The Crippled God

edu.’

Eyes fixed on Aranict and everyone was silent for a moment.

With narrowed gaze the young sorceress addressed Faint. ‘Kellan varad. V’ap gerule y mest.’

Whatever she’d said did not seem to warrant a reply from Faint, who now spoke to Aranict. ‘We are lost. Seek Holds. Way home. Darujhistan. Do you kerall- er, are you, ah, caster magic? Kellan Varad? High Mage?’

Aranict glanced at Brys, who now answered her earlier shrug with one of his own. She was silent for a moment, thinking, and then she said, ‘Yes, Faint. Atri-Ceda. High Mage. I am named Aranict.’ She cocked her head and asked, ‘The Letherii you speak, it is high diction, is it not? Where did you learn it?’

Faint shook her head. ‘City. Seven Cities. Ehrlitan. Lowborn tongue, in slums. You speak like whore.’

Aranict pulled hard on her rustleaf, and then smiled. ‘This should be fun.’

The ghost of Sweetest Sufferance held up her clay pipe, squinted at the curls of smoke rising from it. ‘See that, Faint? That’s the perfect breath of every life-giving god there ever was. Holier than incense. Why, if priests filled their braziers with rustleaf, the temples would be packed, worshippers like salted fish in a barrel-’

‘Worshippers?’ Faint snorted. ‘Addicts, you mean.’

‘Variations on a theme, darling. You’ve stopped wincing with every breath, I see.’

Faint leaned back on the heap of blankets. ‘You heard Precious. That Aranict is tapping Elder magic-’

‘And something else, too, she said. Newborn, she called it — what in Hood’s name is that supposed to mean?’

‘I don’t care. All I know is I’ve stopped aching everywhere.’

‘Me too.’

Sweetest puffed contentedly for a time, and then said, ‘They were nervous round Amby though, weren’t they?’ She glanced over at the silent man where he sat close to the tent’s entrance. ‘Like they never seen a Bole before, right, Amby?’

The man gave no sign of having heard her, which Faint found something of a relief. He must think I’ve gone mad, having a one-way conversation like this. Then again, he might be right. Something snapped in me, I suppose.

Sweetest Sufferance rolled her eyes at Faint.

‘Did you see the tack on that commander’s horse,’ Faint asked in a low voice. ‘A different rig from what the lancers had. The set-up was different, I mean. That over-tug inside the horn. The stirrup angle-’

‘What’re you going on about, Faint?’

‘The prince’s horse, idiot. He had his tack worked in the Malazan style.’

Sweetest Sufferance frowned at Faint. ‘Coincidence?’ She waved a hand. ‘Sorry, pretend I didn’t say that. So, that is strange, isn’t it? Can’t think the Malazans ever got this far. But maybe they did. Oh, well, they must have, since you saw what you saw-’

‘Your head’s spinning, isn’t it?’

‘I might crawl out and throw up soon,’ she replied. ‘Amby, don’t be blocking that flap, right? Now, Malazan tack. What do you think that means?’

‘If Precious and Aranict can work out a way of talking to each other, we might find out.’

‘We ever use the Holds, Faint?’

‘Not on purpose. No. Master Quell had some stories, though. The early days, when things were a lot wilder than what we go through — when they didn’t know how to control or even pick their gates. Every now and then, one of the carriages would plunge into some world nobody even knew existed. Got into lots of trouble, too. Quell once told me about one realm where there was virtually no magic at all. The shareholders who ended up there had a Hood’s hole of a time getting back.’

‘Yeah, we had it easy, didn’t we?’

‘Until our master got eviscerated, yes, Sweetie.’

‘You know, I doubt Precious is going to get much that’s useful from that High Mage.’

‘Why do you say that?’

Sweetest shrugged. ‘It’s not like we got anything to offer them, is it? Not like we can bargain or make a deal.’

‘Sure we can. Get us back home and the Trygalle will offer ’em a free delivery. Anything, anywhere.’

‘You think so? Why? I can’t think we’re that important, Faint.’

‘You ain’t read all the articles, have you? If we’re in trouble, we can bargain with the full backing of the Guild, and they will honour those bargains to the letter.’

‘Really? Well now, they know how to take care of their shareholders. I’m impressed.’

‘You have to hand it to them,’ Faint agreed. ‘I mean, excepting when we’re torn off the carriage on a run and left behind to get ripped apart and eaten. Or cut down in a deal that goes sour. Or we run up a whopping tab in the local pit. Or some alien disease takes us down. Or we lose a limb or three, get head-bash addled, or-’

‘Giant lizards drop outa the sky and kill us, yes. Be quiet, Faint. You’re not helping things at all.’

‘What I’m doing,’ Faint said, closing her eyes, ‘is trying not to think about those runts, and the hag that took them.’

‘It’s not like they were shareholders, dearie.’

Ah, now that’s my Sweetest. ‘True enough. Still. We got stretched out plain to see that day, Sweetest, and the rack’s tightening still, at least in my mind. I just don’t feel good about it.’

‘Think I’ll head out and throw up now,’ Sweetest said.

Slipping past Amby was easy, Faint saw, for a ghost.

Precious Thimble rubbed at her face, which had gone slightly numb. ‘How are you doing this?’ she asked. ‘You’re pushing words into my head.’

‘The Empty Hold is awake once more,’ Aranict replied. ‘It is the Hold of the Unseen, the realms of the mind. Perception, knowledge, illusion, delusion. Faith, despair, curiosity, fear. Its weapon is the false belief in chance, in random fate.’

Precious was shaking her head. ‘Listen. Chance is real. You can’t say it isn’t. And mischance, too. You said your army got caught in a fight nobody was looking for — what was that?’

‘I dread to think,’ Aranict replied. ‘But I assure you it was not blind chance. In any case, your vocabulary has improved dramatically. Your comprehension is sound-’

‘So you can stop shoving stuff in, right?’

Aranict nodded. ‘Drink. Rest now.’

‘I have too many questions for that, Atri-Ceda. Why is the Hold empty?’

‘Because it is home to all which cannot be possessed, cannot be owned. And so too is the throne within the Hold empty, left eternally vacant. Because the very nature of rule is itself an illusion, a conceit and the product of a grand conspiracy. To have a ruler one must choose to be ruled over, and that forces notions of inequity to the fore, until they become, well, formalized. Made central to education, made essential as a binding force in society, until everything exists to prop up those in power. The Empty Throne reminds us of all that. Well, some of us, anyway.’

Precious Thimble frowned. ‘What did you mean when you said the Hold was awake once more?’

‘The Wastelands are so called because they are damaged-’

‘I know that — I can’t do a damned thing here.’

‘Nor could I, until recently.’ The Atri-Ceda plucked out a stick of rolled rustleaf and quickly lit it. Smoke thickened the air in the tent. ‘Imagine a house burning down,’ she said, ‘leaving nothing but heaps of ash. That’s what happened to magic in the Wastelands. Will it ever come back? Ever heal? Maybe that’s what we’re seeing here, but the power doesn’t just show up. It grows, and I think now it has to start in a certain way. Beginning with