way that Kiska found hardly reassuring. ‘Thank you for your concern… m’lady,’ she said, ‘but I do not need this fellow.’
‘You will fail if you go alone.’
The finality of that pronouncement chilled Kiska.
‘How are we-’ Jheval began, then corrected himself. ‘That is, how is the man to be tracked down?’
The Enchantress gestured to a burlap sack atop the broad stone at the centre of the circle. Kiska could not recall seeing it there before.
‘The Void that took the High Mage opened on to Chaos and there your trail will take you. When you reach its borders open this. The thing within will then lead you on.’
Kiska wrapped the sack in her cloak. It was dirty, as if it had been buried. From what she could glimpse inside all it seemed to contain were broken twigs and a few scraps of cloth.
‘I can send you on your way from here,’ the Enchantress said. ‘Is that acceptable?’
‘Thank you, m’lady,’ Kiska said, bowing.
Jheval grunted his agreement.
Agayla, whom Kiska had thought uncharactisterically quiet all this time, now embraced her, kissing her cheeks. ‘Be careful,’ she whispered. ‘I see in the weave that this search will not be the simple task you believe. You may not know what it is you are really after.’
Kiska would have spoken, but she was silenced by the tears that brimmed in her aunt’s eyes. A moment ago she would have thought such a thing impossible. I never thought of her as old before yet now, suddenly, I see her so. Time is cruel.
The Enchantress motioned aside. ‘You will see hills. Keep them to your left.’ Kiska bowed again and turned away. Jheval followed, his hands tucked into his leather belt.
After the two had gone, the Enchantress gently brushed a hand across Agayla’s face. ‘Do not cry, Weaver.’
‘I fear I have sent the child to her death.’
‘I cannot see into Chaos. But what she has taken as her failure has wounded her to her core. I can only hope she will come to forgive herself.’
‘So much is on its way, T’riss. I see it in the weft. The knots ahead come so thick they may choke the shuttle. The cloth may part.’
‘It may. We can only do our best to see to it that it only tears in certain places.’
Agayla smiled then, perhaps at her fears. ‘Yes. It will be a new order.’
The Queen of Dreams’ face hardened as she looked off into the distance. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice taut with something almost like distaste. ‘Let us hope it will be a better one.’
It took Bakune two months of questioning, searching archives, and squeezing minor city officials to track down the family name and possible current residence of the family of Sister Charity. Whether the woman yet lived remained to be discovered.
He left his offices at noon on foot, wrapped in a plain wool cloak. He took the west road until it exited the town proper and here he turned off the way, down towards the coast where a ghetto of shacks and huts spilled down the slope. Dogs raged at his heels, knowing full well he did not belong. Dirty half-naked children stared at him, many obviously the half-breed by-blows of Roolian mothers and the Malazan occupiers. Young toughs collected in the muddy narrow paths, staring silently at what he imagined must be quite the apparition of a Roolian citizen wandering lost in the maze of their neighbourhood. At every turn round a staked tent or wattle and daub hut the crowd seemed to grow until he faced a solid wall of young men and women, dressed no better than the urchins, many carrying wasted limbs, milky blinded eyes, ugly swellings, and other disfigurements of illnesses — all from the filth of their poverty, no doubt.
‘I’m looking for the Harldeth family,’ he called to one of the young men. ‘Harldeth. Do you know the name?’
Blocking Bakune’s way, the fellow just stared. His mouth was twisted in a harelip and Bakune would have suspected him slow but for the unaccountable hostility simmering in his gaze. ‘Stranger,’ a weak voice called from a nearby hut. Bakune ducked his head to squint into the darkness.
‘Yes?’
‘Enter.’
He had to crouch almost double to slip within. He found an old man cross-legged on a woven mat next to a dead blackened hearth. The man was bare-chested despite the gathering cold of autumn. Bakune introduced himself, and was invited to sit. The stink of smoke and old rotten food made him almost gag; he elected to crouch on his haunches. After the old man had sat regarding him for a time, his night-black eyes unreadable, Bakune prompted again, ‘Yes? You know the Harldeth?’
‘I know the family.’
‘Will you take me to them?’
‘Why do you seek them?’
‘I’m assessing a death. I need to question Lithel Harldeth. She was once a nun in the Cloister. I’m told her family now lives out here.’
The old man cocked his head. ‘So, you are assessing a death… Where is the Watch? Where are their truncheons? Where is your signed confession?’
Bakune pulled away, offended. ‘That’s not how we do things. We assess to apportion the balance of innocence and culpability.’
The old man just gave a sad indulgent smile. ‘You should spend more time out here, Assessor Bakune.’ He struggled to rise, pulling up a tall walking stick, which he held horizontal. ‘Come.’
Outside, the old man made some gesture and the crowd backed away. Bakune looked sharply at him; he wore only dirty trousers and jerkin, his grey hair hung stringy and bedraggled, yet his wiry limbs, dark as stained wood, held an obvious strength. A stone on a thong round his neck was the man’s only decoration other than the old branch he held as a staff. A thin cold rain had begun to fall that the old man ignored, though it chilled Bakune. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked, struck by a sudden vague recollection.
‘No, Assessor. You most certainly do not know me. This way…’
Surprised yells sounded up the mud path the way Bakune had come and the crowd parted there to reveal his two Watch guards, their cloaks pulled back from the shortswords hung at their sides.
‘Who are these?’ the old man asked.
Bakune sighed. Lady-damned fools! They’ll ruin everything! ‘Guards that the Watch captain insists follow me around.’
The old man’s dark eyes slid to Bakune; the indulgent, almost pitying smile returned. ‘Guards, Assessor? Or minders?’ He started off before Bakune could respond.
The path the old man followed was bewilderingly twisted, probably deliberately so. His two guards plodded along behind, hands at their belts. Each muddy trail they took between crowded shacks seemed identical to the last. Everyone ignored Bakune now, going about their daily business, carrying bundled firewood, earthenware pots of water. Women cooked over low smoky fires.
Then the old man stopped abruptly at a wattle and daub hut, no different from any other. He gestured within.
‘Thank you.’
He did not answer, only motioned inside once again.
Within, a family sat eating. Startled, Bakune nearly backed out until the woman present, mother Bakune assumed of the four wide-eyed children, pointed to a woven reed hanging farther within. Bowing, Bakune edged around the staring family and brushed the hanging aside. A thick cloud of smoke blinded him. He had entered what proved to be no more than a tiny nook, and he pressed a fold of his cloak over his nose and mouth. Eventually he made out a low shape hunched before some sort of altar cluttered with burned-down candle stubs, clay lamps, small rudely shaped statues, and stands of smouldering incense sticks.
‘Lithel Harldeth?’
The shape, which had been rocking gently from side to side and crooning to itself, stilled. The head rose, questing. ‘Who is there?’
