Night of Knives

Her eyes flashed with anger. ‘You damned idiot. I’m trying to save your worthless hide.’ She raised a fist, opened it palm up. A small badge lay there on the pale lined flesh, metal painted and enamelled in the sigil of a stone arch over a field of flames. The badge of the Bridgeburners, the very regiment of the man downstairs, once of the Third Army. An army that Dassem, with Temper at his side, had led in Falar and the Seven Cities.

All he could think was: so it is the smell of smoke that surrounds her. A dusky scent that took on a lethal edge in the face of that small badge. ‘Aw, no,’ he groaned, ‘Hood, no. Why? What do you want?’

Footsteps sounded from the hall. Corinn leaned close. ‘I want you to do as I say because I know who you are. I recognized you. I was at Y’Ghatan. I saw the Sword broken. I know.’ She took his arm, her hand warm and hard through his shirt. ‘Stand aside tonight and it will remain our secret. Just… stand aside.’

The door swung open behind him. He turned. The man with the burn scars stood in the hall, two of the men he’d sat with behind him, crossbows levelled. The man eyed Corinn who answered his gaze with a short nod. ‘He’s unarmed,’ she told them.

All Temper could think of were her words: I know who you are. Did that mean she’d been sent? Been watching him? He was stunned, as if everything he’d hidden from this last year now crashed upon him like an undermined wall.

The man’s gaze was deceptively bland. ‘My name is Ash,’ he said, his voice soft. ‘Sergeant Ash. You, on the other hand, are my prisoner.’

They sat him at a rear booth beside Coop, opposite Trenech and old Faro Balkat. The old man appeared asleep, sagging against the wall, eyes staring sightlessly. A drop of saliva hung from purple-stained lips. Oddly, Trenech was gently propping him up with one huge hand. Temper glared at Coop, who appeared more confused than worried, then turned to watch Ash. He claimed to be a sergeant but was probably an officer. In the centre of the room he conferred with Corinn and a few others.

‘What will they do?’ Coop whispered.

‘I don’t know.’ At first Temper thought they’d come for him, that they’d finally reached his name on the long list Surly kept of her enemies. But now he wondered.

‘What happened?’ he asked Coop.

Out came a cloth and the brewer wiped his glistening jowls and forehead. ‘I blame myself,’ he stuttered. ‘I can’t believe it. They made me send away all the staff. How could I have fallen for that?’

‘For what, man. What?’

Coop blinked at him. ‘Thieves, of course. A pack of damned thieves!’

Temper choked down a laugh. He turned away, tried to catch Corinn’s eye. ‘No, Coop. I think it’s something more than that.’

Corinn met his gaze, but her face remained flat, as if she didn’t know him. He gave the ghost of a nod in response and looked away — straight into Trenech’s eyes. The hulking fellow stared at him, or rather through him. Sweat beaded his brow. His right hand clenched the table in a white-knuckled grip.

Temper had spoken with the fellow only a few times. He thought him slow-witted, like an infant in a giant’s body. Was he terrified by all this, or mindlessly enraged? Temper imagined he ought to say something reassuring but didn’t know what.

Turning his head slightly, he studied the men. The majority, some thirty or so, sat gathered towards the door, voices low as they whispered among themselves. Closer, in the flickering light of the fireplace, Ash, Corinn, and a dozen others sat together at two tables. Of these, Temper guessed the average age to be around the mid-thirties. They adjusted the straps of their armour and weapon belts. Some smoked short clay pipes. None spoke. Temper identified three Wickan tribesmen, moustached, wearing studded boiled-leather hauberks with mailed sleeves; two dark Dal Honese, one with the raised cuts of facial scarification on his cheeks, the other’s right eye a pale milky orb; one Napan, short and thick-set like a stump, his bluish-toned skin faded to a silty green; two dusky men from Seven Cities in mail shirts under long surcoats that they adjusted and belted snug; and the rest probably Quon Talian, in army-standard Malazan hauberks, one with rows of blued steel lozenges riveted over the leather. Every one of them possessed a crossbow, either at his back, on the table, or at the bench beside him. Short swords hung sheathed at belts and shoulder harness. Veterans, and probably all Bridgeburners as well.

The others were the street-sweepings and thugs Temper had identified earlier. Many carried curved short swords sheathed pommel-forward, Jakatan style, while on others Temper identified plain Talian long knives, curved Dal Honese daggers, and on two, long double-edged Untan duelling swords. They wore a mishmash of armour, the heaviest of which amounted to nothing more than boiled-leather vests or padded long shirtings.

Some pulled at their leathers, obviously uncomfortable in them. Temper looked away in disgust: city toughs, not a veteran among them. What could Ash hope to accomplish with these? And Corinn? Head down, she spoke with the sergeant. Temper eyed her hard, hoping to raise her head by the heat of his gaze. He knew she was a mage, but was she really a Bridgeburner cadre mage? He thought they’d all died during the campaigns of Seven Cities and Genabackis.

He sighed, rubbed his eyes. All the gods above and below. Seven Cities. Y’Ghatan. He could almost smell the desert’s faint cinnamon scent, feel the punishing heat. That day, that betrayal — returned like a stab to the chest, and he shuddered. He remembered how the dust had risen in choking clouds that scoured his throat and blinded vision; the hordes of robed Seven City defenders. He saw Dassem, unbelievably thrust through, supported by Hilt. He recalled the glimpses he’d caught of Dassem stumbling, holding his chest. He’d said something to Temper, some joke or farewell lost amid the screams and clash of battle.

Temper unclenched his jaws and eased his tension in a long slow exhalation. So now both he and Corinn knew of each other. What was it she wanted from him? Perhaps nothing. Perhaps this was just a warning that he should keep his head down and not interfere or she’d reveal who he was. Like she said, maybe she was just trying to save his sorry ass. Leaning forward, he tried to catch her eye across the room.

A dog’s howl cut through the stone walls like the concussion of Moranth munitions. It rose and fell, deep, resounding, the most savage and lustful call Temper had ever heard. Corinn flinched as if bitten, snapped a panicked glance to Temper, then turned away. The young toughs peered about, their eyes wide. The veterans’ hands twitched towards their crossbows.

From the corner of his eye, Temper caught a sly, disturbingly cretinous smile grow on Trenech’s fat lips. Temper swallowed to wet his own suddenly dry mouth. Here he sat, prisoner to a gang of ruthless criminals or deserters — betrayed by a woman, beside a fool, a mindless drooling wreck, and a moron the size of a bhederin — on the most locally dreaded night of this generation. Could things possibly get any worse?

Faro Balkat’s eyelids flickered open, revealing orbs rolled back to whites. As calmly as if ordering another drink he announced into the silence: ‘The Shadow Moon is risen.’

Kiska wondered if she was hallucinating, for she suddenly found herself lying at the narrow bottom of a deep defile. Streamers of cloud threaded across a ribbon of sky high above. Wind tossed hot dust in her face, soughing down the curves of the canyon. She rubbed her eyes. What had happened? Barked laughter jerked her to her feet.

A man slid down the side of the canyon using his hands and feet, digging his elbows to slow his descent. At the bottom he fell, tumbling, robes flapping around pale shins. It was the dead old man. He lurched to his feet, closed on her. Kiska ran. He yelled a word and she stopped, legs numb. He came around to stand before her, grinning like one of the Nacht statues in the gardens and alleys of Malaz. Kiska could still move her arms so she punched him across the mouth and he fell back in surprise. With that she was free and she ran on around the curve of the canyon.

Two sinuous turns later the channel ended in a cul-de-sac of stone layered like folded cloth. Snarling, Kiska threw herself at it. She scrabbled and grabbed for hand and footholds. After she had climbed only an arm’s length the rotten layers crumbled beneath her like brittle old leather, and she slid down, scraping her side and chin. She lay gasping in the dust.

‘Nothing’s as easy as it seems, is it? Would that I had kept that in mind.’

Kiska yelped and lunged to her feet, drawing her knife.

The old man sneered, brushed dirt from his robes. ‘I’m dead. Remember?’

Kiska didn’t allow the point of her blade to waver. ‘Where are we? What’s going on?’