The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (1200 page)

‘And?'

His voice dropped lower. ‘Bottle, I ain't thinking past next week. I ain't thought about my pay in months. You hearing me? No cottage, no tavern. No nice little fisher boat or, gods forbid, a garden. None of it.'

‘That's because we're the walking dead, right?'

‘I thought so, what with what Fid said the other night, but now I don't.'

Curious, Bottle eyed the sapper. ‘Go on, then.'

Cuttle shrugged, as if suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Something's happened to us, that's all. The Bonehunters. Maybe it was invading Lether. Maybe it was Malaz City, or even Y'Ghatan, I don't know. Look at us. We're an army not thinking about loot. Why do you think Koryk went and mocked Smiles here about charging for her piss?'

‘Because he's broke,' Smiles answered. ‘And jealous.'

‘It's because no one cares about silver and gold, or buying stinking estates, or breeding horses or taking up sea trades. We're probably the only army in the world that doesn't.'

Smiles snorted. ‘Hold on, sapper. You don't think that when we've chopped up whoever and we're standing there on that battlefield – don't you think we're gonna start cutting off fingers and all the rest? Loading up on torcs and rings and decent swords and whatever?'

‘No. I don't, Smiles.'

‘I think I agree with Cuttle on this one,' said Bottle. ‘Then again, maybe
you
will—'

‘Why should I?' she retorted. ‘I wasn't talking about me at all—'

‘Another first,' Bottle muttered.

‘Oh, I'm gonna walk around checking bodies, aye,' she said, nodding. ‘Find one still breathing, and slit goes the throat. Rings and shit? Forget it.'

‘Just what I been saying,' Cuttle said, and he fixed wide eyes upon Bottle. ‘It's exactly it, Bottle. This army has gone insane.'

 

‘Fid's captain now,' Balm growled. ‘What more do you need to know? He'll do us right. He was a Bridgeburner, wasn't he? Look at his old squad, lads – didn't lose a damned one of them. If that ain't the kind eye of a god looking down, what is?'

Widdershins crowded up behind Throatslitter, Deadsmell and the sergeant. ‘Did any of you hear Bottle back there? That stuff about our name?'

Throatslitter scowled. ‘What?'

‘He was asking about how we got our name.'

‘So?'

‘So, I just think…well… I think it's important. I think Bottle knows something, but he's keeping it quiet—'

‘Bottled up?' Deadsmell asked.

Throatslitter's high-pitched laugh triggered curses up and down the line. The assassin hissed under his breath. ‘Sorry, that just came out.'

‘So give him a shake, Wid,' pressed Deadsmell, ‘until it all gushes out. He's got a cork somewhere, go and find it.'

Throatslitter snorted, and then choked as he held down another squeal.

‘Stop that, Deadsmell,' Balm ordered. ‘I mean it.'

‘But I've just scratched the surface of possibilities, Sergeant—'

‘You saw what Cuttle went and did to Koryk? I'll lay you out, Deadsmell—'

‘You can't do that – you're our sergeant!'

‘Meaning I
can
do it, idiot.'

Widdershins said, ‘Bottle's a mage, just like me. We got us a common bond. Think I might talk to him after all. There's something he's not saying. I know it.'

‘Well,' mused Deadsmell, ‘the man did somehow survive the Nah'ruk kitchen tent, so that's kind of impressive.'

‘And he came in with Captain Ruthan Gudd. There's an inner circle, you see. I suspected it from way back.'

‘Widdershins, you may have hit on something there,' said Deadsmell. ‘People in the know. Knowing…something.'

‘More than us, right.'

‘Probably got it all mapped out, too. Even how we're going to get across this desert, and then take down another empire just like we took down Lether.'

‘Just like we crushed the Whirlwind, too. And got ourselves out of Malaz City. So now you ain't making fun of me no more, Deadsmell, are ya?'

As one, the four marines twisted round to glare at the squad trudging behind them. Sergeant Tarr's brows lifted.

‘You hearing this, Tarr?' Balm called back.

‘Not a word of it, Balm.'

‘Good.'

Facing forward again, Widdershins tried to press even closer. ‘Listen,' he whispered, ‘we can work out who's in the know. Fid, and Ruthan Gudd—'

‘And Bottle,' said Deadsmell, ‘because he's Fid's shaved knuckle.'

‘Masan Gilani—'

‘What? Really?'

‘Another one attached to the Adjunct's retinue – they didn't kill her horse, did you know that? They kept her two of 'em, in fact.' Widdershins rubbed at his face. ‘Gets cold with the sun down, don't it? Then there's Lostara Yil, who did that Shadow Dance – that one for sure. Who else?'

‘Keneb but he's dead,' said Balm. ‘Quick Ben, too.'

Widdershins barked a low laugh. ‘I'm with Bottle on that one. He's out there, somewhere. Maybe with Gesler and Stormy—'

‘Of course!' Balm cut in. ‘Ges and Stormy! And don't they have the runts with them?'

‘Sinn and Grub, aye.'

Widdershins nodded. ‘Could be the whole conspiracy right there, then. The inner circle I was talking about—'

‘The conniving cabal,' said Deadsmell.

‘Aye—'

‘The secret sneaks.'

‘Just so.'

‘The shifty-eyed sentinels of truth—'

Throatslitter's laugh pierced the night.

 

Sinter winced at the cry behind them. ‘Gods, I wish he'd stop doing that.'

‘Nothing very funny about this,' Badan Gruk agreed. ‘But then it's Throatslitter, isn't it? That man would laugh over his dying sister.' He shook his head. ‘I don't get people like him. Taking pleasure in misery, in torture, all that. What's to laugh about? Talk about a messed-up mind.'

She glanced at him curiously. His face was lit in the green glow of the Jade Spears. Ghoulish. Ethereal. ‘What's eating you, Badan?'

‘That conspiracy of Wid's.' He shot her a suspicious look. ‘It's got to include you, Sinter, don't it?'

‘Like Hood it does.'

‘You had a chat with Masan Gilani – and' – he nodded towards the wagon rocking and creaking just ahead of them – ‘your sister.'

‘We was just trying to work out stuff to help the Adjunct—'

‘Because you knew something. Those feelings you get. You knew we were in trouble, long before the lizards showed up.'

‘Little good it did us. Don't you see? I knew but I didn't know. Do you have any idea how helpless that made me feel?'

‘So what's coming, Sinter?'

‘No idea – and that's just how I want it.' She tapped her helm. ‘All quiet, not a whisper. You think I'm in some inner circle? You're wrong.'

‘Fine,' he said. ‘Forget it.'

The silence stretched between them, and to Sinter it felt like a cocoon, or a web they were snared in. Struggling just made it worse. In the hills high above the savanna of her homeland there were ancient tombs carved into cliff faces. Barely past her first blooding, she'd journeyed with her sister and two others to explore those mysterious caves.

Nothing but dust. The stone sarcophagi were stacked a dozen to each chamber, and Sinter remembered standing in the relative chill, one hand holding a makeshift torch, and in the flickering, wavering orange light staring at the lowest coffin in a stack rising before her. Other peoples buried their dead, instead of gifting the corpse to the vulture goddess and her get. Or sealed them beneath heavy lids of stone. And she remembered thinking, with a chill rippling through her:
but what if they got it wrong? What if you weren't dead?

In the years since, she'd heard horrifying tales of hapless people buried alive, trapped within coffins of stone or wood. Life in the barracks was rife with stories intended to make one shiver. Worse than the haranguing threats from priests behind a pulpit – and everyone knew those ones were doing it for the coin. And all that delicious sharing out of fear.

And now…now, I feel as if I'm about to wake up. From a long sleep. From my mouth, a sighing breath – but all I see is darkness, all I hear is a strange dull echo all around me. And I reach up, and find cold, damp stone. It was the drops that awakened me. The condensation of my own breathing.

I am about to wake up, to find that I have been buried alive.

The terror would not let her go.
This desert belongs to the dead. Its song is the song of dying.

In the wagon lumbering a few strides ahead sat her sister. Head lolling as if asleep. Was it that easy for her? That leg was slow in mending, and now that they were in this lifeless place no healer could help her. She must be in pain. Yet she slept.

While we march.

The deserter never deserted after all. Who could have guessed she'd find something inside, something that reached out beyond, outside her damned self? We can never know, can we? Can never know someone else, even one of our own blood.

Kisswhere. You should have run. Limped. Done whatever you needed to do. I could manage all of this, I could. If I knew you were safe – far away.

She thought back to when her sister had appeared, in the company of the Khundryl – that ragged, wretched huddle of survivors. Young mothers, old mothers, crippled warriors, unblooded children. Elders tottering like the harbingers of shattered faith. And there she was, struggling with a makeshift crutch – the kind one saw among broken veterans on foreign streets as they begged for alms.
Gods below, at least the Malazan Empire knew how to honour their veterans. You don't just up and forget them. Ignore them. Step over them in the gutters. You honour them. Even the kin of the lost get coin and a holyday in their honour…

There were, she knew, all kinds of coffins. All kinds of ways of finding out you've been buried alive. How many people dreaded opening their eyes? Opening them for real? How many were terrified of what they would find? That stone box. That solid darkness. The immovable walls and lid and the impossible weight.

Her sister would not meet her eye. Would not even speak to her. Not since Kisswhere's return to the ranks.
But return she did. And soldiers saw that. Saw, and realized that she'd gone to get the Khundryl, to find help for that awful day.

They understood, too, how Kisswhere must feel, there in that ruined haggle of survivors. Aye, she'd sent the rest of them to their deaths. Enough to destroy the strongest among them, aye. But look at her. Seems able to bear it. The broken leg? She was riding Hood-bent for leather, friends – would've been in that fatal charge, too, if not for her horse going down.

No, they now looked on Kisswhere with a seriousness to their regard that spoke tomes about finally belonging, that spoke of seeing on her the fresh scars from the only rite of passage worth respecting –
surviving, with the coin paid in full for the privilege.

Well. That is my sister, isn't it? No matter what, she will shine. She will shine.

 

Kisswhere could feel her teeth grinding, on the edge of cracking, as the wagon clunked over yet another rock, and with breath held she waited for the rush of stunning pain. Up from the bones of her leg, spreading like bright flowers through her hips, rising through her torso like a tree with a thousand stabbing branches and ten thousand needled twigs. Higher still, the mad serrated leaves unfurling in her skull, lacerating her brain.

She rode the manic surge, the insane growth of agony, and then, as it pulsed back down, as it ebbed, she slowly released her sour breath. She stank of suffering; she could taste it on her swollen tongue. She leaked it out on the grimy boards beneath her.

They should have left her behind. A lone tent in the rubbish of the abandoned camp. That would have been an act of mercy. But since when did armies think about that? Their whole business was the denial of mercy, and like a water mill the huge stone wheel of destruction rolled on, and on. No one allowed to get off, on…on what? She found herself grinning.
On pain of death, that's what.

Staring at her own knees, at the thick bundling of myrid skins surrounding her splinted leg. Hair hanging down, hiding from her eyes Badan Gruk, Sinter and all the rest, so useless in their clumping along, so bitter in all the ghosts they now carried, the weight bowing them down.

Was it Pores or Kindly? Yes, Pores. ‘Grow that hair, woman!' Or was it ‘Cut it'? I can't remember – how can I not remember? Was it that long ago?

Pores, pretending to be Kindly. Where does that kind of courage come from? That…audacity? That knowing look will be in his eye right up until he's shoved through Hood's Gate. It will, won't it?

How I admire people like that. How I wanted to be like them.

Badan Gruk, take a lesson from Pores, I beg you. No more of the sad eyes, the hurt look. I see it and I want to stab deeper. Lash out. I want to make true all your miserable worries, all those wounds upon your heart. Let's see them bleed!

The wagon jarred beneath her. She gasped. Flowers and trees, leaves of fire igniting behind her eyes. No time to think. Every thought tried running, only to explode in the forest.
Bursting awake all the leaves, high in the canopy, and every thought wings away.
Like birds into the sky.

The leg was infected. There was fever, and nothing anyone could do about it. Herbs fought the good war, or they would if there were any. If she asked for them. If she told someone. Pastes and poultices, elixirs and unguents, all the ranks of grim-faced soldiers, banners waving, marching into disease's grinning face.