A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

from? A thought so far away from the
sentiment of gratitude that it might as well be in another
realm.
    The truth was obvious. He would rather have been here.
He would rather have died last night. Instead, interfering
bitch that she was, Scillara had refused him that release.
Had instead left him in this sad life that would not end.
That glance had been harder, more stinging, than a savage
slap in the face.
    She should have gone below. Should be standing there
in that narrow, cramped cellar, holding Chaur's hand,
listening to them all grieve, each in their own way. Antsy's
curses. Picker at his side, so close as to be leaning on him,
but otherwise expressionless beyond the bleakness of her
glazed stare. Barathol and his glistening beard, his puffy
eyes, the knotted muscles ravaging his brow.
    The door opened suddenly, sending a shaft of daylight
through suspended dust, and in stepped the grey-haired
bard.
    She and Duiker watched as the man shut the door behind
him and replaced the solid iron bar in its slots – how
he had ended up with that bar in his hands was a mystery,
yet neither Scillara nor the historian commented.
    The man approached, and she saw that he too had not
bothered to change his clothes, wearing the old blood with
the same indifference she had seen in the others.
    There'd been a half-dozen bodies, maybe more, at the
stage. A passing observation from Blend implicated the
bard in that slaughter, but Scillara had trouble believing
that. This man was gaunt, old. Yet her eyes narrowed on
the blood spatter on his shirt.
    He sat down opposite them, met Duiker's eyes, and said,
'Whatever they have decided to do, Historian, they can
count me in.'
    'So they did try for you, too,' said Scillara.
    He met her gaze. 'Scillara, they attacked everyone in the
room. They killed innocents.'
    'I don't think they'll do anything,' said Duiker, 'except
sell up and leave.'
    'Ah,' the bard said, then sighed. 'No matter. I will not be
entirely on my own in any case.'
    'What do you mean?'
    'I called in an old favour, Historian. Normally, I am not
one to get involved in . . . things.'
    'But you're angry,' Scillara observed, recognizing at last
the odd flatness in the old man's eyes, the flatness that
came before – before cold killing. This poet has claws indeed.
And now I look at him, he's not as old as I thought he was.
    'I am, yes.'
    From below there came a splintering crack followed by
shouts of surprise. All three at the table swiftly rose. Duiker
leading the way, they ran to the kitchen, then down the
narrow stairs to the cellar. Torchlight wavered at the far
end of the elongated storage room, casting wild shadows on
a bizarre scene. Pungent fluid sloshed on the earthen floor,
seeming reluctant to drain, and in a half-circle stood the
two Malazans, Barathol and Chaur, all facing one side wall
where a large cask had shattered.
    Antsy, Scillara surmised, had just kicked it.
    Splitting it open, in a cascade of pickling juice, revealing
to them all the object that that liquid had so perfectly
preserved.
    Folded up with knees beneath chin, arms wrapped round
the shins.
    Still wearing a mask on which four linear, vertical barbs
marked a row across the forehead.
    The bard grunted. 'I'd often wondered,' he said under his
breath, 'where the old ones ended up.'
    The fluids were now seeping into the floor, along the
edges of the freshly dug mounds.
    *
    A hundred stones, a cavort of ripples, the city in its life
which is one life which is countless lives. To ignore is to
deny brotherhood, sisterhood, the commonality that, could
it be freed, would make the world a place less cruel, less
vicious. But who has time for that? Rush this way, plunge
that way, evade every set of eyes, permit no recognition in
any of the faces flashing past. The dance of trepidation is
so very tiresome.
    Hold this gaze, if you dare, in the tracking of these
tremulous ripples, the lives, the lives! See Stonny Menackis,
wrought with recrimination, savaged by guilt. She sleeps
badly or not at all (who would risk peering into her dark
bedroom at night, for fear of seeing the gleam of staring
eyes?). She trembles, her nerves like strings of fire, whilst
poor Murillio stands apart, desperate to comfort her, to
force open all that had now closed between them.
    And in the courtyard a mob of unattended young
savages wail about with wooden swords and it's a miracle
no one's yet lost an eye or dropped to the pavestones with
a crushed trachea.
    While, in a workroom not