A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

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pity. He is my heir. He has come. At last, he has come.'
    The maids, both wide-eyed with fear now, helped him
inside.
    And still the ants swarmed.
    The horses stood in a circle facing inward, tails flicking
at flies, heads lowered as they cropped grass. The oxen
stood nearby, still yoked, and watched them. Kedeviss,
who leaned with crossed arms against one of the wagon's
wheels, seemed to be watching the grey-haired foreigner
with the same placid, empty regard.
    Nimander knew just how deceptive that look could be.
Of them all – these paltry few left – she saw the clearest,
with acuity so sharp it intimidated almost everyone
subject to it. The emptiness – if the one being watched
finally turned to meet those eyes – would slowly fade, and
something hard, unyielding and immune to obfuscation
would slowly rise in its place. Unwavering, ever sharpening
until it seemed to pierce the victim like nails being
hammered into wood. And then she'd casually look away,
unmindful of the thumping heart, the pale face and the
beads of sweat on the brow, and the one so assailed was
left with but two choices: to fear this woman, or to love
her with such savage, demanding desire that it could crush
the heart.
    Nimander feared Kedeviss. And loved her as well. He
was never good with choices.
    If Kallor sensed that regard – and Nimander was certain
he did – he was indifferent to it, preferring to divide his
attention between the empty sky and the empty landscape
surrounding them. When he wasn't sleeping or eating. An
unpleasant guest, peremptory and imperious. He would not
cook, nor bother cleansing his plate afterwards. He was a
man with six servants.
    Nenanda was all for banishing the old man, driving him
away with stones and pieces of dung, but Nimander found
something incongruous in that image, as if it was such an
absurd impossibility that it had no place even in his imagination.
    'He's weakening,' Desra said at his side.
    'We're soon there, I think,' Nimander replied. They
were just south of Sarn, which had once been a sizeable
city. The road leading to it had been settled all along its
length, ribbon farms behind stalls, shops and taverns.
The few residents left were an impoverished lot, skittish
as whipped dogs, hacking at hard ground that had been
fallow too long – at least until they saw the travellers on
the main road, whereupon they dropped their hoes and
hurried away.
    The supplies left at the T-intersection had been meticulously
packed into wooden crates, the entire pile covered
in a tarp with its corners staked. Ripe fruits, candied sugarrocks
dusted in salt, heavy loaves of dark bread, strips of
dried eel, watered wine and three kinds of cheese – where
all this had come from, given the wretched state of the
farms they'd passed, was a mystery.
    'He would kill us as soon as look at us,' Desra said, her
eyes now on Kallor.
    'Skintick agrees.'
    'What manner of man is he?'
    Nimander shrugged. 'An unhappy one. We should get
going.'
    'Wait,' said Desra. 'I think we should get Aranatha to
look at Clip.'
    'Aranatha?' He looked round, found the woman sitting,
legs folded under her like a fawn's, plucking flowers from
the sloped bank of the road. 'Why? What can she do?'
    Desra shook her head, as if unable to give her reasons.
Or unwilling.
    Sighing, Nimander said, 'Go ahead, ask her, then.'
    'It needs to come from you.'
    Why? 'Very well.' He set out, a dozen strides taking him
to where Aranatha sat. As his shadow slipped over her she
glanced up and smiled.
    Smiles so lacking in caution, in diffidence or wry reluctance,
always struck him as a sign of madness. But the eyes
above it, this time, were not at all vacuous. 'Do you feel me,
Nimander?'
    'I don't know what you mean by that, Aranatha. Desra
would like you to examine Clip. I don't know why,' he
added, 'since I don't recall you possessing any specific skills
in healing.'
    'Perhaps she wants company,' Aranatha said, rising
gracefully to her feet.
    And he was struck, as if slapped across the face, by her
beauty. Standing now so close, her breath so warm and so
strangely dark. What is happening to me? Kedeviss and now
Aranatha.
    'Are you all right, Nimander?'
    'Yes.' No. 'I'm fine.' What awakens in me? To deliver both
anguish and exaltation?
    She placed a half-dozen white flowers in his hand,
smiled again, then walked over to the wagon. A soft laugh
from Skintick brought him round.
    'There's more of that these days,' his cousin said, gazing
after Aranatha. 'If we