and children dying beneath the sword.
«Sounds like the Empress is keeping her word with the Moranth,» Quick Ben said quietly. «An hour of slaughter. I didn't think Dujek-»
«Dujek knows his orders,» Whiskeyjack cut in. «And there's a High Mage taloned on his shoulder.»
«An hour,» Kalam repeated. «Then we clean up the mess.»
«Not our squad,» Whiskeyjack said. «We've received new orders.»
The two men stared at their sergeant.
«And you still need convincing?» Quick Ben demanded. «They're driving us into the ground. They mean to.»
«Enough!» Whiskeyjack barked. «Not now. Kalam, find Fiddler. We need resupply from the Moranth. Round up the rest, Quick, and take Sorry with you. Join me outside the High Fist's tent in an hour.»
«And you?» Quick Ben asked. «What are you going to do?»
The sergeant heard an ill-concealed yearning in the wizard's voice. The man needed a direction, or maybe confirmation that they were doing the right thing. A little late for that. Even so, Whiskeyjack felt a pang of regret-he couldn't give what Quick Ben wanted the most. He couldn't tell him that things would turn out for the best. He sank down on his haunches, his eyes on Pale. «What am I going to do? I'm going to do some thinking, Quick Ben. I've been listening to you and Kalam, to Mallet and Fiddler, even Trotts has been jawing in my ear. Well, now it's my turn. So leave me be, Wizard, and take that damn girl with you.»
Quick Ben flinched, seeming to withdraw. Something in Whiskeyjack's words had made him very unhappy-or maybe everything.
The sergeant was too tired to worry about it. He had their new assignment to think over. Had he been a religious man, Whiskeyjack would have let blood in Hood's Bowl, calling upon the shades of his ancestors. As much as he hated to admit it, he shared the feeling among his squad: someone in the Empire wanted the Bridgeburners dead.
Pale was behind them now, the nightmare nothing but the taste of ashes in his mouth. Ahead lay their next destination: the legendary city of Darujhistan. Whiskeyjack had a premonition that a new nightmare was about to begin.
Down in the camp just beyond the last crest of denuded hills, horsedrawn carts loaded with wounded soldiers crowded the narrow aisles between the tent rows. All the precise order of the Malazan encampment had disintegrated, and the air was febrile with soldiers screaming their pain, giving voice to horror.
Tattersail threaded her way around the dazed survivors, stepping across puddles of blood in the wagon-ruts, her eyes lingering on an obscene pile of amputated limbs outside the cutter tents. From the massive sprawl of the camp followers» slum of tents and shelters came a wailing dirge-a broken chorus of thousands of voices, the sound a chilling reminder that war was always a thing of grief.
In some military headquarters back in the Empire's capital of Unta, three thousand leagues distant, an anonymous aide would paint a red stroke across the 2nd Army on the active list, and then write in fine script beside it: Pale, late winter, the 1163rd Year of Burn's Sleep. Thus would the death of nine thousand men and women be noted. And then forgotten.
Tattersail grimaced. Some of us won't forget. The Bridgeburners harboured some frightening suspicions. The thought of challenging Tayschrenn in a direct confrontation appealed to her sense of outrage and-if the High Mage had killed Calot-her feeling of betrayal. But she knew that her emotions had a way of running away with her. A sorcery duel with the Empire's High Mage would buy her a quick passage to Hood's Gate. Self-righteous wrath had planted more corpses in the around than an empire could lav claim to, and as Calot used to say:
Shake your fist all you want but dead is dead. She'd witnessed all too many scenes of death since she'd first joined the ranks of the Malazan Empire, but at least they couldn't be laid squarely at her feet. That was the difference, and it had been enough for a long time. Not as I once was. I've spent twenty years washing the blood from my hands. Right now, however, the scene that rose again and again behind her eyes was the empty armour on the hilltop, and it gnawed at her heart. Those men and women had been running to her, looking for protection against the horrors of the plain below. It had been a desperate act, a fatal one, but she understood it. Tayschrenn didn't care about them, but she did. She was one of their own. In past battles they'd fought like rabid dogs to keep enemy legions from killing her. This time, them instead of shielding my own hide? She'd been surviving on instinct back then, and her instincts had had nothing to do with altruism. Those it was a mage war. Her territory. Favours were traded in the 2nd. It's what kept everyone alive, and it was what had made the 2nd a legion of legend. Those soldiers had expectations, and they had the right to them.
They'd come to her for salvation. And they died for it.
And if I had sacrificed myself then? Cast my Warren's defences on to Being alive, Tattersail concluded as she approached her tent, isn't the same as feeling good about it. She entered her tent and closed the flap behind her, then stood surveying her worldly possessions. Scant few, after two hundred and nineteen years of life. The oak chest containing her book of Thyr sorcery remained sealed by warding spells; the small collection of alchemical devices lay scattered on the tabletop beside her cot, like a child's toys abandoned in mid-game.
Amid the clutter sat her Deck of Dragons. Her gaze lingered on the reading cards before continuing its round. Everything looked different now, as if the chest, the alchemy, and her clothes all belonged to someone else: someone younger, someone still possessing a shred of vanity.
Only the Deck-the Fatid-called out to her like an old friend.
Tattersail walked over to stand before it. With an absent gesture she set down the package given her by Kalam, then pulled out a stool from under the table. Sitting down, she reached for the Deck. She hesitated.
It had been months. Something had kept her away. Maybe Calot's death could have been foretold, and maybe that suspicion had been pacing in the darkness of her thoughts all this time. Pain and fear had been shaping her soul all her life, but her time with Calot had been another kind of shaping, something light, happy, pleasantly floating.
She'd called it mere diversion.
«How's that for wilful denial?» She heard the bitterness in her tone and hated herself for it. Her old demons were back, laughing at the death of her illusions. You refused the Deck once before, the night before Mock's throat was opened, the night before Dancer and the man who would one day rule an Empire stole into your master's-your lover's-Hold. Would you deny that a pattern exists, woman?
Her vision blurry with memories she'd thought buried for ever, she looked down at the Deck, blinking rapidly. «Do I want you to talk to me, old friend? Do I need your reminders, your wry confirmation that faith is for fools?»
A motion caught the corner of her eye. Whatever was inside the bound hide had moved. Lumps rose here and there, pushing against the seams.
Tattersail stared. Then, her breath catching, she reached to it and set it in front of her. She withdrew a small dagger from her belt and began to cut the seams. The object within went still, as if awaiting the result of her efforts. She peeled back a sliced flap of hide.
«Sail,» said a familiar voice.
Her eyes widened as a wooden marionette, wearing bright yellow silk clothing, climbed out of the bag. Painted on its round face were features she recognized.
«Hairlock.»
