A lone owl, already engorged on lizards, was the sole witness to the sudden wave of writhing deaths on the rumpled earth below, as from the mouths of dying lizards, grotesque shapes emerged. The extinction of the two-headed beetles proved not as imminent a threat as it had seemed only moments earlier.
But owls, being among the least clever of birds, are unmindful of such lessons. This one watched, wide-eyed and empty. Until it felt a strange stirring in its own gut, sufficient to distract it from the wretched dying below, that array of pale lizard bellies blotting the dark ground. It did not think of the lizards it had eaten. It did not take note, even in retrospect, of the sluggish efforts some of them had displayed at escaping its swooping talons.
The owl was in for a long night of excruciating regurgitation. Dimwitted as it was, from that moment on and for ever more, lizards were off its menu.
The world delivers its lessons in manners subtle or, if required, cruel and blunt, so that even the thickest of subjects will comprehend. Failing that, they die. For the smart ones, of course, incomprehension is inexcusable.
A night of heat in Letheras. Stone dripped sweat. The canals looked viscid, motionless, the surface strangely flattened and opaque with swirls of dust and rubbish. Insects danced over the water as if seeking their reflections, but this smooth patina yielded nothing, swallowing up the span of stars, devouring the lurid torchlight of the street patrols, and so the winged insects spun without surcease, as though crazed with fever.
Beneath a bridge, on stepped banks buried in darkness, crickets crawled like droplets of oozing oil, glistening, turgid, haplessly crunched underfoot as two figures drew together and huddled in the gloom.
‘He never would’ve went in,’ one of them said in a hoarse whisper. ‘The water reeks, and look, no ripples, no nothing. He’s scarpered to the other side, somewhere in the night market where he can get lost fast.’
‘Lost,’ grunted the other, a woman, lifting up the dagger in one gloved hand and examining the edge, ‘that’s a good one. Like he could get lost. Like any of us could.’
‘You think he can’t wrap himself up like we done?’
‘No time for that. He bolted. He’s on the run. Panicked.’
‘Looked like panic, didn’t it,’ agreed her companion, and then he shook his head. ‘Never seen anything so… disappointing.’
The woman sheathed her dagger. ‘They’ll flush him out. He’ll come back across, and we jump him then.’
‘Stupid, thinking he could get away.’
After a few moments, Smiles unsheathed her dagger again, peered at the edge.
Beside her, Throatslitter rolled his eyes but said nothing.
Bottle straightened, gestured for Koryk to join him, then watched, amused, as the broad-shouldered half-blood Seti shoved and elbowed his way through the crowd, leaving a wake of dark glares and bitten-off curses-there was little risk of trouble, of course, since clearly the damned foreigner was looking for just that, and instincts being what they were the world over, no one was of a mind to take on Koryk.
Too bad. It’d be a thing worth seeing, Bottle smiled to himself, if a mob of irate Letherii shoppers descended on the glowering barbarian, pummelling him into the ground with loaves of crusty bread and bulbous root-crops.
Then again, such distractions wouldn’t do. Not right now, anyway, when they’d found their quarry, with Tarr and Corabb moving round back of the tavern to cover the alley bolt-hole, and Maybe and Masan Gilani up on the roof by now, in case their target got imaginative.
Koryk arrived, in a sweat, scowling and grinding his teeth. ‘Miserable turds,’ he muttered. ‘What’s with this lust to spend coin? Markets are stupid.’
‘Keeps people happy,’ said Bottle, ‘or if not exactly happy, then… temporarily satiated. Which serves the same function.’
‘Which is?’
‘Keeping them outa trouble. The disruptive kind of trouble,’ he added, seeing Koryk’s knotted forehead, his darting eyes. ‘The kind that comes when a population finds the time to think, really think, I mean-when they start realizing what a piece of shit all this is.’
‘Sounds like one of the King’s speeches-they put me to sleep, like you’re doing right now, Bottle. Where exactly is he, then?’
‘One of my rats is crouching at the foot of a banister-’
‘Which one?’
‘Baby Smiles-she’s the best for this. Anyway, she’s got her beady eyes fixed right on him. He’s at a table in the corner, just under a shuttered window-but it doesn’t look like the kind anyone could actually climb through. Basically,’ Bottle concluded, ‘he’s cornered.’
Koryk’s frown deepened. ‘That’s too easy, isn’t it?’
Bottle scratched at his stubble, shifted from one foot to the other, and then sighed. ‘Aye, way too easy.’
‘Here come Balm and Gesler.’
The two sergeants arrived.
‘What are we doing here?’ Balm asked, eyes wide.
Gesler said, ‘He’s in his funk again, never mind him. We got us a fight ahead, I figure. A nasty one. He won’t go down easy.’
‘What’s the plan, then?’ Koryk asked.
‘Stormy leads the way. He’s going to spring him loose-if he heads for the back door your friends will take him down. Same for if he goes up. My guess is, he’ll dodge round Stormy and try for the front door-that’s what I’d do. Stormy’s huge and mean but he ain’t fast. And that’s what we’re counting on. The four of us will be waiting for the bastard-we’ll take him down. With Stormy coming up behind him and holding the doorway to stop any retreat.’
‘He’s looking nervous and in a bad mood in there,’ Bottle said. ‘Warn Stormy-he just might stand and fight.’
‘We hear a scrap start and in we go,’ said Gesler.
The gold-hued sergeant went off to brief Stormy. Balm stood beside Koryk, looking bewildered.
People were rolling in and out of the tavern like it was a fast brothel. Stormy then appeared, looming over almost everyone else, his visage red and his beard even redder, as if his entire face was aflame. He tugged loose the peace-strap on his sword as he lumbered towards the door. Seeing him, people scattered aside. He met one more customer at the threshold and took hold of the man by the front of his shirt, then threw him into his own wake-the poor fool yelped as he landed face first on the cobbles not three paces from the three Malazans, where he writhed, hands up at his bloodied chin.
As Stormy plunged into the tavern, Gesler arrived, stepping over the fallen citizen, and hissed, ‘To the door now, all of us, quick!’
Bottle let Koryk take the lead, and held back even for Balm who almost started walking the other way-before Gesler yanked the man back. If there was going to be a scrap, Bottle preferred to leave most of the nasty work to the others. He’d done his job, after all, in tracking and finding the quarry.
Chaos erupted in the tavern, furniture crashing, startled shouts and terrified screams. Then something went thump! And all at once white smoke was billowing out from the doorway. More splintering furniture, a heavy crash, and then a figure sprinted out from the smoke.
An elbow cracked hard on Koryk’s jaw and he toppled like a tree.
Gesler ducked a lashing fist, just in time to meet an upthrust knee, and the sound the impact made was of two coconuts in collision. The quarry’s leg spun round, taking the rest of the man with it in a wild pirouette, whilst Gesler rocked back to promptly sit down on the cobbles, his eyes glazed.
Shrieking, Balm back-stepped, reaching for his short sword-and Bottle leapt forward to pin the sergeant’s arm-as the target lunged past them all, running hard but unevenly for the bridge.
Stormy stumbled out from the tavern, his nose streaming blood. ‘You didn’t get him? You damned idiots-look at my face! I took this for nothing!’
Other customers pushed out round the huge Falari, eyes streaming and coughing.