‘He just wants to see that altar,’ Skintick said, ‘and he’s not the one they’re bothered with. Too bad,’ he added, ’it might have been interesting to see the old badger fight.’
‘Let’s head back,’ Nimander said, ‘while they’re distracted.’
‘If they let us.’
They turned and set off at an even, unhurried pace. After a dozen or so strides Skintick half turned. He grunted, then said, ‘They’ve left us to it. Nimander, the message seems clear. To get to that altar, we will have to go through them.’
‘So it seems.’
‘Things will get messy yet.’ Yes, they would.
‘So, do you think Kallor and the Dying God will have a nice conversation? Observations on the weather. Reminiscing on the old tyrannical days when everything was all fun and games. Back when the blood was redder, its taste sweeter. Do you think?’
Nimander said nothing, thinking instead of those faces in that mob, the black stains smeared round their mouths, the pits of their eyes. Clothed in rags, caked with filth, few children among them, as if the kelyk made them all equal, regardless of age, regardless of any sort of readiness to manage the world and the demands of living. They drank and they starved and the present was the future, until death stole away that future. A simple trajectory. No worries, no ambitions, no dreams.
Would any of that make killing them easier? No. ‘I do not want to do this,’ Nimander said. ‘No,’ Skintick agreed. ‘But what of Clip?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘This kelyk is worse than a plague, because its victims invite it into their lives, and then are indifferent to their own suffering. It forces the question-have we any right to seek to put an end to it, to destroy it?’
‘Maybe not,’ Nimander conceded.
‘But there is another issue, and that is mercy.’
He shot his cousin a hard look. ‘We kill them all for their own good? Abyss take us, Skin-’
‘Not them-of course not. I was thinking of the Dying God.’
Ah… well. Yes, he could see how that would work, how it could, in fact, make this palatable. If they could get to the Dying God without the need to slaughter hundreds of worshippers. ‘Thank you, Skin.’
‘For what?’
‘We will sneak past them.’
‘Carrying Clip?’
‘Yes.’
‘That won’t be easy-it might be impossible, in fact. If this city is the temple, and the power of the Dying God grants gilts to the priests, then they will sense our approach no matter what we do.’
‘We are children of Darkness, Skintick. Let us see if that still means some-thing.’
Desra pulled her hand from Clip’s brow. ‘I was wrong. He’s getting worse.’ And she straightened and looked across to Aranatha. ‘How are they?’ A languid blink. ‘Coming back, unharmed.’
Something was wrong with Aranatha. Too calm, too… empty. Desra always considered her sister to be vapid- oh, she wielded a sword with consummate elegance, as cold a killer as the rest of them when necessity so demanded-but there was a kind of pervasive disengagement in Aranatha. Often descending upon her in the midst of calamity and chaos, as if the world in its bolder mayhem could bludgeon her senseless.
Making her unreliable as far as Desra was concerned. She studied Aranatha for a moment longer, their eyes meeting, and when her sister smiled Desra answered with a scowl and turned to Nenanda. ‘Did you find anything to eat in the tap-room? Or drink?’
The warrior was standing by the front door, which he held open with one hand. At Desra’s questions he glanced back. ‘Plenty, as if they’d just leftor maybe it was a delivery, like the kind we got on the road.’
‘Someone must be growing proper food, then,’ said Kedeviss. ‘Or arranging its purchase from other towns and the like.’
‘They’ve gone to a lot of trouble for us,’ Nenanda observed. ‘And that makes me uneasy.’
‘Clip is dying, Aranatha,’ Desra said.
‘Yes.’
‘They’re back,’ Nenanda announced.
‘Nimander will know what to do,’ Desra pronounced.
‘Yes,’ said Aranatha.
She circled once, high above the city, and even her preternatural sight struggled against the eternal darkness below. Kurald Galain was a most alien warren, even in this diffused, weakened state. Passing directly over the slumbering mass of Silanah, Crone cackled out an ironic greeting. Of course there was no visible response from the crimson dragon, yet the Great Raven well knew that Silanah sensed her wheeling overhead. And no doubt permitted, in a flash of imagery, the vision of jaws snapping, bones and feathers crunching as delicious fluids spurted-Crone cackled again, louder this time, and was rewarded with a twitch of that long, serpentine tail.
She slid on to an updraught from the cliff’s edge, then angled down through it on a steep dive towards the low-walled balcony of the keep.
He stood alone, something she had come to expect of late. The Son of Darkness was dosing in, like an onyx flower as the bells of midnight rang on, chime by chime to the twelfth and last, and then there would be naught but echoes, until even these faded, leaving silence. She crooked her wings to slow her plummet, the keep still rushing up to meet her. A flurry of beating wings and she settled atop the stone wall, talons crunching into the granite.
‘And does the view ever change?’ Crone asked.
Anomander Rake looked down, regarded her for a time.
She opened her beak to laugh in silence for a few heartbeats. ‘The Tiste Andii are not a people prone to sudden attacks of joy, are they? Dancing into darkness? The wild cheerful cavort into the future? Do you imagine that our flight from his rotting flesh was not one of rapturous glee? Pleasure at being born, delight at being alive? Oh, I have run Out of questions for you-it is indeed now a sad time.’
‘Does Baruk understand, Crone?’
‘He does. More or less. Perhaps. We’ll see.’
‘Something is happening to the south.’
She bobbed her head in agreement. ‘Something, oh yes, something all right. Are the priestesses in a wild orgy yet? The plunge that answers everything! Or, rather, postpones the need for answers for a time, a time of corresponding bliss, no doubt. But then… reality returns. Damn reality, damn it to the Abyss! Time for another plunge!’
‘Travel has soured your mood, Crone.’
‘It is not in my nature to grieve. I despise it, in fact. I rail against it! My sphincter explodes upon it! And yet, what is it you force upon me, your old companion, your beloved servant?’
‘I have no such intention,’ he replied. ‘Clearly, you fear the worst. Tell me, what have your kin seen?’
‘Oh, they are scattered about, here and there, ever high above the petty machinations of the surface crawlers. We watch as they crawl this way and that. We watch, we laugh, we sing their tales to our sisters, our brothers.’
‘And?’
She ducked her head, fixed one eye upon the tumultuous black seas below. ‘This darkness of yours, Master, breeds fierce storms.’
‘So it does.’
‘I will fly high above the twisting clouds, into air clear and cold.’
‘And so you shall, Crone, so you shall.’
‘I dislike it when you are generous, Master. When that soft regard steals into your eyes. It is not for you to reveal compassion. Stand here, yes, unseen, unknowable, that I might hold this in my mind. Let me think of the ice of true justice, the kind that never shatters-listen, I hear the bells below! How sure that music, how true the cry of iron.’
‘You are most poetic this day, Crone.’
‘It is how Great Ravens rail at grief, Master. Now, what would you have me do?’
