The captain was doing the same, he saw a moment later, with her own. ‘What is this?’ she demanded in a hiss.
‘Broken?’ Beak wondered.
‘Not that I can see-and yours are identical to mine. What fool invented these?’
‘Captain,’ said Beak, ‘I don’t think we have to worry much about Letherii cavalry, do we?’
‘You’ve that right, Beak. Well, let’s ride. If we’re lucky, we won’t break our necks twenty paces up the road.’
The father of the man named Throatslitter used to tell stories of the Emperor’s conquest of Li Heng, long before Kellanved was emperor of anywhere. True, he’d usurped Mock on Malaz Island and had proclaimed himself the island’s ruler, but since when was Malaz Island anything but a squalid haven for pirates? Few on the mainland took much notice of such things. A new tyrannical criminal in place of the old tyrannical criminal.
The conquest of Li Heng changed all that. There’d been no fleet of ships crowding the river mouth to the south and east of the city; nothing, in fact, to announce the assault. Instead, on a fine spring morning no different from countless other such mornings, Throatslitter’s father, along with thousands of other doughty citizens, had, upon a casual glance towards the Inner Focus where stood the Palace of the Protectress, noted the sudden inexplicable presence of strange figures on the walls and battlements. Squat, wide, wearing furs and wielding misshapen swords and axes. Helmed in bone.
What had happened to the vaunted Guard? And why were tendrils of smoke rising from the barracks of the courtyard and parade ground? And was it-was it truly-the Protectress herself who had been seen plunging from the High Tower beside the City Temple at the heart of the cynosure?
Someone had cut off Li Heng’s head in the Palace. Undead warriors stood sentinel on the walls and, a short time later, emerged in their thousands from the Inner Focus Gate to occupy the city. Li Heng’s standing army-after a half-dozen suicidal skirmishes-capitulated that same day. Kellanved now ruled the city-state, and officers and nobles of the high court knelt in fealty, and the reverberations of this conquest rattled the windows of palaces across the entire mainland of Quon Tali.
‘This, son, was the awakening of the Logros T’lan lmass. The Emperor’s undead army. I was there, on the streets, and saw with my own eyes those terrible warriors with their pitted eyeholes, the stretched, torn skin, the wisps of hair bleached of all colour. They say, son, that the Logros were always there, below Reacher’s Falls. Maybe in the Crevasse, maybe not. Maybe just the very dust that blew in from the west every damned day and night-who can say? But he woke them, he commanded them, and 1 tell you after that day every ruler on Quon Tali saw a skull’s face in their silver mirror, aye.
‘The fleet of ships came later, under the command of three madmen ~ Crust, Vrko and Nok-but first to step ashore was none other than Surly and you know who she’d become, don’t you?’
Didn’t he just. Command of the T’lan lmass didn’t stop the knife in the back, did it? This detail was the defining revelation of Throatslitter’s life. Command thousands, tens of thousands. Command sorcerors and imperial fleets. Hold in your hand the lives of a million citizens. The real power was none of this. The real power was the knife in the hand, the hand at a fool’s back.
The egalitarian plunge. There, Father, you old crab, a word you’ve never heard among the fifty or so you knew about in your long, pointless life. Paint on pots, now there’s a useless skill, since pots never survive, and so all those lovely images end up in pieces, on the pebbled beaches, in the fill between walls, on the fields of the farmers. And it’s true enough, isn’t it, Father, that your private firing of ‘The Coming of the Logros’ proved about as popular as a whore’s dose of the face-eater?
Eldest son or not, mixing glazes and circling a kiln on firing day was not the future he dreamed about. But you can paint me, Father, and call it ‘The Coming of the Assassin. My likeness to adorn funeral urns-those who fell to the knife, of course. Too bad you never understood the world well enough to honour me. My chosen profession. My war against inequity in this miserable, evil existence.
And striking my name from the family line, well now, really, that was uncalled for.
Fourteen years of age, Throatslitter found himself in the company of secretive old men and old women. The why and the how were without relevance, even back then. His future was set out before him, in measured strides, and not even the gods could drive him from this cold path.
He wondered about his old masters from time to time. All dead, of course. Surly had seen to that. Not that death meant failure. Her agents had failed in tracking down Throatslitter, after all, and he doubted he was the only one to evade the Claws. He also wondered if indeed he was still on the path-torn away, as he had been, from the Malazan Empire. But he was a patient man; one in his profession had to be, after all.
Still, the Adjunct has asked for loyalty. For service to an. unknown cause. We are to be unwitnessed, she said. That suits me fine. It’s how assassins conduct their trade. So he would go along With her and this Oponn- pushed army of sorry fools. For now.
He stood, arms crossed, shoulders drawn forward as he leaned against the wall, and could feel the occasional touch, light as a mouse’s paw, on his chest as he watched, with half-hearted interest, the proceedings in Brullyg’s private chamber.
The poor Shake ruler was sweating and no amount of his favoured ale could still the trembling of his hands as he sat huddled in his high-backed chair, eyes on the tankard in his grip rather than on the two armoured women standing before him.
Lostara Yil, Throatslitter considered, was if anything better-looking than T’amber had been. Or at least more closely aligned with his own tastes. The Pardu tattoos were sensuality writ on skin, and the fullness of her figure- unsuccessfully disguised by her armour-moved with a dancer’s grace (when she moved, which she wasn’t doing now, although the promise of elegance was unmistakable). The Adjunct stood in grim contrast, the poor woman. Like those destined to dwell in the shadows of more attractive friends, she suffered the comparison with every sign of indifference, but Throatslitter-who was skilled at seeing unspoken truths-could read the pain that dull paucity delivered, and this was a human truth, no more or less sordid than all the other human truths. Those without beauty compensated in other ways, the formal but artificial ways of rank and power, and that was just how things were the world over.
Of course when you’ve finally got that power, it doesn’t matter how ugly you are, you can breed with the best. Maybe this explained Lostara’s presence at Tavore’s side. But Throatslitter was not entirely sure of that. He didn’t think they were lovers. He wasn’t even convinced they were friends.
Aligned near the wall to the right of the door stood the rest of the Adjunct’s retinue. Fist Blistig, his blunt, wide face shadowed with some kind of spiritual exhaustion. Doesn’t pay, Adjunct, to keep close a man like that-he drains life, hope, faith. No, Tavore, you need to get rid of him and pro-mote some new Fists. Faradan Sort. Madan tul’Rada. Fiddler. Not Captain Kindly, though, don’t even think that, woman. Not unless you want a real mutiny on your hands.
Mutiny. Well, there, he’d said it. Thought it, actually, but that was close enough. To conjure the word was to awaken the possibility, like making the scratch to invite the fester. The Bonehunters were now scattered to the winds and that was a terrible risk. He suspected that, at the end of this bizarre campaign, her soldiers would come trickling back in paltry few number, if at all.
Unwitnessed. Most soldiers don’t like that idea. True, it made them hard-when she told them-but that fierceness can’t last. The iron is too cold. Its taste too bitter. Gods, just look at Blistig for the truth of that.
Beside the Fist stood Withal, the Meckros blacksmith-the man we went to Malaz City to get, and we still don’t know why. Oh, there’s blood in your shadow, isn’t there? Malazan blood. Tamber’s. Kalam’s. Maybe Quick Ben’s, too. Are you worth it? Throatslitter had yet to see Withal speaking to a soldier. Not one, not a word of thanks, not an apology for the lives sacrificed. He was here because the Adjunct needed him. For what? Hah, not like she’s talking, is it? Not our cagey Tavore Varan.
To Withal’s right stood Banaschar, a deposed high priest of D’rek, if the rumours were true. Yet another passenger in this damned renegade army. But Throatslitter knew Banaschar’s purpose. Coin. Thousands, tens of thousands. He’s our paymaster, and all this silver and gold in our pouches was stolen from somewhere. Has to be. Nobody’s that rich. The obvious answer? Why, how about the Worm of Autumn’s temple coffers?
Pray to the Worm, pay an army of disgruntled malcontents. Somehow, all you believers, I doubt that was in your prayers.
Poor Brullyg had few allies in this chamber. Balm’s source of lust, this Captain Shurq Elalle of the privateer Undying Gratitude, and her first mate, Skorgen Kaban the Pretty. And neither seemed eager to leap to Brullyg’s side
