A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

wear alla this!'
    Scillara glanced over. 'Really, Antsy? Didn't Blend say
that about a bell ago?'
    'What? Who? Her? What does she know?'
    To that entirely unselfconscious display of irony, Blend
could only raise her brows when she caught Scillara's eye.
    Scillara smiled in response, then drew again on her
pipe.
    Blend glanced over at the bard, and then said to Antsy,
'We're safe out there now, anyway.'
    Eyes bulging, Antsy stared at her in disbelief. 'You'd take
the word of some damned minstrel? What does he know?'
    'You keep asking what does anyone know, when it's
obvious that whatever they know you're not listening to
anyway.'
    'What?'
    'Sorry, that so confused me I doubt I could repeat it. The
contract's cancelled – Fisher said so.'
    Antsy wagged his head from side to side. 'Fisher said so!'
He jabbed a finger at the bard. 'He's not Fisher – not the
famous one, anyway. He's just stolen the name! If he was
famous he wouldn't be just sittin' there, would he? Famous
people don't do that.'
    'Really?' the bard who called himself Fisher asked. 'What
are we supposed to do, Antsy?'
    'Famous people do famous things, alla time. Everybody
knows that!'
    'The contract has been bought out,' the bard said. 'But if
you want to dress as if preparing for a single-handed assault
on Moon's Spawn, you go right ahead.'
    'Rope! Do I need rope? Let me think!' And to aid in this
process Antsy began pacing, moustache twitching.
    Blend wanted to pull a boot off and push her foot between
Scillara's thighs. No, she wanted to crawl right in
there. Staking a claim. With a hiss of frustration she stood,
hesitated, and then went to sit down at the bard's table.
She fixed him with an intense stare, to which he responded
with a raised brow.
    'There're more songs supposedly composed by Fisher
than anyone else I've ever heard of.'
    The man shrugged.
    'Some of them are a hundred years old.'
    'I was a prodigy.'
    'Were you now?'
    Duiker spoke. 'The poet is immortal.'
    She turned to face him. 'Is that some kind of general,
ideological statement, Historian? Or are you talking about
the man sharing this table with you?'
    Antsy cursed suddenly and then said, 'I don't need any
rope! Who put that into my head? Let's get going – I'm
taking this shortsword and a sharper and anybody gets too
close to me or looks suspicious they can eat the sharper for
breakfast!'
    'We'll stay here,' Duiker said when Blend hesitated. 'The
bard and me. I'll look in on Picker.'
    'All right. Thanks.'
    Antsy, Blend and Scillara set out.
    The journey took them from the Estates District and
into Daru District, along the Second Tier Wall. The city
had fully awakened now, and in places the crowds were
thick with the endless machinery of living. Voices and
smells and needs and wants, hungers and thirsts, laughter
and irritation, misery and joy, and the sunlight fell on
everything it could reach and shadows retreated wherever
they could.
    Temporary barriers blocked the three foreigners here
and there – a cart jammed sideways in a narrow street,
a carthorse dropped dead with its legs sticking up, half a
family pinned under the upended cart. A swarm of people
round a small collapsed building, stealing every dislodged
brick and shard of lumber, and if anyone had been trapped
in it, alas, no one was looking for them.
    Scillara walked like a woman bred to be admired. And
oh, yes, people noticed. In other circumstances, Blend –
being another woman – might have resented that, but then
she'd made a career out of not being noticed; and besides,
she counted herself among the admirers.
    'Friendly people, these Darujhistanii,' said Scillara as
they finally swung south from the wall, heading for the
southwest corner of the district.
    'They're smiling,' said Blend, 'because they want a roll
with you. And clearly you haven't noticed the wives and
such, all looking as if they swallowed something sour.'
    'Maybe they did.'
    'Oh they did, all right. The truth that men are men,
that's what they've swallowed.'
    Antsy snorted. 'What else would men be but men? Your
problem, Blend, is you see too much, even when it's not
there.'
    'Oh, and what have you been noticing, Antsy?'
    'Suspicious people, that's what.'
    'What suspicious people?'
    'The ones who keep staring at us, of course.'
    'That's because of Scillara – what do you think we've just
been talking about?'
    'Maybe they are, maybe they ain't. Maybe they're
assassins, lookin' to jump us.'
    'That old man back there who got his ear boxed by