The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (690 page)

Two Claws had darted past, out of T'amber's reach, and set off towards the Adjunct. Kalam shifted to come at them from their left. The nearer one leapt into his path, seeking to hold Kalam long enough for the other killer to close on Tavore.

A dancing flurry of parries from the Claw had begun even before Kalam engaged with his own weapons – and he recognized that form – the Web – ‘Gods below, you fool,' he said in a snarl as he reached both long-knives into the skein of parries, feinted with minute jabs then, breaking his timing, evaded the knife-blades as they snapped across, and neatly impaled both hands.

The man screamed as Kalam closed in, pushing both stuck hands out to the sides, and head-butted him. Hooded head snapped back – and met the point of Kalam's right-hand long-knife as it completed its disengage to come up behind the Claw. A grating crunch as the point drove up into the base of his brain. Even as he crumpled Kalam was stepping over him, into the wake of the last killer.

The Adjunct watched calmly as the Claw launched himself at her. Her stop-thrust took him in the cup of his throat, between the breastbones, the heavy blade punching through windpipe, then spine, and out the back, stretching but not cutting the cloak.

The Claw had thrown both daggers a heartbeat before spitting himself on the sword, and the Adjunct had lithely evaded both as she turned her body sideways in extending the stop-thrust.

Kalam slowed down, turned round, to see T'amber walking back towards them.

Eight dead Claws. Damned impressive. Even if it took a knife in the lung to do it.

There was frothy blood trickling onto T'amber's chin. She had pulled out the knife and more blood soaked her tunic. Yet her strides were steady.

‘Through the gate, then,' Kalam said.

They entered the courtyard. Overgrown, filled with rubbish. A fountain commanded the centre, the pool entirely sheathed in gleaming algae. Insects rose from it in a cloud that spun and whirled towards them. Kalam pointed with one weapon to the far wall. ‘That old well. There was once a natural cistern in the limestone under all of this. Some enterprising thief broke into it from below. Stole an entire fortune from the family living here. Left them destitute. This was long ago – that hoard of wealth bankrolled Kellanved's early ventures in piracy on the lanes between here and the Napan Isles.'

The Adjunct glanced over. ‘Kellanved was the enterprising thief?'

‘More likely Dancer. The estate was Mock's family, and, accordingly, the hoard was takings from twenty years of piracy. Not long after, Kellanved usurped Mock and annexed the whole island. Birth of the Malazan Empire. Among the few who know about it, this is called the Well of Plenty.'

A cough from T'amber, and she spat out a gout of blood.

Kalam eyed her in the gloom. That perfect face had grown very pale. He faced the well once more. ‘I'll go first. The drop is about two and half man-heights – if you can, use the side walls to work your way down as far as possible. Adjunct, do you hear music?'

‘Yes. Faint.'

Nodding, Kalam vaulted onto the lip of the well, then worked his way down.
Not just me, then. Fiddler, you're breaking my heart
.

 

Four Hands, weapons out, hooded eyes scanning in every direction. Pearl stood above a body. The poor man's head had been driven into the street, hard enough to turn it into pulp, to push the jaw and the base of the skull into the column of the neck between the shoulders, turing the spine into a coiled, splintered mess.

That was the one thing about Kalam Mekhar that one tended to forget, or even more erroneously, disregard. The bastard's animal strength.

‘Westward,' one of his lieutenants said in a whisper. ‘Along Lightings, likely to the last gate. They will seek to circle round, pulling loose our established ambushes—'

‘Not all of them,' Pearl murmured. ‘I did not for a moment believe he would attempt the direct route. In fact, he's about to run into the bulk of my small army.'

The lieutenant actually chuckled – Pearl faced him, stared for a long moment, then said, ‘Take two Hands and trail him. Don't close, just get in sight every now and then. Push them onward.'

‘They'll turn and ambush us, Clawmaster—'

‘Probably. Enjoy your evening. Now go.'

An evil snicker would have been worse, but the chuckle was bad enough.

Pearl drew back the left sleeve of his loose silk shirt. The head of the quarrel set in the wrist-strapped crossbow was sheathed in thick wax. Easily pulled off when the time was propitious. In the meantime, he would not risk any possible contact with the paralt smeared on the head's edges.
No, this taste is for you, Kalam
.

You've eliminated sorcery, after all. So, you leave me little choice, and no, I do not care about the Code.

He rolled the sleeve back down, looked over at his two chosen Hands, his favoured, elite assassins. Not one of them a mage. Theirs was the most direct kind of talent. Tall, well-muscled, a match for Kalam's brawn. ‘We position ourselves south of Admiral Bridge, at the edge of the Mouse.'

One spoke: ‘You believe they will get that far, Clawmaster?'

Pearl simply turned away. ‘Let's go.'

 

Kalam edged down the low, narrow tunnel. He could see the brush of the garden disguising the cave mouth ahead. There were broken branches among it, and the air stank of bile and blood.
What's this, then?
Weapons out, he drew closer, came to the threshold.

There had been a Hand, positioned around the tunnel entrance. Five corpses, limbs sprawled. Kalam pushed through the brush.

They had been cut to pieces. Arms broken. Legs snapped. Blood everywhere, still dripping from some low branches on the tree commanding the abandoned orchard. Two had been cleanly eviscerated, their intestines tumbled out, trailing across the leaf-littered ground like bloated worms.

Movement behind him and he turned. The Adjunct and T'amber pushed their way into the clearing.

‘That was fast,' Tavore said in a whisper.

‘Not me, Adjunct.'

‘I'm sorry. I realized that. We have friends, it seems.'

‘Don't count on it,' Kalam said. ‘This has the look of vendetta – someone or ones took out a whole lot of anger on these poor bastards. I don't think it has anything to do with us. As you said, the Claw is a compromised organization.'

‘Have they turned on themselves?'

‘Certainly looks that way.'

‘Still in our favour, Kalam.'

‘Well,' he muttered after a moment, ‘that's not as important as the revelation that taking the long way round was anticipated. We've real trouble ahead, Adjunct.'

‘There are sounds,' T'amber said, ‘from the top of the well, I think. Hands. Two.'

‘Fast,' said Kalam, baring his teeth. ‘They want to flush us forward. To Hood with that. Stay here, you two.' He set off back into the tunnel.
Top of the well. Meaning you've got to come down…one at a time. You were impatient, fools. And now it's going to cost you.

Reaching the cistern, he saw the first set of moccasined feet appear, dangling from the hole in the ceiling. Kalam moved closer.

The Claw dropped, landed lightly, and died with a knife-blade through an eye socket. Kalam tugged his weapon free and pulled the slumping corpse to one side. Looking up, he waited for the next one.

Then he heard, echoing down, a voice.

 

Gathered round the well, the two Hands hesitated, looking down into the darkness. ‘Lieutenant said he'd call up,' one of them hissed. ‘I don't hear a thing down there.'

There then came a faint call, three fast clicks. A recognized signal. The assassins relaxed. ‘Was checking out the entrance, I guess – Kalam must have got past the ambush in the orchard.'

‘They say he's the meanest Claw there ever was. Not even Dancer wanted to mess with him.'

‘Enough of that. Go on, Sturtho, get down there and give the lieutenant company and be sure to wipe up the puddle around his feet while you're at it – wouldn't want any of us to slip.'

The one named Sturtho clambered onto the well.

 

A short time later, Kalam emerged from the tunnel mouth. T'amber, sitting with her back to a tree, looked up, then nodded and began to rise. Blood had pooled in her lap and now streaked down onto her thighs.

‘Which way ahead?' the Adjunct asked Kalam.

‘We follow the old orchard wall, west, until we hit Raven Hill Road, then straight south to the hill itself – it's a wide track, with plenty of barred or barricaded alleys. We'll skirt the hill on the east side, along the Old City Wall, and then across Admiral Bridge.' Kalam hesitated, then said, ‘We've got to move fast, at a run, never straight but never stopping either. Now, there's mobs out there, thugs looking for trouble – we need to avoid getting snagged up by those. So when I say we move fast and keep moving that's exactly what I mean. T'amber—'

‘I can keep up.'

‘Listen—'

‘I said I can keep up.'

‘You shouldn't even be conscious, damn you!'

She hefted her sword. ‘Let's go find the next ambush, shall we?'

 

Tears glistened beneath Stormy's eyes as the sorrow-filled music born of strings filled the small room, and names and faces slowly resolved, one after another, in the minds of the four soldiers as the candles guttered down. Muted, from the streets of the city outside, there rose and fell the sounds of fighting, of dying, a chorus like the accumulated voices of history, of human failure and its echoes reaching them from every place in this world. Fiddler's struggle to evade the grim monotony of a dirge forced hesitation into the music, a seeking of hope and faith and the solid meaning of friendship – not just with those who had fallen, but with the three other men in the room – but it was a struggle he knew he was losing.

It seemed so easy for so many people to divide war from peace, to confine their definitions to the unambivalent. Marching soldiers, pitched battles and slaughter. Locked armouries, treaties, fêtes and city gates opened wide. But Fiddler knew that suffering thrived in both realms of existence – he'd witnessed too many faces of the poor, ancient crones and babes in a mother's arms, figures lying motionless on the roadside or in the gutters of streets – where the sewage flowed unceasing like rivers gathering their spent souls. And he had come to a conviction, lodged like an iron nail in his heart, and with its burning, searing realization, he could no longer look upon things the way he used to, he could no longer walk and see what he saw with a neatly partitioned mind, replete with its host of judgements – that critical act of moral relativity –
this is less, that is more
. The truth in his heart was this: he no longer believed in peace.

It did not exist except as an ideal to which endless lofty words paid service, a litany offering up the delusion that the absence of overt violence was sufficient in itself, was proof that one was better than the other. There
was
no dichotomy between war and peace – no true opposition except in their particular expressions of a ubiquitous inequity. Suffering was all-pervasive. Children starved at the feet of wealthy lords no matter how secure and unchallenged their rule.

There was too much compassion within him – he knew that, for he could feel the pain, the helplessness, the invitation to despair, and from that despair came the desire – the need – to disengage, to throw up his hands and simply walk away, turn his back on all that he saw, all that he knew. If he could do nothing, then,
dammit
, he would
see
nothing. What other choice was there?

And so we weep for the fallen. We weep for those yet to fall, and in war the screams are loud and harsh and in peace the wail is so drawn-out we tell ourselves we hear nothing.

And so this music is a lament, and I am doomed to hear its bittersweet notes for a lifetime.

Show me a god that does not demand mortal suffering.

Show me a god that celebrates diversity, a celebration that embraces even non-believers and is not threatened by them.

Show me a god who understands the meaning of peace. In life, not in death.

Show
—

‘Stop,' Gesler said in a grating voice.

Blinking, Fiddler lowered the instrument. ‘What?'

‘You cannot end with such anger, Fid. Please.'

Anger? I am sorry.
He would have spoken that aloud, but suddenly he could not. His gaze lowered, and he found himself studying the littered floor at his feet. Someone, in passing – perhaps Fiddler himself – had inadvertently stepped on a cockroach. Half-crushed, smeared into the warped wood, its legs kicked feebly. He stared at it in fascination.

Dear creature, do you now curse an indifferent god?

‘You're right,' he said. ‘I can't end it there.' He raised the fiddle again. ‘Here's a different song for you, one of the few I've actually learned. From Kartool. It's called “The Paralt's Dance”.' He rested the bow on the strings, then began.

Wild, frantic, amusing. Its final notes recounted the triumphant female eating her lover. And even without words, the details of that closing flourish could not be mistaken.

The four men laughed.

Then fell silent once more.