Picker just shook her head in a slow heavy dismissal. She rubbed her arm where scars marked a ring round the flesh, eyed the distance once more. Then she pushed him aside, muttering, ‘Fuckin’ moron. Can’t believe I’m beginnin’ to miss Antsy.’
Spindle was left alone in the chill air. He turned back to the view across the hills of the estate district, snorted to himself.
‘What did it look like?’ someone asked from behind.
He spun, jumping. It was Duiker, the old historian. He nodded a greeting. ‘It was pale. Kinda see-through. Big. Like the moon. It looked like the moon.’
The historian frowned thoughtfully behind his thick grey beard. His gaze fixed on Spindle. ‘You lot been gone days. What happened?’
‘I’ll tell you over some hot mulled wine.’
‘We don’t have any.’
Spindle cast another pinched glance over the hilltops. ‘Then I’m gonna go get some.’
*
Torvald Nom awoke to a cat’s claws sinking into his chest. He jerked upright with a gasp, heard something ricochet off the shelves under the open window, then sat tensed, limbs trembling with startled awareness.
‘What is it?’ Tiserra murmured, still mostly asleep.
‘For a moment I thought you’d thrown yourself upon me and sunk your nails into my chest in an ecstasy of passion, dear. But it was the cat.’
‘That’s nice,’ she murmured into her pillow.
Torvald sighed, peered about the shadowed room. ‘Well. I’m awake now. Might as well head out.’
‘Hmph.’
‘Don’t trouble yourself. Don’t bustle about with tea and bread and such for your working man.’
‘Hmm?’
‘Never mind.’ Torvald got up.
Passing through the streets on his walk to the estate district it struck him that the city was very quiet this morning. He felt that sense of suspended expectation, the atmosphere that some described as ‘holding one’s breath’. And he had had the strangest dreams just before awakening so very painfully. He did hear one noise that was very out of place indeed. He recognized it only because of his travels so far from this city of his birth. For it was a sound utterly unfamiliar to Darujhistan: the ordered stamp of marching soldiery. He hurried to where the marching echoed, the Second Tier Way.
He joined a press of Darujhistani citizenry turned out to watch this once in a lifetime sight. The tall cross-piece hanging banner preceding the column declared their allegiance: the white sceptre on a field of black, the sceptre much like an orb clasped in an upright three-toed predatory bird’s foot. The naked clawed grip of the Malazan Empire.
Elite heavy infantry. Campaign stripes marked them as veterans of every engagement on these, to them, foreign Genabackan lands. They carried broad rectangular shields blackened and edged in burgundy. Shortswords swung belted high at their sides. Crossbows and javelins rode strapped to their backs. The Malazan delegation honour guard, some two hundred strong. Withdrawing?
‘What’s going on?’ he asked one fellow in the crowd.
‘The Empire’s invading!’ the man bellowed, half drunk.
Torvald grimaced at his bad luck. ‘They’re headed in the wrong direction,’ he pointed out.
‘Ha ha!’ the drunk yelled. ‘We beat them! Good riddance, y’damned foreigners!’
Torvald walked away just in case the appropriately feared Malazan mailed fist should make itself felt. The rear of the column came marching up. Mounted officers rode just before a train of wagons and carts and strings of spare mounts. Torvald noted that he did not see the bald and rather fat figure of the ambassador among the officers. He hurried on to bring the news to his employer, the head of his family house and thus councilwoman, Lady Varada.
Madrun let him into the compound. ‘Captain,’ the man said, bowing. Torvald always listened carefully to this welcome but so far he’d yet to detect even the slightest tinge of insincerity. More than ever he regretted the absence of his old partners, Scorch and Leff, who used to guard these doors.
At least then he wasn’t the obvious weak link in the estate’s personnel.
The castellan Studlock met him at the open front doors of the house. ‘I have orders from the mistress,’ he lisped as Torvald hurried past.
‘Yes?’
‘The mistress is … ill,’ Studlock murmured. ‘Yes. That is it. Quite ill.’
Torvald sniffed the air. ‘What is that I smell? Is something burning?’
‘Just my preparations. The singeing of rare leaves. An infusion gone wrong.’ The strange man crept up close; the tatters and strips of gauzy cloth he wrapped himself in dragged long behind. Torvald flinched away. ‘You appear tired, malnourished,’ Studlock went on. ‘Are you having trouble in your sexual performance? Perhaps a mineral poultice to rebalance your animus?’
‘Rebalance my what? Ah, no. Thank you.’
‘A pity.’
‘Ill, you say? Where is she?’
‘The mistress is … indisposed.’
‘Indisposed …’
‘Yes. Quite. She did, however, leave detailed instructions regarding you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. None other.’
‘I see. And these instructions?’
The man edged closer, his watery green eyes narrowed upon Torvald. ‘There is a worrisome choleric tinge to you. Have you evacuated lately?’
‘Evacu what?’
‘Evacuated. Discharged your bodily wastes.’
‘Ah! Yes.’
‘And your bowels? How are they?’
‘Sacrosanct, thank you.’
‘Regretful. How am I to continue my practice?’
Torvald was surprised. ‘You’re a physicker?’
The man blinked his confusion. ‘No.’
Torvald regarded the unnerving hunched figure for a time, cleared his throat. ‘So … these instructions?’
‘Yes. You are now head of House Nom. Congratulations.’ The castellan shuffled away.
Torvald stood motionless in the receiving hall for a long time. Then he stormed up the stairs for his employer’s office. He was in the process of ransacking her desk when he looked up to see the gauzy apparition of Studlock before him once again.
‘There must be some mistake.’
‘None, I assure you.’
‘What of Bellam?’
‘Young Bellam remains an eventual heir.’
‘But … it can’t be official. There has to be paperwork. Certificates and such.’
The castellan drew a scroll from within the folds of cloth at his chest. ‘I have them here. Sealed and authenticated.’
Torvald slumped down into the chair. That had been his last hope. He straightened, his brows rising. ‘Aha! I appoint another. Someone else. Anyone else.’
‘Rallick Nom will support m’lady’s choice. So then will the majority of the House.’
Torvald slumped once more. Damn him! He would, too — if only to avoid being appointed himself!
He set his elbows on the desk, cupped his head in his hands. ‘But this is terrible … Tiserra will kill me! One day I leave for work and when I come home it’s hello dear your husband has a seat on the Council! Rather a shock.’
The castellan cocked his head. ‘Will she not be pleased?’
‘You don’t know her.’
‘You are correct. I do not. Are introductions in order? Some tea? My special brew …’
Torvald threw up his hands. ‘No! No, no, thank you. That’s quite all right.’
Studlock’s shoulders fell. ‘That is regrettable. Who will I test it on?’
Torvald frowned. ‘So, now what? What do I do?’
‘You should register your appointment with the clerk of the Council, I imagine.’
‘Ah. Thank you. How very … practical.’
The castellan bowed. ‘My only wish is to serve.’
Torvald had never been to Majesty Hill; indeed, had never dreamed he’d have cause. The Wardens at the lowest gate stopped him to inspect his paperwork. Before him rose the stairs that switched back and forth up the flank of the hill, lined all the way by monuments, family shrines, plaques commemorating victories — real and invented — and other grandiose pronouncements meant to impress the reader with the virtue and generosity of their sponsors. All no more than base self-aggrandizement, Torvald reflected, once you boiled it all down.