A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

to
get along with. Murillio, maybe, or even Coll.'
    'Will I one day discover,' she asked, 'that you've just
insulted me?'
    'No! Of course not. I like Murillio! And Coil's a
Councilman. He owns an estate and everything.'
    Barathol said, 'Ever seen an animal led to slaughter,
Cutter?'
    'What do you mean?'
    But the big man simply shook his head.
     
    After repacking her pipe, Scillara settled back in her
saddle, a small measure of mercy silencing, for the moment
at least, her baiting of Cutter. Mercy and, she admitted,
Barathol's subtle warning to ease up on the young man.
    That old killer was a sharp one.
    It wasn't that she held anything against Cutter. The very
opposite, in fact. That small glimmer of enthusiasm – when
he spoke of Darujhistan – had surprised her. Cutter was reaching
out to the comfort of old memories, suggesting to her that
he was suffering from loneliness. That woman who left him. The
one for whom he departed Darujhistan in the first place, I suspect. Loneliness, then, and a certain loss of purpose, now that
Heboric was dead and Felisin Younger stolen away. Maybe
there was some guilt thrown in – he'd failed in protecting
Felisin, after all, failed in protecting Scillara too, for that
matter – not that she was the kind to hold such a thing
against him. They'd been T'lan Imass, for Hood's sake.
    But Cutter, being young and being a man, would see it
differently. A multitude of swords that he would happily
fall on, with a nudge from the wrong person. A person who
mattered to him. Better to keep him away from such notions,
and a little flirtation on her part, yielding charming confusion
on his, should suffice.
    She hoped he would consider her advice on burying
Heboric. She'd had enough of deserts. Thoughts of a city lit
by blue fire, a place filled with people, none of whom
expected anything of her, and the possibility of new friends
– with Cutter at her side – were in truth rather enticing. A
new adventure, and a civilized one at that. Exotic foods,
plenty of rustleaf ...
    She had wondered, briefly, if the absence of regret or
sorrow within her at the surrendering of the child she had
carried inside all those months was truly indicative of some
essential lack of morality in her soul, some kind of flaw that
would bring horror into the eyes of mothers, grandmothers
and even little girls as they looked upon her. But such
thoughts had not lasted long. The truth of the matter was,
she didn't care what other people thought, and if most of
them saw that as a threat to ... whatever ... to their view
on how things should be ... well, that was just too bad, wasn't
it? As if her very existence could lure others into a life of
acts without consequence.
    Now that's a laugh, isn't it? The most deadly seducers are the
ones encouraging conformity. If you can only feel safe when
everybody else feels, thinks and looks the same as you, then
you're a Hood-damned coward ... not to mention a vicious
tyrant in the making.
    'So, Barathol Mekhar, what awaits you on the coast?'
    'Probably plague,' he said.
    'Oh now that's a pleasant thought. And if you survive
that?'
    He shrugged. 'A ship, going somewhere else. I've never
been to Genabackis. Nor Falar.'
    'If you go to Falar,' Scillara said, 'or empire-held
Genabackis, your old crimes might catch up with you.'
    'They've caught up with me before.'
    'So, either you're indifferent to your own death,
Barathol, or your confidence is supreme and unassailable.
Which is it?'
    'Take your pick.'
    A sharp one. I won't get any rise from him, no point in trying. 'What do you think it will be like, crossing an ocean?'
    'Like a desert,' Cutter said, 'only wetter.'
    She probably should have glared at him for that, but she
had to admit, it was a good answer. All right, so maybe
they're both sharp, in their own ways. I think I'm going to enjoy
this journey.
    They rode the track, the heat and sunlight burgeoning
into a conflagration, and in their wake clumped Chaur, still
smiling.
     
    The Jaghut Ganath stood looking into the chasm. The
sorcerous weaving she had set upon this ... intrusion had
shattered. She did not need to descend that vast fissure, nor
enter the buried sky keep itself, to know the cause of that
shattering. Draconean blood had been spilled, although
that in itself was not enough. The chaos between the
warrens had also been unleashed, and it had devoured
Omtose Phellack as boiling water does ice.
    Yet her sense of the sequence of events necessary for such
a thing to