A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

self-importance. Accordingly, it presents an almost overwhelming temptation – how can I not be excused the occasional mockery? Alas, the Patriotists lacked
flexibility in such matters – the deadliest weapon against
them was derisive laughter, and they knew it.
    He crossed Quillas Canal at a lesser bridge, made his way
into the less ostentatious north district, and eventually
sauntered into a twisting, shadow-filled alley that had once
been a dirt street, before the invention of four-wheeled
wagons and side-by-side horse collars. Instead of the usual
hovels and back doors that one might expect to find in
such an alley, lining this one were shops that had not
changed in any substantial way in the past seven hundred
or so years. There, first to the right, the Half-Axe Temple
of Herbs, smelling like a swamp's sinkhole, wherein one
could find a prune-faced witch who lived in a mudpit, with
all her precious plants crowding the banks, or growing in
the insect-flecked pool itself. It was said she had been born
in that slime and was only half human; and that her mother
had been born there too, and her mother and so on. That
such conceptions were immaculate went without saying,
since Tehol could hardly imagine any reasonable or even
unreasonable man taking that particular plunge.
    Opposite the Half-Axe was the narrow-fronted entrance
to a shop devoted to short lengths of rope and wooden
poles a man and a half high. Tehol had no idea how such a
specialized enterprise could survive, especially in this
unravelled, truncated market, yet its door had remained
open for almost six centuries, locked up each night by a
short length of rope and a wooden pole.
    The assortment proceeding down the alley was similar
only in its peculiarity. Wooden stakes and pegs in one,
sandal thongs in another – not the sandals, just the thongs.
A shop selling leaky pottery – not an indication of incompetence:
rather, the pots were deliberately made to leak
at various, precise rates of loss; a place selling unopenable
boxes, another toxic dyes. Ceramic teeth, bottles filled with
the urine of pregnant women, enormous amphorae containing
dead pregnant women; the excreta of obese hogs; and
miniature pets – dogs, cats, birds and rodents of all sorts, each
one reduced in size through generation after generation of
selective breeding – Tehol had seen guard dogs standing no
higher than his ankle, and while cute and appropriately
yappy, he had doubts as to their efficacy, although they were
probably a terror for the thumbnail-sized mice and the cats
that could ride an old woman's big toe, secured there by an
ingenious loop in the sandal's thong.
    Since the outlawing of the Rat Catchers' Guild,
Adventure Alley had acquired a new function, to which
Tehol now set about applying himself with the insouciance
of the initiated. First, into the Half-Axe, clawing his way
through the vines immediately beyond the entrance, then
drawing up one step short of pitching head-first into the
muddy pool.
    Splashing, thick slopping sounds, then a dark-skinned
wrinkled face appeared amidst the high grasses fringing the
pit. 'It's you,' the witch said, grimacing then slithering out
her overlong tongue to display all the leeches attached to
it.
    'And it's you,' Tehol replied.
    The red protuberance with all its friends went back
inside. 'Come in for a swim, you odious man.'
    'Come out and let your skin recover, Munuga. I happen
to know you're barely three decades old.'
    'I am a map of wisdom.'
    'As a warning against the perils of overbathing, perhaps.
Where's the fat root this time?'
    'What have you got for me first?'
    'What I always have. The only thing you ever want from
me, Munuga.'
    'The only thing you'll never give, you mean!'
    Sighing, Tehol drew out from under his makeshift sarong
a small vial. He held it up for her to see.
    She licked her lips, which proved alarmingly complicated.
    'What kind?'
    'Capabara roe.'
    'But I want yours.'
    'I don't produce roe.'
    'You know what I mean, Tehol Beddict.'
    'Alas, poverty is more than skin deep. Also, I have lost
all incentive to be productive, in any sense of the word.
After all, what kind of a world is this that I'd even
contemplate delivering a child into?'
    'Tehol Beddict, you cannot deliver a child. You're a man.
Leave the delivering to me.'
    'Tell you what, climb out of that soup, dry out and let me
see what you're supposed to look like, and who knows?
Extraordinary things might happen.'
    Scowling, she held out an object.