A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

before him.
    Barathol turned about to give the three guards some
trouble. Enough to purchase Chaur the time he needed,
at least.
    He managed that well enough, with fists and feet, with
knees and elbows, and if not for the arrival of reinforcements,
he might even have won clear. Six more guards,
however, proved about five too many, and he was wrestled
to the ground and beaten half senseless.
    The occasional thought filtered weakly through the
miasma of pain and confusion as he was roughly carried to
the nearest gaol. He'd known a cell before. It wasn't so bad,
so long as the gaolers weren't into torture. Yes, he could
make a tour of gaol cells, country to country, continent to
continent. All he needed to do was start up a smithy without
the local Guild's approval.
    Simple enough.
    Then these fragmented notions went away, and the bliss
of unconsciousness was unbroken, for a time.
    ''Tis the grand stupidity of our kind, dear Cutter, to see all
the errors of our ways, yet find in ourselves the inability
to do anything about them. We sit, dumbfounded by
despair, and for all our ingenuity, our perceptivity, for all
our extraordinary capacity to see the truth of things, we
hunker down like snails in a flood, sucked tight to our
precious pebble, fearing the moment it is dislodged beneath
us. Until that terrible calamity, we do nothing but cling.
    'Can you even imagine a world where all crimes are
punished, where justice is truly blind and holds out no
hands happy to yield to the weight of coin and influence?
Where one takes responsibility for his or her mistakes, acts
of negligence, the deadly consequences of indifference or
laziness? Nay, instead we slip and duck, dance and dodge,
dance the dodge slip duck dance, feet ablur! Our selves
transformed into shadows that flit in chaotic discord.
We are indeed masters of evasion – no doubt originally
a survival trait, at least in the physical sense, but to have
such instincts applied to the soul is perhaps our most
egregious crime against morality. What we will do so that
we may continue living with ourselves. In this we might
assert that a survival trait can ultimately prove its own
antithesis, and in the cancelling out thereof, why, we are
left with the blank, dull, vacuous expression that Kruppe
now sees before him.'
    'Sorry, what?'
    'Dear Cutter, this is a grave day, I am saying. A day of
the misguided and the misapprehended, a day of mischance
and misery. A day in which to grieve the unanticipated,
this yawning stretch of too-late that follows fell decisions,
and the stars will plummet and if we truly possessed courage
we would ease ourselves with great temerity into that high,
tottering footwear of the gods, and in seeing what they see,
in knowing what they have come to know, we would at last
comprehend the madness of struggle, the absurdity of hope,
and off we would stumble, wailing our way into the dark
future. We would weep, my friend, we would weep.'
    'Maybe I have learned all about killing,' Cutter said in a
mumble, his glazy eyes seemingly fixed on the tankard in
his hand. 'And maybe assassins don't spare a thought as to
who deserves what, or even motivations. Coin in hand, or
love in the heart – reward has so many . . . flavours. But
is this what she really wants? Or was that some kind of
careless . . . burst, like a flask never meant to be opened
– shatters, everything pours out – staining your hands,
staining . . . everything.'
    'Cutter,' said Kruppe in a low, soft but determined tone. 'Cutter. You must listen to Kruppe, now. You must listen
– he is done with rambling, with his own bout of terrible,
grievous helplessness. Listen! Cutter, there are paths that
must not be walked. Paths where going back is impossible
– no matter how deeply you would wish it, no matter how
loud the cry in your soul. Dearest friend, you must—'
    Shaking himself, Cutter rose suddenly. 'I need a walk,'
he said. 'She couldn't have meant it. That future she paints
. . . it's a fairy tale. Of course it is. Has to be. No, and no,
and no. But . . .'
    Kruppe watched as the young man walked away, watched
as Cutter slipped through the doorway of the Phoenix Inn,
and was gone from sight.
    'Sad truth,' Kruppe said – his audience of none sighing in
agreement – 'that a tendency towards verbal excess can so
defeat the precision of meaning. That intent can be so well
disguised in majestic plethora of nuance, of rhythm both
serious and mocking, of this penchant for