The Crippled God

‘Fid’s captain now,’ Balm growled. ‘What more do you need to know? He’ll do us right. He was a Bridgeburner, wasn’t he? Look at his old squad, lads — didn’t lose a damned one of them. If that ain’t the kind eye of a god looking down, what is?’

Widdershins crowded up behind Throatslitter, Deadsmell and the sergeant. ‘Did any of you hear Bottle back there? That stuff about our name?’

Throatslitter scowled. ‘What?’

‘He was asking about how we got our name.’

‘So?’

‘So, I just think … well … I think it’s important. I think Bottle knows something, but he’s keeping it quiet-’

‘Bottled up?’ Deadsmell asked.

Throatslitter’s high-pitched laugh triggered curses up and down the line. The assassin hissed under his breath. ‘Sorry, that just came out.’

‘So give him a shake, Wid,’ pressed Deadsmell, ‘until it all gushes out. He’s got a cork somewhere, go and find it.’

Throatslitter snorted, and then choked as he held down another squeal.

‘Stop that, Deadsmell,’ Balm ordered. ‘I mean it.’

‘But I’ve just scratched the surface of possibilities, Sergeant-’

‘You saw what Cuttle went and did to Koryk? I’ll lay you out, Deadsmell-’

‘You can’t do that — you’re our sergeant!’

‘Meaning I can do it, idiot.’

Widdershins said, ‘Bottle’s a mage, just like me. We got us a common bond. Think I might talk to him after all. There’s something he’s not saying. I know it.’

‘Well,’ mused Deadsmell, ‘the man did somehow survive the Nah’ruk kitchen tent, so that’s kind of impressive.’

‘And he came in with Captain Ruthan Gudd. There’s an inner circle, you see. I suspected it from way back.’

‘Widdershins, you may have hit on something there,’ said Deadsmell. ‘People in the know. Knowing … something.’

‘More than us, right.’

‘Probably got it all mapped out, too. Even how we’re going to get across this desert, and then take down another empire just like we took down Lether.’

‘Just like we crushed the Whirlwind, too. And got ourselves out of Malaz City. So now you ain’t making fun of me no more, Deadsmell, are ya?’

As one, the four marines twisted round to glare at the squad trudging behind them. Sergeant Tarr’s brows lifted.

‘You hearing this, Tarr?’ Balm called back.

‘Not a word of it, Balm.’

‘Good.’

Facing forward again, Widdershins tried to press even closer. ‘Listen,’ he whispered, ‘we can work out who’s in the know. Fid, and Ruthan Gudd-’

‘And Bottle,’ said Deadsmell, ‘because he’s Fid’s shaved knuckle.’

‘Masan Gilani-’

‘What? Really?’

‘Another one attached to the Adjunct’s retinue — they didn’t kill her horse, did you know that? They kept her two of ’em, in fact.’ Widdershins rubbed at his face. ‘Gets cold with the sun down, don’t it? Then there’s Lostara Yil, who did that Shadow Dance — that one for sure. Who else?’

‘Keneb but he’s dead,’ said Balm. ‘Quick Ben, too.’

Widdershins barked a low laugh. ‘I’m with Bottle on that one. He’s out there, somewhere. Maybe with Gesler and Stormy-’

‘Of course!’ Balm cut in. ‘Ges and Stormy! And don’t they have the runts with them?’

‘Sinn and Grub, aye.’

Widdershins nodded. ‘Could be the whole conspiracy right there, then. The inner circle I was talking about-’

‘The conniving cabal,’ said Deadsmell.

‘Aye-’

‘The secret sneaks.’

‘Just so.’

‘The shifty-eyed sentinels of truth-’

Throatslitter’s laugh pierced the night.

Sinter winced at the cry behind them. ‘Gods, I wish he’d stop doing that.’

‘Nothing very funny about this,’ Badan Gruk agreed. ‘But then it’s Throatslitter, isn’t it? That man would laugh over his dying sister.’ He shook his head. ‘I don’t get people like him. Taking pleasure in misery, in torture, all that. What’s to laugh about? Talk about a messed-up mind.’

She glanced at him curiously. His face was lit in the green glow of the Jade Spears. Ghoulish. Ethereal. ‘What’s eating you, Badan?’

‘That conspiracy of Wid’s.’ He shot her a suspicious look. ‘It’s got to include you, Sinter, don’t it?’

‘Like Hood it does.’

‘You had a chat with Masan Gilani — and’ — he nodded towards the wagon rocking and creaking just ahead of them — ‘your sister.’

‘We was just trying to work out stuff to help the Adjunct-’

‘Because you knew something. Those feelings you get. You knew we were in trouble, long before the lizards showed up.’

‘Little good it did us. Don’t you see? I knew but I didn’t know. Do you have any idea how helpless that made me feel?’

‘So what’s coming, Sinter?’

‘No idea — and that’s just how I want it.’ She tapped her helm. ‘All quiet, not a whisper. You think I’m in some inner circle? You’re wrong.’

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Forget it.’

The silence stretched between them, and to Sinter it felt like a cocoon, or a web they were snared in. Struggling just made it worse. In the hills high above the savanna of her homeland there were ancient tombs carved into cliff faces. Barely past her first blooding, she’d journeyed with her sister and two others to explore those mysterious caves.

Nothing but dust. The stone sarcophagi were stacked a dozen to each chamber, and Sinter remembered standing in the relative chill, one hand holding a makeshift torch, and in the flickering, wavering orange light staring at the lowest coffin in a stack rising before her. Other peoples buried their dead, instead of gifting the corpse to the vulture goddess and her get. Or sealed them beneath heavy lids of stone. And she remembered thinking, with a chill rippling through her: but what if they got it wrong? What if you weren’t dead?

In the years since, she’d heard horrifying tales of hapless people buried alive, trapped within coffins of stone or wood. Life in the barracks was rife with stories intended to make one shiver. Worse than the haranguing threats from priests behind a pulpit — and everyone knew those ones were doing it for the coin. And all that delicious sharing out of fear.

And now … now, I feel as if I’m about to wake up. From a long sleep. From my mouth, a sighing breath — but all I see is darkness, all I hear is a strange dull echo all around me. And I reach up, and find cold, damp stone. It was the drops that awakened me. The condensation of my own breathing.

I am about to wake up, to find that I have been buried alive.

The terror would not let her go. This desert belongs to the dead. Its song is the song of dying.

In the wagon lumbering a few strides ahead sat her sister. Head lolling as if asleep. Was it that easy for her?