A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

as much—'
    'Unless their haul ain't going to market,' the first mate
cut in. 'Could be it's all to replenish the royal vaults,
Captain, or maybe it goes to the Edur and nobody else.
Blood and Kagenza, after all. We could always find a coastal
port and do our selling there.'
    'You get wiser with every body part you lose, Pretty.'
    He grunted. 'Gotta be some kind of upside.'
    'That's the attitude,' she replied. 'All right, that's what
we'll do, but never mind the coastal port – they're all dirt
poor this far north, surrounded by nothing but wilderness
and bad roads where the bandits line up to charge tolls.
And if a few Edur galleys take after us, we can always scoot
straight up to that hold-out prison isle this side of Fent
Reach – that's a tight harbour mouth, or so I've been told,
and they got a chain to keep the baddies out.'
    'Pirates ain't baddies?'
    'Not as far as they're concerned. The prisoners are running
things now.'
    'I doubt it'll be that easy,' Skorgen muttered. 'We'd just
be bringing trouble down on them – it's not like the Edur
couldn't have conquered them long ago. They just can't be
bothered.'
    'Maybe, maybe not. The point is, we'll run out of food
and water if we can't resupply somewhere. Edur galleys are
fast, fast enough to stay with us. Anywhere we dock they'll
be on us before the last line is drawn to the bollard. With
the exception of the prison isle.' She scowled. 'It's a
damned shame. I wanted to go home for a bit.'
    'Then we'd best hope the whole damned fleet back there
heads upriver,' Skorgen the Pretty said, scratching round an
eye socket.
    'Hope and pray – you pray to any gods, Skorgen?'
    'Sea spirits, mostly. The Face Under the Waves, the
Guardian of the Drowned, the Swallower of Ships,
the Stealer of Winds, the Tower of Water, the Reef Hiders,
the—'
    'All right, Pretty, that'll do. You can keep your host of
disasters to yourself . . . just make sure you do all the
propitiations.'
    'Thought you didn't believe in all that, Captain.'
    'I don't. But it never hurts to make sure.'
    'One day their names will rise from the water, Captain,'
Skorgen Kaban said, making a complicated warding gesture
with his one remaining hand. 'And with them the seas will
lift high, to claim the sky itself. And the world will vanish
beneath the waves.'
    'You and your damned prophecies.'
    'Not mine. Fent. Ever see their early maps? They show a
coast leagues out from what it is now. All their founding
villages are under hundreds of spans of water.'
    'So they believe their prophecy is coming true. Only it's
going to take ten thousand years.'
    His shrug was lopsided. 'Could be, Captain. Even the
Edur claim that the ice far to the north is breaking up. Ten
thousand years, or a hundred. Either way, we'll be long dead
by then.'
    Speak for yourself, Pretty. Then again, what a thought. Me wandering round on the sea bottom for eternity. 'Skorgen, get
young Burdenar down from the crow's nest and into my
cabin.'
    The first mate made a face. 'Captain, you're wearing him
out.'
    'I ain't heard him complain.'
    'Of course not. We'd all like to be as lucky – your pardon,
Captain, for me being too forward, but it's true. I was
serious, though. You're wearing him out, and he's the
youngest sailor we got.'
    'Right, meaning I'd probably kill the rest of you. Call
him down, Pretty.'
    'Aye, Captain.'
    She stared back at the distant ships. The long search was
over, it seemed. What would they be bringing back to fair
Letheras, apart from casks of blood? Champions. Each one convinced they can do what no other has ever managed. Kill the Emperor. Kill him dead, deader than me, so dead he never gets back up.
    Too bad that would never happen.
    On his way out of Letheras, Venitt Sathad, Indebted
servant to Rautos Hivanar, halted the modest train outside
the latest addition to the Hivanar holdings. The inn's refurbishment
was well under way, he saw, as, accompanied by
the owner of the construction company under hire, he
made his way past the work crews crowding the main building,
then out back to where the stables and other
outbuildings stood.
    Then stopped.
    The structure that had been raised round the unknown
ancient mechanism had been taken down. Venitt stared at
the huge monolith of unknown metal, wondering why, now
that it had been exposed, it looked so familiar. The edifice
bent without a visible seam, three-quarters of the way up –
at about one and a half times his own height – a seemingly
perfect ninety degrees. The apex