A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

the binding.
    In the week following that fateful tear in the trust
between them, Harllo had come to believe that he was
once more truly alone in the world. Wounds scabbed over
and scabs fell away to reveal faint scars that soon faded
almost out of existence, and the boy worked on, crawling
into fissures, scratching his way along fetid, gritty cracks in
the deep rock. Choking at times on bad air, stung by blind
centipedes and nipped by translucent spiders. Bruised by
shifting stones, his eyes wide in the darkness as he searched
out the glitter of ore on canted, close walls.
    At week's end, however, Bainisk was with him once
more, passing him a jug of silty lakewater as he backed
out of a fissure and sat down on the warm, dry stone of
the tunnel floor, and in this brief shared moment the tear
slowly began to heal, re-knitted in the evasiveness of their
eyes that would not yet lock on to the reality of their sitting
side by side – far beneath the world's surface, two beating
hearts that echoed naught but each other – and this was
how young boys made amends. Without words, with spare
gestures that, in their rarity, acquired all the necessary
significance. When Harllo was done drinking he passed
back the jug.
    'Venaz is on me all the time now,' Bainisk said. 'I tried it,
with him again, I mean. But it's not the same. We're both
too old for what we had, once. All he ever talks about is
stuff that bores me.'
    'He just likes hurting people.'
    Bainisk nodded. 'I think he wants to take over my job.
He argued over every order I gave him.'
    'People like him always want to take over,' Harllo said.
'And most times when other people see it they back off and
let them. That's what I don't get, Bainisk. It's the scariest
thing of all.'
    That last admission was uncommon between boys. The
notion of being frightened. But theirs was not a normal
world, and to pretend that there was nothing to fear was
not among the few privileges they entertained. Out here,
people didn't need reasons to hurt someone. They didn't
need reasons for doing anything.
    'Tell me about the city again, Mole.'
    'There's a haunted tower. My uncle took me to see it
once. He has big hands, so big that when he holds yours it's
like your hand disappears and there's nothing in the world
could pull you apart. Anyway, there's a ghost in that tower.
Named Hinter.'
    Bainisk set on him wide eyes. 'Did you see it? Did you
see that ghost?'
    'No, it was daytime. They're hard to see in daytime.'
    'It's dark enough down here,' Bainisk said, looking
round. 'But I ain't never seen a ghost.'
    Harllo thought to tell him, then. It had been his reason
for bringing up the story in the first place, but he found
himself holding back yet again. He wasn't sure why. Maybe
it was because the skeleton wasn't a true ghost. 'Sometimes,'
he said, 'the dead don't go away. I mean, sometimes,
they die but the soul doesn't, er, leave the body. It stays
where it is, where it always was.'
    'Was this Hinter like that?'
    'No, he was a real ghost. A spirit with no body.'
    'So what makes ghosts of some people but not others?'
    Harllo shrugged. 'Don't know, Bainisk. Maybe spirits
with a reason to stay are the ones that become ghosts.
Maybe the Lord of Death doesn't want them, or lets them
be so they can maybe finish doing what they need to do.
Maybe they don't realize they're dead.' He shrugged again.
'That's what my uncle said. He didn't know either, and not
knowing made him mad – I could tell by the way he held
my hand tighter.'
    'He got mad at a ghost?'
    'Could be. That's what I figure, anyway. I didn't say
nothing to make him mad, so it must have been the ghost.
His not knowing what it wanted or something.'
    Harllo could well recall that moment. Like Bainisk, he'd
asked lots of questions, amazed that such a thing as a ghost
could exist, could be hiding, watching them, thinking all
its ghost thoughts. And Gruntle had tried to answer him,
though it was obviously a struggle. And when Harllo asked
him if maybe his father – who was dead – might be a ghost
out there somewhere far away, his uncle had said nothing.
And when he asked if maybe his ghost father was still
around because he was looking for his son, then Gruntle's
big hand squeezed tight and then tighter for a breath or
two, not enough to actually hurt Harllo, but close. And
then the grip softened once more, and Gruntle took him
off to buy sweets.
    He'd probably seen Hinter, looking out through one of
the gloomy windows of the tower. He'd