The Malazan Empire, page 751
The cellar door swung open and there stood Bluepearl, carrying a dusty cask as if it was a newborn child.
‘Did you see it?’ Antsy demanded.
‘See what?’
‘The two-headed rat! It just went under the door!’
‘Gods below, Antsy. Please, no more. There’s no two-headed rat. Move aside, will you? This thing’s heavy.’
And he shouldered past Antsy, out into the kitchen.
Three cloaked figures stepped in from outside K’rul’s Bar, crossbows at the ready. The bolts snapped out. Behind the bar, Skevos, who was handling the shift this night, was driven back as a quarrel thudded into his chest, shattering his sternum. A second quarrel shot up towards the office window where Picker was leaning out and she lunged back, either struck or dodging there was no way to tell. The third quarrel caught Hedry, a serving girl of fifteen years of age, and spun her round, her tray of mugs tumbling over.
From closer to the dais, the five drunks drew knives and swords from beneath their cloaks and fanned out, hacking at everyone within reach.
Shrieks filled the air.
Stepping out from her table, Blend slid like smoke into the midst of the three figures at the doorway. Her knives flickered, slashed, opening the throat of the man directly in front of her, severing the tendons of the nearer arm of the man to her left. Ducking beneath the first man as he toppled forward, she thrust one of her daggers into the chest of the third assassin. The point punched through chain and the blade snapped. She brought the other one forward in an upper cut, stabbing between the man’s legs. As he went down, Blend tore the knife free and spun to slash at the face of the second assassin. Throwing his head back to avoid the blade drove it into a low rafter. There was a heavy crunch and the man sagged on watery knees. Blend stabbed him through an eye.
She heard a fourth crossbow release and something punched her left shoulder, flinging her round. The arm below that shoulder seemed to have vanished – she could feel nothing – and she heard the knife clunk on the floor, even as the assassin who had held back in the doorway now rushed towards her, crossbow discarded and daggers drawn.
Mallet had opened the door at the moment that Picker – leaning out of the window – gave a startled yelp. A quarrel slammed into the wall not an arm’s reach from the healer’s head. Ducking, he threw himself out into the corridor.
As he half straightened, he saw figures pouring from round the corner to his left. Cords thrummed. One bolt punched into his stomach. The other ripped through his throat. He fell backward in a wash of blood and pain.
Lying on his back, hearing footfalls fast approach, Mallet reached up to his neck – he couldn’t breathe – blood gushed down into his lungs, hot and numbing. Frantic, he summoned High Denul—
A shadow descended over him and he looked up into a passive young face, the eyes blank as a dagger lifted into view.
Kick open the gate, Whiskeyjack—
Mallet watched the point flash down.
A sting in his right eye, and then darkness.
Mallet’s killer straightened, withdrawing the dagger, and he wondered, briefly, at the odd smile on the dead man’s face.
Emerging from the kitchen, ducking beneath the low cross-beam of the doorway leading into the taproom, Bluepearl heard crossbows loose, heard screams, and then the hiss of swords whipped free of scabbards. He looked up.
A flung dagger pinned his right hand to the cask. Shouting at the fiery agony, he staggered back as two assassins rushed towards him. One with a knife, the other with a long, thin-bladed sword.
The attacker with the knife was in the lead, his weapon raised.
Bluepearl spat at him.
That pearlescent globule transmogrified in the air, expanding into a writhing ball of serpents. A dozen fanged jaws struck the assassin in the face. He screamed in horror, slashing at his own face with his knife.
Bluepearl sought to drop the cask, only to have its weight tug his arm downward – his hand still pinned – and he shrieked at the burst of agony.
He had time to look up and see the sword as it was thrust into his face. Into the side of his nose, the point punching deeper, upward, driving into his forebrain.
At the threshold to the cellar, Antsy heard the scrap erupt in the taproom. Whirling round, loosing twenty curses in fourteen different languages, readjusting his grip on his shortsword. Gods, it sounded like unholy slaughter out there. He needed a damned shield!
The cooks and scullions were rushing for the back door – and all at once there were screams from the alley beyond.
Antsy plunged into the storeroom on the left. To the crate at the far end, beneath the folds of burlap. He jimmied the lid open and plucked out three, four sharpers, stuffing them beneath his shirt. A fifth one for his left hand. Then he rushed back out into the kitchen.
One cook and two scullions – both girls – were running back inside, and Antsy saw cloaked forms crowding the back door. ‘Down!’ he screamed, throwing the sharper overhand, hard, straight past the two assassins in the doorway. The sharper struck the alley wall and exploded.
He saw red mist burst round the two visible assassins, like Hood’s own haloes. They both slammed down face first. From the alley beyond, a chorus of terrible shrieks. Antsy drew out another sharper, ran to the doorway. Standing on the backs of the dead assassins, he leaned out and threw the grenado into the alley. Another snapping, fierce detonation. And there were no more cries out there.
‘Chew on that, you fuckin’ arseholes!’
Picker rolled across the floor in the wake of that first quarrel. She saw Mallet lunge into the corridor, saw the bolts take him down. Scrambling – knowing the healer was a dead man – she threw herself at the office door, slamming it shut even as footfalls rushed closer. Dropping the latch, a heartbeat before a heavy weight pounded into the solid barrier, she went to the crate at the foot of the desk.
Fumbled with the key for a moment – thundering thumps from the door behind her, mayhem in the taproom below – before working the lock free and flinging back the lid. She drew out her heavy crossbow and a clutch of quarrels.
She heard the echo of sharpers from the kitchen and grinned, but it was a cold grin.
On her feet once more, even as wood splintered on the door, she rushed back to the window – in time to see Blend knocked back by a bolt in her shoulder, and an assassin lunging after her from the doorway.
It was a damned good shot, her quarrel striking the man in the forehead, snapping his head back in a burst of blood, skull and brains.
Whirling round, she went back to the crate, found the lone sharper she’d stashed there, then back to the window, where she leapt up on to the sill, balanced in a crouch. Directly below was a table. Two bodies bled out beside it, legs tangled in the knocked-over chairs – two innocent patrons, two regulars who never did nobody any harm, good with tips, always a smile—
The door crashed open behind her. She twisted and threw the sharper, then dropped down from the sill. The crack of the grenado in the office, a gout of flames and smoke, as Picker landed on the tabletop.
It exploded beneath her. One of her knees slammed into her chin and she felt teeth crack as she fell to one side, thumping down on one of the corpses. She managed to hold on to the crossbow, although the quarrels scattered across the floor.
Spitting blood, she sat up.
Blend saw her attacker flung back, saw his head cave inward above his eyes. She crouched down, reaching up for the quarrel embedded in her left shoulder. The point was jammed into the cartilage between the bone of the upper arm and the shoulder’s socket. Leaving it in there was probably worse than pulling the damned thing out. Gritting her teeth, she tugged the bolt free.
That made her pass out.
After pushing the surviving crew in the kitchen back out into the alley – now crowded with a dozen torn-up corpses – Antsy crossed the room, collecting the iron lid of a large cauldron along the way. At the entrance leading to the taproom he found Bluepearl, dead as dead could be in a pool of ale, and just beyond him knelt an assassin who seemed to have taken his dagger to his own face, which was now a sliced, shredded, eyeless mess. He was crooning some wordless melody from deep in his throat.
Antsy’s backslash split the bastard’s skull. Tugging the sword loose, he edged forward.
There’d been another sharper, from upstairs, and the crashing of furniture, but little else now. Moving in a crouch, sword ready, lid held like a shield, he worked his way round the near end of the bar.
There was Picker, on her knees directly ahead, reaching out for a quarrel on the floor and quickly loading her marine-issue weapon. Blend was lying motionless near the bar entrance.
Antsy hissed.
Picker looked up, met his eyes. She signalled with one hand, six gestures, and he nodded, answering with two.
Dripping ale and blood, a few soft groans here and there.
Soft footfalls on the landing at the top of the stairs.
Antsy set down his sword, drew out a sharper and showed it to Picker, who nodded and then quietly moved round, using the wreckage of the table for cover, and trained her crossbow on the stairs.
When he saw she was ready, Antsy lifted his makeshift shield to cover shoulder and head, then quickly stepped round to the foot of the stairs. And threw the grenado upward.
Two quarrels clanged off the cauldron lid, with enough force to knock it from his hand. At the same moment an assassin, having launched herself from halfway down the stairs, sailed down towards him.
Picker’s quarrel caught the attacker somewhere in the midsection, convulsing her in mid-flight. She crashed down just as the sharper detonated near the landing.
And then Antsy, sword in hand once more, was rushing up those steps. Picker raced into his wake, drawing out her own sword. ‘Get outa the way with that pigsticker!’ she snarled. ‘Cover me in close!’ She pulled him back and round by one shoulder and pushed past.
Limbs twitching from a heap of bodies on the landing, and splashed blood on the walls – and movement beyond, somewhere in the corridor.
She scrambled over the dead and dying on the landing, pitched into the corridor and, seeing three assassins slowly picking themselves up from the floor, charged forward.
Short work cutting down the stunned attackers, with Antsy guarding her back.
Blend opened her eyes and wondered why she was lying on the floor. She attempted to lift her left arm and gasped as pain blossomed red and hot, leaving her half blind in its aftermath. Oh, now she remembered. With a low moan, she rolled on to her good side and worked herself into a sitting position, blinking sweat and worse from her eyes.
The bar door was open, one of the hinges broken.
In the street beyond, she saw at least a half-dozen cloaked figures, gathered and creeping closer.
Shit.
Desperate, she looked round for the nearest discarded weapon. Knowing she wouldn’t have time, knowing they were going to cut her down once and for all. Still – she saw a knife and reached out for it.
The six assassins came at a sprint.
Someone slammed into them from one side, loosing a bellowing bawl like a wounded bull, and Blend stared as the huge man – Chaur – swung his enormous fists. Heads snapped back on broken necks, faces crumpled in sprays of blood—
And then Barathol was there, with nothing more than a knife, slashing into the reeling assassins, and Blend could see the fear in the blacksmith’s eyes – fear for Chaur, dread for what might happen if the assassins recovered—
As they were now doing.
Blend pushed herself to her feet, collecting the dagger from the floor as she staggered forward—
And was shoved aside by Antsy. Hacking at the nearest assassin with his shortsword, a dented cauldron lid shielding his left side.
Chaur, his forearms slashed by desperate daggers, picked up an assassin and threw him down on to the cobbles. Bones snapped. Still bawling, he picked the broken form up by an ankle and swung him into the air, round, then loose – to collide with another assassin, and both went down. Barathol was suddenly above the first man, driving his boot heel down on his temple. Limbs spasmed.
Antsy pulled his sword from an assassin’s chest and readied himself for his next target, then slowly straightened.
Leaning against the doorframe, Blend spat and said, ‘All down, Sergeant.’
Barathol wrapped Chaur in a hug to calm the man down. Tears streaked Chaur’s broad cheeks, and his fists were still closed, like massive bloody mauls at the ends of his arms. He had wet himself.
Blend and Antsy watched as the blacksmith hugged his friend tightly, with need and with raw relief, so exposed that both Malazans had to look away.
Picker came up behind Blend. ‘You gonna live?’ she asked.
‘Good as new, as soon as Mallet—’
‘No. Not Mallet, love.’
Blend squeezed shut her eyes. ‘They caught us, Pick,’ she said. ‘They caught us good.’
‘Aye.’
She glanced over. ‘You got ’em all in the taproom? Damned impressive—’
‘No, I didn’t, but they’re all down. Four of ’em, right at the foot of the stage. Looked like they rushed it.’
Rushed it? But who was up there… ‘We lose our bard, then?’
‘Don’t know,’ Picker said. ‘Didn’t see him.’
Rushed the stage…
‘We lost Bluepearl, too.’
Blend slowly closed her eyes a second time. Oh, she was hurting, and a lot of that hurt couldn’t get sewn up. They caught us. ‘Picker.’
‘They slaughtered everyone, Blend. People with nothing but bad luck being here tonight. Skevos. Hedry, Larmas, little Boothal. All to take us down.’
From up the street came a squad of City Guard, lanterns swinging.
For a scene such as Blend was looking out on right now, there should be a crowd of onlookers, the ones hungry to see injured, dying people, the ones who fed on such things. But there was no one.
Because this was Guild work.
‘Some of us are still breathing,’ Blend said. ‘It’s not good to do that. Leave some marines still breathing.’
‘No, it’s not good at all.’
Blend knew that tone. Still, she wondered. Are we enough? Is there enough in us to do this? Do we still have what’s needed? They’d lost a healer and a mage this night. They’d lost the best of them. Because we were careless.
Antsy joined them as the guards closed in round Barathol and Chaur. ‘Pick, Blend,’ he said, ‘I don’t know about you two, but right now, gods below, I’m feeling old.’
A sergeant of the guard approached. ‘How bad is it inside?’
No one seemed eager to reply.
Six streets away, a world away, Cutter stood in the front yard of a store selling headstones and crypt façades. An array of stylized deities, none of them temple-sanctioned as yet, beseeching blessings upon the future dead. Beru and Burn, Soliel and Nerruse, Treach and the Fallen One, Hood and Fanderay, Hound and tiger, boar and worm. The shop was closed and he looked upon stones still uncarved, awaiting names of loved ones. Against one of the low yard walls stood a row of marble sarcophagi, and against the wall opposite there were tall urns with their flared mouths, narrow necks and swollen bellies, reminding him of pregnant women…birth into death, wombs to hold all that remained of mortal flesh, homes to those who would answer the final question, the last question: what lies beyond? What awaits us all? What shape the gate before me? There were plenty of ways of asking it, but they all meant the same thing, and all sought the one answer.
One spoke of death often. The death of a friendship. The death of love. Each echoed with the finality that waited at the very end, but they were faint echoes, ghostly, acting out scenes in puppet shows swallowed in flickering shadows. Kill a love. What lies beyond? Emptiness, cold, drifting ashes, yet does it not prove fertile? A place where a new seed is planted, finding life, growing into itself? Is this how true death is, as well?
From the dust, a new seed…
A pleasing thought. A comforting thought.
The street behind him was modestly crowded, the last of the late night shoppers reluctant to close out this day. Maybe they had nothing to go home to. Maybe they hungered for one more purchase, in the forlorn hope that it would fill whatever emptiness gnawed deep inside.
None wandered into this yard, none wanted the reminder of what waited for them all. Why, then, had he found himself here? Was he seeking some kind of comfort, some reminder that for each and every person, no matter where, the same conclusion was on its way? One could walk, one could crawl, one could run headlong, but one could never turn round and head the other way, could never escape. Even with the truism that all grief belonged to the living, the ones left behind – facing empty spaces where someone once stood – there could be found a kind of calm repose. We walk the same path, some farther along, some farther back, but still and for ever more the same path.
There was, then, the death of love.
And there was, alas, its murder.
‘Crokus Younghand.’
He slowly turned round. A woman stood before him, exquisitely dressed, a cloak of ermine about her shoulders. A heart-shaped face, languid eyes, painted lips, and yes, he knew this face. Had known it, a younger version, a child’s version, perhaps, but now there was nothing of that child – not in the eyes, not even in the sad smile on those full lips. ‘Challice D’Arle.’
Later, he would look back on this moment, on the dark warning contained in the fact that, when he spoke her name of old, she did not correct him.
Would such percipience have changed things? All that was to come?
Death and murder, seeds in the ashes, one does as one does. Sarcophagi gaped. Urns echoed hollow and dark. Stone faces awaited names, grief crouching at the gate.
Such was this night in the city of Darujhistan.
Such is this night, everywhere.
Chapter Twelve
