When the Silver had gone K’ess introduced the two captains, then eyed the woods.
Captain Fal-ej cleared her throat. ‘Fist. Forgive me … but we’re in no position to negotiate anything.’
‘Yes, Captain.’
‘Then …?’
K’ess raised his chin to the blasted field of craters and thrown dirt. ‘Look …’
Malazan rankers were silently spreading out among the fallen torn bodies, collecting around the mangled corpses. Out came cloaks and blankets and other odds and ends to wrap the bodies. Then out came saboteur shovels and picks to hack individual shallow graves out of the thin rocky soil. Some even took advantage of the craters the munitions had blasted to site their pits.
Then one by one, respectful hands clenching the tied-off cloth at head and feet and sides, the bodies were laid in their graves. Only the noise of shovels clattering from stones sounded from the valley. Each pit was covered and the troopers stood still for a long moment, heads bowed.
Watching and observing his own silence, K’ess thought back to that wrenching moan of pain that had swept through the massed ranks as realization came of what was about to strike. It had beed an awful, hopeless sound. The one that soldiers give when they see unavoidable death descending over a compatriot, for, in that instant, the Seguleh had become — if not friends — then brothers and sisters of the battlefield.
Now he did not have to wonder at their thoughts. Once they may have been,
To one side the captured Seguleh, a bare handful out of the four hundred, sat or stood, unarmed, still masked, watching while their dead were buried. K’ess could not even imagine what was going through their minds.
Clearing his throat, he turned to the officers. ‘Captain Fal-ej … I believe what Aragan is hoping to do is stop the Moranth from doing to Darujhistan what they just did here in this valley. Reducing the entire city to smoking rubble.’
‘By the Seven,’ Fal-ej murmured, falling back on her old faith. ‘That would be unforgivable. We cannot allow that.’
K’ess let out a long pained breath. ‘It looks as though we no longer have much say in the matter.’
‘But, Fist … over a half-million live there.’
‘Yes, Captain … Yes.’
BOOK III
CHAPTER XVIII
The contempt of the cultured elite of Darujhistan for the manners and customs of the Seguleh of the far south is well known. One Council member famously remarked that what these Seguleh fail to understand is that words are the most powerful weapons of all.
A Seguleh informed of this argument responded: ‘Then when he is silent he is useless.’
Like small blessings moments of calm occasionally descended unbidden into the punishing windstorm of Ebbin’s thoughts. During these respites he was able, at least briefly, to gather his scattered identity and reconstitute his thoughts.
Sometimes he would find himself in a recurring dream of the gold-masked figure standing at the edge of Majesty Hill overlooking Darujhistan. Either the ancient terror allowed him to join him there in reviewing these memories, or he was simply too insignificant to matter. Each time Ebbin was unwilling to creep up to the overlook, for he knew what would confront him there: the city in flames, screams, mass murder, carnage. The fall of a civilization.
After many of these dreams, or waking nightmares — having wandered here, or been drawn, or allowed to discover him here — Ebbin finally dared speak: ‘Why do you always come here?’
‘Lessons learned,’ the masked and cloaked figure answered.
‘You seek to avoid this.’
‘I seek to avoid a paradox. Escape the inescapable. I wish to complete the circle without suffering its fate.’
‘Each time it has ended this way.’
‘So far.’
‘So many would-be tyrants,’ Ebbin breathed, saddened.
The graven gold face turned his way. ‘Still you do not fully understand.’
Emboldened, Ebbin ventured: ‘What is there to understand? You failed once, you shall fail again.’
‘Once? No, scholar. Evidently the truth is even more difficult for you to swallow than that. In truth, I have failed countless times.’
‘What?’
The taunting secretive curve carved on the lips of the mask seemed to be verging on a full smile. ‘Each time it has been me, scholar. In truth, there has been but one Tyrant.’
The raging winds of Ebbin’s mind crept closer. Walls of impenetrable black closing in. ‘But … that cannot be. What of Raest? What of him?’
‘Ah, yes. Raest. Too crude in his methods. I have refined and perfected his tools. Lessons learned, scholar.’
Ebbin clenched his skull as if to hold it from flying apart. ‘Why tell me this?’
‘Give up, scholar. Yield. There can be but one outcome.’
‘No! Never. I … never.’ And he fled. Hands pressed to his skull, he ran from the ledge and laughter chased him. The laughter melded with the howling of the winds that came sweeping in to toss him, spinning and flying, into countless shattered fragments.
Jan could not get used to being confronted wherever he turned by near replicas of the Legate’s gold mask. The ladies of the court held theirs on long gold stems that they raised to their faces. The men’s rested on the bridges of their noses, held there by fine thread that ran behind their heads.
Part of Jan wished to slap them all off. Just as he still could not help twitching upon meeting so many directly challenging, even haughty, stares from armed men.
Across the court Palla, the Sixth, signed to him:
