On a surge of immense satisfaction, Barathol Mekhar's rather large fist smashed into the man's face, sending him flying back through the doorway of the smithy. He stepped out after him, shaking the stinging pain from his hand. 'I will be pleased to pay the Guild's annual fees, sir,' he said, 'when the Guild decides to accept my membership. As for demanding coin while denying my right to run my business, well, you have just had my first instalment.'

A smashed nose, blood pouring forth, eyes staring up from a puffiness burgeoning to swallow up his features, the Guild agent managed a feeble nod.

'You are welcome,' Barathol continued, 'to come back next week for the next one, and by all means bring a few dozen of your a.s.sociates I expect I'll be in an even more generous mood by then.'

A crowd had gathered to watch, but the blacksmith was disinclined to pay them any attention. He rather wanted word to get out, in fact, although from what he'd gathered his particular feud was already a sizzling topic of conversation, and no doubt his words just spoken would be quoted and misquoted swift as a plague on the hot winds.

Turning about, he walked back into his shop.

Chaur stood near the back door, wearing his heavy ap.r.o.n with its spatter of burn holes revealing the thick weave of aesgir gra.s.s insulation beneath the leather the only plant known that did not burn, even when flung into a raging fire. Oversized gloves of the same manufacture covered his hands and forearms, and he was holding tongs that gripped a fast-cooling curl of bronze. Chaur's eyes were bright and he was smiling.

'Best get that back into the forge,' Barathol said.

As expected, business was slow. A campaign had begun, fomented by the Guild, that clearly involved the threat of a blacklist that could and would spread to other guilds in the city. Barathol's customers could find themselves unable to purchase things they needed from a host of other professions, and that of course would prove devastating. And as for Barathol's own material requirements, most doors had already begun closing in his face. He was forced to seek out alternatives in the black market, never a secure option.

As his friend Mallet had predicted, Malazans resident in the city had been indifferent to all such extortions and warnings against taking Barathol's custom. There was, evidently, something in their nature that resisted the notion of threats, and in fact being told they could not do something simply raised their hackles and set alight a stubborn fire in their eyes. That such a response could prove a curse had been driven home with the slaughter at K'rul's and the grief that followed remained deeply embedded in Barathol, producing within him a dark, cold rage. Unfortunately for the latest agent from the Guild of Blacksmiths, something of that fury had transferred itself into Barathol's instinctive reaction to the man's demand for coin.

Even so, he had not come to Darujhistan to make enemies. Yet now he found himself in a war. Perhaps more than one at that. No wonder, then, his foul mood.

He made his way into the work yard, where the heat from the two stoked forges rolled over him in a savage wave. His battle axe needed a new edge, and it might do to fashion a new sword something he could actually wear in public.

Barathol's new life in Darujhistan was proving anything but peaceful.

Bellam Nom was, in Murillio's estimation, the only student of the duelling school worthy of the role. Fifteen years of age, still struggling with the awkwardness of his most recent growth spurt, he approached his studies with surprising determination. Even more astonishing, the lad actually wanted wanted to be here. to be here.

In the prolonged absence of Stonny Menackis's attention, it had fallen to Murillio to a.s.sume most of the school's responsibilities, and he was finding this very distant relation of Rallick (and Torvald) in every respect a Nom, which alone encouraged a level of instruction far beyond what he gave the others. The young man stood before him sheathed in sweat, as the last of the cla.s.s hurried out through the compound gate, the echoes of their voices quickly fading, and Murillio sensed that Bellam was far from satisfied with the torturously slow pace of the day's session.

'Master,' he now said, 'I have heard of an exercise involving suspended rings. To achieve the perfect lunge, piercing the hole and making no contact with the ring itself-' Murillio snorted. 'Yes. Useful if you happen to be in a travelling fair or a circus. Oh, for certain, Bellam, point control is essential in fencing with the rapier I wouldn't suggest otherwise. But as an exercise, I am afraid its value is limited.'

'Why?'

Murillio eyed the young man for a moment, and then sighed. 'Very well. The exercise requires too many constraints, few of which ever occur in the course of a real fight. You achieve point control useful point control, I mean when it's made integral to other exercises. When it's combined with footwork, distance, timing and the full range of defence and offence demanded when facing a real, living opponent. Spearing rings is all very impressive, but the form of concentration it demands is fundamentally different different from the concentration necessary in a duel. In any case, you can spend the next two months mastering the art of spearing a ring, or two months mastering the art of staying alive against a skilled enemy, and not just staying alive, but presenting a true threat to that enemy, in turn.' He shrugged. 'Your choice, of course.' from the concentration necessary in a duel. In any case, you can spend the next two months mastering the art of spearing a ring, or two months mastering the art of staying alive against a skilled enemy, and not just staying alive, but presenting a true threat to that enemy, in turn.' He shrugged. 'Your choice, of course.'

Bellam Nom grinned suddenly and Murillio saw at once how much he looked like his oh-so-distant cousin. 'I still might try it in my own time, of course.'

'Tell you what,' Murillio said. 'Master spearing a suspended ring at the close of a mistimed lunge, an off-balance recovery to your unarmed side, two desperate parries, a toe-stab to your opponent's lead foot to keep him or her from closing, and a frantic stop-thrust in the midst of a back-pedalling retreat. Do that, and I will give you my second best rapier.'

'How long do I have?'

'As long as you like, Bellam.'

'Extra time with an instructor,' said a voice from the shaded colonnade to one side, 'is not free.'

Murillio turned and bowed to Stonny Menackis.

'Mistress, we were but conversing-'

'You were giving advice,' she cut in, 'and presenting this student with a challenge. The first point qualifies as instruction. The second is an implicit agreement to extracurricular efforts on your part at some time in the future.'

Bellam's grin had broadened. 'My father, Mistress, will not hesitate to meet any extra expense, I a.s.sure you.'

She snorted, stepping out from the gloom. 'Any?'

'Within reason, yes.'

She looked terrible. Worn, old, her clothes dishevelled. If Murillio had not known better, he would judge her as being hungover, a condition of temporary, infrequent sobriety to mark an alcoholic slide into fatal oblivion. Yet he knew she was afflicted with something far more tragic. Guilt and shame, self-hatred and grief. The son she didn't want had been taken from her to imagine that such a thing could leave her indifferent was not to understand anything at all.

Murillio said to Bellam, 'You'd best go now.'

They watched him walk away.

'Look at him,' Stonny muttered as he reached the gate, 'all elbows and knees.'

'That'll pa.s.s,' he said.

'A stage, is it?'

'Yes.' And of course he knew this particular game, the way she spoke of Harllo by not speaking of him, of the life that might await him, or the future taken away from him, stolen by her cruel denial. She would inflict this on herself again and again, at every opportunity. Seemingly innocent observations, each one a m.a.s.o.c.h.i.s.tic flagellation. For this to work, she required someone like Murillio, who would stand and listen and speak and pretend that all this was normal the back and forth and give and take, the blood pooling round her boots. She had trapped him in this role using the fact of his adoration, his love for her and he was no longer certain that his love could survive such abuse.

The world is small. And getting smaller.

He had walked the pauper pits south of the city, just outside the wall between the two main trader gates. He had looked upon scores of recent unclaimed dead. It was, in fact, becoming something of a ritual for him, and though he had only second-hand descriptions of Harllo, he did his best, since no one who knew the boy would accompany him. Not Stonny, not Myrla nor Bedek. On occasion, Murillio had been forced to descend into one of the pits to make closer examination of some small body, a soft, lime-dusted face, eyes lidded shut as if in sleep or, on occasion, scrunched in some last moment of pain, and these mute, motionless faces now paraded in his dreams at night, a procession of such sorrow that he awoke with tears streaming from his eyes.

He told Stonny none of this. He'd said nothing of how his and Kruppe's enquiries among the sailors and fisherfolk had failed to find any evidence of someone press-ganging a five-year-old boy. And that every other possible trail thus far had turned up nothing, not even a hint or remote possibility, leaving at last the grim likelihood of some fell mishap, unreported, uninvestigated just another dead child abandoned long before death's arrival, known only in the records of found corpses as the 'twice-dead'.

'I am thinking of signing over my stakes in this school,' Stonny now said. 'To you.'

Startled, he turned to stare at her. 'I won't accept.'

'Then you'd be a fool as if I didn't already know that. You're better suited. You're a better teacher. I barely managed any interest in this from the very start it was always the coin and now I find I could not care less. About the school, the students even promising ones like Nom there. I don't care about anything, in fact.'

Including you, Murillio. Yes, he heard that unspoken addition without the need for her to actually say it aloud. Well, she would of course want to push him away. Much as she needed him to play those self-wounding games with her, she needed even more the solitude necessary for complete self-destruction. Isolation was more than a simple defence mechanism; it also served to prepare one for more severe punishments, possibly culminating in suicide. On another level, she would view her desire to drive him off as an act of mercy on her part. But that was a most irritating form of self-pity. Yes, he heard that unspoken addition without the need for her to actually say it aloud. Well, she would of course want to push him away. Much as she needed him to play those self-wounding games with her, she needed even more the solitude necessary for complete self-destruction. Isolation was more than a simple defence mechanism; it also served to prepare one for more severe punishments, possibly culminating in suicide. On another level, she would view her desire to drive him off as an act of mercy on her part. But that was a most irritating form of self-pity.

He had given his heart to the wrong woman. Timing, Bellam Nom, is everything. With sword in hand. Timing, Bellam Nom, is everything. With sword in hand.

With love in hand.

Oh, well. I'd figured it out with a rapier, at least.

'Don't make that decision just yet,' he said. 'I have one more thing I can try.' It won't be pleasant, but you don't need to know that. It won't be pleasant, but you don't need to know that.

Stonny simply turned away. 'I'll see you tomorrow, then.'

Many adults, in the indurated immobility of years, acquire a fear of places they have never been, even as they long for something different in their lives, something new. But this new thing is a world of the fantastical, formless in answer to vague longings, and is as much defined by absence as presence. It is a conjuration of emotions and wishful imaginings, which may or may not possess a specific geography. Achieving such a place demands a succession of breaks with one's present situation, always a traumatic endeavour, and upon completion, why, sudden comes the fear.

Some do not choose the changes in their lives. Some changes no one in their right mind would ever choose. In K'rul's Bar, a once-soldier of the Malazan Empire stands tottering over the unconscious form of her lover, whilst behind her paces Antsy, muttering self-recriminations under his breath, interrupted every now and then with a stream of curses in a half-dozen languages.

Blend understood all that had motivated Picker to attempt what she had done. This did little to a.s.suage her fury. The very same High Denul healer who had just attended to her had set to a thorough examination of Picker as soon as Antsy had returned with his charge lying in the bed of a hired oxcart, only to p.r.o.nounce that there was nothing to be done. Either Picker would awaken or she wouldn't. Her spirit had been torn loose and now wandered lost.

The healer had left. In the main room below, Duiker and Scillara sat in the company of ghosts and not much else.

Although still weak, Blend set out to collect her weapons and armour. Antsy followed her into the corridor.

'What're you planning?' he demanded, almost on her heels as she went into her own room.

'I'm not sure,' she replied, laying out her chain hauberk on the bed, then pulling off her shirt to find the padded undergarment.

Antsy's eyes bugged slightly as he stared at her b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the faint bulge of her belly, the sweet- Blend tugged on the quilted shirt and then returned to the hauberk. 'You'll need to wrap me,' she said.

'Huh? Oh, aye. Right. But what about me?'

She regarded him for a moment. 'You want to help?'

He half snarled in reply.

'All right,' she said. 'Go find a couple of crossbows and plenty of quarrels. You're going to cover me, for as long as that's possible. We don't walk together.'

'Aye, Blend.'

She worked the hauberk over her head and pushed her arms through the heavy sleeves.

Antsy went to the equipment trunk at the foot of the bed and began rummaging through its contents, looking for the swaths of black cloth to bind the armour close and noiseless about Blend's body. 'G.o.ds below, woman, what do you need all these clothes for?'

'Banquets and soirees, of course.'

'You ain't never been to one in your life, woman.'

'The possibility always exists, Antsy. Yes, those ones, but make sure the drawstrings are still in them.'

'How do you expect to find the nest?'

'Simple,' she said. 'Don't know why we didn't think of it before. The name Picker said, the one that Jaghut heard.' She selected a matched pair of Wickan longknives from her store of weapons and strapped the belt on, low on her hips, offered Antsy a hard grin. 'I'm going to ask the Eel.'

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

And these things were never so precious Listen to the bird in its cage as it speaks In a dying man's voice; when he is gone The voice lives to greet and give empty a.s.surances with random poignancy

I do not know if I could live with that If I could armour myself as the inhuman beak Opens to a dead man's reminder, head c.o.c.ked As if channelling the ghost of the one Who imagines an absence of sense, a vacuum awaiting

The cage is barred and nightly falls the shroud To silence the commentary of impossible apostles Spirit G.o.dlings and spanning abyss, impenetrable cloud Between the living and the dead, the here and the gone Where no bridge can smooth the pa.s.sage of pain

And these things were never so precious Listening to the bird as it speaks and it speaks And it speaks, the one who has faded away The father departed knowing the unknown And it speaks and it speaks and it speaks In my father's voice Caged Bird Fisher kel Tath

There was no breath to speak of. Rather, what awoke him was the smell of death, dry, an echo of pungent decay that might belong to the carca.s.s of a beast left in the high gra.s.ses, desiccated yet holding its reek about itself, close and suffocating as a cloak. Opening his eyes, Kallor found himself staring up at the enormous, rotted head of a dragon, its ma.s.sive fangs and shredded gums almost within reach.

The morning light was blotted out and it seemed the shade cast by the dragon roiled with all its centuries of forgotten breath.

As the savage thunder of Kallor's heartbeat eased, he slowly edged to one side the dragon's viper head tilting to track his movement and carefully stood, keeping his hands well away from the scabbarded sword lying on the ground beside his bedroll. 'I did not,' he said, scowling, 'ask for company.'

The dragon withdrew its head in a crackling of dried scales along the length of its serpent neck; settled back between the twin cowls of its folded wings.

He could see runnels of dirt trickling down from creases and joins on the creature's body. One gaunt forelimb bore the tracery of fine roots in a colourless mockery of blood vessels. From the shadowed pits beneath the gnarled brow ridges there was the hint of withered eyes, a mottling of grey and black that could hold no display of desire or intent; and yet Kallor felt that regard raw as sharkskin against his own eyes as he stared up at the undead dragon.

'You have come,' he said, 'a long way, I suspect. But I am not for you. I can give you nothing, a.s.suming I wanted to, which I do not. And do not imagine,' he added, 'that I will bargain with you, whatever hungers you may still possess.'

He looked about his makeshift camp, saw that the modest hearth with its fistful of coals still smouldered from the previous night's fire. 'I am hungry, and thirsty,' he said. 'You can leave whenever it pleases you.'

The dragon's sibilant voice spoke in Kallor's skull. 'You 'You cannot know my pain.' cannot know my pain.'

He grunted. 'You cannot feel feel pain. You're dead, and you have the look of having been buried. For a long time.' pain. You're dead, and you have the look of having been buried. For a long time.'

'The soul writhes. There is anguish. I am broken.'

He fed a few clumps of dried bhederin dung on to the coals, and then glanced over. 'I can do nothing about that.'

'I have dreamt of a throne.'

Kallor's attention sharpened with speculation. 'You would choose a master? That is unlike your kind.' He shook his head. 'I scarcely believe it.'

'Because you do not understand. None of you understand. So much is beyond you. You think to make yourself the King in Chains. Do not mock my seeking a master, High King Kallor.'

'The Crippled G.o.d's days are numbered, Eleint,' said Kallor. 'Yet the throne shall remain, long after the chains have rusted to dust.'

There was silence between them then, for a time. The morning sky was clear, tinted faintly red with the pollen and dust that seemed to seethe up from this land. Kallor watched the hearth finally lick into flames, and he reached for the small, battered, blackened pot. Poured the last of his water into it and set the pot on the tripod perched above the fire. Swarms of suicidal insects darted into the flames, igniting in sparks, and Kallor wondered at this penchant for seeking death, as if the lure for an end was irresistible. Not a trait he shared, however.