A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 1

cold upon seeing it.
    'I don't know what you mean,' Crokus said. 'After who? The Empress? How?'
    'He means,' Apsalar said, still smiling a smile that had belonged to her once, long ago, when she'd been ... someone else, 'that he's going to try and kill her.'
    'What?' Crokus stood, almost pitching himself over the side. 'You? You and a seasick sapper with a broken fiddle strapped to his back? Do you think we're going to help you in this insane, suicidal—'
    'I remember,' Apsalar said suddenly, her eyes narrowing on Kalam.
    Crokus turned to her. 'Remember what?'
    'Kalam. He was a Falah'dan's Dagger, and the Claw gave him command of a Hand. Kalam's a master assassin, Crokus. And Quick Ben—'
    'Is three thousand leagues away!' Crokus shouted. 'He's a squad mage, for Hood's sake! That's it, a squalid little squad mage!'
    'Not quite,' Fiddler said. 'And being so far away doesn't mean a thing, son. Quick Ben's our shaved knuckle in the hole.'
    'Your what in the where?'
    'Shaved knuckle, as in the game of knuckles – a good gambler's usually using a shaved knuckle, as in cheating in the casts, if you know what I mean. As for "hole", that'd be Quick Ben's Warren – the one that can put him at Kalam's side in the space of a heartbeat, no matter how far away he happens to be. So, Crokus, there you have it: Kalam's going to give it a try, but it's going to take some planning, preparation. And that starts here, in Seven Cities. You want Darujhistan free for ever more? The Empress Laseen must die.'
    Crokus slowly sat back down. 'But why Seven Cities? Isn't the Empress in Quon Tali?'
    'Because,' Kalam said as he angled the fisherboat into the creek mouth and the oppressive heat of the land rose around them, 'because, lad, Seven Cities is about to rise.'
    'What do you mean?'
    The assassin bared his teeth. 'Rebellion.'
    Fiddler swung around and scanned the fetid undergrowth lining the banks. And that, he said to himself with a chill clutching his stomach, is the part of this plan that I hate the most. Chasing one of Quick Ben's wild ideas with the whole countryside going up in flames.
    A minute later they rounded a bend and the village appeared, a scattering of wattle-and-daub huts in a broken half-circle facing a line of skiffs pulled onto a sandy beach. Kalam nudged the tiller and the fisherboat drifted towards the strand. As the keel scraped bottom, Fiddler clambered over the gunnel and stepped onto dry land, Moby now awake and clinging with all fours to the front of his tunic. Ignoring the squawking creature, Fiddler slowly straightened. 'Well,' he sighed as the first of the village's mongrel dogs announced their arrival, 'it's begun.'

CHAPTER TWO
    To this day it remains easy to ignore the fact that the Aren High Command was rife with treachery, dissension, rivalry and malice ... The assertion that [the Aren High Command] was ignorant of the undercurrents in the countryside is, at best naive, at worst cynical in the extreme .. .
    The Sha'ik Rebellion
Cullaran
     
    The red ochre handprint on the wall was dissolving in the rain, trickling roots down along the mortar between the fired mudbricks. Hunched against the unseasonal downpour, Duiker watched as the print slowly disappeared, wishing that the day had broken dry, that he could have come upon the sign before the rain obscured it, that he could then have gained a sense of the hand that had made its mark here, on the outer wall of the old Falah'd Palace in the heart of Hissar.
    The many cultures of Seven Cities seethed with symbols, a secret pictographic language of oblique references that carried portentous weight among the natives. Such symbols formed a complex dialogue that no Malazan could understand. Slowly, during his many months resident here, Duiker had come to realize the danger behind their ignorance. As the Year of Dryjhna approached, such symbols blossomed in chaotic profusion, every wall in every city a scroll of secret code. Wind, sun and rain assured impermanence, wiping clean the slate in readiness for the next exchange.
    And it seems they have a lot to say these days.
    Duiker shook himself, trying to loosen the tension in his neck and shoulders. His warnings to the High Command seemed to be falling on deaf ears. There were patterns in these symbols, and it seemed that he alone among all the Malazans had any interest in breaking the code, or even in recognizing the risks of maintaining an outsider's indifference.
    He pulled his cowl further over his head in