A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

of a pyre. Which was appropriate, because she
had, but Gaz didn't need to know things like that. He
didn't need to know anything at all.
    Be a plant, Gaz. Worry about nothing. Until the harvest.
    *
    The ox was too stupid to worry. If not for a lifetime of
back-breaking labour and casual abuse, the beast would be
content, existence a smooth cycle to match the ease of day
into night and night into day and on and on for ever. Feed
and cud aplenty, water to drink and salt to lick, a plague to
eradicate the world's biting flies and ticks and fleas. If the
ox could dream of paradise, it would be a simple dream and
a simple paradise. To live simply was to evade the worries
that came with complexity. This end was achieved at the
expense, alas, of intelligence.
    The drunks that staggered out of the taverns as the sun
rose were in search of paradise and they had the sodden,
besotted brains to prove it. Lying senseless in the durhang
and d'bayang dens could be found others oozing down a
similar path. The simplicity they would find was of course
death, the threshold crossed almost without effort.
    Unmindful (naturally) of any irony, the ox pulled a
cart into an alley behind the dens where three emaciated
servants brought out this night's crop of wasted corpses.
The carter, standing with a switch to one side, spat out a
mouthful of rustleaf juice and silently gestured to another
body lying in the gutter behind a back door. In for a sliver,
in for a council. Grumbling, the three servants went
over to this corpse and reached for limbs to lift it from
the cobblestones. One then gasped and recoiled, and a
moment later so too did the others.
    The ox was not flicked into motion for some time thereafter,
as humans rushed about, as more arrived. It could
smell the death, but it was used to that. There was much
confusion, yet the yoked beast remained an island of calm,
enjoying the shade of the alley.
    The city guardsman with the morning ache in his chest
brushed a hand along the ox's broad flank as he edged past.
He crouched down to inspect the corpse.
    Another one, this man beaten so badly he was barely
recognizable as human. Not a single bone in his face was
left unbroken. The eyes were pulped. Few teeth remained.
The blows had continued, down to his crushed throat
– which was the likely cause of death – and then his chest.
Whatever weapon had been used left short, elongated
patterns of mottled bruising. Just like all the others.
    The guardsman rose and faced the three servants from
the dens. 'Was he a customer?'
    Three blank faces regarded him, then one spoke, 'How
in Hood's name can we tell? His damned face is gone!'
    'Clothing? Weight, height, hair colour – anyone in there
last—'
    'Sir,' cut in the man, 'if he was a customer he was a new
one – he's got meat on his bones, see? And his clothes was
clean. Well, before he spilled hisself.'
    The guardsman had made the same observations. 'Might
he have been, then? A new customer?'
    'Ain't been none in the last day or so. Some casuals, you
know, the kind who can take it or leave it, but no, we don't
think we seen this one, by his clothes and hair and such.'
    'So what was he doing in this alley?'
    No one had an answer.
    Did the guardsman have enough to requisition a
necromancer? Only if this man was well born. But the clothes
aren't that high-priced. More like merchant class, or some midlevel
official. If so, then what was he doing here in the dregs of
Gadrobi District? 'He's Daru,' he mused.
    'We get 'em,' said the loquacious servant, with a faint
sneer. 'We get Rhivi, we get Callowan, we get Barghast
even.'
    Yes, misery is egalitarian. 'Into the cart, then, with the
others.'
    The servants set to work.
    The guardsman watched. After a moment his gaze
drifted to the carter. He studied the wizened face with its
streaks of rustleaf juice running down the stubbled chin.
    'Got a loving woman back home?'
    'Eh?'
    'I imagine that ox is happy enough.'
    'Oh, aye, that it is, sir. All the flies, see, they prefer the
big sacks.'
    'The what?'
    The carter squinted at him, then stepped closer. 'The
bodies, sir. Big sacks, I call 'em. I done studies and lots of
thinking, on important things. On life and stuff. What
makes it work, what happens when it stops and all.'
    'Indeed. Well—'
    'Every body in existence, sir, is made up of the same stuff.
So small you can't see except with a special lens but I made
me one a those. Tiny, that stuff. I call 'em bags . And inside
each bag there's a wallet,