Stonewielder (3 page)

Without looking up Bakune asked: ‘Who was she to you?’

‘No one,’ the old man croaked in thickly accented Roolian.

‘Then why the Watch?’

‘Is one anonymous dead girl not worth your attention?’

Bakune slowly raised his head to the fellow: dark features, kinky greying hair. The black eyes in return studied him with open, what others might term impertinent, intent. He lowered his head, picked up a stick to shift the girl’s arm. ‘You are a tribesman. Of the Drenn?’

‘You know your tribes. That is unusual for you invaders.’

Bakune peered up once again, his eyes narrowed. ‘Invaders? The Malazans are the invaders.’

A smile empty of any humour pulled at the edge of the old man’s lips. ‘There are invaders and then there are invaders.’

Straightening, Bakune dropped the stick and regarded the old man directly. As a trained Assessor he knew when he himself was being …
examined
. He crossed his arms. ‘What is your name?’

Again the patient smile. ‘In your language? Gheven.’

‘Very well, Gheven. What is your – assessment – here?’

‘I’m just an itinerant tribal, vaunted sir. What should my opinion matter?’

‘It matters to me.’

The lips hardened into a straight tight line; the eyes almost disappeared into their nests of wrinkles. ‘Does it? Really?’

For some odd reason Bakune felt himself almost faltering. ‘Well, yes. Of course. I am the Assessor. It is my duty.’

A shrug and the hardened lines eased back into the distant, flat watchfulness. ‘It’s more and more common now,’ he began, ‘but it goes far back. You all blame the Malazan troops, of course. These Malazans, they’ve been here for what, ten years now? They walk your streets, billet themselves in your houses and inns. Visit your taverns. Hire your prostitutes. Your women take up with them. Often these girls are killed for such mixing. Usually by their own fathers or brothers for smearing what they call their “honour”—’

‘That’s a damned lie, tribal scum! It’s the Malazans!’

Bakune almost jumped – he’d forgotten the Watch lieutenant. He raised a placating hand to the man who stood seething, knuckles white on the grip of his shortsword. ‘You said
usually
… ?’

The man’s lined face had knotted in uncompromising distaste; his gnarled hands remained loose at his sides. He seemed unaware of, or indifferent to, how close he was to being struck down. Luckily for him Bakune shared his disgust, and, generally, his assessment as well. Gheven nodded his craggy head up and down, and the tightened lips unscrewed. ‘Yes.
Usually
. But not this time. Much of the flesh is gone but note the design high on the right shoulder.’

Bakune knelt, and, dispensing with the niceties of any stick, used his own hands to shift the body. The henna swirls were old and further faded by the bleaching of the seawater, but among the unremarkable geometric abstracts one particular symbol caught his eye … a broken circle. A sign of one of the new foreign cults outlawed by their native Korel and Fistian church of their Saviour, their Lady of Deliverance. He tried to recall which one among the bewildering numbers of all those foreign faiths, then he remembered: a minor one, the cult of the ‘Fallen God’.

‘What of it? You are not suggesting that just because of one such tattoo the Guardians of Our Lady—’

‘I am suggesting worse. Note the bruises at the throat. The cuts at the wrists. It has been a long time, has it not, Assessor, since the one who you claim protects you from the sea-demons, the Riders, has demanded her payment, yes?’

‘Drenn filth!’ Karien’el grasped the man by the neck. Iron scraped wood as his sword swung free of its scabbard.

‘
Lieutenant!
’ The man froze, panting his fury. ‘You forget yourself. Release him. I am assessing here.’

Slowly, reluctantly, the officer peeled his fingers free and slammed home the blade, pushing the man backwards. ‘Same old lies. Always defaming Our Lady despite her protection. She protects even you, you know. You tribals. From the sea-demons. You should stay in your mountains and woods and consider yourselves blessed.’

Gheven said nothing, but in the old man’s taut, almost rigid, mien Bakune saw a fierce unbowed pride. The dark eyes shifted their challenge to him. ‘And what is your judgement here …
Assessor?
’

Bakune retreated from the shoreline where stronger waves now cast up cold spray that chilled his face. He pulled a handkerchief from a
sleeve to dab away the briny water. ‘Your, ah, suspicions are noted, Gheven. But I am sorry. Strong accusations require equally strong evidence and that I do not see here. Barring any further material facts the murder remains as you originally suggested – a murder or a distasteful honour killing. That is my assessment.’

‘We are finished here?’ Karien’el asked. His slitted eyes remained unwavering on the old tribesman.

‘Yes. And Lieutenant, no harm is to come to this man. He did his duty in calling our attention to an ugly crime. I will hold you personally responsible.’

The officer’s sour scowl twisted even tighter but he bowed his accord. ‘Yes, Assessor.’

Climbing back up on to the breakwater walk Bakune adjusted his robes and clenched his chilled fingers to bring life back to them. Of course he’d seen the marks encircling the neck, but some things one must not admit aloud – at least not so early in one’s career. He regarded the lieutenant who had followed, one boot on the stone ledge, ever dutiful. ‘Report to me directly the discovery of any more such bodies. Or rumoured disappearances of youths, male or female. There may be a monster among us, Karien.’

A salute of fingertips to the knurled brow of his iron helmet. ‘Aye, Assessor.’

The officer descended the slope, his boots scraping over the boulders, cloak snapping in the wind. Bakune hugged himself for warmth. The coast, Lady, how he hated it: the chill wind that smelled of the Riders, the clawing waters, the cold damp that mildewed all it touched. Yet a positive review here could lead to promotion and that posting in Paliss he hoped for … yet another good reason for discretion.

He looked for the tribesman down among the wet boulders but the man was gone. Good. He didn’t want a beating on his conscience. What an accusation! Why jump to such an assessment? True, long ago the ancient ways sanctioned such acts in the name of the greater good – but all that had been swept aside by the ascendancy of Our Saviour, the Blessed Lady.
And in their histories it is plain that that man’s ancestors practised it, not ours! Thus the long antipathy between us and these swamp- and wasteland-skulking tribals with their bastardized blood
.

Perhaps in truth a killing by an enraged father or brother, but without sufficient evidence who can assess? In lieu of evidence the locals will decide that this one, like all those prior, was plainly
the work of their bloody-handed murderous occupiers, the Malazans.

From between tall boulders Gheven watched the two walk away. The Watch officer, Karien’el, lingered, searching for him. That did not trouble him; he intended to be moving on in any case. In the eyes of the Roolian occupiers of this land they called Fist he was officially itinerant, after all. And why not, since he was on pilgrimage – an itinerary of sacred paths to walk and sites to visit, and in walking and visiting thus reinscribing and reaffirming? A remarkable confluence of diametric attitudes aligning.

He turned to go. With each step the dreamscape of his ancient ancestral land unfolded itself around him. For the land was their Warren and they its practitioners. Something all these foreign invaders, mortal and immortal, seemed incapable of apprehending. And he too was finished here. The seeds had been sown; time would tell how strong or deep the roots may take.

If this new Assessor was true to his calling then Gheven pitied him. Truth tellers were never welcome; most especially one’s own. Better to be a storyteller – they at least have grasped the essential truth that everyone prefers lies.

*    *    *

Korelri year 4176 sw
Year 31 of the Malazan Occupation
Kingdom of Rool
Island of Fist

The occupant of the small lateen-rigged launch manoeuvred it through the crowded Banith harbour to tie up between an oared merchant galley out of Theft, and a rotting Jourilan cargo scow. He threw his only baggage, a cloth roll cinched tight by rope, on to the dock, then climbed up on to the mildewed blackwood slats. He straightened his squat broad form, hands at the small of his back, and stretched, grimacing.

An excise officer taking inventory on the galley pointed his baton of office. ‘You there! You can’t tie up here! This is a commercial dock. Take that toy to the public wharf.’

‘Take what?’ the man asked blandly.

The dock master opened his mouth to respond, then shut it. He’d
thought the fellow old by his darkly tanned shaven head, but power clearly remained in the meaty thick neck, rounded shoulders, and gnarled, big-knuckled hands. More alarmingly, faded remnants of blue tattoos swirled across his brow, cheeks, and chin, demarking a fiercely snarling boar’s head. ‘The boat – move the boat.’

‘’Tain’t mine.’

‘Yes it is! I saw you tie it up just now!’

‘You there,’ the fellow called to an old man in rags on his hands and knees scouring the dock with a pumice stone. ‘How about a small launch? Battered but seaworthy.’

The elder stared then laughed a wet cackle, shaking his head. ‘Haven’t the coin.’

The newcomer threw a copper coin to the dock. ‘Now you do.’

The excise officer’s gaze flicked suspiciously between the two. ‘Wait a moment …’

The old man took up the coin, cocked an amused eye at the excise officer and tossed it back. The newcomer snatched it from the air. ‘Talk to this man,’ he told the officer, turning his back.

‘Hey! You can’t just—’

‘I’ll be moving my boat right away, sir!’ the old man cackled, revealing a dark pit empty of teeth. ‘Wouldn’t
think
of tying up here, sir!’

Walking away, the newcomer allowed his mouth to widen in a broad frog-like grin beneath his splayed, squashed nose.

He passed Banith’s harbour guardhouse, where his gaze lingered on the Malazan soldiers lounging in the shade of the porch. He took in the opened leather jerkin of one, loosened to accommodate a bulging stomach; the other dozing, chair tipped back, helmet forward over his eyes.

The newcomer’s smile faded. Ahead, the front street of Banith ran roughly east–west. The town climbed shallow coastal hills, its roofs dominated by the tall jutting spires of the Holy Cloister and the many gables of the Hospice nearby. Beyond these, rich cultivated rolling plains, land once forested, stretched into the mist-shrouded distance. The man turned right. Walking slowly, he studied the shop fronts and stalls. He passed a knot of street toughs and noted the much darker or fairer hues of mixed Malazan blood among them, so different from the uniformly swart Fistian heritage.

‘Cast us a coin, beggar priest,’ one bold youth called, the eldest.

‘All I own is yours,’ the fellow answered in his gravelly voice.

That brought many up short. Glances shot between the puzzled youths until the older tough snorted his disbelief. ‘Then hand it all over.’

The squat fellow was examining an empty shop front. ‘Easily done – since I own nothing. This building occupied?’

‘Debtors’ prison,’ answered a girl, barefoot, in tattered canvas pants and dirty tunic, boasting the frizzy hair of mixed Korel and foreign parentage. ‘Withholding taxes from the Malazan overlords.’

The man raised his thick arms to it. ‘Then I consecrate it to my God.’

‘Which of all your damned foreign gods is that?’

The man turned. A smile pulled up his uneven lips and distorted the faded boar’s head tattoo. His voice strengthened. ‘Why, since you ask … Let me tell you about my God. His domain is the downtrodden and dispossessed. The poor and the sick. To him social standing, riches and prestige are meaningless empty veils. His first message is that we are all weak. We all are flawed. We all are mortal. And that we must learn to accept this.’

‘Accept? Accept what?’

‘Our failings. For we are all of us imperfect.’

‘What is the name of this sick and perverted god?’

The priest held out his hands open and empty. ‘It is that which resides within us – each god is but one face of it.’

‘Each god? All? Even Our Lady who shields us from evil?’

‘Yes. Even she.’

Many of the gang flinched then, wincing, and they moved off as they sensed a more profound and disquieting sacrilege flowing beneath the usual irreverence of foreigners.

‘And his second message?’ a girl asked. She had stepped closer, but her eyes remained watchful on the street, and a sneer seemed fixed at her bloodless lips.

‘Anyone may achieve deliverance and grace. It is open to all. It cannot be kept from anyone like common coin.’

She pointed to her thin chest. ‘Even us? The divines of the Sainted Lady turn us away from their thresholds – even the Hospice. They spit at us as half-bloods. And the old Dark Collector demands payment for all souls regardless.’

The man’s dark eyes glittered his amusement. ‘What I speak of cannot be bought by any earthly coin. Or compelled by any earthly power.’