Chapter Seventeen
When I go in search
The world cries out
And spins away
To walk is to reach
But the world turns
Shied into sublime fend
Flinching to my sting
So innocent a touch
This is what it is to search
The world’s answer
Is a cornered retort
It does not want seeing
Does not suffer knowing
To want is to fail
And die mute
Ever solitary these steps
Yielding what it is
To be alone
Crying out to the world
Spinning away
As in its search
It finds you out.
–
He might well speak of mystery and show a mask of delighted wonder, but the truth of it was, mystery frightened Beak. He could smell sorcery, yes, and sense its poetic music, so orderly and eloquent, but its heat could so easily burn, right down to a mortal man’s core. He was not much for bravery; oh, he could see it well enough among other soldiers-he could see it in every detail of Captain Faradan Sort, who now sat her horse at his side-but he knew he possessed none of it himself.
Coward and stupid were two words that went together, Beak believed, and both belonged to him. Smelling magic had been a way of avoiding it, of running from it, and as for all those candles within him, well, he was happiest when nothing arrived that might send their flames flickering, brightening, bursting into a conflagration. He supposed it was just another stupid decision, this being a soldier, but there was nothing he could do about it now.
Marching across that desert in that place called Seven Cities (although he’d only seen two cities, he was sure there were five more somewhere), Beak had listened to all the other soldiers complaining. About… well, everything. The fighting. Not fighting. The heat of the day, the cold at night, the damned coyotes yipping in the dark sounding so close you thought they were standing right beside you, mouth at your ear. The biting insects, the scorpions and spiders and snakes all wanting to kill you. Yes, they’d found lots to complain about. That terrible city, Y’Ghatan, and the goddess who’d opened one eye that night and so stolen away that evil rebel, Leoman. And then, when all had seemed lost, that girl-Sinn-showing her own candle. Blindingly bright, so pure that Beak had cowered before it. They’d complained about all of that, too. Sinn should have snuffed that firestorm out. The Adjunct should have waited a few days longer, because there was no way those marines would have died so easily.
And what about Beak? Hadn’t he sensed them? Well, maybe. That mage, Bottle, the one with all the pets. Maybe Beak had smelled him, still alive under all those ashes. But then he was a coward, wasn’t he? To go up to, say, the Adjunct, or Captain Kindly, and tell them-no, that was too much. Kindly was like his own father, who didn’t like to listen whenever it was something he wasn’t interested in hearing. And the Adjunct, well, even her own soldiers weren’t sure of her.
He’d listened with all the rest to her speech after they’d left Malaz City (a most terrifying night, that, and he was so glad he’d been far away from it, out on a transport), and he remembered how she talked about going it alone from now on. And doing things nobody else would ever know about. Unwitnessed, she said. As if that was important. Such talk usually confused Beak, but not this time. His entire life was, he knew, unwitnessed. So, she had made all the other soldiers just like him, just like Beak, and that had been an unexpected gift from that cold, cold woman. Coward or no and stupid as he was, she’d won him that night. Something she wouldn’t think much of, obviously, but it meant a lot to him.
Anyway, his heart had slowed its wild run, and he lifted his head and glanced over at the captain. She sat her horse in the deep shadow, unmoving just as he had been, and yet, in an instant, he thought he caught from her a sound-the hammering of waves against stone, the screams of soldiers in battle, swords and slaughter, lances like ice piercing hot flesh, and the waves-and then all of that was gone.
She must have sensed his attention, for she asked in a low voice: ‘Are they well past, Beak?’
‘Aye.’
‘Caught no scent of us?’
‘None, Captain. I hid us with grey and blue. It was easy. That mage she kneels in front of the Holds. She knows nothing about the grey and blue warrens.’
‘The Letherii were supposed to join us,’ Faradan Sort muttered. ‘Instead, we find them riding with Tiste Edur, doing their work for them.’
All stirred up, aye. Especially round here.’
‘And that’s the problem,’ she replied, gathering her reins and nudging her mount out from beneath the heavy branches where they had hidden-fifteen paces off the trail-while the war-party rode past. ‘We’re well ahead of the other squads. Either Hellian or Urb has lost their mind, or maybe both of them.’
Beak followed on his own horse, a gentle bay he’d named Lily. ‘Like a hot poker, Captain, pushing right to the back of the forge. Do that and you burn your hand, right?’
‘The hand, yes. Keneb. You and me. All the other squads.’
‘Um, your hand, I meant.’
‘I am learning to tell those moments,’ she said, now eyeing him.
‘What moments?’ Beak asked.
‘When you’ve convinced yourself how stupid you are.’
‘Oh.’ Those moments. ‘I ain’t never been so loyal, Captain. Never.’
She gave him a strange look then, but said nothing.
They rode up onto the trail and faced their mounts east. ‘They’re up there somewhere ahead,’ the captain said. ‘Causing all sorts of trouble.’
Beak nodded. They’d been tracking those two squads for two nights now. And it was truly a trail of corpses. Sprung ambushes, dead Letherii and Tiste Edur, the bodies dragged off into cover, stripped down and so naked Beak had to avert his eyes, lest evil thoughts sneak into his mind. All the places his mother liked him to touch that one night-no, all that was evil thinking, evil memories, the kind of evil that could make him hang himself as his brother had done.
‘We have to find them, Beak.’
He nodded again.
‘We have to rein them in. Tonight, do you think?’
‘It’s the one named Balgrid, Captain. And the other named Bowl-who’s learned magic real fast. Balgrid’s got the white candle, you see, and this land ain’t had no white candle for a long time. So he’s dragging the smell off all the bodies they’re leaving and that’s muddying things up-those ears they’re cutting off, and the fingers and stuff that they’re tying to their belts. That’s why we’re going from ambush to ambush, right? Instead of straight to them.’
‘Well,’ she said after a moment and another long, curious look, ‘we’re on damned horses, aren’t we?’
‘So are they now, Captain.’
