‘Somethin’ like that.’
Picker sobered, eyed the man, doubtful. She hiked up her trousers and headed to the kitchen. Spindle followed.
At the open doorway Picker stopped, peered right, then left. Behind, Spindle hopped from foot to foot, brushing at his wet pants. ‘Do you see it? Do ya?’
‘What? The amazin’ chickens? They dancin’? Singin’?’
‘No! Not …’ He squeezed his way round her, stared squinting into the distance. ‘But there was …’ He turned back to the big woman, hunched his shoulders. ‘There was this huge dome-like thing there. Over the hilltop …’
Picker just shook her head in a slow heavy dismissal. She rubbed her arm where scars marked a ring round the flesh, eyed the distance once more. Then she pushed him aside, muttering, ‘Fuckin’ moron. Can’t believe I’m beginnin’ to miss Antsy.’
Spindle was left alone in the chill air. He turned back to the view across the hills of the estate district, snorted to himself.
‘What did it look like?’ someone asked from behind.
He spun, jumping. It was Duiker, the old historian. He nodded a greeting. ‘It was pale. Kinda see-through. Big. Like the moon. It looked like the moon.’
The historian frowned thoughtfully behind his thick grey beard. His gaze fixed on Spindle. ‘You lot been gone days. What happened?’
‘I’ll tell you over some hot mulled wine.’
‘We don’t have any.’
Spindle cast another pinched glance over the hilltops. ‘Then I’m gonna go get some.’
*
Torvald Nom awoke to a cat’s claws sinking into his chest. He jerked upright with a gasp, heard something ricochet off the shelves under the open window, then sat tensed, limbs trembling with startled awareness.
‘What is it?’ Tiserra murmured, still mostly asleep.
‘For a moment I thought you’d thrown yourself upon me and sunk your nails into my chest in an ecstasy of passion, dear. But it was the cat.’
‘That’s nice,’ she murmured into her pillow.
Torvald sighed, peered about the shadowed room. ‘Well. I’m awake now. Might as well head out.’
‘Hmph.’
‘Don’t trouble yourself. Don’t bustle about with tea and bread and such for your working man.’
‘Hmm?’
‘Never mind.’ Torvald got up.
Passing through the streets on his walk to the estate district it struck him that the city was very quiet this morning. He felt that sense of suspended expectation, the atmosphere that some described as ‘holding one’s breath’. And he had had the strangest dreams just before awakening so very painfully. He did hear one noise that was very out of place indeed. He recognized it only because of his travels so far from this city of his birth. For it was a sound utterly unfamiliar to Darujhistan: the ordered stamp of marching soldiery. He hurried to where the marching echoed, the Second Tier Way.
He joined a press of Darujhistani citizenry turned out to watch this once in a lifetime sight. The tall cross- piece hanging banner preceding the column declared their allegiance: the white sceptre on a field of black, the sceptre much like an orb clasped in an upright three-toed predatory bird’s foot. The naked clawed grip of the Malazan Empire.
Elite heavy infantry. Campaign stripes marked them as veterans of every engagement on these, to them, foreign Genabackan lands. They carried broad rectangular shields blackened and edged in burgundy. Shortswords swung belted high at their sides. Crossbows and javelins rode strapped to their backs. The Malazan delegation honour guard, some two hundred strong. Withdrawing?
‘What’s going on?’ he asked one fellow in the crowd.
‘The Empire’s invading!’ the man bellowed, half drunk.
Torvald grimaced at his bad luck. ‘They’re headed in the wrong direction,’ he pointed out.
‘Ha ha!’ the drunk yelled. ‘We beat them! Good riddance, y’damned foreigners!’
Torvald walked away just in case the appropriately feared Malazan mailed fist should make itself felt. The rear of the column came marching up. Mounted officers rode just before a train of wagons and carts and strings of spare mounts. Torvald noted that he did not see the bald and rather fat figure of the ambassador among the officers. He hurried on to bring the news to his employer, the head of his family house and thus councilwoman, Lady Varada.
Madrun let him into the compound. ‘Captain,’ the man said, bowing. Torvald always listened carefully to this welcome but so far he’d yet to detect even the slightest tinge of insincerity. More than ever he regretted the absence of his old partners, Scorch and Leff, who used to guard these doors.
At least then
The castellan Studlock met him at the open front doors of the house. ‘I have orders from the mistress,’ he lisped as Torvald hurried past.
‘Yes?’
‘The mistress is … ill,’ Studlock murmured. ‘Yes. That is it. Quite ill.’
Torvald sniffed the air. ‘What is that I smell? Is something burning?’
‘Just my preparations. The singeing of rare leaves. An infusion gone wrong.’ The strange man crept up close; the tatters and strips of gauzy cloth he wrapped himself in dragged long behind. Torvald flinched away. ‘You appear tired, malnourished,’ Studlock went on. ‘Are you having trouble in your sexual performance? Perhaps a mineral poultice to rebalance your animus?’
‘Rebalance my
‘A pity.’
‘Ill, you say? Where is she?’
‘The mistress is … indisposed.’
‘Indisposed …’
‘Yes. Quite. She did, however, leave detailed instructions regarding you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. None other.’
‘I see. And these instructions?’
The man edged closer, his watery green eyes narrowed upon Torvald. ‘There is a worrisome choleric tinge to you. Have you evacuated lately?’
‘Evacu what?’
‘Evacuated. Discharged your bodily wastes.’
‘Ah! Yes.’
‘And your bowels? How are they?’
‘Sacrosanct, thank you.’
‘Regretful. How am I to continue my practice?’
Torvald was surprised. ‘You’re a physicker?’
The man blinked his confusion. ‘No.’
Torvald regarded the unnerving hunched figure for a time, cleared his throat. ‘So … these instructions?’
‘Yes. You are now head of House Nom. Congratulations.’ The castellan shuffled away.
Torvald stood motionless in the receiving hall for a long time. Then he stormed up the stairs for his employer’s office. He was in the process of ransacking her desk when he looked up to see the gauzy apparition of Studlock before him once again.
‘There must be some mistake.’
‘None, I assure you.’
‘What of Bellam?’
‘Young Bellam remains an eventual heir.’
‘But … it can’t be official. There has to be paperwork. Certificates and such.’
The castellan drew a scroll from within the folds of cloth at his chest. ‘I have them here. Sealed and
