The Malazan Empire Read online

  He grunted. “Tales of pigeons—I think the possibility was foreseen.”

  She regarded him with a raised brow.

  “Pardon, Adjunct. It seems that death’s heralds were . . . birds.”

  “And were we to glance through the eyes of the dead soldiers, we would see little else. Pigeons, you said?”

  He nodded.

  “Curious.” She fell silent.

  He watched her for a moment longer. “Was I bait, Adjunct?”

  “No.”

  “And Topper’s timely arrival?”

  “Convenience.”

  He fell silent. When he closed his eyes his head spun. He’d not realized how weary he’d become. It was a moment before he understood that she was speaking to him. He shook himself, straightened.

  The Adjunct stood before him. “Sleep later, not now, Lieutenant. I was informing you of your future. It would be well if you paid attention. You completed your task as instructed. Indeed, you have proved yourself highly . . . resilient. To all outward appearances, I am done with you, Lieutenant. You will be returned to the Officer Corps here in Unta. What will follow will be a number of postings, completing your official training. As for your time in Itko Kan, nothing unusual occurred there, do you understand me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  “And what of what really happened there, Adjunct? Do we abandon pursuit? Do we resign ourselves to never knowing exactly what happened, or why? Or is it simply me who is to be abandoned?”

  “Lieutenant, this is a trail we must not follow too closely, but follow it we shall, and you will be central to the effort. I have assumed—perhaps in error—that you would wish to see it through, to be witness when the time for vengeance finally arrives. Was I wrong? Perhaps you’ve seen enough and seek only a return to normality.”

  He closed his eyes. “Adjunct, I would be there when the time came.”

  She was silent and he knew without opening his eyes that she was studying him, gauging his worth. He was beyond unease and beyond caring. He’d stated his desire; the decision was hers.

  “We proceed slowly. Your reassignment will take effect in a few days’ time. In the meanwhile, go home to your father’s estate. Get some rest.”

  He opened his eyes and rose to his feet. As he reached the doorway she spoke again. “Lieutenant, I trust you won’t repeat the scene in the Hall of the Throne.”

  “I doubt I’d earn as many laughs the second time around, Adjunct.”

  As he reached the stairs he heard what might have been a cough from the room behind him. It was hard to imagine that it could have been anything else.

  ______

  As he led his horse through the streets of Unta he felt numb inside. The familiar sights, the teeming, interminable crowds, the voices and clash of languages all struck Paran as something strange, something altered, not before his eyes but in that unknowable place between his eyes and his thoughts. The change was his alone, and it made him feel shorn, outcast.

  Yet the place was the same: the scenes before him were as they always had been and even in watching them pass by all around him, nothing had changed. It was the gift of noble blood that kept the world at a distance, to be observed from a position unsullied, unjostled by the commonry. Gift . . . and curse.

  Now, however, Paran walked among them without the family guards. The power of blood was gone, and all he possessed by way of armor was the uniform he now wore. Not a craftsman, not a hawker, not a merchant, but a soldier. A weapon of the Empire, and the Empire had those in the tens of thousands.

  He passed through Toll Ramp Gate and made his way along Marble Slope Road, where the first merchant estates appeared, pushed back from the cobbled street, half hidden by courtyard walls. The foliage of gardens joined their lively colors with brightly painted walls; the crowds diminished and private guards were visible outside arching gates. The sweltering air lost its reek of sewage and rotting food, slipping cooler across unseen fountains and carrying into the avenue the fragrance of blossoms.

  Smells of childhood.

  The estates spread out as he led his horse deeper into the Noble District. Breathing-space purchased by history and ancient coin. The Empire seemed to melt away, a distant, mundane concern. Here, families traced their lines back seven centuries to those tribal horsemen who had first come to this land from the east. In blood and fire, as was always the way, they had conquered and subdued the cousins of the Kanese who’d built villages along this coast. From warrior horsemen to horsebreeders to merchants of wine, beer, and cloth. An ancient nobility of the blade, now a nobility of hoarded gold, trade agreements, subtle maneuverings, and hidden corruptions in gilded rooms and oil-lit corridors.

  Paran had imagined himself acquiring trappings that closed a circle, a return to the blade from which his family had emerged, strong and savage, all those centuries ago. For his choice, his father had condemned him.

  He came to a familiar postern, a single high door along one side wall and facing an alley that in another part of the city would be a wide street. There was no guard here, just a thin bell-chain, which he pulled twice.

  Alone in the alley, Paran waited.

  A bar clanked on the other side, a voice growled a curse as the door swung back on protesting hinges.

  Paran found himself staring down at an unfamiliar face. The man was old, scarred and wearing much-mended chain-mail that ended raggedly around his knees. His pot-helm was uneven with hammered-out dents, yet polished bright.

  The man eyed Paran up and down with watery gray eyes, then grunted, “The tapestry lives.”

  “Excuse me?”

  The guardsman swung the door wide. “Older now, of course, but it’s all the same by the lines. Good artist, to capture the way of standing, the expression and all. Welcome home, Ganoes.”

  Paran led his horse through the narrow doorway. The path was between two outbuildings of the estate, showing sky overhead.

  “I don’t know you, soldier,” Paran said. “But it seems my portrait has been well studied by the guards. Is it now a throw-rug in your barracks?”

  “Something like that.”

  “What is your name?”

  “Gamet,” the guard answered, as he followed behind the horse after shutting and locking the door. “In service to your father these last three years.”

  “And before that, Gamet?”

  “Not a question asked.”

  They came to the courtyard. Paran paused to study the guardsman. “My father’s usually thorough in researching the histories of those entering his employ.”

  Gamet grinned, revealing a full set of white teeth. “Oh, that he did. And here I am. Guess it weren’t too dishonorable.”

  “You’re a veteran.”

  “Here, sir, I’ll take your horse.”

  Paran passed over the reins. He swung about and looked round the courtyard. It seemed smaller than he remembered. The old well, made by the nameless people who’d lived here before even the Kanese, looked ready to crumble into a heap of dust. No craftsman would reset those ancient carved stones, fearing the curse of awakened ghosts. Under the estate house itself were similarly un-mortared stones in the deepest reaches, the many rooms and tunnels too bent, twisted, and uneven to use.

  Servants and groundskeepers moved back and forth in the yard. None had yet noticed Paran’s arrival.

  Gamet cleared his throat. “Your father and mother aren’t here.”

  He nodded. There’d be foals to care for at Emalau, the country estate.

  “Your sisters are, though,” Gamet continued. “I’ll have the house servants freshen up your room.”

  “It’s been left as it was, then?”

  Gamet grinned again. “Well, clear out the extra furniture and casks, then. Storage space at a premium, you know . . .”

  “As always.” Paran sighed and, without another word, made his way to the house entrance.

  The feast hall echoed to Paran’s boots as he strode to the long dining
table. Cats bolted across the floor, scattering at his approach. He unclasped his traveling cloak, tossed it across the back of a chair, then sat at a longbench and leaned his back against the paneled wall. He closed his eyes.

  A few minutes passed, then a woman’s voice spoke. “I thought you were in Itko Kan.”

  He opened his eyes. His sister Tavore, a year younger than him, stood close to the head of the table, one hand on the back of their father’s chair. She was as plain as ever, a slash of bloodless lines comprising her features, her reddish hair trimmed shorter than was the style. She was taller than the last time he’d seen her, nearly his own height, no longer the awkward child. Her expression revealed nothing as she studied him.

  “Reassignment,” Paran said.

  “To here? We would have heard.”

  Ah, yes, you would have, wouldn’t you? All the sly whisperings among the connected families.

  “Unplanned,” he conceded, “but done nevertheless. Not stationed here in Unta, though. My visit is only a few days.”

  “Have you been promoted?”

  He smiled. “Is the investment about to reap coin? Reluctant as it was, we still must think in terms of potential influence, mustn’t we?”

  “Managing this family’s position is no longer your responsibility, brother.”

  “Ah, it’s yours now, then? Has Father withdrawn from the daily chores?”

  “Slowly. His health is failing. Had you asked, even in Itko Kan . . .”

  He sighed. “Still making up for me, Tavore? Assuming the burden of my failings? I hardly left here on a carpet of petals, you may recall. In any case, I always assumed the house affairs would fall into capable hands . . .”

  Her pale eyes narrowed, but pride silenced the obvious question.

  He asked, “And how is Felisin?”

  “At her studies. She’s not heard of your return. She will be very excited, then crushed to hear of the shortness of your visit.”

  “Is she your rival now, Tavore?”

  His sister snorted, turning away. “Felisin? She’s too soft for this world, brother. For any world, I think. She’s not changed. She’ll be happy to see you.”

  He watched her stiff back as she left the hall.

  He smelled of sweat—his own and the mare’s—travel and grime, and of something else as well . . . Old blood and old fear. Paran looked around. Much smaller than I remembered.

  Chapter Two

  With the coming of the Moranth

  the tide turned.

  And like ships in a harbor

  the Free Cities were swept under

  Imperial seas.

  The war entered its twelfth year,

  the Year of the Shattered Moon

  and its sudden spawn of

  deathly rain and

  black-winged promise.

  Two cities remained to contest

  the Malazan onslaught.

  One stalwart, proud banners

  beneath Dark’s powerful wing.

  The other divided—

  —without an army,

  bereft of allies—

  The strong city fell first.

  CALL TO SHADOW

  FELISIN (B.1146)

  1163rd Year of Burn’s Sleep (two years later)

  105th Year of the Malazan Empire

  9th Year of Empress Laseen’s Rule

  Through the pallor of smoke ravens wheeled. Their calls raised a shrill chorus above the cries of wounded and dying soldiers. The stench of seared flesh hung unmoving in the haze.

  On the third hill overlooking the fallen city of Pale, Tattersail stood alone. Scattered around the sorceress the curled remains of burned armor—greaves, breastplates, helms, and weapons—lay heaped in piles. An hour earlier there had been men and women wearing that armor, but of them there was no sign. The silence within those empty shells rang like a dirge in Tattersail’s head.

  Her arms were crossed, tight against her chest. The burgundy cloak with its silver emblem betokening her command of the 2nd Army’s wizard cadre now hung from her round shoulders stained and scorched. Her oval, fleshy face, usually parading an expression of cherubic humor, was etched with deep-shadowed lines, leaving her cheeks flaccid and pale.

  For all the smells and sounds surrounding Tattersail, she found herself listening to a deeper silence. In some ways it came from the empty armor surrounding her, an absence that was in itself an accusation. But there was another source of the silence. The sorcery that had been unleashed here today had been enough to fray the fabric between the worlds. Whatever dwelt beyond, in the Warrens of Chaos, felt close enough to reach out and touch.

  She’d thought her emotions spent, used up by the terror she had just been through, but as she watched the tight ranks of a legion of Moranth Black marching into the city a frost of hatred slipped over her heavy-lidded eyes.

  Allies. They’re claiming their hour of blood. At the end of that hour there would be a score thousand fewer survivors among the citizens of Pale. The long savage history between the neighboring peoples was about to have the scales of retribution balanced. By the sword. Shedunul’s mercy, hasn’t there been enough?

  A dozen fires raged unchecked through the city. The siege was over, finally, after three long years. But Tattersail knew that there was more to come. Something hid, and waited, in the silence. So she would wait as well. The deaths of this day deserved that much from her—after all, she had failed in all the other ways that mattered.

  On the plain below, the bodies of Malazan soldiers covered the ground, a rumpled carpet of dead. Limbs jutted upward here and there, ravens perching on them like overlords. Soldiers who had survived the slaughter wandered in a daze among the bodies, seeking fallen comrades. Tattersail’s eyes followed them achingly.

  “They’re coming,” said a voice, a dozen feet to her left. Slowly she turned. The wizard Hairlock lay sprawled on the burned armor, the pate of his shaved skull reflecting the dull sky. A wave of sorcery had destroyed him from the hips down. Pink, mud-spattered entrails billowed out from under his ribcage, webbed by drying fluids. A faint penumbra of sorcery revealed his efforts at staying alive.

  “Thought you were dead,” Tattersail muttered.

  “Felt lucky today.”

  “You don’t look it.”

  Hairlock’s grunt released a gout of dark thick blood from below his heart. “They’re coming,” he said. “See them yet?”

  She swung her attention to the slope, her pale eyes narrowing. Four soldiers approached. “Who are they?”

  The wizard didn’t answer.

  Tattersail faced him again and found his hard gaze fixed on her, intent in the way a dying person achieves in those last moments. “Thought you’d take a wave through the gut, huh? Well, I suppose that’s one way to get shipped out of here.”

  His reply surprised her. “The tough façade ill fits you, ’Sail. Always has.” He frowned and blinked rapidly, fighting off darkness, she supposed. “There’s always the risk of knowing too much. Be glad I spared you.” He smiled, unveiling red-stained teeth. “Think nice thoughts. The flesh fades.”

  She eyed him steadily, wondering at his sudden . . . humanity. Maybe dying did away with the usual games, the pretenses of the living dance. Maybe she just wasn’t prepared to see the mortal man in Hairlock finally showing itself. Tattersail prised her arms from the dreadful, aching hug she had wrapped around herself, and sighed shakily. “You’re right. It’s not the time for façades, is it? I never liked you, Hairlock, but I’d never question your courage—I never will.” She studied him critically, a part of her astonished that the horror of his wound didn’t so much as make her flinch. “I don’t think even Tayschrenn’s arts are enough to save you, Hairlock.”

  Something cunning flashed in his eyes and he barked a pained laugh. “Dear girl,” he gasped, “your naïveté never fails to charm me.”

  “Of course,” she snapped, stung at falling for his sudden ingenuousness. “One last joke on me, just for old times’
sake.”

  “You misunderstand—”

  “Are you so certain? You’re saying it isn’t over yet. Your hatred of our High Mage is fierce enough to let you slip Hood’s cold grasp, is that it? Vengeance from beyond the grave?”

  “You must know me by now. I always arrange a back door.”

  “You can’t even crawl. How do you plan on getting to it?”

  The wizard licked his cracked lips. “Part of the deal,” he said softly. “The door comes to me. Comes even as we speak.”

  Unease coiled around her insides. Behind her, Tattersail heard the crunch of armor and the rattle of iron, the sound arriving like a cold wind. She turned to see the four soldiers appear on the summit. Three men, one woman, mud-smeared and crimson-streaked, their faces almost bone-white. The sorceress found her eyes drawn to the woman, who hung back like an unwelcome afterthought as the three men approached. The girl was young, pretty as an icicle and looking as warm to the touch. Something wrong there. Careful.

  The man in the lead—a sergeant by the torque on his arm—came up to Tattersail. Set deep in a lined, exhausted face, his dark gray eyes searched hers dispassionately. “This one?” he asked, turning to the tall, thin black-skinned man who came up beside him.

  This man shook his head. “No, the one we want is over there,” he said. Though he spoke Malazan, his harsh accent was Seven Cities.

  The third and last man, also black, slipped past on the sergeant’s left and for all his girth seemed to glide forward, his eyes on Hairlock. His ignoring Tattersail made her feel somehow slighted. She considered a well-chosen word or two as he stepped around her, but the effort seemed suddenly too much.

  “Well,” she said to the sergeant, “if you’re the burial detail, you’re early. He’s not dead yet. Of course,” she continued, “you’re not the burial detail. I know that. Hairlock’s made some kind of deal—he’s thinking he can survive with half a body.”

  The sergeant’s lips grew taut beneath his grizzled, wiry beard. “What’s your point, Sorceress?”

  The black man beside the sergeant glanced back at the young girl still standing a dozen paces behind them. He seemed to shiver, but his lean face was expressionless as he turned back and offered Tattersail an enigmatic shrug before moving past her.