«The Emperor was insane,» Bellurdan said. «Else he would have protected himself better.»
Tattersail frowned at that. The Thelomen had a point. Like she'd just said, that old man wasn't a fool. So what had happened? «I'm sorry. We must talk later. The High Mage has summoned me. Bellurdan, will we talk later?»
The giant nodded. «As you wish. Soon I will depart to raise Nightchill's barrow. Far out on the Rhivi Plain, I think.»
Tattersail glanced back up the aisle. The marine still stood there, shifting from one foot to the other. «Bellurdan, would you mind if I cast a sealing spell on her remains?»
His eyes clouded and he looked down at the sack. «The guards are unhappy, it's true.» He thought for a moment, then said, «Yes, Tattersail. You may do that.»
«It smells bad from here to the throne,» Kalam said, his scarred face twisted with worry. He sat crouched on his haunches, absently scratching the lines of a web on the ground with his dagger, then looked up at his sergeant.
Whiskeyjack eyed Pale's stained walls, the muscles of his jaw bunching beneath his beard. «The last time I stood on this hill,» he said, his gaze narrowing, «it was crowded with armour. And a mage and a half.» He was silent for a time, then he sighed. «Go on, Corporal.»
Kalam nodded. «I pulled some old threads,» he said, squinting against the harsh morning light. «Somebody high up has us marked. Could be the court itself, or maybe the nobility-there's rumours they're back at it behind the scenes.» He grimaced. «And now we've got some new captain from Unta eager to get our throats cut. Four captains in the last three years, not one worth his weight in salt.»
Quick Ben stood ten feet away, at the hill's crest, his arms crossed. He now spoke. «You heard the plan. Come on, Whiskeyjack. That man slid straight out of the palace and into our laps on a stream of-»
«Quiet,» Whiskeyjack muttered. «I'm thinking.»
Kalam and Quick Ben exchanged glances.
A long minute passed. On the road below troop wagons rattled in the ruts leading into the city. Remnants of the 5th and 6th Armies, already battered, almost broken, by Caladan Brood and the Crimson Guard.
Whiskeyjack shook his head. The only force intact was the Moranth, they seemed determined to field only the Black regiments, using the Gr for lifts and drops-and where the hell was the Gold he'd been hearing much about? Damn those unhuman bastards anyway. Pale's gutters ran red from their hour of retribution. Once the burial shifts were through there'd be a few more hills outside the city's walls. Big ones.
There would be nothing to mark thirteen hundred dead Bridgeburners though. The worms didn't need to travel far to feast on those bodies. What chilled the sergeant to his bones was the fact that, apart from a few survivors, nobody had made a serious effort to save them. Some high ranking officer had delivered Tayschrenn's commiserations on those lost in the line of duty, then had unloaded a wagonload of tripe about heroism and sacrifice. His audience of thirty-nine stone-faced soldiers looked on without a word. The officer was found dead in his room hours later, expertly garotted. The mood was bad-nobody in regiment would have even thought of something so ugly five years ago. But now they didn't blink at the news.
Garotte-sounds like Claw work. Kalam had suggested it was a setup, an elaborate frame to discredit what was left of the Bridgeburners. Whiskeyjack was sceptical.
He tried to clear his thoughts. If there was a pattern it would be a simple one, simple enough to pass by unnoticed. But exhaustion see in like a thick haze behind his eyes. He took a deep lungful of the morning air. «The new recruit?» he asked.
Kalam rose from his haunches with a grunt. A faraway and longlook entered his eyes. «Maybe,» he said finally. «Pretty young for a Claw though.»
«I never believed in pure evil before Sorry showed up,» Quick Ben said. «But you're right, she's awfully young. How long are they trained before they're sent out?»
Kalam shrugged uneasily. «Fifteen years minimum. Mind you, they them young. Five or six.»
«Could be magery involved, making her look younger than she is.» Quick Ben said. «High-level stuff, but within Tayschrenn's abilities.»
«Seems too obvious,» Whiskeyjack muttered. «Call it bad upbringing.» Quick Ben snorted. «Don't tell me you believe that, Whiskeyjack.»
The sergeant's face tightened. «The subject's closed on Sorry. And don't tell me what I think, Wizard.» He faced Kalam. «All right. You think Empire's into killing its own these days. You think Laseen's cleaning house, maybe? Or someone close to her? Getting rid of certain people. Fine. Tell me why.»
«The old guard,» Kalam replied immediately. «Everyone still loyal to Emperor's memory.»
«Doesn't wash,» Whiskeyjack said. «We're all dying off anyway. We don't need Laseen's help. Apart from Dujek there's not a man in this army here who even knows the Emperor's name, and nobody'd give a damn in any case. He's dead. Long live the Empress.»
«She ain't got the patience to wait it out,» Quick Ben said.
Kalam nodded agreement. «She's losing momentum as it is. Things used to be better-it's that memory she wants dead.»
«Hairlock's our snake in the hole,» Quick Ben said with a sharp nod.
«It'll work, Whiskeyjack. I know what I'm doing on this one.»
«We do it the way the Emperor would have,» Kalam added. «We turn the game. We do our own house-cleaning.»
Whiskeyjack raised a hand. «All right. Now be quiet. You're both sounding too damn rehearsed.» He paused. «It's a theory. A complicated one. Who's in the know and who isn't?» He scowled at Quick Ben's expression. «Right, that's Hairlock's task. But what happens when you come face to face with someone big, powerful and mean?»
«Like Tayschrenn?» The Wizard grinned.
«Right. I'm sure you've got an answer. Let's see if I can work it out myself. You look for someone even nastier. You make a deal and you set things up, and if we're quick enough we'll come out smelling of roses. Am I close, Wizard?»
Kalam snorted his amusement.
Quick Ben looked away. «Back in the Seven Cities, before the Empire showed up-»
«Back in the Seven Cities is back in the Seven Cities,» Whiskeyjack said. «Hell, I led the company chasing you across the desert, remember? I know how you work, Quick. And I know you're damn good at this. But I also recall that you were the only one of your cabal to come out alive back then. And this time?»
The wizard seemed hurt by Whiskeyjack's words. His lips thinned to a straight line.
The sergeant sighed. «All right. We go with it. Start things rolling. And pull that sorceress all the way in. We'll need her if Hairlock breaks his chains.»
«And Sorry?» Kalam asked.
Whiskeyjack hesitated. He knew the question behind that question.
Quick Ben was the squad's brains, but Kalam was their killer. Both made him uneasy with their single-minded devotion to their respective talents.
«Leave her alone,» he said at last. «For now.»
Kalam and Quick Ben sighed, sharing a grin behind their sergeant's back.
«Just don't get cocky,» Whiskeyjack said drily.
The grins faded.
The sergeant's gaze returned to the wagons entering the city. Two riders approached. «All right,» he said. «Mount up. Here comes our reception committee.» The riders were from his squad, Fiddler and Sorry.
«You think the new captain's arrived?» Kalam asked, as he climbed into his saddle. His roan mare turned her head and snapped at him. He growled in return. A moment later the two long-time companions settled down into their mutual mistrust.
Whiskeyjack looked on, amused. «Probably. Let's head down to them. Anybody up on the wall watching us might be getting antsy.» Then his humour fell away. They had, indeed, just turned the game. And the timing couldn't have been worse. He knew the full extent of their next mission, and in that he knew more than either Quick Ben or Kalam.
There was no point in complicating things even further, though. They'll find out soon enough.
Tattersail stood half a dozen feet behind High Mage Tayschrenn. The Malazan banners snapped in the wind, the spars creaking above the smoke-stained turret, but here in the shelter of the wall the air was calm.
On the western horizon across from her rose the Moranth Mountains, reaching a mangled arm northward to Genabaris. As the range swept southward it joined the Tahlyn in a jagged line stretching a thousand leagues into the east. Off to her right lay the flat yellow-grassed Rhivi Plain.
Tayschrenn leaned on a merlon looking down on the wagons rolling into the city. From below rose the groans of oxen and shouting soldiers.
The High Mage hadn't moved or said a word in some minutes. Off to his left waited a small wood table, its surface scarred and pitted and crowded with runes cut deep into the oak. Peculiar dark stains blotted the surface here and there.
Knots of tension throbbed in Tattersail's shoulders. Meeting Bellurdan had shaken her, and she didn't feel up to what was to come.
«Bridgeburners,» the High Mage muttered.
Startled, the sorceress frowned, then stepped up to stand beside Tayschrenn. Descending from a hill off to the right, a hill she knew intimately, rode a party of soldiers. Even from this distance she recognized four of them: Quick Ben, Kalam, Whiskeyjack and that recruit, Sorry.
The fifth rider was a short, wiry man, who had sapper written all over him. «Oh?» she said, feigning lack of interest.
«Whiskeyjack's squad,» Tayschrenn said. He turned his full gaze on the sorceress. «The same squad you spoke with immediately following the Moon's retreat.» The High Mage smiled, then clapped Tattersail's shoulder. «Come. I require a Reading. Let's begin.» He walked over to stand before the table. «Oponn's strands are twisting a peculiar maze, the influence snares me again and again.» He turned his back to the wall and sat down on a crenel, then looked up. «Tattersail,» he said soberly, «in matters of Empire, I am the servant of the Empress.»
Tattersail. recalled their argument at the debriefing. Nothing had been resolved. «Perhaps I should take my complaints to her, then.»
Tayschrenn's brows rose. «I take that as sarcastic.»
«You do?»
The High Mage said, stiffly, «I do, and be thankful for it, woman.»
Tattersail pulled out her Deck and held it against her stomach, running her fingers over the top card. Cool, a feeling of great weight and darkness. She set the Deck in the table's centre, then lowered her bulk slowly into a kneeling position. Her gaze locked with Tayschrenn's. «Shall we begin?»
«Tell me of the Spinning Coin.»
Tattersail's breath caught. She could not move.
«First card,» Tayschrenn commanded.
With an effort she expelled the air from her lungs in a hissing sigh.
Damn him, she thought. An echo of laughter sounded in her head, and she realized that someone, something, had opened the way. An Ascendant was reaching through her, its presence cool and amused, almost fickle. Her eyes shut of their own accord, and she reached for the first card. She flipped it almost haphazardly to her right. Eyes still closed, she felt herself smile. «An unaligned card: Orb. Judgement and true sight.» The second card she tossed to the left side of the field. «Virgin, High House Death. Here scarred and blindfolded, with blood on her hands.» Faintly, as if from a great distance away, came the sound of horses, thundering closer, now beneath her, as if the earth had swallowed them.
Then the sound rose anew, behind her. She felt herself nod. The recruit.
