«Hairlock's our snake in the hole,» Quick Ben said with a sharp nod.
«It'll work, Whiskeyjack. I know what I'm doing on this one.»
«We do it the way the Emperor would have,» Kalam added. «We turn the game. We do our own house-cleaning.»
Whiskeyjack raised a hand. «All right. Now be quiet. You're both sounding too damn rehearsed.» He paused. «It's a theory. A complicated one. Who's in the know and who isn't?» He scowled at Quick Ben's expression. «Right, that's Hairlock's task. But what happens when you come face to face with someone big, powerful and mean?»
«Like Tayschrenn?» The Wizard grinned.
«Right. I'm sure you've got an answer. Let's see if I can work it out myself. You look for someone even nastier. You make a deal and you set things up, and if we're quick enough we'll come out smelling of roses. Am I close, Wizard?»
Kalam snorted his amusement.
Quick Ben looked away. «Back in the Seven Cities, before the Empire showed up-»
«Back in the Seven Cities is back in the Seven Cities,» Whiskeyjack said. «Hell, I led the company chasing you across the desert, remember? I know how you work, Quick. And I know you're damn good at this. But I also recall that you were the only one of your cabal to come out alive back then. And this time?»
The wizard seemed hurt by Whiskeyjack's words. His lips thinned to a straight line.
The sergeant sighed. «All right. We go with it. Start things rolling. And pull that sorceress all the way in. We'll need her if Hairlock breaks his chains.»
«And Sorry?» Kalam asked.
Whiskeyjack hesitated. He knew the question behind that question.
Quick Ben was the squad's brains, but Kalam was their killer. Both made him uneasy with their single-minded devotion to their respective talents.
«Leave her alone,» he said at last. «For now.»
Kalam and Quick Ben sighed, sharing a grin behind their sergeant's back.
«Just don't get cocky,» Whiskeyjack said drily.
The grins faded.
The sergeant's gaze returned to the wagons entering the city. Two riders approached. «All right,» he said. «Mount up. Here comes our reception committee.» The riders were from his squad, Fiddler and Sorry.
«You think the new captain's arrived?» Kalam asked, as he climbed into his saddle. His roan mare turned her head and snapped at him. He growled in return. A moment later the two long-time companions settled down into their mutual mistrust.
Whiskeyjack looked on, amused. «Probably. Let's head down to them. Anybody up on the wall watching us might be getting antsy.» Then his humour fell away. They had, indeed, just turned the game. And the timing couldn't have been worse. He knew the full extent of their next mission, and in that he knew more than either Quick Ben or Kalam.
There was no point in complicating things even further, though. They'll find out soon enough.
Tattersail stood half a dozen feet behind High Mage Tayschrenn. The Malazan banners snapped in the wind, the spars creaking above the smoke-stained turret, but here in the shelter of the wall the air was calm.
On the western horizon across from her rose the Moranth Mountains, reaching a mangled arm northward to Genabaris. As the range swept southward it joined the Tahlyn in a jagged line stretching a thousand leagues into the east. Off to her right lay the flat yellow-grassed Rhivi Plain.
Tayschrenn leaned on a merlon looking down on the wagons rolling into the city. From below rose the groans of oxen and shouting soldiers.
The High Mage hadn't moved or said a word in some minutes. Off to his left waited a small wood table, its surface scarred and pitted and crowded with runes cut deep into the oak. Peculiar dark stains blotted the surface here and there.
Knots of tension throbbed in Tattersail's shoulders. Meeting Bellurdan had shaken her, and she didn't feel up to what was to come.
«Bridgeburners,» the High Mage muttered.
Startled, the sorceress frowned, then stepped up to stand beside Tayschrenn. Descending from a hill off to the right, a hill she knew intimately, rode a party of soldiers. Even from this distance she recognized four of them: Quick Ben, Kalam, Whiskeyjack and that recruit, Sorry.
The fifth rider was a short, wiry man, who had sapper written all over him. «Oh?» she said, feigning lack of interest.
«Whiskeyjack's squad,» Tayschrenn said. He turned his full gaze on the sorceress. «The same squad you spoke with immediately following the Moon's retreat.» The High Mage smiled, then clapped Tattersail's shoulder. «Come. I require a Reading. Let's begin.» He walked over to stand before the table. «Oponn's strands are twisting a peculiar maze, the influence snares me again and again.» He turned his back to the wall and sat down on a crenel, then looked up. «Tattersail,» he said soberly, «in matters of Empire, I am the servant of the Empress.»
Tattersail. recalled their argument at the debriefing. Nothing had been resolved. «Perhaps I should take my complaints to her, then.»
Tayschrenn's brows rose. «I take that as sarcastic.»
«You do?»
The High Mage said, stiffly, «I do, and be thankful for it, woman.»
Tattersail pulled out her Deck and held it against her stomach, running her fingers over the top card. Cool, a feeling of great weight and darkness. She set the Deck in the table's centre, then lowered her bulk slowly into a kneeling position. Her gaze locked with Tayschrenn's. «Shall we begin?»
«Tell me of the Spinning Coin.»
Tattersail's breath caught. She could not move.
«First card,» Tayschrenn commanded.
With an effort she expelled the air from her lungs in a hissing sigh.
Damn him, she thought. An echo of laughter sounded in her head, and she realized that someone, something, had opened the way. An Ascendant was reaching through her, its presence cool and amused, almost fickle. Her eyes shut of their own accord, and she reached for the first card. She flipped it almost haphazardly to her right. Eyes still closed, she felt herself smile. «An unaligned card: Orb. Judgement and true sight.» The second card she tossed to the left side of the field. «Virgin, High House Death. Here scarred and blindfolded, with blood on her hands.» Faintly, as if from a great distance away, came the sound of horses, thundering closer, now beneath her, as if the earth had swallowed them.
Then the sound rose anew, behind her. She felt herself nod. The recruit.
«The blood on her hands is not her own, the crime not its own. The cloth against her eyes is wet.»
She slapped the third card immediately in front of her. Behind her lids an image formed. It left her cold and frightened. «Assassin, High House Shadow. The Rope, a count of knots unending, the Patron of Assassins is in this game.» For a moment she thought she heard the howling of Uoun&. Skit lai(I aliana on tiat fourtki caTcX and, felt a tlafikk of recognition ripple through her, followed by something like false modesty.
«Oponn, Lady's head high, Lord's low.» She picked it up and set it down opposite Tayschrenn.
There's your block. She smiled to herself. Chew on it awhile, High Mage. The Lady regards you with disgust. Tattersail knew he must be burning with questions, but he wouldn't speak them. There was too much power behind this opening. Had he sensed the Ascendant's presence? She wondered if it scared him.
«The Coin,» she heard herself say, «spins on, High Mage. Its face looks upon many, a handful perhaps, and here is their card.» She set the fifth card to Oponn's right, edges touching. «Another unaligned card: Crown. Wisdom and justice, as it is upright. Around it a fair city's walls, lit by flames of gas, blue and green.» She pondered. «Yes, Darujhistan, the last Free City.»
The way closed, the Ascendant withdrawing as if bored. Tattersail's eyes opened, an unexpected warmth comforting her weary body. «Into Oponn's maze,» she said, amused at the truth hidden in that statement. «I can take it no further, High Mage.»