A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

so, too, was Bellam Nom.
    When he was dragged in through the narrow door of
a nondescript shop at the near end of Twisty Alley, Snell
suddenly recoiled – he knew this place. He knew—
    'What you got yourself there, Bellam?'
    'A fresh one, Goruss, and I'll let him go cheap.'
    'Wait!' Snell shrieked, and then a heavy hand clamped
over his mouth and he was pulled into the gloom, smelling
rank sweat, feeling a breath on his cheek as the ogre named
Goruss leaned in close.
    'A screamer, iz he?'
    'A nasty little shit, in fact.'
    'We'll work that outer 'im.'
    'Not this one. He'd stab his mother just to watch
the blood flow. 'Sprobably left a trail of tortured small
animals ten leagues long, buried in little holes in every
back yard of the neighbourhood. This is one of those,
Goruss.'
    'Eighteen silver?'
    'Slivers?'
    'Yah.'
    'All right.'
    Snell thrashed about as he was carried off into a back
room, then down steps and into an unlit cellar that smelled
of piss-soaked mud. He was gagged and bound and thrown
into a low iron cage. Goruss then went back up the stairs,
leaving Snell alone.
    In the front room, Goruss sat down across from Bellam.
    'Ale, nephew?'
    'Too early for me, Uncle.'
    'How long you want me to hold him?'
    'Long enough to shit everything out of him. I want him
so scared he breaks inside.'
    'Give him a night, then. Enough to run through all his
terrors, but not so much he gets numb. Shit, nephew, I
don't deal in anybody under, oh, fifteen years old, and we
do careful interviewing and observing, and only the completely
hopeless ones get shipped to the rowing benches.
And even then, they get paid and fed and signed out after
five years – and most of them do good after that.'
    'I doubt Snell knows any of that, Uncle. Just that
children are dragged into this shop and they don't come
back out.'
    'Must look that way.'
    Bellam smiled. 'Oh, it does, Uncle, it does.'
    'Not seen him in days.'
    Barathol just nodded, then walked over to the cask of
water to wash the grime off his forearms and hands. Chaur
sat on a crate nearby, eating some local fruit with a yellow
skin and pink, fleshy insides. Juice dribbled down his
stubbled chin.
    Scillara gave him a bright smile as she wandered into
the front room. The air smelled brittle and acrid, the
way it does in smithies, and she thought now that, from
this moment on, the scent would accompany her every
recollection of Barathol, this large man with the gentle
eyes. 'Had any more trouble with the Guilds?' she asked.
    He dried himself off and flung the cloth to one side.
'They're making it hard, but I expected that. We're surviving.'
    'So I see.' She kicked at a heap of iron rods. 'New order?'
    'Swords. The arrival of the Malazan embassy's garrison
has triggered a new fad among the nobles. Imperial longswords.
Gave trouble to most of the local swordsmiths.' He
shrugged. 'Not me, of course.'
    Scillara settled down in the lone chair and began
scraping out her pipe. 'What's so special about Malazan
longswords?'
    'The very opposite, actually. The local makers haven't
quite worked out that they have to reverse engineer to get
them right.'
    'Reverse engineer?'
    'The Malazan longsword's basic design and manufacture
is originally Untan, from the imperial mainland. Three
centuries old, at least, maybe older. The empire still uses
the Untan foundries and they're a conservative bunch.'
    'Well, if the damned things do what they're supposed to
do, why make changes?'
    'That seems to be the thinking, yes. The locals have
gone mad folding and refolding, trying to capture that
rough solidity, but the Untan smiths are in the habit of
working iron not hot enough. It's also red iron that they're
using – the Untan Hills are rotten with it even though it's
rare everywhere else.' He paused, watching as she lit her
pipe. 'This can't be of any real interest to you, Scillara.'
    'Not really, but I do like the sound of your voice.' And
she looked up at him through the smoke, her eyes half
veiled.
    'Anyway, I can make decent copies and the word's gone
out. Eventually, some swordsmith will work things out, but
by then I'll have plenty of satisfied customers and even undercutting
me won't be too damaging.'
    'Good,' she said.
    He studied her for a moment, and then said, 'So, Cutter's
gone missing, has he?'
    'I don't know about that. Only that I've not seen him in
a few days.'
    'Are you worried?'
    She thought about it, and then thought some more.
'Barathol, that wasn't my reason for visiting you. I