A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 3

reeking of urine, trickled down the
steps leading to Coop's Hanged Man Inn, one of
the score of disreputable taverns in the Docks
Quarter of Malaz City that Banaschar, once a priest of
D'rek, was now in the habit of frequenting. Whatever
details had once existed in his mind to distinguish one such
place from another had since faded, the dyke of his resolve
rotted through by frustration and a growing panic, poisonous
enough to immobilize him – in spirit if not in flesh.
And the ensuing deluge was surprisingly comforting, even
as the waters rose ever higher.
    Little different, he observed as he negotiated the
treacherous, mould-slimed steps, from this cursed rain, or so
the long-time locals called it, despite the clear sky overhead.
Mostly rain comes down, they said, but occasionally
it comes up, seeping through the crumbling cobbles of the
quarter, transforming such beneath-ground establishments
as Coop's into a swampy quagmire, the entrance guarded by
a whining cloud of mosquitoes, and the stench of overflowed
sewers wafting about so thick the old-timers
announce its arrival as they would an actual person
miserably named Stink – greeted if not welcomed into
already sordid company.
    And most sordid was Banaschar's company these days.
Veterans who avoided sobriety as if it was a curse; whores
who'd long since hawked their hearts of gold – if they'd
ever had them in the first place; scrawny youths with a host
of appropriately modest ambitions – meanest thug in this
skein of fetid streets and alleys; master thief of those few
belongings the poor possessed; nastiest backstabber with at
least fifty knots on their wrist strings, each knot honouring
someone foolish enough to trust them; and of course the
usual assortment of bodyguards and muscle whose brains
had been deprived of air at some point in their lives;
smugglers and would-be smugglers, informants and the
imperial spies to whom they informed, spies spying on the
spies, hawkers of innumerable substances, users of selfsame
substances on their way to the oblivion of the Abyss; and
here and there, people for whom no category was possible,
since they gave away nothing of their lives, their histories,
their secrets.
    In a way, Banaschar was one such person, on his better
days. Other times, such as this one, he could make no claim
to possible – if improbable – grandiosity. This afternoon,
then, he had come early to Coop's, with the aim of stretching
the night ahead as far as he could, well lubricated of
course, which would in turn achieve an overlong and hopefully
entirely blissful period of unconsciousness in one of
the lice-infested rat-traps above the tavern.
    It would be easy, he reflected as he ducked through the
doorway and paused just within, blinking in the gloom,
easy to think of clamour as a single entity, one sporting
countless mouths, and to reckon the din as meaningless as
the rush of brown water from a sewer pipe. Yet Banaschar
had come to a new appreciation of the vagaries of the noise
erupting from human throats. Most spoke to keep from
thinking, but others spoke as if casting lifelines even as
they drowned in whatever despairing recognition they had
arrived at – perhaps during some unwelcome pause, filled
with the horror of silence. A few others fit neither category.
These were the ones who used the clamour surrounding
them as a barrier, creating in its midst a place in which to
hide, mute and indifferent, fending off the outside world.
    More often than not, Banaschar – who had once been a
priest, who had once immersed himself within a drone of
voices singing the cadence of prayer and chant – sought out
such denizens for the dubious pleasure of their company.
    Through the haze of durhang and rustleaf smoke, the
acrid black-tail swirls from the lamp wicks, and something
that might have been mist gathered just beneath the ceiling,
he saw, hunched in a booth along the back wall, a
familiar figure. Familiar in the sense that Banaschar had
more than a few times shared a table with the man,
although Banaschar was ignorant of virtually everything
about him, including his given name, knowing him only as Foreigner.
    A foreigner in truth, who spoke Malazan with an accent
Banaschar did not recognize – in itself curious since the expriest's
travels had been extensive, from Korel to Theft to
Mare in the south; from Nathilog to Callows on
Genabackis in the east; and, northward, from Falar to Aren
to Yath Alban. And in those travels he had met other