The Malazan Empire Page 19

  The belfry overlooked a dozen flat roofs, of houses that belonged to gentry. One such structure crowded close to one of the temple’s rough-hewn walls, and across its roof lay the heavy shadow of the tower. On this roof crouched an assassin with blood on his hands.

  Talo Krafar of Jurrig Denatte’s Clan drew breath in hissing gasps. Sweat trickled muddy streaks down his brow and droplets fell from his broad, crooked nose. His dark eyes were wide as he stared down at his hands, for the blood staining them was his own.

  His mission this night had been as a Roamer, patrolling the city’s rooftops which, except for the occasional thief, were the assassins’ sole domain, the means by which they traveled the city for the most part undetected. The rooftops provided their routes on missions of unsanctioned political . . . activities or the continuation of a feud between two Houses, or the punishment for betrayal. The Council ruled by day under public scrutiny; the Guild ruled by night, unseen, leaving no witnesses. It had always been this way, since Darujhistan first rose on the shores of Lake Azur.

  Talo had been crossing an innocuous rooftop when a crossbow quarrel had driven a hammer blow to his left shoulder. He was flung forward by the concussion, and for an unknown length of time stared dumbfounded at the cloud-wreathed sky overhead, wondering what had happened. Finally, as numbness slowly gave way to agony, he twisted onto his side. The quarrel had gone entirely through him. It lay on the tarred tiles a few feet away. He rolled until he was beside the bloodied bolt.

  One glance had been enough to confirm that this was no thief’s quarrel. It had come from a heavy weapon—an assassin’s weapon. As this fact worked its way through the confused jumble of Talo’s thoughts, he drew himself up to his knees, and then to his feet. An unsteady jog brought him to the building’s edge.

  Blood streamed from the wound as he climbed down to the unlit alley below. His moccasins resting finally on the slick, rubbish-littered cobblestones, he paused, forcing clarity into his head. An assassin war had begun this night. But which Clan Leader was fool enough to believe he or she could usurp Vorcan’s mastery of the Guild? In any case, he would return to his clan’s nest, if possible. With this in mind, he began to run.

  He had dashed into the shadows of his third alley when ice trickled down his spine. Breath catching, Talo froze. The sensation creeping over him was unmistakable, as certain as instinct: he was being stalked. He glanced down at the blood-soaked front of his shirt and realized that there was no hope of outrunning his hunter. No doubt his stalker had seen him enter the alley and even now had a crossbow trained on its mouth at the far end. At least, that is how Talo would play it.

  He’d have to turn the game round, set a trap. And for that he’d need the rooftops. Talo turned back to the alley-mouth he had just entered and studied the nearby buildings. Two streets to his right squatted the K’rul Temple. His gaze fixed on the dark edifice that was the belfry. There.

  The climb left him close to unconsciousness, and he now crouched in the belfry’s shadow one building away from the temple. His exertions had pumped blood from his shoulder in horrifying volume. He’d seen blood before, of course, but never so much of his own at one time. He wondered for the first time seriously if he would die. A numbness spread in his arms and legs, and he knew if he remained where he was any longer he might never leave. With a soft grunt he pushed himself upright. The jump down to the temple roof was only a matter of a few yards, but the impact jarred him to his knees.

  Gasping, Talo drove thoughts of failure from his mind. All that was left was to climb down the temple’s inner wall to the court, then ascend the belfry’s spiral staircase. Two tasks. Two simple tasks. And, once within the belfry’s shadows, he could command every nearby rooftop. And the stalker would come to him. Talo paused to check his own crossbow, which was strapped to his back, and the three quarrels sheathed on his left thigh.

  He glared into the darkness around him. “Whoever you are, you bastard,” he whispered, “I want you.”

  He began to crawl across the temple roof.

  The lock on the jewel box had proved simple to pick. Ten minutes after entering the room Crokus had swept it clean. A small fortune’s worth of gold and gemand pearl-studded jewelry now resided in a small leather bag tied to his belt.

  He squatted by the dressing-table and held in his hands his final prize. This, I’ll keep. The item was a sky-blue silk turban with gold-braided tassels, no doubt intended for the upcoming Fête. He ended his long minute of admiration, tucked the turban under an arm, then rose. His gaze lingered on the bed across from him, and he moved closer.

  The netting obscured the form half buried beneath soft blankets. Another step brought him to the bedframe’s edge. From the waist up the girl was naked. An embarrassed flush rose in the thief’s cheeks, but he did not look away. Queen of Dreams, but she’s lovely! At seventeen years of age, Crokus had seen enough whores and dancers not to tremble agape at a woman’s exposed virtues; even still his gaze lingered. Then, grimacing, he headed back to the balcony door. A moment later he was outside. He drew a deep breath of the cool night air to clear his head. In the blanket of darkness overhead a handful of stars shone sufficiently bright to pierce the gauze of clouds. Not clouds, but smoke, drifting across the lake from the north. The word of Pale’s fall to the Malazan Empire had been on the tongues of everyone for the past two days.

  And we’re next.

  His uncle had told him that the Council still frantically proclaimed neutrality, desperate in their efforts to separate the city from the now destroyed Free Cities alliance. But the Malazans didn’t seem to be listening. And why should they? Uncle Mammot had asked. Darujhistan’s army is a contemptible handful of noble sons who do nothing but strut back and forth on Whore Street, gripping their jeweled swords . . .

  Crokus climbed to the estate’s roof and padded silently across its tiles. Another house, of equal height, was before him, its flat top less than six feet away. The thief paused at the edge and looked down to the alley thirty feet below, seeing only a pool of darkness, then he jumped to land softly on the next roof.

  He began to cross it. Off to his left rose the stark silhouette of K’rul’s belfry tower, gnarled like a bony fist thrust into the night sky. Crokus brought one hand down to the leather bag tied to his belt, probing with his fingers the knot and the condition of the drawstrings. Satisfied that all was secure, he checked the turban tucked beneath a strap of his harness. All was well. He continued his soundless way across the rooftop. A fine night indeed. Crokus smiled to himself.

  Talo Krafar opened his eyes. Dazed and uncomprehending, he stared about himself. Where was he? Why did he feel so weak? Then memory returned, and a groan slipped from his lips. He had blacked out, leaning here against this marble pillar. But what had awoken him? Stiffening, the assassin pushed himself up on the dusty column and scanned the rooftops below. There! A figure moved across the flat top of a building less that fifty feet away.

  Now, you bastard. Now. He raised his crossbow, anchoring one elbow against the pillar. He had already cocked his weapon, though he had no memory of having done so. At this distance there was no chance of missing. In seconds his stalker would be dead. Talo bared his teeth and took careful aim.

  Crokus was halfway across the rooftop, one hand tracing the silk finery of the turban snug over his heart, when a coin clattered loudly at his feet. Instinctively he pounced down and trapped it beneath both hands. Something hissed through the air immediately above his head, and he looked up, startled, then ducked again as a ceramic tile shattered twenty feet away.

  He moaned with sudden realization. As he clambered to his feet one hand absently collected the coin and tucked it under his belt.

  Talo cursed in disbelief. He lowered the crossbow and stared down at the figure, dumbfounded, until his instinct for danger asserted itself one last time. Whirling, he caught a blurred glimpse of a cloaked figure standing before him, arms raised. Then the arms flashed down and two long, grooved daggers slid into Talo�
�s chest. With a final baffled grunt, the assassin died.

  A grating sound reached Crokus’s ears and he spun to face the belfry. A black shape tumbled from between the pillars and landed with a thump fifteen feet away. Moments later a crossbow clanged down beside it. Crokus looked up to see a silhouette framed between the pillars, glittering long-bladed knives in its hands. The figure seemed to be studying him.

  “Oh, Mowri,” the thief prayed, then turned and ran.

  In the K’rul belfry the killer’s oddly shaped eyes watched the thief scamper toward the rooftop’s far side. With a slight lifting of its head the killer sniffed the air, then frowned. A burst of power had just frayed the fabric of night, like a finger poking through rotted cloth. And, through the rent, something had come.

  The thief reached the far edge and disappeared over it. The killer hissed a spell in a language older than the belfry and the temple, a language that had not been heard in this land for millennia, then sprang from the tower. Enwreathed in magic, the killer’s descent to the rooftop below was slow, controlled. The landing came as a light brush on the tiles.

  A second figure appeared, its cloak spread like a black wing, from the above darkness to join the first. Then a third, also descending in silence, landed on the rooftop. They spoke briefly. The last to arrive muttered a command, then moved off. The remaining two exchanged a few last words, then set out on the thief’s trail, the second one preparing its crossbow.

  Ten minutes later Crokus leaned against the sloped roof of a merchant’s house to regain his breath. He’d seen no one, heard nothing. Either the killer hadn’t pursued or he had managed to lose him. Or her. In his mind returned his single vision of the figure as it stood in the belfry. No, unlikely that it could be a woman—too tall, perhaps six and a half feet, and thin.

  A tremor ran through the young thief. What had he stumbled on? An assassin had almost skewered him, and then had himself been murdered. A Guild war? If so, it made the rooftops a risky place to be.

  Warily, Crokus rose and looked about him.

  A tile farther along the roof clattered down the sloped side. Crokus whirled to see the killer dashing toward him. One look at the two daggers flashing in the air and the thief darted to the roof’s edge and leaped out into darkness.

  The building across from him was too distant, but Crokus had chosen his resting place on familiar territory. As he fell into the shadows he reached out grasping hands. The guidewire caught his arms near the elbows and he scrambled frantically for a secure grip, then hung dangling twenty feet above the alley.

  While most of the clotheslines spanning the city’s streets were just thin, unreliable hemp, among them were wrapped wires. Placed by thieves generations past they were securely bolted to the walls. By day Monkey Road, as the thieves called it, looked no different from any other line, festooned with undergarments and sheets. With the sun’s setting, however, came its true purpose.

  With hands burned raw Crokus made his way along the wire toward the far wall. He chanced to glance up then, and froze. On the roof’s edge before him stood a second hunter, taking careful aim with a heavy, antique crossbow.

  Crokus let go of the wire. A quarrel whizzed directly above his head as he fell. From behind and below a window shattered. His drop was cut short by the first of a series of clotheslines, tugging his limbs and twitching him about before snapping. After what seemed an eternity of bone-wrenching jerks and the whip of cord slicing through his clothes and flaying his skin, Crokus struck the alley’s cobblestones, straight-legged and leaning far forward. His knees buckled. He dipped a shoulder enough to earn a slightly cushioned roll, brought up short when his head struck a wall.

  Dazed and groaning, Crokus pushed himself upright. He looked up. Through vision blurred with pain he saw a figure descending in seeming slow-motion immediately overhead. The thief’s eyes widened. Sorcery!

  He turned and staggered dizzily before managing a limping run down the alleyway. He reached the corner and, briefly lit by gaslight, hurried across a wide street, then entered the mouth of another alley. Once in its shadow, Crokus stopped. Cautiously, he poked his head out from the wall’s edge for a look. A quarrel struck the brick beside his face. He jumped back into the alley, spun, and sprinted.

  Above him Crokus heard the flapping of a cloak. A burning spasm in his left hip made him stumble. Another quarrel whipped past his shoulder and skidded on the cobblestones. The spasm passed as quickly as it had come and he staggered on. Ahead, at the alley-mouth, was the lit doorway of a tenement. An old woman sat on the stone steps puffing on a pipe. Her eyes glittered as she watched the thief approach. As Crokus bounded past her and up the steps she rapped the pipe against the sole of her shoe. Sparks rained on to the cobbles.

  Crokus pushed open the door and plunged inside. He paused. A narrow, poorly lit hallway was before him, a staircase crowded with children at the far end. His eyes on the stairs, he jogged up the hall. From the curtained doorways on either side came a cacophony of noise: voices raised in argument, wailing babies, the clatter of cookware.

  “Don’t you people ever sleep?” Crokus shouted as he ran. The children on the stairs scampered out of his way and he took the warped steps two at a time. On the top floor he stopped at a door a third of the way down the hall, this one solid oak. He pushed it open and entered the room within.

  An old man sitting behind a massive desk looked up briefly from his work, then resumed his frantic scrawl on a sheet of crinkled parchment. “Evening, Crokus,” he said distractedly.

  “And to you, Uncle,” Crokus gasped.

  On Uncle Mammot’s shoulder squatted a small winged monkey, whose glittering, half-mad gaze followed the young thief’s dart across the room to the window opposite the door. Flinging open the shutters Crokus climbed up onto the sill. Below was a squalid, overgrown garden mostly lost in shadows. A lone, gnarled tree rose upward. He eyed the branches across from him, then gripped the window-frame and leaned back. He drew a deep breath, then propelled himself forward.

  As he passed through the intervening gap he heard a surprised grunt come from directly above, then a wild scratching against stone. An instant later someone crashed down into the garden below. Cats shrieked and a voice groaned out a single pained curse.

  Crokus clung to a bowing branch. He timed each bounce of the resilient wood then extended his legs as the branch pulled him up. His moccasins landed on a window-sill and held. Grunting, he swung himself onto it and let go of the branch. He punched at the wooden shutters. They sprang inward and Crokus followed head first, down onto the floor and rolling to his feet.

  He heard movement from another room in the apartment. Scrambling to his feet, he bolted for the hallway door, flung it open and slipped out just as a hoarse voice shouted a curse behind him. Crokus ran to the far end of the passage, where a ladder led to a hatch on the ceiling.

  Soon he was on the roof. He crouched in the darkness and tried to catch his breath. The burning sensation returned to his hip. He must have damaged something in his fall from the guidewire. He reached down to massage the spot and found his fingers pressing something hard, round, and hot. The coin! Crokus reached for it.

  Just then he heard a sudden whistling sound, and chips of stone spattered him. Ducking, he saw a quarrel, its shaft split by the impact, bounce once on the rooftop then plummet over the edge, spinning wildly. A soft moan escaped his lips and he scrambled across the roof to the far side. Without pause he jumped. Ten feet down was an awning, sagged and stretched out of shape, on which he landed. The iron spars framing the canvas dipped but held. From there it was a quick climb down to the street.

  Crokus jogged to the corner, where an old building squatted with yellow light bleeding through dirty windows. A wooden sign hung above the door, bearing the faded image of a bird dead on its back, feet jutting upward. The thief bounded up the steps and pushed open the door.

  A rush of light and noise washed over him like balm. He slammed the door behind him and leaned against
it. He closed his eyes, pulling the disguising cloth from his face and head, revealing shoulder-length black hair—now dripping with sweat—and regular features surrounding light blue eyes.

  As he reached up to wipe his brow a mug was pushed into his hand. Crokus opened his eyes to see Sulty hurry by, carrying on one hand a tray loaded with pewter tankards. She glanced at him over her shoulder and grinned. “Rough night, Crokus?”

  He stared at her, then said, “No, nothing special.” He raised the mug to his lips and drank deep.

  ______

  Across the street from the ramshackle Phoenix Inn, a hunter stood at the roof’s edge and studied the door through which the thief had just passed. The crossbow lay cradled in its arms.

  The second hunter arrived, sheathing two long-knives as it came alongside the first.

  “What happened to you?” the first hunter asked quietly, in its native tongue.

  “Had an argument with a cat.”

  The two were silent for a moment, then the first hunter sighed worriedly. “All in all, too awry to be natural.”

  The other agreed. “You felt the parting too, then.”

  “An Ascendant . . . meddled. Too cautious to show itself fully, however.”

  “Unfortunate. It’s been years since I last killed an Ascendant.”

  They began to check their weapons. The first hunter loaded the crossbow and slipped four extra quarrels in its belt. The second hunter removed each long-knife and cleaned it carefully of sweat and grime.

  They heard someone approach from behind, and turned to see their commander.

  “He’s in the inn,” the second hunter said.

  “We’ll leave no witnesses to this secret war with the Guild,” the first added.

  The commander glanced at the door of the Phoenix Inn. Then, to the hunters, she said, “No. The wagging tongue of a witness might be useful to our efforts.”