The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (15 page)

There would be nothing to mark thirteen hundred dead Bridgeburners, though. The worms didn’t need to travel far to feast on those bodies. What chilled the sergeant to his bones was the fact that, apart from the few survivors, nobody had made a serious effort to save them. Some low-ranking officer had delivered Tayschrenn’s commiserations on those lost in the line of duty, then had unloaded a wagonload of tripe about heroism and sacrifice. His audience of thirty-nine stone-faced soldiers had looked on without a word. The officer was found dead in his room two hours later, expertly garotted. The mood was bad—nobody in the regiment would have even thought of something so ugly five years ago. But now they didn’t blink at the news.

Garotte—sounds like Claw work
. Kalam had suggested it was a set-up, an elaborate frame to discredit what was left of the Bridgeburners. Whiskeyjack was skeptical.

He tried to clear his thoughts. If there was a pattern it would be a simple one, simple enough to pass by unnoticed. But exhaustion seeped in like a thick haze behind his eyes. He took a deep lungful of the morning air. “The new recruit?” he asked.

Kalam rose from his haunches with a grunt. A faraway and long-ago look entered his eyes. “Maybe,” he said finally. “Pretty young for a Claw, though.”

“I never believed in pure evil before Sorry showed up,” Quick Ben said. “But you’re right, she’s awfully young. How long are they trained before they’re sent out?”

Kalam shrugged uneasily. “Fifteen years minimum. Mind you, they get them young. Five or six.”

“Could be magery involved, making her look younger than she is,” Quick Ben said. “High-level stuff, but within Tayschrenn’s abilities.”

“Seems too obvious,” Whiskeyjack muttered. “Call it bad upbringing.”

Quick Ben snorted. “Don’t tell me you believe that, Whiskeyjack.”

The sergeant’s face tightened. “The subject’s closed on Sorry. And don’t tell me what I think, Wizard.” He faced Kalam. “All right. You think the Empire’s into killing its own these days. You think Laseen’s cleaning her house, maybe? Or someone close to her? Getting rid of certain people. Fine. Tell me why.”

“The old guard,” Kalam replied immediately. “Everyone still loyal to the Emperor’s memory.”

“Doesn’t wash,” Whiskeyjack said. “We’re all dying off anyway. We don’t need Laseen’s help. Apart from Dujek there’s not a man in this army here who even knows the Emperor’s name, and nobody’d give a damn in any case. He’s dead. Long live the Empress.”

“She ain’t got the patience to wait it out,” Quick Ben said.

Kalam nodded agreement. “She’s losing momentum as it is. Things used to be better—it’s that memory she wants dead.”

“Hairlock’s our snake in the hole,” Quick Ben said with a sharp nod. “It’ll work, Whiskeyjack. I know what I’m doing on this one.”

“We do it the way the Emperor would have,” Kalam added. “We turn the game. We do our own house-cleaning.”

Whiskeyjack raised a hand. “All right. Now be quiet. You’re both sounding too damn rehearsed.” He paused. “It’s a theory. A complicated one. Who’s in the know and who isn’t?” He scowled at Quick Ben’s expression. “Right, that’s Hairlock’s task. But what happens when you come face to face with someone big, powerful, and mean?”

“Like Tayschrenn?” The wizard grinned.

“Right. I’m sure you’ve got an answer. Let’s see if I can work it out myself. You look for someone even nastier. You make a deal and you set things up, and if we’re quick enough we’ll come out smelling of roses. Am I close, Wizard?”

Kalam snorted his amusement.

Quick Ben looked away. “Back in the Seven Cities, before the Empire showed up—”

“Back in the Seven Cities is back in the Seven Cities,” Whiskeyjack said.
“Hood knows, I led the company chasing you across the desert, remember? I know how you work, Quick. And I know you’re damn good at this. But I also recall that you were the only one of your cabal to come out alive back then. And this time?”

The wizard seemed hurt by Whiskeyjack’s words. His lips thinned to a straight line.

The sergeant sighed. “All right. We go with it. Start things rolling. And pull that sorceress all the way in. We’ll need her if Hairlock breaks his chains.”

“And Sorry?” Kalam asked.

Whiskeyjack hesitated. He knew the question behind that question. Quick Ben was the squad’s brains, but Kalam was their killer. Both made him uneasy with their single-minded devotion to their respective talents. “Leave her alone,” he said at last. “For now.”

Kalam and Quick Ben sighed, sharing a grin behind their sergeant’s back.

“Just don’t get cocky,” Whiskeyjack said dryly.

The grins faded.

The sergeant’s gaze returned to the wagons entering the city. Two riders approached. “All right,” he said. “Mount up. Here comes our reception committee.” The riders were from his squad, Fiddler and Sorry.

“You think the new captain’s arrived?” Kalam asked, as he climbed into his saddle. His roan mare turned her head and snapped at him. He growled in return. A moment later the two longtime companions settled down into their mutual mistrust.

Whiskeyjack looked on, amused. “Probably. Let’s head down to them. Anybody up on the wall watching us might be getting antsy.” Then his humor fell away. They had, indeed, just turned the game. And the timing couldn’t have been worse. He knew the full extent of their next mission, and in that he knew more than either Quick Ben or Kalam. There was no point in complicating things even further, though.
They’ll find out soon enough
.

Tattersail stood half a dozen paces behind High Mage Tayschrenn. The Malazan banners snapped in the wind, the spars creaking above the smoke-stained turret, but here in the shelter of the wall the air was calm. On the western horizon across from her rose the Moranth Mountains, reaching a mangled arm northward to Genabaris. As the range swept southward it joined the Tahlyn in a jagged line stretching a thousand leagues into the east. Off to her right lay the flat yellow-grassed Rhivi Plain.

Tayschrenn leaned on a merlon looking down on the wagons rolling into the city. From below rose the groans of oxen and shouting soldiers. The High Mage hadn’t moved or said a word in some minutes. Off to his left waited a small wood table, its surface scarred and pitted and crowded with runes cut deep into the oak. Peculiar dark stains blotted the surface here and there.

Knots of tension throbbed in Tattersail’s shoulders. Meeting Bellurdan had shaken her, and she didn’t feel up to what was to come.

“Bridgeburners,” the High Mage muttered.

Startled, the sorceress frowned, then stepped up to stand beside Tayschrenn. Descending from a hill off to the right, a hill she knew intimately, rode a party of soldiers. Even from this distance she recognized four of them: Quick Ben, Kalam, Whiskeyjack, and that recruit, Sorry. The fifth rider was a short, wiry man, who had sapper written all over him. “Oh?” she said, feigning lack of interest.

“Whiskeyjack’s squad,” Tayschrenn said. He turned his full gaze on the sorceress. “The same squad you spoke with immediately following the Moon’s retreat.” The High Mage smiled, then clapped Tattersail’s shoulder. “Come. I require a Reading. Let’s begin.” He walked over to stand before the table. “Oponn’s strands are twisting a peculiar maze, the influence snares me again and again.” He turned his back to the wall and sat down on a crenel, then looked up. “Tattersail,” he said soberly, “in matters of Empire, I am the servant of the Empress.”

Tattersail recalled their argument at the debriefing. Nothing had been resolved. “Perhaps I should take my complaints to her, then.”

Tayschrenn’s brows rose. “I take that as sarcastic.”

“You do?”

The High Mage said, stiffly, “I do, and be thankful for it, woman.”

Tattersail pulled out her Deck and held it against her stomach, running her fingers over the top card. Cool, a feeling of great weight and darkness. She set the Deck in the table’s center, then lowered her bulk slowly into a kneeling position. Her gaze locked with Tayschrenn’s. “Shall we begin?”

“Tell me of the Spinning Coin.”

Tattersail’s breath caught. She could not move.

“First card,” Tayschrenn commanded.

With an effort she expelled the air from her lungs in a hissing sigh. Damn him, she thought. An echo of laughter sounded in her head, and she realized that someone, something, had opened the way. An Ascendant was reaching through her, its presence cool and amused, almost fickle. Her eyes shut of their own accord, and she reached for the first card. She flipped it almost haphazardly to her right. Eyes still closed, she felt herself smile. “An unaligned card: Orb. Judgment and true sight.” The second card she tossed to the left side of the field. “Virgin, High House Death. Here scarred and blindfolded, with blood on her hands.”

Faintly, as if from a great distance away, came the sound of horses, thundering closer, now beneath her, as if the earth had swallowed them. Then the sound rose anew, behind her. She felt herself nod.
The recruit
. “The blood on her hands is not her own, the crime not its own. The cloth against her eyes is wet.”

She slapped the third card immediately in front of her. Behind her lids an image formed. It left her cold and frightened. “Assassin, High House Shadow. The Rope, a count of knots unending, the Patron of Assassins is in this game.” For a moment she thought she heard the howling of Hounds. She laid a hand on the fourth card and felt a thrill of recognition ripple through her, followed by
something like false modesty. “Oponn, Lady’s head high, Lord’s low.” She picked it up and set it down opposite Tayschrenn.

There’s your block
. She smiled to herself.
Chew on it awhile, High Mage. The Lady regards you with disgust
. Tattersail knew he must be burning with questions, but he wouldn’t speak them. There was too much power behind this opening. Had he sensed the Ascendant’s presence? She wondered if it scared him.

“The Coin,” she heard herself say, “spins on, High Mage. Its face looks upon many, a handful perhaps, and here is their card.” She set the fifth card to Oponn’s right, edges touching. “Another unaligned card: Crown. Wisdom and justice, as it is upright. Around it a fair city’s walls, lit by flames of gas, blue and green.” She pondered. “Yes, Darujhistan, the last Free City.”

The way closed, the Ascendant withdrawing as if bored. Tattersail’s eyes opened, an unexpected warmth comforting her weary body. “Into Oponn’s maze,” she said, amused at the truth hidden in that statement. “I can take it no further, High Mage.”

Tayschrenn’s breath gusted out and he leaned back. “You’ve gone far past what I’ve managed, Sorceress.” His face was drawn as he looked at her. “I’m impressed with your source, though not pleased with its message.” He frowned, planting his elbows on his knees and steepling his long-fingered hands before his face. “This Spinning Coin, ever echoing. There’s the Jester’s humor in this shaping—even now I feel we are being misled. Death’s Virgin, a likely deceit.”

It was now Tattersail’s turn to be impressed. The High Mage was an Adept, then. Had he, too, heard the laughter punctuating the laying of the field? She hoped not. “You might be right,” she said. “The Virgin’s face is ever changing—it could be anyone. Can’t say the same for Oponn, or the Rope’s.” She nodded. “A very possible deception,” she said, pleased to be conversing with an equal—a truth that made her grimace inwardly.
It’s always better when hatred and outrage stay pure, uncompromised
.

“I would hear your thoughts,” Tayschrenn said.

Tattersail started, shied from the High Mage’s steady gaze. She began collecting the cards. Would it hurt to offer some explanation?
If anything, it will leave him even more rattled than he already is
. “Deception is the Patron Assassin’s forte. I sensed nothing of his presumed master, Shadowthrone himself. Makes me suspect the Rope is on his own here. Beware the Assassin, High Mage; if anything his games are even more subtle than Shadowthrone’s. And while Oponn plays their own version, it remains the same game, and that game is being played out in our world. The Twins of Luck have no control in Shadow’s Realm, and Shadow is a Warren known for slipping its boundaries. For breaking the rules.”

“True enough,” Tayschrenn said, rising to his feet with a grunt. “The birth of that bastard realm has ever troubled me.”

“It’s young yet,” Tattersail said. She picked up her Deck and returned it to the pocket inside her cloak. “Its final shaping is still centuries away, and it may never happen. Recall other new Houses that ended up dying a quick death.”

“This one stinks of too much power.” Tayschrenn returned to his study of the Moranth Mountains. “My gratitude,” he said, as Tattersail went to the steps leading down into the city, “is worth something, I hope. In any case, Sorceress, you have it.”

Tattersail hesitated at the landing, then began the descent. He’d be less magnanimous if he found out that she had just misled him. She could guess the Virgin’s identity. Her thoughts traveled back to the moment of the Virgin’s appearance. The horses she had heard, passing beneath, hadn’t been an illusion. Whiskeyjack’s squad had just entered the city, through the gate below. And among them rode Sorry. Coincidence? Maybe, but she didn’t think so. The Spinning Coin had faintly wobbled at that instant, then its ringing returned. Though she heard it in her mind day and night, it had become almost second nature, and Tattersail found she had to concentrate to find it. But she’d caught the nudge, felt the pitch change and sensed a brief instant of uncertainty.

Death’s Virgin, and the Assassin of High House Shadow. There was a connection there, somehow, and it bothered Oponn. Obviously, everything remained in a flux. “Terrific,” she muttered, as she reached the bottom of the staircase.

She saw the young marine who had approached her earlier. He stood in a line of recruits in the center of the compound. No commanding officer was in sight. Tattersail called the boy over.

“Yes, Sorceress?” he asked, as he arrived to stand at attention in front of her.

“What are you all standing around for, soldier?”

“We’re about to be issued our weapons. The staff sergeant’s gone to bring the wagon round.”