The Malazan Empire, page 780
He nodded, and she saw the pupils of his eyes dilate. She caught his quickened breathing, and knew her choice had been the right one. Now, the next three days and two nights, Gorlas would be as one on fire. With anticipation, with his imagination unleashed and playing out scenarios, each one a variation on a single theme.
Yes, Gorlas, we are not done with each other yet, after all.
His hand withdrew from her breast and, with a courtly bow, he stepped to one side to permit her to pass.
She did so.
Murillio hired a horse for the day; with tack included, the rental amounted to three silver councils along with a twenty-council deposit. Of that, the animal was worth perhaps five, certainly not much more. Slope-backed, at least ten years old, worn out, beaten down, the misery in the beast’s eyes stung Murillio to sympathy and he was of half a mind to forgo the deposit and leave the animal in the hands of a kindly farmer with plenty of spare pasture.
He rode at a slow, plodding walk through the crowded streets, until he reached Two-Ox Gate. Passing through the archway’s shadow, he collected the horse into a steady trot on the cobbled road, passing laden wagons and carts and the occasional Gadrobi peasant struggling beneath baskets filled with salted fish, flasks of oil, candles and whatever else they needed to make bearable living in a squalid hut along the roadside.
Once beyond the leper colony, he began scanning the lands to either side, seeking the nearest active pasture. A short distance on he spied sheep and goats wandering the slope of a hillside to his right. A lone shepherd hobbled along the ridge, waving a switch to keep the flies off. Murillio pulled his mount off the road and rode towards him.
The old man noticed his approach and halted.
He was dressed in rags, but the crook he carried looked new, freshly oiled and polished. His eyes were smeared with cataracts from too many years in the bright sunlight, and he squinted, wary and nervous, as Murillio drew up and settled back in the saddle.
‘Hello, good shepherd.’
A terse nod answered him.
‘I am looking for someone—’
‘Nobody but me here,’ the old man replied, flicking the switch before his face.
‘This was a few weeks back. A young boy, up here collecting dung, perhaps.’
‘We get ’em, out from the city.’
The furtiveness was ill-disguised. The old man licked his lips, switched at flies that weren’t there. There were secrets here, Murillio realized. He dismounted. ‘You know of this one,’ he said. ‘Five years old. He was hurt, possibly unconscious.’
The shepherd stepped back as he approached, half raised the crook. ‘What was I supposed to do?’ he demanded. ‘The ones that come out here, they got nothing. They live in the streets. They sell the dung for a few coppers. I got no help here, we just working for somebody else. We go hungry every winter – what was I supposed to do?’
‘Just tell me what happened,’ said Murillio. ‘You do that and maybe I’ll just walk away, leave you be. But you’re a bad liar, old man, and if you try again I might get angry.’
‘We wasn’t sure he was gonna live – he was beat up near dead, sir. Woulda died if we hadn’t found him, took care of him.’
‘And then?’
‘Sold him off. It’s hard enough, feedin’ ourselves—’
‘To who? Where is he?’
‘Iron mines. The Eldra Holdings, west of here.’
Murillio felt a chill grip his heart. ‘A five-year-old boy—’
‘Moles, they call ’em. Or – so I heard.’
He returned to the horse. Lifted himself into the saddle and roughly pulled the beast round. Rode hard back to the road.
A thousand paces along, the horse threw a shoe.
The ox lumbered along at the pace of a beast for which time was meaningless, and perhaps in this it was wise indeed. Walking beside it, the man with the crop twitched its flank every now and then, but this was habit, not urgency. The load of braided leather was not a particularly onerous burden, and if the carter timed things right, why, he might wangle himself a meal at the camp before the long return journey back to the city. At least by then the day would be mostly done and the air would’ve cooled. In this heat, neither man nor beast was in any hurry.
Hardly surprising, then, that the lone traveller on foot caught up with them before too long, and after a brief conversation – a few words to either side of the jangle of coins – the load on the cart grew heavier, yet still not enough to force a groan from the ox. This was, after all, the task of its life, the very definition of its existence. In truth, it had little memory of ever being free, of ever trundling along without something to drag behind it, or the endless reverberation in its bones as wheels clunked across cobbles, slipping into and out of worn ruts in the stone.
Languid blinks, the storm of flies that danced in the heat, twitching tail and spots of blood on the fetlocks, and pulling something from one place to another. And at its side, squinting red-shot eyes, a storm of flies dancing, spots of blood here and there from midges and whatnot, and taking something from one place to another. Ox and driver, parallel lives through meaningless years. A singular variation, now, the man sitting with legs dangling off the cart, his boots worn and blisters oozing, and the dark maelstrom in his eyes that was for neither of them, and no business of theirs besides.
The ornate, lacquered, leaf-sprung carriage that rumbled past them a league from the camp had its windows shuttered against the heat and dust.
The man in the back had watched its approach. The carter watched it pass. The ox saw it moving away in front of it at a steady pace that it could never match, even had it wanted to, which it didn’t.
Snell was nobody’s fool, and when the ball of bound multicoloured twine rolled close to the door and Hinty stared at it, expecting its miraculous return to her pudgy, grimy hands, why, Snell obliged – and as soon as he was at the door, he darted outside and was gone.
He heard Bellam’s shout, but Snell had a good head start and besides, the stupid idiot wouldn’t just leave the runts behind, would he? No, Snell had made good his escape, easy as that, because he was clever and jerks could threaten him all the time but he won in the end, he always won – proof of his cleverness.
Up the street, into an alley, under the broken fence, across the narrow yard – chickens scattering from his path – and on to the stacked rabbit pens, over the next fence, into Twisty Alley, twenty strides up and then left, into the muddy track where a sewage pipe leaked. Nobody’d go down this pinched passageway, what with the stench and all, but he did, piss soaking through his worn moccasins, and then he was out on to Purse Street, and freedom.
Better if he’d stolen the runts to sell. Better still if he’d still had his stash of coins. Now, he had nothing. But nobody would catch him now. There were some older boys with connections to the gang that worked Worrytown, lifting what they could from the trader wagons that crowded through. If Snell could get out there, he’d be outside the city, wouldn’t he? They could hunt for ever and not find him.
And he could make himself rich. He could rise in the ranks and become a pack leader. People would be scared of him, terrified even. Merchants would pay him just not to rob them. And he’d buy an estate, and hire assassins to kill Bellam Nom and Stonny Menackis and Murillio. He’d buy up his parents’ debts and make them pay him every month – wouldn’t that be something? It’d be perfect. And his sisters he could pimp out and eventually he’d have enough money to buy a title of some sort, get on the Council, and proclaim himself King of Darujhistan, and he’d order new gallows built and execute everyone who’d done him wrong.
He rushed through the crowds, his thoughts a world away, a future far off but almost in reach.
His feet were clipped out from under him and he fell hard: numbing shock from one shoulder and his hip. Bellam Nom stood over him, breathing hard but grinning. ‘Nice try,’ he said.
‘Mew and Hinty! You left them—’
‘Locked up, yes. That’s what slowed me down.’ And he reached down, grasped Snell’s arm and yanked him to his feet, twisting hard enough to make him yelp in pain.
Bellam dragged Snell back the way he’d come.
‘I’m going to kill you one day,’ Snell said, then winced as Bellam’s grip tightened on his arm.
‘It’s what people like you rely on, isn’t it?’
‘What?’
‘That none of us are as nasty as you. That we’ll have qualms about, say, skinning you alive. Or shattering your kneecaps. Gouging out your eyes. You want to kill me? Fine, just don’t be surprised if I get to you first, Snell.’
‘You can’t murder—’
‘Can’t I? Why not? You seem to think you can, whenever you like, whenever the chance arises. Well, I’m not Stonny Menackis. I’m not Murillio, either. They’re…civilized folk. No, Snell, I’m more like you, only I’m older and better at it.’
‘If you did anything to me, Murillio would have to go after you. Like you say, he’s not like us. Or Stonny. She’d cut you to pieces. Yes, it’d be Stonny, once Da asked her to, and he would.’
‘You’re making a big assumption, Snell.’
‘What?’
‘That they’d ever figure out it was me.’
‘I’ll warn them – as soon as they come back – I’ll warn them about you—’
‘Before or after you make your confession? About what you did to poor Harllo?’
‘That was different! I didn’t do nothing on purpose—’
‘You hurt him, probably killed him, and left his body for the birds. You kept it all a secret, Snell. Hood knows, if I asked nicely enough, your da might just hand you over to me and good riddance to you.’
Snell said nothing. There was true terror inside him now. So much terror it filled him up, spilled out through his pores, and out from between his legs. This Bellam was a monster. He didn’t feel anything for nobody. He just wanted to hurt Snell. A monster. A vicious demon, yes, a demon. Bellam was everything that was wrong with…with…everything.
‘I’ll be good,’ Snell whimpered. ‘You’ll see. I’ll make it right, all of it.’
But these were lies, and both of them knew it. Snell was what he was, and no amount of cuddling and coddling would change that. He stood, there in the mind, as if to say: we are in your world. More of us than you imagine. If you knew how many of us there are, you’d be very, very frightened. We are here. Now, what are you going to do with us? Snell was what he was, yes, and so, too, was Bellam Nom.
When he was dragged in through the narrow door of a nondescript shop at the near end of Twisty Alley, Snell suddenly recoiled – he knew this place. He knew—
‘What you got yourself there, Bellam?’
‘A fresh one, Goruss, and I’ll let him go cheap.’
‘Wait!’ Snell shrieked, and then a heavy hand clamped over his mouth and he was pulled into the gloom, smelling rank sweat, feeling a breath on his cheek as the ogre named Goruss leaned in close.
‘A screamer, iz he?’
‘A nasty little shit, in fact.’
‘We’ll work that outer ’im.’
‘Not this one. He’d stab his mother just to watch the blood flow. ’Sprobably left a trail of tortured small animals ten leagues long, buried in little holes in every back yard of the neighbourhood. This is one of those, Goruss.’
‘Eighteen silver?’
‘Slivers?’
‘Yah.’
‘All right.’
Snell thrashed about as he was carried off into a back room, then down steps and into an unlit cellar that smelled of piss-soaked mud. He was gagged and bound and thrown into a low iron cage. Goruss then went back up the stairs, leaving Snell alone.
In the front room, Goruss sat down across from Bellam. ‘Ale, nephew?’
‘Too early for me, Uncle.’
‘How long you want me to hold him?’
‘Long enough to shit everything out of him. I want him so scared he breaks inside.’
‘Give him a night, then. Enough to run through all his terrors, but not so much he gets numb. Shit, nephew, I don’t deal in anybody under, oh, fifteen years old, and we do careful interviewing and observing, and only the completely hopeless ones get shipped to the rowing benches. And even then, they get paid and fed and signed out after five years – and most of them do good after that.’
‘I doubt Snell knows any of that, Uncle. Just that children are dragged into this shop and they don’t come back out.’
‘Must look that way.’
Bellam smiled. ‘Oh, it does, Uncle, it does.’
‘Not seen him in days.’
Barathol just nodded, then walked over to the cask of water to wash the grime off his forearms and hands. Chaur sat on a crate nearby, eating some local fruit with a yellow skin and pink, fleshy insides. Juice dribbled down his stubbled chin.
Scillara gave him a bright smile as she wandered into the front room. The air smelled brittle and acrid, the way it does in smithies, and she thought now that, from this moment on, the scent would accompany her every recollection of Barathol, this large man with the gentle eyes. ‘Had any more trouble with the Guilds?’ she asked.
He dried himself off and flung the cloth to one side. ‘They’re making it hard, but I expected that. We’re surviving.’
‘So I see.’ She kicked at a heap of iron rods. ‘New order?’
‘Swords. The arrival of the Malazan embassy’s garrison has triggered a new fad among the nobles. Imperial longswords. Gave trouble to most of the local swordsmiths.’ He shrugged. ‘Not me, of course.’
Scillara settled down in the lone chair and began scraping out her pipe. ‘What’s so special about Malazan longswords?’
‘The very opposite, actually. The local makers haven’t quite worked out that they have to reverse engineer to get them right.’
‘Reverse engineer?’
‘The Malazan longsword’s basic design and manufacture is originally Untan, from the imperial mainland. Three centuries old, at least, maybe older. The empire still uses the Untan foundries and they’re a conservative bunch.’
‘Well, if the damned things do what they’re supposed to do, why make changes?’
‘That seems to be the thinking, yes. The locals have gone mad folding and refolding, trying to capture that rough solidity, but the Untan smiths are in the habit of working iron not hot enough. It’s also red iron that they’re using – the Untan Hills are rotten with it even though it’s rare everywhere else.’ He paused, watching as she lit her pipe. ‘This can’t be of any real interest to you, Scillara.’
‘Not really, but I do like the sound of your voice.’ And she looked up at him through the smoke, her eyes half veiled.
‘Anyway, I can make decent copies and the word’s gone out. Eventually, some swordsmith will work things out, but by then I’ll have plenty of satisfied customers and even undercutting me won’t be too damaging.’
‘Good,’ she said.
He studied her for a moment, and then said, ‘So, Cutter’s gone missing, has he?’
‘I don’t know about that. Only that I’ve not seen him in a few days.’
‘Are you worried?’
She thought about it, and then thought some more. ‘Barathol, that wasn’t my reason for visiting you. I wasn’t looking for someone to charge in as if Cutter’s been kidnapped or something. I’m here because I wanted to see you. I’m lonely – oh, I don’t mean anybody’ll do, either, when I say that. I just wanted to see you, that’s all.’
After a moment, he shrugged and held out his hands. ‘Here I am.’
‘You won’t make it easy, will you?’
‘Scillara, look at me. Please, look. Carefully. You’re too fast for me. Cutter, that historian, even that Bridgeburner, you leave them all spinning in your wake. Given my choice, I’d rather go through the rest of my life beneath the notice of everyone. I’m not interested in drama, or even excitement.’
She stretched out her legs. ‘And you think I am?’
‘It’s life that you’re full of.’ Barathol frowned and then shook his head. ‘I’m not very good at saying what I mean, am I?’
‘Keep trying.’
‘You can be…overwhelming.’
‘Typical, put on a little fat and suddenly I’m too much for him.’
‘You’re not fat and you know it. You have,’ he hesitated, ‘shape.’
She thought to laugh, decided that it might come out too obviously hurt, which would make him feel even worse. Besides, her comment had been little more than desperate misdirection – she’d lost most of the weight she’d put on during her pregnancy. ‘Barathol, has it not occurred to you that maybe I am as I am because behind it all there’s not much else?’
His frown deepened.
Chaur dropped down from the crate and came over. He patted her on the head with a sticky hand and then hurried off into the yard.
‘But you’ve lived through so much.’
‘And you haven’t? Gods below, you were an officer in the Red Blades. What you did in Aren—’
‘Was just me avoiding a mess, Scillara. As usual.’
‘What are we talking about here?’
His eyes shied away. ‘I’m not sure. I suppose, now that Cutter’s left you…’
‘And Duiker’s too old and Picker’s a woman and that’s fun but not serious – for me, at least – I’ve found myself in need of another man. Chaur’s a child, in his head, that is. Leaving…you.’
