Orb Sceptre Throne (44 page)

Am I going mad? Perhaps we both are
.

A smooth warm hand brushing his cheek brought Lim to consciousness. He smiled, remembering similar nights long ago – then his eyes snapped open.

He stared at Taya crouched on his bed. ‘What in the name of Gedderone are you doing here!’

The girl’s full lips puckered into an exaggerated pout. ‘Don’t you want me, dearest Jeshin?’

‘Well, yes. But – no! You mustn’t … How did you get in here?’

She uncoiled herself from the bed, walked round it. Jeshin could not take his eyes from her. ‘Never mind that, dearest. I am here to congratulate you.’

He rose and threw on a silk dressing gown. He eyed the door to his chamber – closed. ‘Congratulate … me?’ he said as he edged towards the door. A shape emerged from the shadows next to it, a ghostly wavering figure of a man in tattered finery. The spectre raised a finger to its lips for silence.

Jeshin found that his voice had fled.

‘You’ve played your part magnificently, dearest. Even better than we could have hoped. But now …’ She sighed. Jeshin pulled his gaze from the apparition to her. She was shaking her head in mock sadness. ‘Now it is time to move on to the second act.’

Jeshin tried to shout but something had a fist at his throat. He could barely draw breath. Taya was at his side. Her soft lips brushed his cheek. ‘There is someone here I want you to meet,’ she whispered, her voice thick with passion.

Through tears he saw a new figure emerge from the gloom. A man in loose obscuring robes and on his head, bizarrely, an oval mask that shone pale in the starlight like a moon. Terror drove a knife into his heart and he would have collapsed but for Taya supporting him by one arm.

‘You wished to be a great ruler and for Darujhistan to rise anew,’ Taya breathed in his ear. ‘Well, you shall have your wish, my dear! You shall be the most magnificent ruler Darujhistan has ever seen. And under your hand the city will be reborn. All Genabackis shall bow before it, as before.’

She grasped his hair to wrench back his head. His cheeks ran with tears. The figure raised a hand to the mask, lifted it from its head.

When he saw what was revealed beneath Jeshin managed one soul-shattering scream before the suffocating metal was pressed to his face.

Scorch and Leff paused in their card game at a table next to the rear servants’ entrance of Lim manor. Leff cocked his head. ‘Hear that? You hear something?’

Scorch took a stiff sip from a jug of cooking wine, set it down with a grimace of disgust. ‘Hunh?’

‘I said, did you hear something?’

Scorch listened fiercely, cocking his head.

Leff raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Not now! A minute ago – anything?’

Scorch shook a negative. He set a hand on the crossbow leaning against the table. ‘Should we … you know …’

‘Should we what?’

‘I dunno. ’Vestigate?’

Leff examined his cards. Tower, magus, mercenary. It was a good hand. ‘Naw. Not right now.’ He eyed the pot. ‘Raise you ten copper crescents.’

Scorch made a face. ‘I don’t got ten crescents. You cleaned me out.’ He threw down the cards, crossed his arms and eyed the great mound of copper on the table. ‘Where’s all our silver gone, anyway?’

Spindle sat cradling a tankard from the last barrel of beer in K’rul’s bar. The former Imperial historian, Duiker, sat with him. Fisher was at another table, leaning back, tuning a long-necked instrument. Blend and Picker were at the bar, staring at the door as if willing customers to enter.

It seemed to him that he’d done quite enough to answer the Malazans’ request for intelligence. He’d told them all they’d discovered that night out on the Dwelling Plain. He’d even poked around where they were salvaging stone blocks out of the harbour. He saw the scholar there, the one who’d been down the well. He seemed to be working for these scary mages. And weren’t they a hair-raising lot, too. Reminded him of the old gang who used to work for the Empire. It was enough to make his shirt squirm. He wasn’t going to tempt their notice, no sir.
Ma told me ’bout mages like that
.

Everyone was quiet, as they had been for the last few nights. Even Fisher’s plucking was subdued.
Waitin’. Waitin’ for the storm to break
. The historian had been frowning at his glass of tea for some time and now he raised one cocked eye to Spindle.

‘Did you get a good look at these stones?’ he asked.

Spindle nodded, frowning thoughtfully. ‘Pretty good. They got masons cleaning them. Chisellin’ off growths and barnacles and such, then polishing them. The stone’s white beneath. Like purest marble.’ He paused, his brows crimping. ‘But not like any marble I ever seen. Not hard white like solid. Kinda clear, smoky almost …’

Everyone flinched at a discordant jangle from the instrument in Fisher’s hands. All eyes turned to the bard, who was watching Spindle, his brows raised. ‘Smoky?’ he repeated. ‘As in see-through, or translucent?’

Spindle nodded eagerly. ‘Yeah. That’s it. Like you said, see-through.’

From the bar Picker’s voice sounded, low and warning. ‘What is it, bard?’

Fisher lowered his gaze to the instrument and strummed a few idle bars. ‘Has anyone noticed how among all the towers and buildings and temples here in the city, none uses white stone?’

‘I’m not a damned architect,’ Picker grumbled.

Spindle had noticed, but he’d put it down to some sort of local shortage. ‘Well, those’re building stones awright. And they’re digging a trench there too, come to think of it. A foundation.’

Fisher shrugged, returned to his tuning. ‘It’s a local superstition. White stone’s considered bad luck here – even a symbol of death. It’s only used in sepulchres or mausoleums … And then there are the old songs too …’

The bard’s voice trailed away and no one spoke for a time. Finally Blend ground out from where she leaned against the bar, chin in hands: ‘What songs?’

Fisher shrugged as if uninterested. ‘Oh, just local folk tales, really. Rhymes and sayings.’

Blend shifted to return her attention to the door. Picker, arms crossed, hands tucked up under her armpits, nodded to herself for a time. Spindle took a small sip from his tankard. He watched her over its rim. ‘Like?’ she finally asked, almost resentfully.

‘Well, there’s one titled … “The Throne of White Stone”.’

‘Wonderful,’ Picker snorted.

‘Not our fight,’ Blend muttered, facing the door and hunching her shoulders higher.

‘It exists only in fragments,’ Fisher continued, apparently unaware of their reactions, or unconcerned. ‘It’s very old. Thought to date back to the Daru migrations into the region. It tells of tormented spirits imprisoned in an underworld of white stone ruled by demons and guarded by …’ The bard’s voice trailed away.

‘All right!’ Picker snapped. ‘We get the picture.’

‘Not our fight,’ Blend repeated, her jaw set and eyes fixed on the door.

Neither saw Fisher’s expression turn to one almost of alarm as he sat upright. Spindle noticed the man’s change in mood but didn’t know what to make of it. Duiker’s gaze, however, steady upon the man, narrowed suspiciously.

Much later that night only Fisher and the old Imperial historian remained within the bar’s common room. Fisher, it seemed to Duiker, appeared to be waiting for him to retire for the night. He finished his cold tea and turned a speculative eye on the tall bard, who had appeared preoccupied all evening. Perhaps even worried.

‘I’ve not heard that lay,’ he said.

‘It’s not local,’ Fisher said, his gaze on his hands. ‘It’s a travellers’ tale, told of a distant land.’

‘A land distant from where?’

Fisher offered a wry smile. ‘A land rather distant from here.’

‘And who is it that guards those tormented souls?’

The bard took a troubled breath, glanced down once more. ‘A prison of white stone guarded by … faceless warriors.’ He stood, brushed his trousers. ‘I’m … going for a walk.’

Duiker watched the man go. The lock of the door fell into place behind him. He returned his attention to the empty teacup, its leaves drying on the bottom. He swirled the dregs, studying them.
There are patterns here. The trick is in being able to identify them
.

Faceless warriors
…

*

Fisher had prepared himself but he could not quell his start when the masked figure of Thurule opened the door to Lady Envy’s manor. ‘I wish to see the Lady,’ he said. ‘I take it she is up.’

Silent, of course, Thurule motioned him in.

Fisher knew he hadn’t given the fellow much thought before, other than that he was Seguleh, and a rarity. Now, however, with fresh suspicions gnawing at his mind, he could not help but distance himself slightly from the man as they walked along. Though he knew that even a Seguleh would find in him a far from easy challenge. The manor house was dark, and, it must be said, still almost entirely unfurnished. Thurule guided him to the rear terrace, where Fisher glimpsed Envy standing at a short brick wall overlooking the unkempt grounds, peering up into the night sky. She was shimmering bright in some sort of glowing sheer pale-green dress.

‘Bored with your simple-minded friends already?’ she said without even turning round.

He noted that she held a drink in one hand, elbow on her hip.

Fisher took a steadying breath. ‘You know what is coming …’ he began, and then a new thought struck him. ‘You’ve known all along … that’s why you’re here.’

She flashed a satisfied smile over her shoulder. ‘A proper court at last. It’s been ages. I’ll finally be able to get a decent wardrobe.’

The callousness, the monumental self-interest, struck him dumb. He realized there was nothing he could possibly say to change her mind. He spoke his anger instead. ‘It does not matter to you then that untold thousands must be ground into the dirt so that you can wear fashionable dresses and attend your damned balls?’

She slowly turned. The smile was still there, but it was as brittle as crystal. An emerald fire simmered in her eyes. ‘Really, Fisher, such hypocrisy. If you cared so much why are you not beating your chest already? There are poor in the city now. There will always be those who rule and those who are ruled.’ She gave the faintest shrug of her bare, shapely shoulders. ‘And come now, be honest. If you could choose, which would you really prefer?’

What he saw saddened him. He’d seen how Anomander’s death had touched her, yet he knew now it registered only because it was personal. Sympathy for any other’s loss or suffering was beyond her. He should have said nothing then, simply left. But his own anger was up – or was it bitterness and disappointment? ‘I would choose rulership that generated wealth rather than that of a parasite sucking blood and contributing nothing. Rather like a leech.’

The thrown glass struck him on the side of his face, shattering. ‘Said the
bard
– who contributes nothing save hot air! Thurule!’ she called. ‘See this man out. And never admit him again.’

Fisher touched his face where warmth ran down to his neck. His fingers came away wet with blood. Then Thurule was there, silent, one arm indicating the way out. He bowed his exit to Lady Envy though her back was turned.

There is nothing for me here anyway
.

For ages the citizens of Darujhistan were amazed by the riches dug from the tunnels and vaults beneath the region known as the Dwelling Plain. Yet while sitting in a tavern this visitor did overhear one fellow opining the following: ‘Is it not so that better these ancients had been men and women of worth than to possess things of worth?’