A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

too far away, Tiserra sits at
the potter's wheel and stares into space as the lump of clay
spins round and round to the rhythm of her pumping foot
– struck frozen, shocked by the stunning realization of the
sheer depth of her love for her husband. A love so fierce
that she is terrified, comprehending at last the extent of
her vulnerability.
    The sense is a wonder. It is delicious and terrifying. It is ecstatic .
    Smile with her. Oh, do smile with her!
    Whilst at this very moment, the object of Tiserra's
devotion strides into the courtyard of the Varada estate,
his new place of employment. His mind, which had been
calm in the course of his walk from home, now stirs with
faint unease. He had sent Scorch and Leff home, and he
had stood at the gate watching them stumble off like
undead, and this had made him think of moments of
greatest danger – just before dawn was the moment to
strike, if one intended such violence – but who would
bother? What was this mysterious Lady Varada up to
anyway?
    A seat on the Council, true, but was that sufficient cause
for assassination? And why was he thinking of such things
at all? There'd been rumours – picked up at the drunk
baker's stall – that the night just past should have belonged
to the Assassins' Guild but had turned sour for the hired
killers and oh, wasn't that regrettable? A moment of silence
then pass the dumplings, if you please.
    Now he paused in the courtyard, seeing the latest
employees, his peculiar charges, with their dubious pasts
and potentially alarming motivations. Reunited, yes,
with the castellan, with the infamous Studious Lock.
Madrun and Lazan Door were tossing knuckles against
the compound wall to his right. Technically, their shift
was over, although Torvald Nom suspected that this game
of theirs had been going on for some time. Another word
of warning to them? No, his spirits were already plunging,
as they were wont to do when he awakened to a sense that
something was being pulled over him, that he was being
connived around – as his mother used to say when with
one foot she pinned young Torvald to the floor and stared
down at him as he squirmed and thrashed (mostly an
act, of course; she weighed about as much as a guard dog,
without the bite). Connived around, dear boy, and when
I get to the bottom of things and all the trouble's on the
table, why, who will I find hiding in the closet?
His sweet mother never quite mastered the extended
metaphor, bless her.
    Suddenly too despondent to so much as announce his
arrival, Torvald Nom headed for his office, eager to climb
over the desk and plant himself in the chair, where he
could doze until the sounding of the lunch chime. At least
the cooks she'd employed knew their business.
    Leave him there, now, and ride one last ripple, out
beyond the city, west along the lakeshore, out to a dusty,
smoky pit where the less privileged laboured through their
shortened lives to keep such creatures as Gorlas Vidikas and
Humble Measure at the level of comfort and entitlement
they held to be righteous. And, to be fair, they laboured
as well to contribute to the general feeling of civilization,
which is normally measured by technical wherewithal, a
sense of progression and the notion of structural stability,
little of which said labourers could themselves experience,
save vicariously.
    The child Harllo has been lashed ten times for being
places he wasn't supposed to be, and this punishment was
fierce enough to leave him prostrate, lying on his stomach
on his cot with thick unguents slowly melting into the
wounds on his back.
    Bainisk had received a whip to his left shoulder which
would result in the third such scar for dereliction of his
responsibilities as overseer in Chuffs, and he now came to
sit beside Harllo, studying his young charge in a silence
that stretched.
    Until at last Harllo said, 'I'm sorry, Bainisk—'
    'Never mind that. I just want to know what you were
up to. I didn't think you'd keep secrets from me, I really
didn't. Venaz is saying "I told you so". He's saying you're
no good, Mole, and that I should just push you on to the
dredge crews.'
    The young ones did not live long in the dredge crews.
'Venaz wants to be your best mole again.'
    'I know that, only he's grown too big.'
    'People like him never like people like me,' Harllo said.
This was not a whine, just an observation.
    'Because you're smarter than he is and his being older
means nothing, means it's worse even, because in your head
you're