The Malazan Empire Read online

  Murillio grinned. “An offer I can’t refuse.”

  After a single, bemused glance at Coll’s unconscious form, slumped in the chair, the assassin left the table. What had all that been about five black dragons? He made his way to the bar. As he pushed through the crowd, he gave one youth a hard elbow to the back. The boy gasped, then surreptitiously slipped toward the kitchen.

  Rallick arrived, called Scurve over, then ordered another pitcher. Though he did not look the man’s way, he knew he’d been marked by him. It was no more than a feeling, but one he’d learned to trust. He sighed as Scurve delivered the foaming pitcher. Well, he’d done what Ocelot had demanded of him, though he suspected his Clan Leader would be asking for more.

  He returned to the table and conversed with Murillio for a time, plying his friend with the majority of the ale. Murillio sensed a growing tension around Rallick and took his cue. He drained the last of his drink and rose. “Well,” he said, “Kruppe’s scurried off, Crokus too. And Coll’s once again dead to the world. Rallick, I thank you for the ale. Time to find a warm bed. Until the morrow, then.”

  Rallick remained seated for another five minutes, only once brushing gazes with the black man leaning against the bar. Then he rose and strode into the kitchen. The two cooks rolled their eyes at each other as he strode past. Rallick ignored them. He came to the door, which had been left ajar in hopes of a cooling draft. The alley beyond was wet, though the rain had passed. From a shadowed recess on the wall opposite the inn stepped a familiar figure.

  Rallick walked up to Ocelot. “It’s done. Your man is the big black one nursing an ale. Two daggers, hatch-marked. He looks mean and not one I’d like to tussle with. He’s all yours, Ocelot.”

  The man’s pocked face twisted. “He’s still inside? Good. Head back in. Make sure you’ve been noticed—damn sure, Nom.”

  Rallick crossed his arms. “I’m sure already,” he drawled.

  “You’re to draw him out, lead him into Tarlow’s warehouse—into the loading grounds.” Ocelot sneered. “Vorcan’s orders, Nom. And when you head out, do it by the front door. No mistakes, nothing subtle.”

  “The man’s an assassin,” Rallick grated. “If I’m not subtle he’ll know it’s a trap and crawl all over me in seconds flat.”

  “You do as Vorcan wills, Nom. Now get back inside!”

  Rallick stared at his commander, to make his disgust plain, then returned to the kitchen. The cooks grinned at him, but only for a moment. One look at Rallick’s face was enough to kill any humor in the room. They bent to their tasks as if prodded by a landmaster.

  Rallick entered the main room, then stopped dead in his tracks. “Damn,” he muttered. The black man was gone. Now what? He shrugged. “Front door it is.” He made his way through the crowd.

  In an alley, on one side of which ran a high stone wall, Crokus leaned against the damp bricks of a merchant’s house and gazed steadily at a window. It was on the third floor, beyond the wall, and behind its shuttered face was a room he knew intimately.

  There’d been a light on inside for most of the two hours he’d stood below, but for the last fifteen minutes the room within had been dark. Numb with exhaustion and plagued with doubts, Crokus pulled his cloak tighter around him. He wondered what he was doing here, and not for the first time. All his resolve seemed to have drained into the gutters along with the rain.

  Had it been the dark-haired woman in the Phoenix Inn? Had she rattled him that much? The blood on her dagger made it obvious that she wouldn’t hesitate to kill him just to keep her secret intact. Maybe it was the spinning coin that had him so confused. Nothing about that incident had been natural.

  What was so wrong with his dream of being introduced to the D’Arle maiden? It had nothing to do with that killer woman in the bar.

  “Nothing,” he mumbled, then scowled. Now he was talking aloud to himself.

  A thought came to him that deepened his scowl. Everything had begun its mad unraveling the night he’d robbed the maiden. If only he hadn’t paused, if only he hadn’t looked upon her soft, round, lovely face.

  A groan escaped him, and he shifted his feet. A high-born. That was the real problem, wasn’t it?

  It all seemed so stupid now, so absurd. How could he have convinced himself that such a thing as meeting her was possible? He shook himself. It didn’t matter, he’d planned this, now it was time to do it.

  “I don’t believe this,” he muttered as he pushed himself from the wall and headed down the alley. His hand brushed the pouch tied to his waist. “I’m about to put a maiden’s ransom back.”

  He came to the stone wall he’d been looking for, and began to climb. He drew a deep breath. All right, let’s get it done.

  The stone was wet, but he had enough determination in him to scale a mountain. He climbed on, and did not slip even so much as a single foothold.

  Chapter Thirteen

  There’s a spider here

  in this corner in that—

  her three eyes

  tiptoe in darkness,

  her eight legs

  track my spine,

  she mirrors and mocks

  my pacing.

  There’s a spider here

  who knows all of me

  her web my history full writ.

  Somewhere in this strange place

  a spider waits

  for my panicked flight . . .

  THE CONSPIRACY

  BLIND GALLAN (B.1078)

  As soon as the Guild assassin left the room, Kalam drained the last of his beer, paid up, and ascended the staircase. From the gallery railing he studied the crowd below, then, seeing that no one paid him much attention, he strode down the hallway and entered the last room on the right.

  He closed the door and locked it. Quick Ben was seated cross-legged on the floor, within a circle of melted blue wax. The wizard was hunched over, barechested, his eyes shut and droplets of sweat trickling down his face. Around him the air shimmered, as if glossed with lacquer.

  Kalam walked around the wax circle to the bed. He took a leather satchel from a peg above the bedpost and set it down on the thin, straw-filled mattress. Peeling back the flap he removed the contents. A minute later he’d laid out the mechanisms for a goat’s-foot arbalest. The crossbow’s metal parts had been blued, the narrow wooden stock soaked in pitch and dusted with black sand. Kalam slowly, quietly, assembled the weapon.

  Quick Ben spoke behind him. “Done. Whenever you’re ready, friend.”

  “The man left through the kitchen. But he’ll be back,” Kalam said, rising with the arbalest in his hands. He attached a strap to it and slung the weapon over one shoulder. Then he faced the wizard. “I’m ready.”

  Quick Ben also stood, wiping his forehead with a sleeve. “Two spells. You’ll be able to float, control every descent. The other should give you the ability to see anything magical—well, almost anything. If there’s a High Mage kicking around, we’re out of luck.”

  “And you?” Kalam asked, as he examined his quiver of bolts.

  “You won’t see me directly, just my aura,” Quick Ben replied with a grin, “but I’ll be with you all the way.”

  “Well, hopefully this’ll go smoothly. We make contact with the Guild, we offer the Empire’s contract, they accept and remove for us every major threat in the city.” He shrugged into his black cloak and pulled up the hood.

  “You sure we can’t just go downstairs and walk right up to the man, lay it out?”

  Kalam shook his head. “Not how it’s done. We’ve identified him, he’s done the same with us. He’s probably just made contact with his commander, and they’ll arrange things to their liking. Our man should lead us now to the meet.”

  “Won’t it be an ambush we’re walking into, then?”

  The large man agreed. “More or less. But they’ll want to know what we want with them first. And once that’s out, I doubt the Guild’s master will be interested in killing us. You ready?”

  Quick
Ben raised a hand toward Kalam, then muttered briefly under his breath.

  Kalam felt a lightness come into him, rising to his skin and emanating a cushion of cool air that enveloped his body. And before his eyes Quick Ben’s figure formed a blue-green penumbra, concentrated at the wizard’s long-fingered hands. “I have them,” the assassin said, smiling, “two old friends.”

  Quick Ben sighed. “Yes, here we are doing this all over again.” He met his friend’s gaze. “Hood’s on our heels, Kal. I can feel his breath on my neck, these days.”

  “You’re not alone in that.” Kalam turned to the window. “Sometimes,” he said dryly, “I have the feeling our Empire wants us dead.” He walked to the window, unlatched the shutters, then swung them inward and leaned both hands on the sill.

  Quick Ben came up beside him and rested a hand on his shoulder. They gazed out at the darkness, a brief sharing of unease passing between them.

  “We’ve seen too much,” Quick Ben said softly.

  “Hood’s Breath,” Kalam growled, “what are we doing this for anyway?”

  “Maybe if the Empire gets what it wants—Darujhistan—they’ll let us slip away.”

  “Sure, but who’s going to convince the sergeant to walk out of the Empire?”

  “We show him he hasn’t got any choice.”

  Kalam climbed onto the sill. “Good thing I’m not a Claw anymore. Just soldiers, right?”

  Behind him Quick Ben touched his own chest and vanished. His disembodied voice held a note of wry amusement. “Right. No more cloak-and-dagger games for old Kalam.”

  The assassin pulled himself up, turning to face the wall, then beginning his climb to the roof. “Yeah, I’ve always hated it.”

  Quick Ben’s voice was beside him now. “No more assassinations.”

  “No more spying,” Kalam added, reaching for the roof’s edge.

  “No more disguising spells.”

  Clambering onto the roof, Kalam lay still. “No more daggers in the back,” he whispered, then sat up and scanned the nearby rooftops. He saw nothing; no unusual huddled shapes, no bright magical auras.

  “Thank the gods,” came Quick Ben’s whisper from above.

  “Thank the gods,” Kalam echoed, then looked down over the roof’s edge. Below a pool of light marked the inn entrance. “You take the back door. I’ve got this one.”

  “Right.”

  Even as the wizard answered Kalam stiffened. “There he is,” he hissed. “You still with me?”

  Quick Ben assented.

  They watched the figure of Rallick Nom, now cloaked, crossing to the far side of the street and entering an alley.

  “I’m on him,” Quick Ben said.

  A blue-green glow rose around the wizard. He rose into the air and flew out swiftly across the street, slowing as he reached the alley. Kalam climbed to his feet and padded silently along the roof’s edge. Reaching the corner, he glanced down to the rooftop of an adjacent building, then jumped.

  He descended slowly, as if sinking through water, and landed without a sound. Off to his right, moving on a parallel path, was Quick Ben’s magical aura. Kalam crossed the rooftop to the next building. Their man was heading for the harbor-front.

  Kalam continued tracking Quick Ben’s beacon, moving from one rooftop to the next, sometimes jumping down, at other times climbing. There was little subtlety about Kalam: where others used finesse he used the strength of his thick arms and legs. It made him an unlikely assassin, but he’d learned to use that to his advantage.

  They now approached the harbor area, the buildings single-storyed and large, the streets rarely lit except around the double-door entrances to warehouses, where the occasional private guard lingered. In the night air hung the taint of sewage and fish.

  Finally, Quick Ben stopped, hovered over a warehouse courtyard, then hurried back to Kalam, who waited at the edge of a nearby two-storyed clearing house. “Looks like the place,” Quick Ben said, floating a few feet above Kalam. “What now?”

  “I want a good line of sight to that courtyard.”

  “Follow me.”

  Quick Ben led him to another building. Their man was now visible, crouching on the warehouse roof, attention down on the courtyard below.

  “Kal, do you smell something bad about this?”

  Kalam snorted. “Hood, no, it’s bloody roses out here. Take position, friend.”

  “Right.”

  Rallick Nom lay down on the rooftop, his head out over its edge. Below was the warehouse’s courtyard, flat, gray, and empty. Directly beneath him the shadows were impenetrable. Sweat trickled down Rallick’s face.

  From the shadow below came Ocelot’s voice, “He’s got you in sight?”

  “Yes.”

  “And he’s not moving?”

  “No. Listen, I’m sure there’s more than one of them. I would’ve known if he’d been trailing me, and no one was. It stinks of magery, Ocelot, and you know what I think about magery.”

  “Dammit, Nom. If you’d just start using the stuff we give you, you’d rank among the best of us. But to Hood’s Gate with that. We’ve got spotters, and unless there’s a very good wizard around we’d pick up on any magic. Face it,” a note of malice entered Ocelot’s voice, “he’s better than you. He tracked you all right. Solo.”

  “What now?” Rallick asked.

  Ocelot chuckled. “We’re closing the circle even as we speak. Your work’s done, Nom. Tonight the assassins’ war ends. In five minutes you can head home.”

  High above the city a demon flapped on leathery wings, its green reptilian eyes surveying the rooftops below with a vision that detected magic as easily as it did heat. Though the demon was no larger than a dog, its power was immense, near par to the man who had summoned and chained it this very night. On the rooftops it saw two auras close together, one a man on whom spells had been cast, and the other a wizard, a very good wizard. In a ragged circle on other rooftops around these two, men and women moved inward, some betrayed by the heat of their bodies, others by items imbued with sorcery.

  Until now the demon rode the high night winds bored and resentful of its master. A mere mission of observation, for one of such power! But now the demon felt a surge of bloodlust. If only its master had been weaker, so that it could break the bonds and descend to the rooftops, then there would have been slaughter.

  The demon was musing on these thoughts, its eyes fixed on the scene below, when a booted heel rammed into the back of its small, round head. The creature spun, tumbling, then twisted round to face its attacker, rage blazing in its skull.

  A moment later it was fighting for its life. The figure that closed with the demon possessed a blinding magical aura. Grappling, the surging energies of both collided, enwrapped like tentacles. The demon struggled against the savage pain constricting it as the figure pressed its attack. A cold that burned filled the demon’s skull, a cold alien in its breath of power, so alien that the demon could find no means of countering it.

  The two fell slowly as they fought, dueling in absolute silence with forces invisible to the city’s inhabitants below, while around them other figures descended toward the warehouse, cloaks spread like sails, crossbows crooked in their arms, hooded faces angled downward and hidden beneath black masks. There were eleven in all that passed the demon and its attacker. None of the others paid any attention, and with this realization the demon experienced an emotion it had never known before. Fear.

  Its thoughts turning from battle to survival, the demon tore itself from its attacker’s grasp. Loosing a high-pitched cry, it flapped upward.

  The figure did not pursue, instead joining the others in their silent descent to the city.

  As the twelve shrouded assassins dropped toward the circle of men and women below, one splitting off and angling above the circle’s two targets, they took careful aim with their crossbows, and began a massacre.

  Kalam stared down at the assassin lying supine on the roof below, wondering what to do next. Were they
waiting for him to initiate contact? A low growl escaped him. Something was wrong. He could feel it like fever in his bones.

  “Dammit, Quick. Let’s get out of here!”

  “Wait!” came Quick Ben’s disembodied voice. “Oh, damn,” he said softly then.

  In front of Kalam two brightly glowing shapes dropped down onto the roof below, landing behind their mark.

  “What in Hood’s name?”

  Then he felt a slight tremor on the flat tiles beneath his hands. Kalam rolled onto his back, hearing a quarrel whiz past. Framed by his knees, a cloaked figure stood about thirty feet away. After missing with the quarrel the figure raced forward. Another landed behind the first one, near the roof’s far edge.

  Kalam scampered. He dropped down over the roof’s edge.

  Quick Ben floated above him. The spell of deflection he’d raised about himself was a High Order magery, and he was certain he remained unseen by these new assailants. He watched as the approaching figure slowed, then padded cautiously to the roof edge where Kalam had dropped from sight. Daggers gleaming in both gloved hands, this new assassin reached the edge and crouched. Quick Ben held his breath as the figure leaned forward.

  Kalam hadn’t gone far. He gripped the roof’s gables. When the attacker’s upper body came into view, blotting out the stars behind it, he surged upward on the strength of one arm, his other shooting up to close on the assassin’s neck with a vicelike grip. Kalam jerked the assassin downward, at the same time bringing up his knee. The attacker’s cloth-wrapped face met his knee with a crunch. Kalam, still gripping the gable with one hand, gave the now limp figure a shake, then sent the body spiraling down to the street below.

  Gasping, he pulled himself back onto the roof. At the far end he saw the second assassin whirl around. Growling, Kalam surged to his feet and sprinted at the figure.

  The unknown assassin stepped back as if startled, then brought a hand down and promptly vanished.

  Kalam slid to a stop and stood crouched, both hands hanging at his sides.

  “I see her,” Quick Ben whispered.

  With a hiss Kalam spun in a full circle, then danced to one side, putting his back to the roof’s edge. “I don’t.”