A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4
said Karos sharply,
'possess the imperial charter to police the empire. In that
charter no distinction is made between Edur and Letherii,
only between the loyal and the disloyal.'
'Yes sir.'
'Now, I believe you have tasks awaiting you.'
Tanal Yathvanar bowed, then strode from the office.
* * *
The estate dominated a shelf of land on the north bank of
Lether River, four streets west of Quillas Canal. Stepped
walls marking its boundaries made their way down the
bank, extending out into the water – on posts to ease
the current's tug – more than two boat-lengths. Just beyond
rose two mooring poles. There had been flooding this
season. An infrequent occurrence in the past century,
Rautos Hivanar noted as he leafed through the Estate
Compendium – a family tome of notes and maps recording
the full eight hundred years of Hivanar blood on this land.
He settled back in the plush chair and, with contemplative
languor, finished his balat tea.
The house steward and principal agent, Venitt Sathad,
quietly stepped forward to return the Compendium to the
wood and iron chest sunk in the floor beneath the map
table, then replaced the floorboards and unfurled the rug
over the spot. His tasks completed, he stepped back to
resume his position beside the door.
Rautos Hivanar was a large man, his complexion florid,
his features robust. His presence tended to dominate a
room, no matter how spacious. He sat in the estate's library
now, the walls shelved to the ceiling. Scrolls, clay tablets
and bound books filled every available space, the gathered
learning of a thousand scholars, many of whom bore the
Hivanar name.
As head of the family and overseer of its vast financial
holdings, Rautos Hivanar was a busy man, and such
demands on his intellect had redoubled since the Tiste
Edur conquest – which had triggered the official formation
and recognition of the Liberty Consign, an association of
the wealthiest families in the Lether Empire – in ways he
could never have imagined before. He would be hard-pressed
to explain how he found all such activities tedious
or enervating. Yet that was what they had become, even as
his suspicions slowly, incrementally, resolved into
certainties; even as he began to perceive that, somewhere
out there, there was an enemy – or enemies – bent on
the singular task of economic sabotage. Not mere
embezzlement, an activity with which he was personally
very familiar, but something more profound, all-encompassing. An enemy . To all that sustained Rautos
Hivanar, and the Liberty Consign of which he was Master;
indeed, to all that sustained the empire itself, regardless of
who sat upon the throne, regardless even of those savage,
miserable barbarians who were now preening at the very
pinnacle of Letherii society, like grey-feathered jackdaws
atop a hoard of baubles.
Such comprehension, on Rautos Hivanar's part, would
once have triggered a most zealous response within him.
The threat alone should have sufficed to elicit a vigorous
hunt, and the notion of an agency of such diabolical
purpose – one, he was forced to admit, guided by the most
subtle genius – should have enlivened the game until its
pursuit acquired the power of obsession.
Instead, Rautos Hivanar found himself seeking notations
among the dusty ledgers for evidence of past floodings,
pursuing an altogether more mundane mystery that would
interest but a handful of muttering academics. And that, he
admitted often to himself, was odd. Nonetheless, the compulsion
gathered strength, and at night he would lie beside
the recumbent, sweat-sheathed mass that was his wife of
thirty-three years and find his thoughts working ceaselessly,
struggling against the currents of time's cyclical flow, seeking
to clamber his way back, with all his sensibilities, into past
ages. Looking. Looking for something . . .
Sighing, Rautos set down the empty cup, then rose.
As he walked to the door, Venitt Sathad – whose family
line had been Indebted to the Hivanars for six generations
now – stepped forward to retrieve the fragile cup, then set
off in his master's wake.
Out onto the waterfront enclosure, across the mosaic
portraying the investiture of Skoval Hivanar as Imperial
Ceda three centuries past, then down the shallow stone
stairs to what, in drier times, was the lower terrace garden.
But the river's currents had swirled in here, stealing away
soil and plants, exposing a most peculiar arrangement of
boulders set like a cobbled street, framed in
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