A Chosen met them just outside the doorway. He stood wrapped in the thick dark-blue cloak that was their unofficial uniform, crested helmet on his head and wide leaf-bladed spear held tall. Wall Marshal and Quartermaster, Quint of Theft. He bowed to Hiam and his dark, scarred features twisted in what the Lord Protector knew passed as the man’s smile; he inclined his head in acknowledgement.
As they made their inspection tour, Hiam could not help noting troubling details even as he passed them over without comment: cracked steps in ill-repair; torn baskets that ought to be replaced; thin frayed rope past its best years; the tattered edges of Quint’s cloak and his cracked sandals. Lack of maintenance, lack of equipment. All problems adequate funds could solve. But what monies the Stormguard did pull in through tribute, taxation and levies it poured entirely into acquiring warm bodies to man the wall — in any manner it could.
And that flow of tribute and taxation was diminishing. Particularly now with the presence of the invaders, the Malazans, emboldening resentful neighbours such as Stygg and Jasston to neglect their ages-old treaties and agreements.
‘How go repairs, Marshal?’ Hiam asked.
Quint’s scarred face — the gift of a Rider’s jagged blade — twisted down even further. Beneath his cloak he shifted his arms, cradling the spear haft. ‘Slow as fastidious whores in a brothel, these labourers.’
Hiam could not keep an answering wry smile from his lips. The man had the reputation of being most ferocious Stormguard on the wall. Together they went all the way back to induction, though Quint preceded him. ‘They aren’t volunteers, like the old days.’ Unlike us.
An answering grunt was all the marshal would allow — an informality none other would dare before the Lord Protector. ‘If they worked a fraction as hard as they complained we’d have every job done by now. You should hear them, Hiam. How they give enough in the winter without having to provide work gangs in the summer. Yet not one man of them has ever stood the wall. We rely more on foreign levies now than on true Korelri. It’s a damned disgrace is what it is. It wouldn’t surprise me…’ His voice trailed away, then he gave a harsh laugh. ‘Well, their song always changes when the snow flies, hey, Hiam?’
Hiam had glanced up to see Quint’s gaze on Shool’s shocked face. Yes, old friend, we aren’t alone. Going to say you wouldn’t be surprised if Our Lady turned her face from us for our sins, hey? We’re now the old dogs grumbling about how standards have fallen, just as did our instructors and superiors before us.
Stopping, Hiam nodded to Shool. ‘That’s all. I’ll look at the inventories later.’
Shool bowed. ‘My lord.’
Quint watched him go. ‘Too soon from the tit, that one,’ he growled.
‘He did his season.’ Quint grunted, unimpressed. ‘So, give it to me straight, Quartermaster. Not your usual sweet-talk.’
‘’Sa bloody cock-up, is what it is. We’re behind schedule everywhere. There’s a crack in the facing east of Vor you could shove a man through. But,’ and he bared yellowed uneven teeth, ‘I could say the same thing about a woman I knew from Jourilan.’
‘Master Stimins?’
Quint let go a snort of exasperation. ‘Let me tell you about Master Engineer Stimins. Last week he drags me down the wall behind the fifth tower north of Storm, and he points to a little course of sand in the rocks. The man’s pulling his hair out over some tiny dried-up rivulet while I’m trying to find enough masons to fill gaps!’
‘He’s worried about the foundations.’
‘Foundation my arse. The wall’s as heavy as a mountain. It can’t fall down. Anyway, it’s just a place to stand — it’s the men and women defending it who count. And we need more of them.’
‘Lady bless that, Quint. So, what about the latest crop? How are they shaping up?’
‘As useful as eunuchs and seamstresses. But we’ll knock them into line. The usual prison scrapings from Katakan and Theft aren’t worth the food we buy to feed them. The Dourkan and Jourilan contingents are pretty solid, as ever. Mare has sent a shipload of Malazan prisoners. We even have some debtors from Rool — the Malazans continue to allow it, apparently.’
‘They get their cut, I’m sure. Speaking of them, how’s the current champion?’
The quartermaster shook a sour negative. ‘We can’t count on another season out of him. He has the death wish. I’ve seen it before.’
‘Too bad. He accomplished some amazing feats.’
‘True. ’Cept he laughs like a lunatic every time we call him Malazan.’
Nodding to himself, Hiam listened to the wind carrying the distant metallic clinks of mallets on stone, the calls of foremen, and the low heartbeat of the quickening autumn surf. His arms were sweaty beneath the sweltering cloak. ‘Very good, Quartermaster. I won’t keep you from your duties any longer.’
Quint tilted his head suspiciously. ‘Where’re you off to?’
‘To find our good Master Engineer.’
‘Ha! You’ll likely find him on his hands and knees, sniffing around our foundations like a dog, no doubt.’
‘Carry on, Wall Marshal — and stay out of Stimins’ way.’
‘With pleasure.’
It was not until late that afternoon that the Lord Protector finally tracked down Master Engineer Stimins. And — true to Quint’s prediction — the man was sniffing around the base of the wall. By that time Hiam had picked up an escort: two veterans, Stall of Korel and solid Evessa out of Jourilan, whom many suspected of carrying more than a drop of the old blood. They’d arrived care of Quint, whose message was that it was unseemly for the Lord Protector to be wandering about without guards. Hiam did not bother pointing out that it was just as unseemly for Quint to allow the Master Engineer to do so.
He heard Stimins long before he found him, among the huge tumbled boulders of the slope that graded back from the wall’s rear. ‘You’re a pretty one,’ he heard the old fellow coo, and he didn’t have to wonder what the man was addressing. ‘Very nice, very nice.’ Stumbling along with him, their spears clattering, Stall and Evessa shared a glance and rolled their eyes.
Hiam wondered if he was stalking a parrot.
Eventually, circling round a tall boulder, he found the man hunched down on all fours like a pale spider investigating a crevice for food. ‘Master Engineer…’ Hiam began.
The man jumped, and glared about myopically beneath bushy white brows. ‘Who’s that? Who?’
‘It’s Hiam, Stimins.’
‘Oh, young Hiam. What in the Lady’s name are you doing down here?’
‘Looking for you,’ Hiam observed tartly.
‘Ah! Well, whatever for?’
Hiam crooked his head to motion away his escort. Bowing, they moved off to lean back amongst the tumbled boulders, arms crossed over the hafts of their spears. ‘Your report.’
The engineer was fiddling with small rocks in the palm of one hand, turning them round and round. ‘Report? What report?’
The Lord Protector slapped a hand to the hot gritty side of a boulder. Dried bird guano streaked the stone white and patches of lichen grew green and orange. ‘Your report on the state of the wall!’
‘Ah. That report. Well, it’s not conclusive yet. I need to study things further.’
‘That’s what you said last year, and the year before that.’
The snowy brows rose over pale, watery blue eyes. ‘I did? Well, there you go.’
‘With all due respect, Master Engineer. We no longer have the time for the luxury of conclusiveness… Your current assessment will have to do.’
Stimins sniffed his disapproval. ‘That’s the trouble with you younger generations — no patience to do the job right. Things are off to the Abyss in a broken wagon, they are.’
Hiam crossed his arms, and his cloak fell open to reveal the broad scarred forearms, the dire gouges and deep scrapes in the bronze and leather vambraces. The Master Engineer extended his bony hand, clenched, knuckles knotted in joint-ache. Hiam held his own out, open. Two small stones fell into his palm.
‘My report,’ Stimins said.
Mystified, Hiam studied the two stones. Taking one in each hand he found that they fitted together exactly: two halves of the same piece. ‘What’s this? A broken rock?’
‘Shattered cleanly in half, Lord Protector. By the corroding cold itself.’
Now Hiam regarded his Master Engineer. ‘The cold? How could it do such a thing?’
