The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen, page 468
Only…how does one do that?
There was someone she could ask – he was not far off, she knew, having culled his identity from Cotillion’s memories.
She had moved to sit with her legs dangling on the roof’s edge. Someone now sat at her side.
‘Well?’ Cotillion asked.
‘A Semk assassin of the Nameless Ones completed my mission for me.’
‘This very night?’
‘I met him, but was unable to question him.’
The god slowly nodded. ‘The Nameless Ones again. This is unexpected. And unwelcome.’
‘So they were not the reason for killing Mebra.’
‘No. Some stirrings of the old cult. Mebra was positioning himself to become a High Priest. The best candidate – we’re not worried about the others.’
‘Cleaning house.’
‘Necessary, Apsalar. We’re in for a scrap. A bad one.’
‘I see.’
They were silent for a time, then Cotillion cleared his throat. ‘I have not yet had time to check on him, but I know he is hale, although understandably dispirited.’
‘All right.’
He must have sensed she wanted it left at that, for, after a pause, he then said, ‘You freed two ghosts…’
She shrugged.
Sighing, Cotillion ran a hand through his dark hair. ‘Do you know what they once were?’
‘Thieves, I think.’
‘Yes, that.’
‘Tiste Andii?’
‘No, but they lingered long over those two bodies and so…absorbed certain essences.’
‘Ah.’
‘They are now agents of Edgewalker. I am curious to see what they will do.’
‘For the moment they seem content to accompany me.’
‘Yes. I think Edgewalker’s interests include you, Apsalar, because of our past…relationship.’
‘Through me, to you.’
‘I seem to warrant his curiosity.’
‘Edgewalker. That apparition seems a rather passive sort,’ she observed.
‘We first met him,’ Cotillion said slowly, ‘the night we ascended. The night we made passage into the realm of Shadow. He made my spine crawl right then, and it’s been crawling ever since.’
She glanced over at him. ‘You are so unsuited to be a god, Cotillion, did you know that?’
‘Thank you for the vote of confidence.’
She reached up with one hand and brushed the line of his jaw, the gesture close to a caress. She caught the sudden intake of his breath, the slight widening of his eyes, but he would not look at her. Apsalar lowered her hand. ‘I’m sorry. Another mistake. It’s all I seem to make these days.’
‘It’s all right,’ he replied. ‘I understand.’
‘You do? Oh, of course you do.’
‘Complete your mission, and all that is asked of you will end. You will face no more demands from me. Or Shadowthrone.’
There was something in his tone that gave her a slight shiver. Something like…remorse. ‘I see. That is good. I’m tired. Of who I am, Cotillion.’
‘I know.’
‘I was thinking of a detour. Before my next task.’
‘Oh?’
‘The coastal road, east. Just a few days by Shadow.’
He looked across at her, and she saw his faint smile and was unaccountably pleased by it. ‘Ah, Apsalar…that should be fun. Send him my greetings.’
‘Really?’
‘Absolutely. He needs a little shaking up.’ He straightened. ‘I must leave. It’s almost dawn. Be careful, and do not trust those ghosts.’
‘They are bad liars.’
‘Well, I know a High Priest who employs a similar tactic to confound others.’
Iskaral Pust. Now it was Apsalar who smiled, but she said nothing, for Cotillion was gone.
The east horizon was in flames with the rising of the sun.
‘Where did the darkness go?’ Curdle demanded.
Apsalar stood near the bed, running through her assortment of concealed weapons. She would need to sleep soon – perhaps this afternoon – but first she would make use of the daylight. There was something important hidden within the killing of Mebra by the Semk. Cotillion had been shaken by that detail. Although he had not asked her to pursue it, she would nonetheless, for a day or two at least. ‘The sun has risen, Curdle.’
‘The sun? By the Abyss, there’s a sun in this world? Have they gone mad?’
Apsalar glanced over at the cowering ghost. It was dissolving in the grainy light. Huddled in a shadow nearby, Telorast looked on, mute with terror. ‘Has who gone mad?’ Apsalar asked Curdle.
‘Well, them! The ones who created this place!’
‘We’re fading!’ Telorast hissed. ‘What does it mean? Will we cease to exist?’
‘I don’t know,’ Apsalar replied. ‘Probably you will lose some substance, assuming you have any, but it will be temporary. Best you two remain here, and be silent. I will be back before dusk.’
‘Dusk! Yes, excellent, we will wait here for dusk. Then night and all that darkness, and the shadows, and things to possess. Yes, fearful woman, we shall wait here.’
She headed down, paid for another night, then emerged onto the dusty street. The market-bound citizens were already on the move, hawkers dragging burdened mules, carts crowded with caged songbirds or slabs of salted meat or casks of oil or honey. Old men laboured beneath bundles of firewood, baskets of clay. Down the centre of the street strode two Red Blades – feared sentinels of order and law once again now that the empire’s presence had been emphatically reasserted. They were headed in the same direction as Apsalar – and indeed as most of the people – towards the vast sprawl of caravan camps beyond the city wall just south of the harbour.
The Red Blades were provided a wide berth, and the swagger of their stride, their gauntleted hands resting on the grips of their sheathed but not peace-strapped tulwars, made of their arrogance a deliberate, provocative affront. Yet they passed unchallenged.
Moments before she caught up with them, Apsalar swung left down a side passage. There was more than one route to the caravan camps.
A merchant employing Pardu and Gral guards, and appearing to display unusual interest in the presence of a Shadow Dancer in the city, made him or herself in turn the subject of interest. It might simply be that the merchant was a buyer and seller of information, but even that could prove useful to Apsalar – not that she was prepared to pay for any information she gleaned. The tribal guards suggested extensive overland travel, between distant cities and the rarely frequented tracks linking them. That merchant would know things.
And so, indeed, might those guards.
She arrived at the outskirts of the first camp. If seen from the sky, the caravan city would look pockmarked, as merchants came and went in a steady stream of wagons, horse-warriors, herd dogs and camels. The outer edges were home to lesser merchants, their positions fixed according to some obscure hierarchy, whilst the high-status caravans occupied the centre.
Entering the main thoroughfare from a side path between tents, Apsalar began the long search.
At midday she found a tapu-hawker and sat at one of the small tables beneath an awning eating the skewered pieces of fruit and meat, the grease running hot tracks down her hands. She had noted a renewed energy among the merchant camps she had visited so far. Insurrection and strife were bad for business, obviously. The return of Malazan rule was a blessing on trade in all its normal avaricious glory, and she had seen the exultation on all sides. Coins were flowing in a thousand streams.
Three figures caught her eye. Standing before the entrance to a large tent and arguing, it seemed, over a cage of puppies. The two Pardu women and one of the Gral tribesmen she had seen at the tavern. They were too preoccupied to have spied her, she hoped. Wiping her hands on her thighs, Apsalar rose and walked, keeping to the shadier areas, out from under the awning and away from the guards and the merchant’s tent.
It was enough to have found them, for now. Before she would endeavour to interrogate the merchant, or the guards, another task awaited her.
The long walk back to the inn was uneventful, and she climbed the stairs and made her way to her room. It was mid-afternoon, and her mind was filled with thoughts of sleep.
‘She’s back!’
The voice, Curdle’s, came from under the wood-framed cot.
‘Is it her?’ asked Telorast from the same place.
‘I recognize the moccasins, see the sewn-in ridges of iron? Not like the other one.’
Apsalar paused her removing of her leather gloves. ‘What other one?’
‘The one who was here earlier, a bell ago—’
‘A bell?’ Telorast wondered. ‘Oh, those bells, now I understand. They measure the passing of time. Yes, Not-Apsalar, a bell ago. We said nothing. We were silent. That one never knew we were here.’
‘The innkeeper?’
‘Boots, stirrup-worn and threaded with bronze scales, they went here and there – and crouched to look under here, but saw naught of us, of course, and naught of anything else, since you have no gear for him to rifle through—’
‘It was a man, then.’
‘Didn’t we say earlier? Didn’t we, Curdle?’
‘We must have. A man, with boots on, yes.’
‘How long did he stay?’ Apsalar asked, looking around the room. There was nothing there for the thief to steal, assuming he had been a thief.
‘A hundred of his heartbeats.’
‘Hundred and six, Telorast.’
‘Hundred and six, yes.’
‘He came and went by the door?’
‘No, the window – you removed the bars, remember? Down from the roof, isn’t that right, Telorast?’
‘Or up from the alley.’
‘Or maybe from one of the other rooms, thus from the side, right or left.’
Apsalar frowned and crossed her arms. ‘Did he come in by the window at all?’
‘No.’
‘By warren, then.’
‘Yes.’
‘And he wasn’t a man,’ Curdle added. ‘He was a demon. Big, black, hairy, with fangs and claws.’
‘Wearing boots,’ Telorast said.
‘Exactly. Boots.’
Apsalar pulled off her gloves and slapped them down on the bed-stand. She sprawled on the cot. ‘Wake me if he returns.’
‘Of course, Not-Apsalar. You can depend upon us.’
When she awoke it was dark. Cursing, Apsalar rose from the cot. ‘How late is it?’
‘She’s awake!’ The shade of Telorast hovered nearby, a smeared body-shape in the gloom, its eyes dully glowing.
‘Finally!’ Curdle whispered from the window sill, where it crouched like a gargoyle, head twisted round to regard Apsalar still seated on the cot. ‘It’s two bells after the death of the sun! We want to explore!’
‘Fine,’ she said, standing. ‘Follow me, then.’
‘Where to?’
‘Back to the Jen’rahb.’
‘Oh, that miserable place.’
‘I won’t be there long.’
‘Good.’
She collected her gloves, checked her weapons once more – a score of aches from knife pommels and scabbards attested that they remained strapped about her person – and headed for the window.
‘Shall we use the causeway?’
Apsalar stopped, studied Curdle. ‘What causeway?’
The ghost moved to hug one edge of the window and pointed outward. ‘That one.’
A shadow manifestation, something like an aqueduct, stretched from the base of the window out over the alley and the building beyond, then curving – towards the heart of the Jen’rahb. It had the texture of stone, and she could see pebbles and pieces of crumbled mortar along the path. ‘What is this?’
‘We don’t know.’
‘It is from the Shadow Realm, isn’t it? It has to be. Otherwise I would be unable to see it.’
‘Oh yes. We think. Don’t we, Telorast?’
‘Absolutely. Or not.’
‘How long,’ Apsalar asked, ‘has it been here?’
‘Fifty-three of your heartbeats. You were stirring to wakefulness, right, Curdle? She was stirring.’
‘And moaning. Well, one moan. Soft. A half-moan.’
‘No,’ Telorast said, ‘that was me.’
Apsalar clambered up onto the sill, then, still gripping the edges of the wall, she stepped out onto the causeway. Solid beneath her feet. ‘All right,’ she muttered, more than a little shaken as she released her hold on the building behind her. ‘We might as well make use of it.’
‘We agree.’
They set out, over the alley, the tenement, a street and then the rubble of the ruins. In the distance rose ghostly towers. A city of shadow, but this one thoroughly unlike the one of the night before. Vague structures lay over the wreckage below – canals, the glimmer of something like water. Lower bridges spanned these canals. A few thousand paces distant, to the southeast, rose a massive domed palace, and beyond it what might have been a lake, or a wide river. Ships plied those waters, square-sailed and sleek, the wood midnight black. She saw tall figures crossing a bridge fifty paces away.
Telorast hissed. ‘I recognize them!’
Apsalar crouched low, suddenly feeling terribly vulnerable here on this high walkway.
‘Tiste Edur!’
‘Yes,’ she half-breathed.
‘Oh, can they see us?’
I don’t know. At least none walked the causeway they were on…not yet. ‘Come on, it’s not far. I want us away from this place.’
‘Agreed, oh yes, agreed.’
Curdle hesitated. ‘Then again…’
‘No,’ Apsalar said. ‘Attempt nothing, ghost.’
‘Oh all right. It’s just that there’s a body in the canal below.’
Damn this. She edged to the low wall and looked down. ‘That’s not Tiste Edur.’
‘No,’ Curdle confirmed. ‘It most certainly isn’t, Not Apsalar. It is like you, yes, like you. Only more bloated, not long dead – we want it—’
‘Don’t expect help if trying for it attracts attention.’
‘Oh, she has a point, Curdle. Come on, she’s moving away from us! Wait! Don’t leave us here!’
Reaching a steep staircase, Apsalar quickly descended. As soon as she stepped onto the pale dusty ground, the ghostly city vanished. In her wake the two shades appeared, sinking towards her.
‘A most dreadful place,’ Telorast said.
‘But there was a throne,’ Curdle cried. ‘I sensed it! A most delicious throne!’
Telorast snorted. ‘Delicious? You have lost your mind. Naught but pain. Suffering. Affliction—’
‘Quiet,’ Apsalar commanded. ‘You will tell me more about this throne you two sensed, but later. Guard this entrance.’
‘We can do that. We’re very skilled guards. Someone died down there, yes? Can we have the body?’
‘No. Stay here.’ Apsalar entered the half-buried temple.
The chamber within was not as she had left it. The Semk’s corpse was gone. Mebra’s body had been stripped of its clothing, the clothing itself cut apart. What little furnishings occupied the room had been methodically dismantled. Cursing under her breath, Apsalar walked to the doorway leading to the inner chamber – the curtain that had covered it had been torn away. In the small room beyond – Mebra’s living quarters – the searcher or searchers had been equally thorough. Indifferent to the absence of light, she scanned the detritus. Someone had been looking for something, or deliberately obscuring a trail.
She thought about the Semk assassin’s appearance last night. She had assumed he’d somehow seen her sprint across the rubble and so was compelled to return. But now she wondered. Perhaps he’d been sent back, his task only half-completed. In either case, he had not been working alone that night. She had been careless, thinking otherwise.
From the outer chamber came a wavering whisper, ‘Where are you?’
Apsalar stepped back through the doorway. ‘What are you doing here, Curdle? I told you to—’
‘Two people are coming. Women, like you. Like us, too. I forgot. Yes, we’re all women here—’
‘Find a shadow and hide,’ Apsalar cut in. ‘Same for Telorast.’
‘You don’t want us to kill them?’
‘Can you?’
‘No.’
‘Hide yourselves.’
‘A good thing we decided to guard the door, isn’t it?’
Ignoring the ghost, Apsalar positioned herself beside the outer entrance. She drew her knives, set her back against the sloping stone, and waited.
She heard their quick steps, the scuffing as they halted just outside, their breathing. Then the first one stepped through, in her hands a shuttered lantern. She strode in further as she flipped back one of the hinged shutters, sending a shaft of light against the far wall. Behind her entered the second woman, a scimitar unsheathed and held out.
The Pardu caravan guards.
Apsalar stepped close and drove the point of one dagger into the woman’s elbow joint on the sword-arm, then swung the other weapon, pommel-forward, into the woman’s temple.
She dropped, as did her weapon.
The other spun round.
A high swinging kick caught her above the jaw. She reeled, lantern flying to crack against the wall.
Sheathing her knives, Apsalar closed in on the stunned guard. A punch to the solar plexus doubled her over. The guard dropped to her knees, then fell onto one side, curling up around the pain.
‘This is convenient,’ Apsalar said, ‘since I was intending to question you anyway.’
She walked back to the first woman and checked on her condition. Unconscious, and likely would remain so for some time. Even so, she kicked the scimitar into a corner, then stripped her of the knives she found hidden under her arms. Walking back to the other Pardu, she looked down on the groaning, motionless woman for a moment, then crouched and dragged her to her feet.
She grasped the woman’s right arm, the one she used to hold a weapon, and, with a sharp twist, dislocated it at the elbow.
The woman cried out.
Apsalar closed a hand on her throat and slammed her against the wall, the head cracking hard. Vomit spilled onto the assassin’s glove and wrist. She held the Pardu there. ‘Now you will answer my questions.’
