A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

forward,
gloved hand lifting. 'A child's gone missing? I can put out
the word – I know all sorts of people. Please, we can do
this logically – down at the docks, you said? We'll need to
find out which ships left harbour in the last two days – the
trading season's only just starting, so there shouldn't be
many. His name is Harllo, and he's five years old—' Gods below, you send him out into the streets and he's only five? 'Can you give me a description? Hair, eyes, the like.'
    Myrla was nodding, even as tears streamed down her
lined cheeks and her entire body trembled. She nodded
and kept on nodding.
    Stonny spun round and rushed away, boots echoing
harshly down the corridor.
    Murillio stared after her in astonishment. 'Where
– what?'
    'It's her son, you see,' said Myrla between sobs. 'Her only
son, only she don't want him and so he's with us but Snell,
he has bad thoughts and does bad things sometimes only
not this, never this bad, he wouldn't do anything this bad
to Harllo, he wouldn't!'
    'We'll find him,' said Murillio. One way or the other,
Lady's pull bless us, and bless the lad. 'Now, please, describe
him and describe him well – what he normally does each
day – I need to know that, too. Everything you can tell me,
Myrla. Everything.'
    Snell understood, in a dim but accurate way, how others,
wishing only the best in him, could have their faith abused
at will, and even should some truth be dragged into the
light, well, it was then a matter of displaying crushed self-pity,
and the great defender would take him into her arms
– as mothers do.
    Can we hope that on rare occasions, perhaps late at
night when the terrors crept close, he would think about
how things he'd done could damage his mother's faith, and
not just in him, but in herself as well? The son, after all,
is but an extension of the mother – at least so the mother
believed, there in some inarticulate part of her soul, unseen
yet solid as an iron chain. Assail the child and so too the
mother is assailed, for what is challenged is her life as a
mother, the lessons she taught or didn't teach, the things
she chose not to see, to explain away, to pretend were
otherwise than what they were.
    Weep for the mother. Snell won't and he never would,
saving all his future to weep exclusively for himself. The
creeping terrors awakened startling glimmers of thought, of
near-empathy, but they never went so far as to lead to any
self-recognition, or compassion for the mother who loved
him unconditionally. His nature was the kind that took
whatever was given to him as if it was a birthright, all of it,
for ever and ever more.
    Rage at injustice came when something – anything
– was withheld. Things he righteously deserved, and of
course he deserved everything he wanted. All that he
wanted he reached for, and oh such fury if those things
eluded his grasp or were then taken away!
    In the absence of what might be imposed, a child will
fashion the structure of the world to suit itself. Created
from a mind barely awake – and clearly not even that when
it came to introspection – that world becomes a strange
place indeed. But let us not rail at the failings of nearby
adults tied by blood or whatever. Some children are born
in a cage – it's already there, in their skulls – and it's a dark
cage.
    He was wandering the streets, fleeing all the cruel questions
being flung at him. They had no right to accuse him
like that. Oh, when he was all grown up, nobody would be
allowed to get after him like this. He'd break their faces.
He'd step on their heads. He'd make them afraid, every
one of them, so he could go on doing whatever he liked. He
couldn't wait to get older and that was the truth.
    And yet, he found himself heading for Two-Ox Gate. He
needed to know, after all. Was Harllo still lying there? He
hadn't hit him so hard, had he? Enough to kill him? Only
if Harllo had been born weak, only if something was wrong
with him from the start. And that wouldn't be a surprise,
would it? Harllo's own mother had thrown him away, after
all. So, if Harllo was lying dead in the grasses on that hilltop,
why, it wasn't Snell's fault, was it? Something would
have killed him sooner or later.
    So that was a relief, but he'd better go and find out for
sure. What if Harllo hadn't died at all? What if he was out
there somewhere, planning murder? He could be spying
on Snell right now! With a knife he'd found, or a knotted
stick. Quick, cunning, able to dart out of sight no