‘Assessor Bakune. I am investigating the recent death of Sister Prudence. I’m told you knew her well.’
‘So, she is dead. We’ve been waiting many years.’ A gnarled hand went shakily to the altar, pointed to one crude statue. ‘Look here. The Great Mother Goddess. She has had countless names, though Lady is not one.’ The hand moved to another. ‘The Great Sky-Father this one is called, though Light is his aspect. Here, the Great Deceiver would push forward — not realizing that to succeed would spell his dissolution. Here, the Beast of War stirs again — what shall be the final shape of its rising? Here, the Dark Hoarder of Souls. He has my friend now — may both of them come to know peace. And here, the newcomer, the Broken God, watching and scheming from afar.’
Bakune recognized these ancient names and titles from his research into the indigenous peoples of the archipelago — all their old animistic spirits of earth, air, and night. All vaguely similar in character to the foreign Malazan faiths, of which, presumably, they were distant relatives. All the old pagan beliefs that had multiplied indiscriminately before the arrival of the Blessed Lady and the one true faith.
‘What would you call evil, Assessor?’ the old woman suddenly asked.
Bakune was rather startled by the question. Breathing in the heady, dizzying smoke he eased himself down to his knees. Vaguely, he wondered what drugs might be mixed in with the exotic woods and herbs being burned here. He’d already realized that he would get no straight answers from the crone, and could hardly press her. ‘I don’t know. The simple-minded would answer whatever is opposed to them. Whatever current enemy or rival they might face at the time. For my part I believe true evil lies in actions. In deliberate harmful acts.’
‘Spoken as a magistrate. And it must be said that there is some wisdom in your approach. However, can an act not be harmful in the immediate, yet beneficial in the long term? Could such an act be said to be evil?’
Bakune waved the choking coils of smoke from his face. The last thing he expected was to be challenged to a philosophical debate. ‘Again, I do not know. I suppose the harm would have to be weighed against the ultimate benefit accrued.’
The old woman turned her head to regard him directly. Her dirty hair hung like a veil before her face. ‘Exactly. It would have to be… assessed.’
Bakune suddenly felt stricken. ‘What are you getting at, Lithel?’
The woman turned away, rocking. ‘I have meditated long and hard on this vexing question, Assessor. There is really only a small set of final responses. My distillation is a refinement of one of them. True pure evil, Assessor, is waste. It is the blunting of potential, the cutting off of a person’s or a people’s promise, or options, for development. It is, emblematically, the death of a child.’ The old woman’s head sank. ‘Look then, Assessor, to the children.’
‘Lithel? Lithel?’
The old woman once more crooned to herself, and now Bakune could hear the ancient burnished pain in her moaning.
Outside, Bakune straightened, coughing. One of his guards offered a water skin and he took it with gratitude and washed out his mouth.
‘What did you hear?’ the old man asked.
‘Exactly what I did not want to hear.’
The old man’s smile climbed free of any reserve. ‘Good. We are done then. And Assessor…’
‘Yes?’
‘Do not return. Do not try to find this dwelling again. Because you never will.’
Bakune narrowed his gaze on the man. ‘You would threaten a magistrate?’
‘No threat. A fact.’
The guards snorted their disbelief. Bakune shrugged. His gaze caught the stone at the man’s neck. Engraved on it was a circle with a line across its middle like the line of a horizon. The very sigil scratched on the statue Lithel had named the Great Mother Goddess. Bakune motioned to the necklace. ‘The symbol of the old pagan Earth Mother.’
The old man’s hand went to the stone. ‘Yes. The old faith. I am of the Drenn.’
Bakune could not shake a feeling of familiarity. ‘I feel that we have met before.’
‘Perhaps briefly. Now, this way.’
The old man, who once gave his name to the Assessor as Gheven, stopped within the boundary of the shanty town and watched while the magistrate and his minders climbed to the west road. He was surprised, pleased and saddened all at once at having met him again. Surprised by the man’s resilience in keeping to his principles in the face of all that had confronted him for the length of his career; pleased to see him cleaving still to the path to justice — as he interpreted it at any rate — and saddened because he knew what all this would cost the man should he continue along the path as he, Gheven, hoped he would.
It was sad but necessary. Pain would be inflicted but was it not all to the greater good? A thorny question, that. One he did not feel qualified to settle.
Back in his office, Bakune settled into his chair and rested his head in his hands. His guards had drifted away once they’d reached the city centre and the blocks holding the mayoral palace and the courts. He didn’t know whether to be grateful for their dedication or to curse them for it. The old man’s insinuations had slid deep along the paths of his own suspicions. His secretaries appeared at his doorway, thick folders in their hands, but Bakune waved them off.
Rising, he crossed the office and locked the door. He went to a cabinet next to the desk and unlocked it. From the top shelf he pulled out a roll that he laid on his desk. He pulled the ribbon holding the cloth tight and unrolled it. It was a map of Banith that Bakune had ordered drafted years ago. On it, over the years, the Assessor had painstakingly painted in red dots the exact location of every murdered girl and boy he had personally visited, or that he could reliably place. The red dots lay in a thin spread throughout the city; no district was entirely free of their stain. The bright crimson, however, was thickest along the shore, where many bodies were dumped. But not evenly, not randomly. Over the years the marks clumped, observably so, into three main clusters. One to the west, one to the east, and one due south near the centre of the town’s waterfront. Leading more or less straight up from each cluster ran a main road into town. And if one traced each road one’s finger would end up right at the centre of town where lay the holy Cloister of Our Blessed Lady — near which, revealingly enough, not one bloody dot was to be found.
Bakune sat and stared long and hard at the map, his chin nearly touching his chest. Damn you for doing this to me. You’re killing me. Dot by dot, you are surely killing me. Please, won’t you please just stop. Just go away.
He pressed his fingertips to his throbbing temples and sat motionless, staring. By the Blessed Lady, what could he possibly be expected to do?
Around noon the ship’s captain came to talk to Kyle. He was dozing under the shade of an awning, his leg raised and bandaged, when he became vaguely aware that he wasn’t alone any more. Cracking open one eye he saw a wiry fellow gazing down at him, old, grey hair all unkempt, the light dusting of a moustache at the mouth, and a pipe clamped tight between the lips. Multiple gold earrings shone at the lobes and gold bracelets cluttered — her? — wrists. ‘Yes?’ Kyle asked, wary.
‘All comfy, are we?’
‘Yes, thank you. Your bone-mender knows her business.’
A smile of appreciation stretched the thin lips. ‘Speaking of business…’
‘Ah. You are the captain?’
‘Yes. June. Cursed June, they call me.’
‘Kyle. Cursed? May I ask why?’
A rise of the bony shoulders. ‘Had seven husbands is why.’ The woman tilted her head to examine him up and down. ‘Can’t place you, I have to say. There’s something of the Wickan about you with the moustache an’ your dark hue an’ all. But not quite.’
‘Perhaps we’re distantly related.’
‘P’rhaps.’
Kyle took a pouch from his belt and held it out. ‘All I have for transport to your next port of call.’
She hefted it, frowning. ‘Not much…’
‘My companion may have some coin as well.’ A noncommittal grunt. ‘Where are we headed, may I ask?’
