‘I have survived this long, Korbolo Dom, because of my talent in anticipating what my enemies would attempt. Soldiers say no plan of battle survives contact with the enemy. But the game of subterfuge is the very opposite. Plans derive from persistent contact with the enemy. Thus, you proceed on your terms, and I will proceed on mine.’
‘As you like. Now, leave me. It is late, and I would sleep.’
The High Mage stopped pacing to fix the Napan with an unreadable look for a moment, then he swung about and left the chamber.
Korbolo listened until he heard the flap in the outer room swish open, then close. He listened on, and was satisfied to hear the draws being tightened by one of his bodyguards positioned just outside the entrance.
Draining the last of the wine-damned expensive but tastes no different from the dockside swill I choked down on the Isle-he flung the goblet down and strode to the mass of cushions at the far end. Beds in every room. I wonder what that signifies of my personality? Then again, those other ones are not for sleeping in, are they. No, only this one…
In the front room on the other side of the silk partitions, the woman lay unmoving on her own heap of cushions, where Korbolo had left her some time back.
Continuous, overwhelming imbibing of durhang-like any other intoxicant-created a process of diminishment of its effects. Until, while a layer of insensate numbness still persisted-a useful barrier against such things as having her head yanked up by her hair then dropped back down-cool awareness remained beneath it.
Advantageous, as well, the rituals her master had inflicted upon her, rituals that eliminated the weakness of pleasure. There could be no loss of control, not any more, for her mind no longer warred with feelings, for of feelings she had none. An easy surrender, she had found to her delight, for there had been little in her life before her initiation to seed warm remembrances of childhood.
And so she was well suited to this task. Uttering the right sounds of pleasure to disguise her indifference to all of Korbolo Dom’s peculiar preferences. And lying motionless, unmindful even of a throat slowly filling with phlegm from the near-liquid smoke of the durhang, for as much time as was needed, before the subtle, tasteless drops she had added to his wine took effect.
When she could hear his deep, slow breaths that told her he would not easily awaken, she rolled onto her side in a fit of coughing. When it had passed she paused again, just to be certain that the Napan still slept. Satisfied, she clambered to her feet and tottered to the tent flap.
Fumbled with the ties until a gruff voice from just beyond said, ‘Scillara, off to the latrines again?’
And another voice softly laughed and added, ‘It’s a wonder there’s any meat on her at all, the way she heaves night after night.’
‘It’s the rust-leaf and the bitter berries crushed in with the durhang,’ the other replied, as his hands took over the task of loosening the draws, and the flap was drawn aside.
Scillara staggered out, bumping her way between the two guards.
The hands that reached out to steady invariably found unusual places to rest, and squeeze.
She would have enjoyed that, once, in a slightly offended, irritated way that none the less tickled with pleasure. But now, it was nothing but clumsy lust to be endured.
As everything else in this world had to be endured, while she waited for her final reward, the blissful new world beyond death. ‘The left hand of life, holding all misery. And the right hand-yes, the one with the glittering blade, dear-the right hand of death, holding, as it does, the reward you would offer to others, and then take upon yourself. At your chosen moment.’
Her master’s words made sense, as they always did. Balance was the heart of all things, after all. And life-that time of pain and grief-was but one side of that balance. ‘The harder, the more miserable, the more terrible and disgusting your life, child, the greater the reward beyond death…’ Thus, as she knew, it all made sense.
No need, then, to struggle. Acceptance was the only path to walk.
Barring this one. She weaved her way between the tent rows. The Dogslayers’ encampment was precise and ordered, in the Malazan fashion-a detail she knew well from her days as a child when her mother followed the train of the Ashok Regiment. Before that regiment went overseas, leaving hundreds destitute-lovers and their get, servants and scroungers. Her mother had then sickened and died. She had a father, of course, one of the soldiers. Who might be alive, or dead, but either way was thoroughly indifferent to the child he had left behind.
Balance.
Difficult with a head full of durhang, even inured to it as she had become.
But there were the latrines, down this slope, and onto the wooden walkways spanning the trench. Smudge-pots smouldering to cover some of the stench and keep the flies away. Buckets beside the holed seats, filled with hand-sized bundles of grass. Larger open-topped casks with water, positioned out over the trench and fixed to the walkways.
Hands held out to either side, Scillara navigated carefully across one of the narrow bridges.
Long-term camp trenches such as this one held more than just human wastes. Garbage was regularly dumped in by soldiers and others-or what had passed for garbage with them. But for the orphans of this squalid city, some of that refuse was seen as treasure. To be cleaned, repaired and sold.
And so, figures swarmed in the darkness below.
She reached the other side, her bare feet sinking into the mud made by splashes that had reached the ridge. ‘I remember the dark!’ she sang out, voice throaty from years of durhang smoke.
There was a scrabbling from the trench, and a small girl, sheathed in excrement, clambered up to her, teeth flashing white. ‘Me too, sister.’
Scillara drew out a small bag of coins from her sash. Their master frowned on such gestures, and indeed, they ran contrary to his teachings, but she could not help herself. She pressed it into the girl’s hands. ‘For food.’
‘He will be displeased, sister-’
‘And of the two of us, I alone will suffer a moment of torment. So be it. Now, I have words from this night, to be brought to our master-’
He had always walked with a pitching gait, low to the ground, sufficient to have earned him a host of unflattering nicknames. Toad, crab-legs… the names children gave each other, some of which were known to persist into adulthood. But Heboric had worked hard as a youth-long before his first, fateful visit into a temple of Fener-to excoriate those appellations, to eventually earn Light Touch, in response to certain skills he had acquired on the streets. But now, his sidling walk had undergone a transformation, yielding to an instinctive desire to drop even lower, even to using his hands to propel him along.
Had he considered it, he would have concluded, sourly, that he moved less like a cat than an ape, such as those found in the jungles of Dal Hon. Unpleasant to the eye, perhaps, but efficacious none the less.
He slowed on the trail as he approached Toblakai’s glade. A faint smell of smoke, the dull gleam of a fast-cooling fire, the murmur of voices.
Heboric slipped to one side, among the stone trees, then sank down within sight of the two seated at the hearth.
Too long his self-obsession, the seemingly endless efforts to create his temple-that now struck him as a strange kind of neurotic nesting; he had ignored the world beyond the walls for too long. There had been, he realized with a surge of bitter anger, a host of subtle alterations to his personality, concomitant with the physical gifts he had received.