A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

confused. Was the Lord of Death apologizing ?
    'But this once, I shall have my way. I shall have my way.' And he stepped forward, raising one withered hand – a
hand, the guard saw, missing two fingers. 'Your soul shines.
It is bright. Blinding. So much honour, so much love.
Compassion. In the cavern of loss you leave behind, your
children will be less than all they could have been. They
will curl round scars and the wounds will never quite heal,
and they will learn to gnaw those scars, to lick, to drink
deep. This will not do.'
    The guard convulsed, spinning down back into the
corpse on the cobbles. He felt his heart lurch, and then
pound with sudden ease, sudden, stunning vigour. He drew
a deep breath, the air wondrous, cool, sweeping away the
last vestige of pain – sweeping everything away.
    All that he had come to, in those last moments
– that scintillating clarity of vision, the breathtaking
understanding of everything – now sank beneath a familiar
cloud, settling grey and thick, where every shape was but
hinted at, where he was lost. As lost as he had been, as lost
as any and every mortal soul, no matter how blustery its
claims to certainty, to faith. And yet . . . and yet it was a
warm cloud , shot through with precious things: his love for
his wife, his children; his wonder at their lives, the changes
that came to them day by day.
    He found he was weeping, even as he climbed to his
feet. He turned to look at the Lord of Death, in truth
not expecting to see the apparition which must surely
come only to the dead and dying, and then cried out in
shock.
    Hood looked solid, appallingly real, walking down the
street, eastward, and it was as if the webs binding them
then stretched, the fabric snapping, wisping off into the
night, and with each stride that took the god farther away
the guard felt his life returning, an awareness of breathtaking
solidity – in this precise moment, and in every one that
would follow.
    He turned away – and even that was easy – and settled
his gaze upon the door, which hung open, and all that
waited within was dark and rotted through with horror
and madness.
    The guard did not hesitate.
    With this modest and humble man, with this courageous,
honourable man, Hood saw true. And, for just this once,
the Lord of Death had permitted himself to care.
    Mark this, a most significant moment, a most poignant
gesture.
    Thordy heard boots on the warped floorboards of the back
porch and she turned to see a city guardsman emerge from
her house, out through the back door, holding a lantern in
one hand.
    'He is dead,' she said. 'The one you have come here for.
Gaz, my husband.' She pointed with a blood-slick knife.
'Here.'
    The guard walked closer, sliding back one of the shutters
on the lantern and directing the shaft of light until it found
and held on the motionless body lying on the stones.
    'He confessed,' she said. 'So I killed him, with my own
hand. I killed this . . . monster.'
    The guardsman crouched down to study the corpse. He
reached out and gently slipped one finger under the cuff of
one of Gaz's sleeves, and raised up the battered, fingerless
hand. He sighed then, and slowly nodded.
    As he lowered the arm again and began straightening,
Thordy said, 'I understand there is a reward.'
    He looked across at her.
    She wasn't sure what she saw in his expression. He might
be horrified, or amused, or cynically drained of anything
like surprise. But it didn't matter much. She just wanted
the money. She needed the money.
    Becoming, for a time, the mason of the Lord of the Slain
entailed a fearsome responsibility. But she hadn't seen a
single bent copper for her troubles.
    The guardsman nodded. 'There is.'
    She held up the kitchen knife.
    He might have flinched a bit, maybe, but what mattered
now would be Thordy seeing him nod a second time.
    And after a moment, he did just that.
    A god walked the streets of Darujhistan. In itself, never
a good thing. Only fools would happily, eagerly invite
such a visitation, and such enthusiasm usually proved
shortlived. That this particular god was the harvester of
souls meant that, well, not only was his manifestation unwelcome,
but his gift amounted to unmitigated slaughter,
rippling out to overwhelm thousands of inhabitants in
tenement blocks, in the clustered hovels of the Gadrobi
District, in the Lakefront District – but no, such things
cannot be glanced over with a mere shudder.
    Plunge then, courage collected, into this welter of lives.
Open