A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

them. So . . . changed.
    Not three hundred paces away from Lady Challice,
wandering unmindful of where his steps took him,
was Cutter, who had once been a thief named Crokus
Younghand, who had once stolen something he shouldn't
have, and, finding that he could not truly give it back,
had then confused guilt and sympathy with the bliss of
adoration (such errors are common), only to be released
in the end by a young woman's open contempt for his
heartfelt, honest admissions.
    Well, times and people change, don't they just.
    On a rooftop half a city away, Rallick Nom stood looking
out upon the choppy sea of blue lights, at his side Krute
of Talient, and they had much to discuss and this meant,
given Rallick Nom's taciturnity, a long session indeed.
    Krute had too much to say. Rallick weighed every morsel
he fed back, not out of distrust, simply habit.
    In a duelling school, long after the last of the young
students had toddled out, Murillio sat under moonlight
with Stonny Menackis as, weeping, she unburdened herself
to this veritable stranger – which perhaps is what made it
all so easy – but Stonny had no experience with a man such
as Murillio, who understood what it was to listen, to bestow
rapt, thorough and most genuine attention solely upon one
woman, to draw all of her essence – so pouring out – into
his own being, as might a hummingbird drink nectar, or a
bat a cow's ankle blood (although this analogy ill serves
the tender moment).
    And so between them unseen vapours waft, animal and
undeniable, and so much seeps into flesh and bone and self
that stunning recognition comes – when it comes – like the
unlocking of a door once thought sealed for ever more.
    She wept and she wept often, and each time it was somehow
easier, somehow more natural, more comfortable and
acceptable, no different, truly, from the soft stroke of his
fingers through her short hair, the way the tips brushed her
cheek to smooth away the tears – and oh, who then could
be surprised by all this?
    To the present, then, as the blurred moon, now risen,
squints down upon three dozen figures gathering on a
rooftop. Exchanging hand signals and muttering instructions
and advice. Checking weapons. Three dozen, for the
targets were tough, mean veterans with foreign ways. And
the assault to come, well, it would be brutal, unsubtle, and,
without doubt, thorough.
    The usual crowd in K'rul's Bar, a dozen or so denizens
choosing to be unmindful of the temple that once was
– these quarried stone walls, stained with smoke and mute
repositories for human voices generation upon generation,
from droning chants and choral music to the howl
of drunken laughter and the squeals of pinched women,
these walls, then, thick and solid, ever hold to indifference
in the face of drama.
    Lives play out, lives parcel out portions framed by stone
and wood, by tile and rafter, and all of these insensate
forms have, in their time, tasted blood.
    The vast, low-ceilinged main taproom with its sunken
floor was once a transept or perhaps a congregation area.
The narrow corridor between inset pillars along the back
was once a colonnade bearing niches on which, long ago,
stood funerary urns containing the charred, ashen remains
of High Priests and Priestesses. The kitchen and the
three storerooms behind it had once supplied sustenance
to monks and the sanctioned blade-wielders, scribes and
acolytes. Now they fed patrons, staff and owners.
    Up the steep, saddled, stone steps to the landing on the
upper floor, from which ran passages with sharply angled
ceilings, three sides of a square with the fourth interrupted
by the front façade of the building. Eight cell-like rooms fed
off each of these passages, those on the back side projecting
inward (supported by the pillars of the main floor colonnade)
while the two to either side had their rooms against the
building's outer walls (thus providing windows).
    The cells looking out on to the taproom had had inside
walls knocked out, so that eight rooms were now three
rooms, constituting the offices. The interior windows were
now shuttered – no glass or skin – and Picker was in the
habit of throwing them wide open when she sat at her desk,
giving her a clear view of the front third of the taproom,
including the entranceway.
    On this night, there were few guests resident in the
inn's rooms. Barathol and Chaur had not yet returned.
Scillara had taken Duiker into the Daru District. The
bard was on the low dais in the taproom,