A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

it by the throat, choke
the life from it.' He paused, and then spat on to the cobbles
before adding, 'I'm starting to realize what "retirement"
really means. Everything we let go of, we're now scrabbling
to get back, only it's outa reach. It's fuckin' out of reach.'
    She said nothing, and that told Antsy she knew he was
right; that she felt the same.
    Scant comfort, this company.
    They reached Coll's estate, went round towards the back
wall. The journey from K'rul's Bar to here was already a
blur in Antsy's mind, so unimportant as to be instantly
worthless. He'd not registered a single figure amidst the
crowds on the streets. Had they been tracked? Followed?
Probably. 'Hood's breath, Pick, I wasn't checkin' if we
picked up a sniffin' dog. See what I mean?'
    'We did,' she replied. 'Two of 'em. Lowlifes, not actual
assassins, just their dogs, like you say. They're keeping their
distance – probably warned right off us. I doubt they'll
follow us into the wood.'
    'No,' Antsy agreed. 'They'd smell ambush.'
    'Right, so never mind them.'
    She led the way into the overgrown thicket behind the
estate. The uneven forest floor was littered at the edges
with rubbish, but this quickly dwindled as they pushed
deeper into the shadowy, overgrown copse. Few people,
it was obvious, wanted to set eyes on the Finnest House,
to feel the chill of it looking right back at them. Attention
from something as ghastly as that dark edifice was
unwanted attention.
    Thirty uneven strides in, they caught sight of the black
half-stone half-wood walls, the wrinkled, scarred face of
the house, shutters matted like rotted wicker, no light
leaking through from anywhere. Vines snaked up the sides,
sprawled out over the humped ground in the low-walled
yard. The few trees in that yard were twisted and leafless,
roots bared like bones.
    'More lumps than last time I was here,' Picker observed
as they made their way towards the gate.
    Antsy grunted. 'No shortage of idiots tryin' t'get inside.
Thinkin' they'll find treasure . . .'
    'Secret short cuts to power,' she added. 'Magical items
and crap.'
    'An' all they got was an early grave.' He hesitated at the
gate and glanced at Picker. 'Could be we end up the same
way.'
    'Stay on the path, that's the trick. Follow me.'
    He fell into step close behind her as she set out along
the narrow, winding track of tilted pavestones. Too close,
as he trod on her heel and almost made her stumble. She
shot him a vicious look over one shoulder before continuing
on.
    The sheer lack of anything untoward had Antsy's
nerves overwrought by the time they reached the door.
He watched as Picker lifted a gloved hand, made a fist,
hesitated, then thumped it hard against the black wood.
The boom reverberated as if an abyss waited on the other
side.
    They waited. From here, all sounds of the city beyond
this wood had vanished, as if the normal world had ceased
to exist, or, perhaps, the endless rush of life out there
held no relevance to what loomed before them now, this
grotesque intrusion from another realm.
    A dozen heartbeats. Picker made to pound once more
on the door.
    The clunk of a latch sounded dully through the thick
wood, and a moment later the door creaked back.
    Paran had spoken of the lich resident in the Finnest
House, the blasted creature that had once been a Jaghut,
but this was Antsy's first sight of it. Tall (gods how he hated
tall things), gaunt yet large-boned, adorned in a long ragged
coat of black chain. Bared head with long colourless hair
hanging down from patches – where the scalp was visible
there was twisted scarring, and in one place something had
punctured through the skull, and within the uneven hole
left behind there was only darkness, as if the apparition's
brain had simply withered away. Tusks in a shattered face,
the eyes shrunken back into shadows. All in all, Antsy was
not inspired with confidence that this fell meeting would
proceed in anything like a reasonable fashion.
    'Lord Raest,' Picker said, bowing. 'I am a friend of Ganoes
Paran. If you recall, we met—'
    'I know who you are, Corporal Picker,' the lich replied in
a deep, resonant voice.
    'This is Sergeant Antsy—'
    'What do you want?'
    'We need to find Ganoes Paran—'
    'He is not here.'
    'We need to get a message to him.'
    'Why?'
    Picker glanced at Antsy, then back up at Raest. 'Well, it's
a complicated tale – can we come inside?'
    Raest's dead eyes held steady on her for a long moment,
and then he asked, 'Do you expect me to serve