edge of his knife just under one ear. The fellow screeched like a hoarse bird, flailed uselessly at Kyle’s arms. Kyle turned a glance on Kargin.
The big man let out a great belly-laugh and took Bor ’eth from Kyle’s hands. He held him in a tight hug. ‘But I won’t let him do that this time, Bor ’eth! Why would I do such a thing to a paying customer, right?’ The old fellow was fairly sobbing and clung to Kargin as if he’d just saved his life. ‘No… that’s what I’ll do to you if you don’t bring the money to Best tomorrow. This is what I do to those who are late.’ He nodded to the thugs and, grinning, they pulled Bor ’eth from him.
‘What…?’ the old man gasped.
‘Break his hand.’
Laughing, the lads hefted their truncheons, and while one held the squirming man’s hand on a counter the other two raised the weapons.
‘No… please… In the name of Soliel…’
‘I am being merciful, Bor ’eth.’ He gave a curt nod. One truncheon whistled down to smack the counter. The old man shrieked. The second truncheon swung and landed with a wet bang. Bor ’eth went limp in the thug’s arms. The lad shook him until he roused. ‘Again,’ Kargin said. The batons rose.
Kyle examined the goblets while the thugs shattered the merchant’s hand. All this pain and trouble over coins; he’d grown up without any on open plains where his people hunted for the food they needed and made the tools they used. They had some coins and other bits and pieces they kept for trade, but other than that he’d grown up without the need. From what he’d seen in his travels since, his people had been better off without this one particular advance of civilization. And if someone pressed such a need upon him, he’d just walk away.
Kargin raised a hand. Kyle glanced over; released, the old man slid down to sit rocking back and forth, cradling the bloody broken thing that was his hand to his chest. Kargin motioned to the door. Kyle set the rose-hued cut-crystal goblet back in place on its shelf.
Out on the street, as they walked back to Best’s, the night air cold and crisp after a light rain, one of the young thugs sidled up to Kyle and grinned, exposing his broken uneven teeth. ‘Did you see that?’ he asked.
‘See what?’
‘Pissed himself, the old guy. Wet those expensive robes of his,’ and he laughed.
‘Congratulations. You beat an old guy into pissing himself.’
The grin fell away. The young tough tossed his long hair from his pimply face. ‘You ever do any of that stuff Kargin says — cuttin’ ears and such?’
Kyle set his mouth in a leer and leaned close. ‘All the fucking time.’
Close to the front of Best’s inn, Kargin stopped and waved everyone on. ‘Too bad about your friend,’ he said to Kyle.
Kyle stopped, untied the string of fetid trophies and slowly lowered it into its bag. ‘What do you mean?’
‘That fellow you used to chum with, the other foreigner. The merchant houses he got to put up the money for his place… they foreclosed on him. Closed him up tight.’
Cinching the pouch, Kyle glanced over. ‘Really?’
‘Uh-huh. When I heard the news, I wondered… what would you have done if it was his place we went to visit tonight?’
Kyle hefted the feather-light pouch. ‘Nothing. I wouldn’t have had to do anything because he would have scattered you lot like geese.’
The chief enforcer for Best, the man who controlled most of the blackmailing and extortion in the city, seemed to peer down sleepily at Kyle over the great bulk of his chest. His nostrils flared as he snorted. ‘Some kinda hot ex-mercenary you’ve turned out to be. I ain’t seen fuck-all that impresses from you yet.’
‘And you won’t. Here,’ Kyle flicked the pouch at him, ‘keep your ears on. See you around.’
‘I don’t think so,’ the man called after him. ‘He’d be in prison right now ’cept someone bought his debts — and that someone ain’t from around here…’
The man’s sly rumbling laughter followed Kyle down the darkened street.
Some Falaran legal documents, all ribboned and weighted by wax seals, hung nailed to the door of Orjin’s school. Kyle tried the door and found it unlocked. Just inside the tunnel he stopped to study the empty practice floor; the sand shone in the moonlight like glittering quicksilver.
‘Orjin?’ he hissed. ‘Orjin?’ Movement from the shadows. A figure staggered into the pale light, sword held slack and low in one hand. Great Harrier preserve us! What’s happened? He ran to him, grunted as the man’s extraordinary weight sagged on him. ‘What’s happened? Are you wounded?’
Something banged from Kyle’s head, sloshing. He snatched an earthenware jug from Orjin’s hand. ‘What’s this?’
‘No more of your talk!’ the man bellowed hotly in his ear. ‘Keep your contracts and writs! Dare to face me like a man, Dead Poliel take you!’
‘Oh for Hood’s sake!’ Kyle pushed him away. He should’ve smelled it, but the last months spent sitting in a common room had blunted his nose.
Tottering, Orjin swung the slim Darujhistan epee, almost cutting Kyle. ‘Come on! Arm yourself! We’ll settle this the old-fashioned way!’ He crossed to a weapon rack and heaved it over in a ringing clatter of ironmongery. ‘Take your pick! As you see — there’s plenty!’
‘Orjin… Greymane…’
The man blinked, weaving. ‘What’s that? Greymane? Greymane?’ His head sank chin to chest and for a time he seemed to study all the fallen swords glowing silver in the moonlight. ‘That man is dead.’
‘Orjin… I heard someone’s coming. Someone from elsewhere — that can only mean the Malazans. They’ve found you.’ He stepped closer. ‘Now come on. Let’s go. There’s nothing for us here. I hate this place. These people would bend over for donkeys if they had gold. Let’s go.’
Orjin breathed out a noisy wet sigh and eased himself down amid the blades. He hung his head. His long unkempt mane shone just as bright as the tangled iron. ‘No. I’m finished. Let them come.’ He waved broadly to encompass the surroundings. ‘This was always my dream, you know, Kyle. Retire. Open a fighting college. Teach something of what I’ve learned.’ At random, he picked up a longsword, a heavy northern Genabackan weapon; sighted down the blade. ‘But no one really wants to know what a bellyful of war teaches.’
Looking down at the man, Kyle considered trying to wrench him up but didn’t think he’d be able to budge his bulk. He knelt to his haunches. ‘Listen, Orjin. Hood take these merchants and gangsters. They’re no different from each other. Let’s just go! Hire on to the first ship we come to in the harbour — who cares where it’s headed.’
‘No, no. That’s a young man’s game. I’m too old. You go.’
‘No one’s after me.’
‘Then what are you doing here?’
‘I’m here because-’ A small sound, the scuff of a foot on sand, turned Kyle’s head. Four figures emerged from the gloom of the entrance tunnel. All were dressed alike in dark leathers and bore two blades at their sides, one long, one short. Kyle straightened, taking up the nearest weapon as he did so, a sturdy heavy-bladed cutlass. ‘Who are you?’
‘Whoever you are,’ one answered, waving him away, ‘stand aside.’
The accent was not Malazan. It didn’t resemble any accent Kyle had ever heard in all his travels. At the voice, however, Orjin’s head snapped up, and he said to Kyle, his words suddenly stone-cold sober, ‘Go, now. Leave us.’
‘Go? Who are these guys? Hired killers?’
‘Killers, yes.’ Orjin stood, gathering up a long slim blade in each hand. ‘But not for gold or treasure — hey, Cullel?’ A gleaming bright hungry grin from the spokesman answered Orjin. ‘You kill for something else, don’t you? For religious faith alone.’
‘We exterminate heretics,’ Cullel assented, his voice a low purr. The four slowly spread out, walking the perimeter of the practice floor.
‘Where in the Abyss are these lunatics from?’ Kyle demanded.
‘They are Korelri. Veterans of the Stormwall. They’ve been given special dispensation to hunt me down. Yes, Cullel?’
‘Hunt you down?’ Kyle asked.
Orjin shifted to put his back to Kyle’s. ‘Yes.’
