A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

fault,
is it? Someone maybe found him, maybe even adopted
him.'
    'You are going to tell your parents everything, Snell,' the
man said. 'I will be back tonight, probably late, but I will be
back. Don't even think of running—'
    'He won't,' said a voice from the door.
    The man turned. 'Bellam – what—'
    'Master Murillio, I'll stay here and keep an eye on the
fucker. And when his parents show up, well, he'll spill it all
out. Go on, Master, you don't need to worry about anything
happening back here.'
    The man – Murillio – was silent for a time, seeming
to study the rangy boy who stood, arms folded, leaning
against the doorway's frame.
    And then he set Snell down and stepped back. 'I won't
forget this, Bellam.'
    'It'll be fine, Master. I won't beat the bones out of him,
much as I'd like to, and much as he obviously deserves it.
No, he's going to sit and play with his little sisters – soon as
they come round—'
    'A splash of water should do it.'
    'After a splash, then. And not only is Snell going to play
with them, but he's going to make a point of losing every
game, every argument. If they want him to stand on his
head while picking his arsehole, why, that's what Snell will
do. Right, Snell?'
    Snell had met older boys just like this one. They had
calm eyes but that was just to fix you good when you
weren't expecting nothing. He was more frightened of
this Bellam than he'd been of Murillio. 'You hurt me
and I'll get my friends after you,' he hissed. 'My street
friends—'
    'And when they hear the name Bellam Nom they'll cut
you loose faster than you can blink.'
    Murillio had found a clay bowl into which he now
poured some water.
    'Master,' said Bellam, 'I can do that. You got what you
needed from him – at least a trail, a place to start.'
    'Very well. Until tonight then, Bellam, and thank you.'
    After he'd left, Bellam shut the door and advanced on
Snell, who once more cringed against the back wall.
    'You said—'
    'We do that, don't we, when it comes to grown-ups.'
    'Don't touch me!'
    'No grown-ups anywhere close, Snell – what do you like
to do when they're not around? Oh, yes, that's right. You
like to torment everyone smaller than you. That sounds
a fun game. I think I'll play, and look, you're smaller than
me. Now, what torment shall we do first?'
    In leaving them for the time being, all grim concern
regarding anything unduly cruel can be thankfully dispensed
with. Bellam Nom, being cleverer than most,
knew that true terror belonged not to what did occur, but
to what might occur. He was content to encourage Snell's
own imagination into the myriad possibilities, which was
a delicate and precise form of torture. Especially useful in
that it left no bruises.
    Bullies learn nothing when bullied in turn; there
are no lessons, no about-face in their squalid natures.
The principle of righteous justice is a peculiar domain
where propriety and vengeance become confused, almost
indistinguishable. The bullied bully is shown but the other
side of the same fear he or she has lived with all his or her
life. The about-face happens there, on the outside, not the
inside. Inside, the bully and everything that haunts the
bully's soul remains unchanged.
    It is an abject truth, but conscience cannot be shoved
down the throat.
    If only it could.
    *
    Moths were flattened against the walls of the narrow
passageway, waiting for something, probably night. As
it was a little used route to and from the Vidikas estate,
frequented twice a day at specific times by deliveries to the
kitchen, Challice had taken to using it with all the furtive
grace of the insouciant adulteress that she had become.
The last thing she expected was to almost run into her
husband there in the shadows midway through.
    Even more disconcerting, it was clear that he had been
awaiting her. One hand holding his duelling gloves as if
about to slap them across her cheek, yet there was an odd
smile on his face. 'Darling,' he said.
    She halted before him, momentarily struck dumb. It
was one thing to play out the game at breakfast, a table
between them cluttered with all the false icons of a perfect
and perfectly normal marriage. Their language then was
such a smooth navigation round all those deadly shoals
that it seemed the present was but a template of the future,
of years and years of this; not a single wound stung to
life, no tragic floundering on the jagged shallows, sailors
drowning in the foam.
    He stood before her now, tall with a thousand sharp
edges,