you to turn in yourselves to great reward, which will avail you nothing when Gareb hides and quarters poor Scorch and Leff. Ah, calamities await!’
‘Torvald Nom was once our partner,’ said Leff, though now sweating in earnest. ‘He gave us his word, he did. And if he goes back on it, well, doing wrong to Scorch and Leff is never a good idea, for anybody. So you keep that in mind, too, Kruppe, if you go blabbing to Gareb or some such thing.’
‘Bern forbid. Kruppe would do no such thing, dearest temperamental friends! Nay, Kruppe’s fear relates back to those new rags abounding in the grubby hands of urchins at every street corner these days, such a plague upon Darujhistan! Said rags are nefariously quick and diabolical with their gossip, and who can know the multitude of dubious sources? Kruppe worries what the morrow’s rag.will proclaim!’
‘Damned well better proclaim nothing,’ snarled Scorch, looking terrified and belligerent all at once.
‘Now, blessed friends,’ Kruppe said with a perfunctory but flourished wave of his hands, ‘we must end this debacle for tonight! Dread circumstance hovers. Kruppe senses stupendous events imminently… imminent. A taste upon the air, a flutter in the wind, a flicker in the lantern light, a waver in watery pools of ale, a thump upon the stairs… a rattling exposure of front doors-ho! Noms and flowers! Knives and bleeders! Faces most ashen and dismayed! Begone from Kruppe’s table, recent wumplings of desultory concourse! Reunion most precious awaits!’
Rallick was leaning heavily against Cutter by the time they reached the entrance to the Phoenix Inn. Gods, if I’ve killed him-my friend-gods, no-
Pushing open the door he half dragged Rallick inside.
And saw, behind the counter, Meese. Beyond her, Irilta. And there, to his left, frozen in mid-step and staring with wide eyes-
‘Sulty! Rallick’s hurt-we need a room-and help-’
All at once Meese was pulling the assassin from Cutter’s arms. ‘Hood’s breath, he’s cut to pieces!’
‘I’m sorry-’ Cutter began.
But Irilta was now there, taking his face between hands that smelled of ale and chopped garlic. Lips suddenly looming large as she planted a full kiss on his mouth, tongue briefly writhing in like a worm down a hole.
Cutter reeled back, then found Sulty in his arms, grasping him tight – tight with arms astonishingly strong after a dozen or so years of trays and pitchers-so light all the air was pushed from his lungs,
‘He’ll live,’ pronounced Meese from where she crouched over Rallick, who was lying on the floor behind the counteri. Once we stop the bleeding. He musta been lumped by three or four, by the looks.’ Straightening, she dropped the bloody dagger on the counter. A crowd was gathering, and heads now tilted in for a closer look at that foreign-made weapon.
‘Malazan!’ hissed someone.
Pulling himself from Sulty’s arms, Cutter pushed through. ‘Give me room! Don’t touch that knife! It’s mine.’
‘Yours?’ demanded Irilta. ‘What’s that supposed t’mean, Crokus?’
‘He came up on me from behind-all quiet-like a killer. I thought I was defending myself-it was all a mistake-you sure he’s going to be all right, Meese?’
‘You was that scrawny thief years back!’ said a man with a vaguely familiar face, his expression flitting between disbelief and accusation.
‘Crokus, Irilta said,’ added the man beside him.-‘Did something the night the Moon came down, I heard. Knocked over a pillar or something. You remember, Scorch, don’t you?’
‘I make a point of remembering only what I need to, Leff. Though sometimes other stuff sticks, too. Anyway, he was a pickpocket, one of Kruppe’s lads.’
‘Well he ain’t any more, is he?’ Scorch said in a half-snarl. ‘Now he’s a Guild assassin!’
‘No I’m not!’ shouted Cutter-all at once feeling like the ungainly youth he had been years ago. Furious at his own burning face he swung to Meese. ‘Where’s everybody else? I mean-’
Meese held up a hand-on which there was some of Rallick’s blood-and said, ‘He’s waiting, Crokus. At his usual table-go on. Hey,’ she shouted to the crowd, ‘give him a way through! Go back t’your tables!’
Just like that, Cutter reflected, he had made things a shambles. His grand return. Everything. Reaching out as he passed, he retrieved his knife-not meeting Meese’s eyes as he did so. Then, as bodies pulled back, he saw-
There, at his usual table, the small round man with greasy hair and beaming, cherubic smile. Filthy frilly cuffs, a faded and stained red waistcoat. A glistening pitcher on the puddled tabletop, two tankards.
fust a thief. A pickpocket. A raider of girls’ bedrooms. Wasn’t I the breathless oriel A wide-eyed fool. Oh, Kruppe, look at you. If anybody wasn’t going to change, it’s you.
Cutter found himself at the table, collapsing into the waiting chair, reaching for the tankard. ‘I gave up on my old name, Kruppe. It’s now Cutter. Better suited, don’t you think?’ Then why do I feel like weeping? ‘Especially after what I did to I
Rallick just now.’
Kruppe’s brows lifted. ‘Kruppe sympathizes, oh yes he does. Life stumbles on-although the exception is none other than Kruppe himself, for whom life dances. Extraordinary, how such truth rubs so many so wrongly; why, can one’s very existence prove sufficient for such inimical outrage? Seems it can, oh yes, most certainly. There are always those, clear friend, for whom a wink is an insult, a smile a taunt. For whom humour alone is cause for suspicion, as if laughter was sly contempt. Tell Kruppe, dear Cutter, do you believe that we are all equal?’
‘Equal? Well-’
‘A laudable notion, we can both agree, yes? Yet’-and he raised one rather unclean finger-’is it not true that, from one year to the next, we each ourselves are capable of changes so fundamental that our present selves can in no reasonable way be considered equal to our past selves? If the rule does not apply even within our own individual lives, how can one dare hope to believe that it pertains collectively?’
‘Kruppe, what has all this-’
‘Years past, Cutter who was once named Crokus, we would not have a discussion such as this, yes? Kruppe sees and sees very well. He sees sorrow and wisdom both. Pain and still open wounds. Love found and love lost. A certain desperation that still spins like a coin-which way will it fall? Question as yet unanswered, a future as yet undecided. So, old friend now returned, let us drink, thus yielding the next few moments to companionable silence.’ And with that Kruppe collected his tankard and lifted it high.
Sighing, Cutter did the same.
‘The spinning coin!’
And he blanched. ‘Gods below, Kruppe!’
‘Drink, friend! Drink deep the unknown and unknowable future!’
And so he did.
The wheel had stopped spinning, milky water dripping down its sides to gather in the gutter surrounding it. The bright lanterns had been turned well down, sinking the room into soft light, and she now walked towards her bed, drying her hands with a towel.
In a day or two she would fire up the kiln.
It was late and this was no time to be thinking the heavy, turgid thoughts that now threatened to reach up and take hold of her weary mind. Regret has a flavour and it is stale, and all the cups of tea in the world could do nothing to wash it away.
The scratching at the door brought her round-some drunk at the wrong house, no doubt. She was in no mood to answer.
Now knuckles, tapping with muted urgency.
Tiserra tossed the towel down, rubbed absently at her aching wrist, then collected one of the heavier stirring sticks from the glaze table and approached the door. ‘Wrong house,’ she said loudly. ‘Go on, now!’
A fist thumped.
Raising the stick, Tiserra unlatched the door and swung it back.
The man stepping into the threshold was wearing a stupid grin.
One she knew well, had known for years, although it had been some time since she had last seen it. Lowering the stick, she sighed. ‘Torvald Nom. You’re late.’
‘Sorry, love,’ he replied. ‘I got waylaid. Slavers. Ocean voyages, Toblakal, dhenrabi, torture and crucifixion, a sinking ship ‘
