The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen (87 page)

1163rd Year of Burn's Sleep

Ninth Year of the Rule of Empress Laseen

Year of the Cull

He came shambling into Judgment's Round from the Avenue of Souls, a misshapen mass of flies. Seething lumps crawled on his body in mindless migration, black and glittering and occasionally falling away in frenzied clumps that exploded into fragmented flight as they struck the cobbles.

The Thirsting Hour was coming to a close and the priest staggered in its wake, blind, deaf and silent. Honoring his god on this day, the servant of Hood, Lord of Death, had joined his companions in stripping naked and smearing himself in the blood of executed murderers, blood that was stored in giant amphorae lining the walls of the temple's nave. The brothers had then moved in procession out onto the streets of Unta to greet the god's sprites, enjoining the mortal dance that marked the Season of Rot's last day.

The guards lining the Round parted to let the priest pass, then parted further for the spinning, buzzing cloud that trailed him. The sky over Unta was still more gray than blue, as the flies that had swept at dawn into the capital of the Malazan Empire now rose, slowly winging out over the bay toward the salt marshes and sunken islands beyond the reef. Pestilence came with the Season of Rot, and the Season had come an unprecedented three times in the past ten years.

The air of the Round still buzzed, was still speckled as if filled with flying grit. Somewhere in the streets beyond a dog yelped like a thing near death but not near enough, and close to the Round's central fountain the abandoned mule that had collapsed earlier still kicked feebly in the air. Flies had crawled into the beast through every orifice and it was now bloated with gases. The animal, stubborn by its breed, was now over an hour in dying. As the priest staggered sightlessly past, flies rose from the mule in a swift curtain to join those already enshrouding him.

It was clear to Felisin from where she and the others waited that the priest of Hood was striding directly toward her. His eyes were ten thousand eyes, but she was certain they were all fixed on her. Yet even this growing horror did little to stir the numbness that lay like a smothering blanket over her mind; she was aware of it rising inside but the awareness seemed more a memory of fear than fear now alive within her.

She barely recalled the first Season of Rot she'd lived through, but had clear memories of the second one. Just under three years ago, she had witnessed this day secure in the family estate, in a solid house with its windows shuttered and cloth-sealed, with the braziers set outside the doors and on the courtyard's high, broken-glass-rimmed walls billowing the acrid smoke of istaarl leaves. The last day of the Season and its Thirsting Hour had been a time of remote revulsion for her, irritating and inconvenient but nothing more. Then she'd given little thought to the city's countless beggars and the stray animals bereft of shelter, or even to the poorer residents who were subsequently press-ganged into clean-up crews for days afterward.

The same city, but a different world.

Felisin wondered if the guards would make any move toward the priest as he came closer to the Cull's victims. She and the others in the line were the charges of the Empress now—Laseen's responsibility—and the priest's path could be seen as blind and random, the imminent collision one of chance rather than design, although in her bones Felisin knew differently. Would the helmed guards step forward, seek to guide the priest to one side, lead him safely through the Round?

“I think not,” said the man squatting on her right. His half-closed eyes, buried deep in their sockets, flashed with something that might have been amusement. “Seen you flicking your gaze, guards to priest, priest to guards.”

The big, silent man on her left slowly rose to his feet, pulling the chain with him. Felisin winced as the shackle yanked at her when the man folded his arms across his bare, scarred chest. He glared at the approaching priest but said nothing.

“What does he want with me?” Felisin asked in a whisper. “What have I done to earn a priest of Hood's attention?”

The squatting man rocked back on his heels, tilting his face into the late afternoon sun. “Queen of Dreams, is this self-centered youth I hear from those full, sweet lips? Or just the usual stance of noble blood around which the universe revolves? Answer me, I pray, fickle Queen!”

Felisin scowled. “I felt better when I thought you asleep—or dead.”

“Dead men do not squat, lass, they sprawl. Hood's priest comes not for you but for me.”

She faced him then, the chain rattling between them. He looked more of a sunken-eyed toad than a man. He was bald, his face webbed in tattooing, minute, black, square-etched symbols hidden within an overall pattern covering skin like a wrinkled scroll. He was naked but for a ragged loincloth, its dye a faded red. Flies crawled all over him; reluctant to leave, they danced on—but not, Felisin realized, to Hood's bleak orchestration. The tattooed pattern covered the man—the boar's face overlying his own, the intricate maze of script-threaded, curled fur winding down his arms, covering his exposed thighs and shins, and the detailed hooves etched into the skin of his feet. Felisin had until now been too self-absorbed, too numb with shock to pay any attention to her companions in the chain line: this man was a priest of Fener, the Boar of Summer, and the flies seemed to know it, understand it enough to alter their frenzied motion. She watched with morbid fascination as they gathered at the stumps at the ends of the man's wrists, the old scar tissue the only place on him unclaimed by Fener, but the paths the sprites took to those stumps touched not a single tattooed line. The flies danced a dance of avoidance—but for all that, they were eager to dance.

The priest of Fener had been ankle-shackled last in the line. Everyone else had the narrow iron bands fastened around their wrists. His feet were wet with blood and the flies hovered there but did not land. She saw his eyes flick open as the sun's light was suddenly blocked.

Hood's priest had arrived. Chain stirred as the man on Felisin's left drew back as far as the links allowed. The wall at her back felt hot, the tiles—painted with scenes of imperial pageantry—now slick through the thin weave of her slave tunic. Felisin stared at the fly-shrouded creature standing wordless before the squatting priest of Fener. She could see no exposed flesh, nothing of the man himself—the flies had claimed all of him and beneath them he lived in darkness where even the sun's heat could not touch him. The cloud around him spread out now and Felisin shrank back as countless cold insect legs touched her legs, crawling swiftly up her thighs—she pulled her tunic's hem close around her, clamping her legs tight.

The priest of Fener spoke, his wide face split into a humorless grin. “The Thirsting Hour's well past, Acolyte. Go back to your temple.”

Hood's servant made no reply but it seemed the buzzing changed pitch, until the music of the wings vibrated in Felisin's bones.

The priest's deep eyes narrowed and his tone shifted. “Ah, well now. Indeed I was once a servant of Fener but no longer, not for years—Fener's touch cannot be scrubbed from my skin. Yet it seems that while the Boar of Summer has no love for me, he has even less for you.”

Felisin felt something shiver in her soul as the buzzing rapidly shifted, forming words that she could understand. “
Secret…to show…now…
”

“Go on then,” the one-time servant of Fener growled, “show me.”

Perhaps Fener acted then, the swatting hand of a furious god—Felisin would remember the moment and think on it often—or the secret was the mocking of immortals, a joke far beyond her understanding, but at that moment the rising tide of horror within her broke free, the numbness of her soul seared away as the flies exploded outward, dispersing in all directions to reveal…no one.

The former priest of Fener flinched as if struck, his eyes wide. From across the Round half a dozen guards cried out, wordless sounds punched from their throats. Chains snapped as others in the line jolted as if to flee. The iron loops set in the wall snatched taut, but the loops held, as did the chains. The guards rushed forward and the line shrank back into submission.

“Now that,” the tattooed man shakily muttered, “was uncalled for.”

 

An hour passed, an hour in which the mystery, shock and horror of Hood's priest sank down within Felisin to become but one more layer, the latest but not the last in what had become an unending nightmare. An acolyte of Hood…who was not there. The buzzing of wings that formed words.
Was that Hood himself? Had the Lord of Death come to walk among mortals? And why stand before a once-priest of Fener—what was the message behind the revelation?

But slowly the questions faded in her mind, the numbness seeping back, the return of cold despair. The Empress had culled the nobility, stripped the Houses and families of their wealth, followed by a summary accusation and conviction of treason that had ended in chains. As for the ex-priest on her right and the huge, bestial man with all the makings of a common criminal on her left, clearly neither one could claim noble blood.

She laughed softly, startling both men.

“Has Hood's secret revealed itself to you, then, lass?” the ex-priest asked.

“No.”

“What do you find so amusing?”

She shook her head.
I had expected to find myself in good company, how's that for an upturned thought? There you have it, the very attitude the peasants hungered to tear down, the very same fuel the Empress has touched to flame—

“Child!”

The voice was that of an aged woman, still haughty but with an air of desperate yearning. Felisin closed her eyes briefly, then straightened and looked along the line to the gaunt old woman beyond the thug. The woman was wearing her nightclothes, torn and smeared.
With noble blood, no less
. “Lady Gaesen.”

The old woman reached out a shaking hand. “Yes! Wife to Lord Hilrac! I am Lady Gaesen…” The words came as if she'd forgotten who she was, and now she frowned through the cracked makeup covering her wrinkles and her red-shot eyes fixed on Felisin. “I know you,” she hissed. “House of Paran. Youngest daughter. Felisin!”

Felisin went cold. She turned away and stared straight ahead, out into the compound where the guards stood leaning on pikes passing flasks of ale between them and waving away the last of the flies. A cart had arrived for the mule, four ash-smeared men clambering down from its bed with ropes and gaffs. Beyond the walls encircling the Round rose Unta's painted spires and domes. She longed for the shadowed streets between them, longed for the pampered life of a week ago, Sebry barking harsh commands at her as she led her favorite mare through her paces. And she would look up as she guided the mare in a delicate, precise turn, to see the row of green-leafed leadwoods separating the riding ground from the family vineyards.

Beside her the thug grunted. “Hood's feet, the bitch has some sense of humor.”

Which bitch?
Felisin wondered, but she managed to hold her expression even as she lost the comfort of her memories.

The ex-priest stirred. “Sisterly spat, is it?” He paused, then dryly added, “Seems a bit extreme.”

The thug grunted again and leaned forward, his shadow draping Felisin. “Defrocked priest, are you? Not like the Empress to do any temples a favor.”

“She didn't. My loss of piety was long ago. I'm sure the Empress would rather I'd stayed in the cloister.”

“As if she'd care,” the thug said derisively as he settled back into his pose.

Lady Gaesen rattled, “You must speak with
her
, Felisin! An appeal! I have rich friends—”

The thug's grunt turned into a bark. “Farther up the line, hag, that's where you'll find your rich friends!”

Felisin just shook her head.
Speak with her, it's been months. Not even when Father died
.

A silence followed, dragging on, approaching the silence that had existed before this spate of babble, but then the ex-priest cleared his throat, spat and muttered, “Not worth looking for salvation in a woman who's just following orders, Lady, never mind that one being this girl's sister—”

Felisin winced, then glared at the ex-priest. “You presume—”

“He ain't presuming nothing,” growled the thug. “Forget what's in the blood, what's supposed to be in it by your slant on things. This is the work of the Empress. Maybe you think it's personal, maybe you have to think that, being what you are…”

“What I am?” Felisin laughed harshly. “What House claims you as kin?”

The thug grinned. “The House of Shame. What of it? Yours ain't looking any less shabby.”

“As I thought,” Felisin said, ignoring the truth of his last observation with difficulty. She glowered at the guards. “What's happening? Why are we just sitting here?”

The ex-priest spat again. “The Thirsting Hour's past. The mob outside needs organizing.” He glanced up at her from under the shelf of his brows. “The peasants need to be roused. We're the first, girl, and the example's got to be established. What happens here in Unta is going to rattle every nobleborn in the Empire.”

“Nonsense!” Lady Gaesen snapped. “We shall be well treated. The Empress shall have to treat us well—”

The thug grunted a third time—what passed for laughter, Felisin realized—and said, “If stupidity was a crime, lady, you would've been arrested years ago. The ogre's right. Not many of us are going to make it to the slave ships. This parade down Colonnade Avenue is going to be one long bloodbath. Mind you,” he added, eyes narrowing on the guards, “old Baudin ain't going to be torn apart by any mob of peasants…”

Felisin felt real fear stirring in her stomach. She fought off a shiver. “Mind if I stay in your shadow, Baudin?”