roll with him – breaks loose his exhaustion afterwards.'
'I applaud your altruism,' Barathol said, moving closer to the firepit and prodding at the dim coals with the point of his cook-knife. From the gloom to his right, Chaur appeared, smiling.
'You should at that,' Scillara said in reply to Barathol's comment.
He glanced up. 'And is that all there is? For you?'
She looked away, drew hard on her pipe.
'Don't hurt him, Scillara.'
'Fool, don't you see? I'm doing the opposite.'
'That's what I concluded. But what if he falls in love with you?'
'He won't. He can't.'
'Why not?'
She rose and walked over to the packs. 'Get that fire going, Barathol.
Some hot tea should rake away the chill in our bones.'
Unless that's all you have in them, woman.
Chaur went to Scillara's side, crouching to stroke her hair as, ignoring him, she drew out wrapped foodstuffs.
Chaur watched, with avid fascination, every stream of smoke Scillara exhaled.
Aye, lad, like the legends say, some demons breathe fire.
They let Cutter sleep, and he did not awaken until mid-morning – bolting into a sitting position with a confused, then guilty expression on his face. The sun was finally warm, tempered by a pleasantly cool breeze coming in from the east.
Barathol watched as Cutter's scanning gaze found Scillara, who sat with her back to a boulder, and the Daru flinched slightly at her greeting wink and blown kiss.
Chaur was circling the camp like an excited dog – the roar of surf was much louder now, carried on the wind, and he could not contain his eagerness to discover the source of that sound.
Cutter pulled his attention from Scillara and watched Chaur for a time. 'What's with him?'
'The sea,' Barathol said. 'He's never seen it. He probably doesn't even know what it is. There's still some tea, Cutter, and those packets in front of Scillara are your breakfast.'
'It's late,' he said, rising. 'You should've woken me.' Then he halted. 'The sea? Beru fend, we're that close?'
'Can't you smell it? Hear it?'
Cutter suddenly smiled – and it was a true smile – the first Barathol had seen on the young man.
'Did anyone see the moon last night?' Scillara asked. 'It was mottled.
Strange, like holes had been poked through it.'
'Some of those holes,' Barathol observed, 'seem to be getting bigger.'
She looked over, nodding. 'Good, I thought so, too, but I couldn't be sure. What do you think it means?'
Barathol shrugged. 'It's said the moon is another realm, like ours, with people on its surface. Sometimes things fall from our sky. Rocks.
Balls of fire. The Fall of the Crippled God was said to be like that.
Whole mountains plunging down, obliterating most of a continent and filling half the sky with smoke and ash.' He glanced across at Scillara, then over at Cutter. 'I was thinking, maybe, that something hit the moon in the same way.'
'Like a god being pulled down?'
'Yes, like that.'
'So what are those dark blotches?'
'I don't know. Could be smoke and ash. Could be pieces of the world that broke away.'
'Getting bigger…'
'Yes.' Barathol shrugged again. 'Smoke and ash spreads. It stands to reason, then, doesn't it?'
Cutter was quickly breaking his fast. 'Sorry to make you all wait. We should get going. I want to see what's in that abandoned village.'
'Anything seaworthy is all we need,' Barathol said.
'That is what I'm hoping we'll find.' Cutter brushed crumbs from his hands, tossed one last dried fig into his mouth, then rose. 'I'm ready,' he said around a mouthful.
All right, Scillara, you did well.
There were sun-bleached, dog-gnawed bones in the back street of the fisher village. Doors to the residences within sight, the inn and the Malazan assessor's building were all open, drifts of fine sand heaped in the entranceways. Moored on both sides of the stone jetty were half-submerged fisher craft, the ropes holding them fast stretched to unravelling, while in the shallow bay beyond, two slightly larger carracks waited at anchor next to mooring poles.
Chaur still stood on the spot where he had first come in sight of the sea and its rolling, white-edged waves. His smile was unchanged, but tears streamed unchecked and unabating from his eyes, and it seemed he was trying to sing, without opening his mouth: strange mewling sounds emerged. What had run down from his nose was now caked with wind-blown sand.
Scillara wandered through the village, looking for whatever might prove useful on the voyage they now planned. Rope, baskets, casks, dried foodstuffs, nets, gaffs, salt for storing fish – anything.
Mostly what she found were the remnants of villagers – all worried by dogs. Two squat storage buildings flanked the avenue that ran inward from the jetty, and these were both locked. With Barathol's help, both buildings were broken into, and in these structures they found more supplies than they could ever use.
Cutter swam out to examine the carracks, returning after a time to report that both remained sound and neither was particularly more seaworthy than the other. Of matching length and beam, the craft were like twins.
'Made by the same hands,' Cutter said. 'I think. You could judge that better than me, Barathol, if you're at all interested.'
'I will take your word for it, Cutter. So, we can choose either one, then.'
'Yes. Of course, maybe they belong to the traders we met.'
'No, they're not Jelban. What are their names?'
'Dhenrabi's Tail is the one on the left. The other's called Sanal's Grief. I wonder who Sanal was?'
'We'll take Grief,' Barathol said, 'and before you ask, don't.'
Scillara laughed.
Cutter waded alongside one of the swamped sculls beside the jetty. 'We should bail one of these, to move our supplies out to her.'
Barathol rose. 'I'll start bringing those supplies down from the warehouse.'
Scillara watched the huge man make his way up the avenue, then turned her attention to the Daru, who had found a half-gourd bailer and was scooping water from one of the sculls. 'Want me to help?' she asked.
'It's all right. Finally, I've got something to do.'
'Day and night now.'
The glance he threw her was shy. 'I've never tasted milk before.'
Laughing, she repacked her pipe. 'Yes you have. You just don't remember it.'
'Ah. I suppose you're right.'
'Anyway, you're a lot gentler than that little sweet-faced bloodfly was.'
'You've not given her a name?'
'No. Leave that to her new mothers to fight over.'
'Not even in your own mind? I mean, apart from blood-fly and leech and horse tick.'
