Toll the Hounds Page 29

‘He was,’ chimed in Glanno Tarp. ‘Look at us, we’re short maybe six, seven – we can’t be going nowhere any time soon.’

  ‘Maybe not, but maybe it’ll be a quick, easy one.’

  The others all stared at her.

  Faint relented. ‘Fine. Besides, I was just standing in for Quell, who might never leave that closet.’

  ‘Could be he’s dead,’ Sweetest Sufferance suggested.

  ‘Internally explodicated,’ said Glanno Tarp, ‘and don’t think I’m going in for a look.’

  ‘There goes the rat!’ hissed Reccanto Ilk.

  They looked, watched, breathless.

  A pause, nose twitching, then a scurry of small steps. Close now, close enough to flinch back at the reeking breath.

  ‘Two councils it falls over dead.’

  ‘Be more precise – it’s gonna fall over dead some day, ain’t it?’

  ‘Gods below!’

  The rat held its ground, edged a mite closer. Then gathered itself, stretched out its neck, and began drinking from the pool of slime with tiny, flickering laps of its slivery tongue.

  ‘That’s what I was thinking it was gonna do,’ said Sweetest Sufferance.

  ‘Liar.’

  ‘So now he ain’t never going to wake up,’ said Reccanto, ‘and I’m going to die here of thirst.’

  The closet door creaked open and out staggered Master Quell, not looking at all refreshed. He hobbled over. ‘That papaya’s stuck – I need a healer—’

  ‘Or a fruit seller,’ Faint said. ‘Listen, could be we got us a new contract.’

  Quell’s eyes bugged slightly, then he spun round and staggered back into the closet.

  ‘Now see what you did!’ snapped Reccanto.

  ‘It’s not my papaya, is it?’

  So early in the morning, the streets of Darujhistan, barring those of markets, were ghostly, strewn with rubbish and yet somehow magical. The sun’s golden light stroked every surface with a gentle artist’s hand. The faint mists that had drifted in from the lake during the night now retreated once more, leaving the air crisp. In the poorer quarters, shutters opened on upper storeys and moments later the contents of chamber pots sailed out, splashing the alleys and any hapless denizen still lying drunk to the world, and moments later rats and such crept out to sample the fresh offerings.

  The dolorous High Priest led Mappo Runt away from the temple quarter and down into the Lakefront District, skirting Second Tier Wall before cutting across towards the Gadrobi District – in essence taking the Trell back the way he had come the night before. As they walked, the city awoke around them, rubbed sleep from its eyes, then gawked at the shambling priest and his enormous, barbaric companion.

  They eventually arrived upon a narrow, sloped street in which sat a massive, ornate carriage of a sort that Mappo had seen before, though he could not for the moment recall where. Six horses stood in their traces, looking bored. Someone had dumped feed all round them, and there was enough fresh dung scattered about to suggest that the animals had been left there a while.

  The priest directed Mappo towards a nearby tavern. ‘In there,’ he said. ‘The Trygalle Trade Guild has made a specialty of journeys such as the one you require. Of course, they are expensive, but that is hardly surprising, is it?’

  ‘And one simply seeks out one such caravan, wherever one might find them? That sounds to be an ineffective business plan.’

  ‘No, they have offices. Somewhere – not a detail I possess, I’m afraid. I only knew of this carriage because its arrival destroyed the front of my cousin’s shop.’ And, pointing to a nearby ruin, he smiled like a man who had forgotten what real smiling signified. Then he shrugged. ‘All these twists of fate. Blessed by serendipity and all that. If you fail here, Mappo Runt, you will have a long, tedious walk ahead of you. So do not fail.’ He then bowed, turned and walked away.

  Mappo eyed the front of the tavern. And recalled when he had last seen that sort of carriage.

  Tremorlor.

  Shareholder Faint had just stood, stretching out all the alarming kinks in her back, when the tavern door opened and a monstrous figure pushed its way in, shoulders squeezing through the frame, head ducking. A misshapen sack slung over one shoulder, a wicked knife tucked in its belt. A damned Trell.

  ‘Glanno,’ she said, ‘better get Master Quell.’

  Scowling, the last driver left alive in their troupe rose and limped away.

  She watched as the huge barbarian stepped over the drunk and made his way to the bar. The rat looked up and hastily retreated down the length of the counter. The Trell nudged Quip Younger’s head. The barkeep coughed and slowly straightened, wiping at his mouth, blinking myopically as he lifted his gaze to take in the figure looming over him.

  With a bleat he reeled back a step.

  ‘Never mind him,’ Faint called out. ‘You want us, over here.’

  ‘What I want,’ the Trell replied in passable Daru, ‘is breakfast.’

  Head bobbing, Quip bolted for the kitchen, where he was met by a screeching woman, the piercing tirade dimming as soon as the door closed behind him.

  Faint dragged a bench from the nearby wall – no chair in this dump would survive – and waved to it with a glance over to the barbarian. ‘Come over, then. Sit, but just so you know, we’re avoiding Seven Cities. There was a terrible plague there; no telling if it’s run its course.’

  ‘No,’ the Trell rumbled as he approached, ‘I have no desire to return to Seven Cities, or Nemil.’

  The bench groaned as he settled on to it.

  Sweetest Sufferance was eyeing the newcomer with a strangely avid intensity. Reccanto Ilk simply stared, mouth open, odd twitches of his scalp shifting his hairline up and down.

  Faint said to the Trell, ‘The truth of it is, we’re really in no shape for anything . . . ambitious. Master Quell needs to put out a call for more shareholders, and that could hold us back for days, maybe a week.’

  ‘Oh, that is unfortunate. It is said your Guild has an office here in Darujhistan—’

  ‘It does, but I happen to know we’re the only carriage available, for the next while. Where were you hoping to go, and how quickly?’

  ‘Where is your Master, or are you the one who does the negotiating?’

  At that moment Glanno finally succeeded in dragging Quell out from the water closet. The Master was pale, and shiny with sweat, and it seemed his legs weren’t working very well. Faint met his slightly wild gaze. ‘Better?’ she asked.

  ‘Better,’ he replied in a gasp, as Glanno more or less carried him over to his chair. ‘It was a damned kidney stone, it was. Size of a knuckle – I never thought . . . well, never mind. Gods, who is this?’

  The Trell half rose to bow. ‘Apologies. My name is Mappo Runt.’ And he sat back down.

  Faint saw Quell lick dry lips, and with a trembling hand reach for a tankard. He scowled to find it empty and set it back down. ‘The most infamous Trell of them all. You lost him, didn’t you?’

  The barbarian’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘Where?’ Quell’s voice sounded half strangled.

  ‘I need to get to a continent named Lether. To an empire ruled by Tiste Edur, and a cursed emperor. And yes, I can pay you for the trouble.’

  Faint had never seen her master so rattled. It was fascinating. Clearly, Quell had recognized the Trell’s name, which signified . . . well, something.

  ‘And, er, did he face that emperor, Mappo? In ritual combat?’

  ‘I do not think so.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I believe I would have . . . sensed such a thing—’ ‘The end of the world, you mean.’

  ‘Perhaps. No, something else happened. I cannot say what, Master Quell. I need to know, will you take me there?’

  ‘We’re under-crewed,’ Quell said, ‘but I can drop by the office, see if there’s a list of waiting prospects. A quick interview process. Say by this time tomorrow, I can have an answer.’

  The huge warrior
sighed. He glanced round. ‘I have nowhere else to go, so I will stay here until then.’

  ‘Sounds wise,’ Quell said. ‘Faint, you’re with me. The rest of you, get cleaned up, see to the horses, carriage and all that. Then stay close by, keep Mappo company – he might have nasty tusks but he don’t bite.’

  ‘But I do,’ said Sweetest Sufferance, offering the Trell an inviting smile.

  Mappo stared at her a moment, then, rubbing at his face, he rose. ‘Where’s that breakfast, anyway?’

  ‘Let’s go, Faint,’ said Quell, pushing himself upright with another wince.

  ‘Can you make it?’ she asked him.

  A nod. ‘Haradas is handling the office these days – she can heal me quick enough.’

  ‘Good point. Hands on?’

  *

  There is, as a legion of morose poets well know, nothing inconsequential about love. Nor all those peculiarities of related appetites often confused for love, for example lust, possession, amorous worship, appalling notions of abject surrender where one’s own will is bled out in sacrifice, obsessions of the fetishistic sort that might include earlobes or toenails or regurgitated foodstuffs, and indeed that adolescent competitiveness which in adults – adults who should of course know better but don’t – is manifested as insane jealousy.

  Such lack of restraint has launched and no doubt sunk an equal number of ships, if one takes the long view of such matters, which in retrospect is not only advisable but, for all the sighs of worldly wind, probably the most essential survival trait of them all – but pray, let not this rounded self wallow unthinkingly into recounting a host of lurid tales of woe, loss and the like, nor bemoan his present solitude as anything other than a voluntary state of being!

  Cast attention, then (with audible relief), upon these three for whom love heaves each moment like a volcano about to erupt, amidst the groan of continents, the convulsion of valleys and the furrowing of furrows – but no, honesty demands a certain revision to what steams and churns beneath the surface. Only two of the three thrash and writhe in the delicious agony of that-which-might-be-love, and the subject of their fixed attention is none other than the third in their quaint trio, who, being of feminine nature, is yet to decide and, now that she basks in extraordinary attention, may indeed never decide. And should the two ever vying for her heart both immolate themselves at some future point, ah well, there are plenty of eels in the muck, aren’t there?

  And these three, then, bound together in war and bound yet tighter in the calamity of desire long after the war was done with, now find themselves in the fair city of Darujhistan, two pursuing one and where the one goes so too will they, but she wonders, yes, just how far she can take them and let’s see, shall we?

  Being illiterate, she has scrawled her name on to a list, assuming her name can be pictographically rendered into something like a chicken heart’s spasm the moment before death, and lo, did not her two suitors follow suit, competing even here in their expressions of illiterate extravagance, with the first devising a most elaborate sigil of self that might lead one to imagine his name’s being Smear of Snail in Ecstasy, whilst the other, upon seeing this, set to with brush, scrivener’s dust and fingernails to fashion a scrawl reminiscent of a serpent trying to cross a dance floor whilst a tribe importuned the fickle gods of rain. Both men then stood, beaming with pride in between mutual baring of teeth, while their love sauntered off to find a nearby stall where an old woman wearing seaweed on her head was cooking stuffed voles over a brazier of coals.

  The two men hastened after her, both desperate to pay for her breakfast, or beat the old woman senseless, whichever their darling preferred.

  Thus it was that High Marshal Jula Bole and High Marshal Amby Bole, along with the swamp witch named Precious Thimble, all late of the Mott Irregulars, were close at hand and, indeed, ready and willing newfound shareholders when Master Quell and Faint arrived at the office of the Trygalle Trade Guild. And while three was not quite the number Quell sought by way of replacements, they would just have to do, given Mappo Runt’s terrible need.

  So they would not have to wait until the morrow after all. Most consequential indeed.

  Happy days!

  Conspiracies are the way of the civilized world, both those real and those imagined, and in all the perambulations of move and countermove, why, the veracity of such schemes is irrelevant. In a subterranean, most private chamber in the estate of Councilman Gorlas Vidikas sat fellow Council members Shardan Lim and Hanut Orr in the company of their worthy host, and the wine had flowed like the fount of the Queen of Dreams – or if not dreams then at least irresponsible aspirations – throughout the course of the night just past.

  Still somewhat inebriated and perhaps exhausted unto satiation by self-satisfaction, they were comfortably silent, each feeling wiser than their years, each feeling that wellspring of power against which reason was helpless. In their half-lidded eyes something was swollen and nothing in the world was unattainable. Not for these three.

  ‘Coll will be a problem,’ Hanut said.

  ‘Nothing new there,’ Shardan muttered, and the other two granted him soft, muted laughter. ‘Although,’ he added as he played with a silver candle snuffer, ‘unless we give him cause for suspicion, there is no real objection he can legitimately make. Our nominee is well enough respected, not to mention harmless, at least physically.’

  ‘It’s just that,’ Hanut said, shaking his head, ‘by virtue of us as nominators, Coll will be made suspicious.’

  ‘We play it as we discussed, then,’ Shardan responded, taunting with death the nearest candle’s flame. ‘Bright-eyed and full of ourselves and brazenly awkward, eager to express our newly acquired privilege to propose new Council members. We’d hardly be the first to be so clumsy and silly, would we?’

  Gorlas Vidikas found his attention wandering – they’d gone through all this before, he seemed to recall. Again and again, in fact, through the course of the night, and now a new day had come, and still they chewed the same tasteless grist. Oh, these two companions of his liked the sound of their own voices all too well. Converting dialogue into an argument even when both were in agreement, and all that distinguished the two was the word choices concocted in each reiteration.

  Well, they had their uses none the less. And this thing he had fashioned here was proof enough of that.

  And now, of course, Hanut once more fixed eyes upon him and asked yet again the same question, ‘Is this fool of yours worth it, Gorlas? Why him? It’s not as if we aren’t approached almost every week by some new prospect wanting to buy our votes on to the Council. Naturally, it serves us better to string the fools along, gaining favour upon favour, and maybe one day deciding we own so much of them that it will be worth our while to bring them forward. In the meantime, of course, we just get richer and more influential outside the Council. The gods know, we can get pretty damned rich with this one.’

  ‘He is not the type who will play the whore to our pimp, Hanut.’

  A frown of distaste. ‘Hardly a suitable analogy, Gorlas. You forget that you are the junior among us here.’

  The one who happens to own the woman you both want in your beds. Don’t chide me about whores and pimps, when you know what you’ll pay for her. Such thoughts remained well hidden behind his momentarily chastened expression. ‘He’ll not play the game, then. He wants to attain the Council, and in return we shall be guaranteed his support when we make our move to shove aside the elder statesmen and their fossilized ways, and take the real power.’

  Shardan grunted. ‘Seems a reasonable arrangement, Hanut. I’m tired, I need some sleep.’ And he doused the candle before him as he rose. ‘Hanut, I know a new place for breakfast.’ He smiled at Gorlas. ‘I am not being rude in not inviting you, friend. Rather, I imagine your wife will wish to greet you this morning, with a breakfast you can share. The Council does not meet until mid-afternoon, after all. Take your leisure, Gorlas, when you can.’

  ‘I will walk you
both out,’ he replied, a smile fixed upon his face.

  Most of the magic Lady Challice Vidikas was familiar with was of the useless sort. As a child she had heard tales of great and terrible sorcery, of course, and had she not seen for herself Moon’s Spawn? On the night when it sank so low its raw underside very nearly brushed the highest rooftops, and there had been dragons in the sky then, and a storm to the east that was said to have been fierce magic born of some demonic war out in the Gadrobi Hills, and then the confused madness behind Lady Simtal’s estate. But none of this had actually affected her directly. Her life had slipped through the world so far as most people’s did, rarely touched by anything beyond the occasional ministrations of a healer. All she had in her possession was a scattering of ensorcelled items intended to do little more than entrance and amuse.

  One such object was before her now, on her dresser, a hemisphere of near-perfect glass in which floated a semblance of the moon, shining as bright as it would in the night sky. The details on its face were exact, at least from the time when the real moon’s visage had been visible, instead of blurred and uncertain as it was now.

  A wedding gift, she recalled, although she’d forgotten from whom it had come. One of the less obnoxious guests, she suspected, someone with an eye to romance in the old-fashioned sense, perhaps. A dreamer, a genuine well-wisher. At night, if she desired darkness in the room, the half-globe needed covering, for its refulgent glow was bright enough to read by. Despite this inconvenience, Challice kept the gift, and indeed kept it close.

  Was it because Gorlas despised it? Was it because, while it had once seemed to offer her a kind of promise, it had, over time, transformed into a symbol of something entirely different? A tiny moon, yes, shining ever so bright, yet there it remained, trapped with nowhere to go. Blazing its beacon like a cry for help, with an optimism that never waned, a hope that never died.

  Now, when she looked upon the object, she found herself feeling claustrophobic, as if she was somehow sharing its fate. But she could not shine for ever, could she? No, her glow would fade, was fading even now. And so, although she possessed this symbol of what might be, her sense of it had grown into a kind of fascinated resentment, and even to look upon it, as she was doing now, was to feel its burning touch, searing her mind with a pain that was almost delicious.