The Seventh led though his pace was glacially slow, almost reluctant. A permanent grimace of pain seemed fixed on his face. He’d muttered that no one seemed to be about.
Yet she’d seen more people than she’d ever seen since her refugee days. And these people certainly weren’t ragged drifters. Many were finely dressed. Some were even plump. Imagine, having so much to eat that you could get fat! Now that’s damned rich. She’d be that rich one day. She could taste the duck fat already. Soon it’d be her who was fat!
Then abruptly the Seventh raised a hand for a halt. He regarded the darkening sky, the glow Yusek knew was the fabled gas lighting of Darujhistan. That glow struck her as far less than the green blaze of the Scimitar above and she thought it probably overrated. Damned typical! The Seventh turned to Sall and Lo. ‘You Seguleh have stirred up a hornets’ nest and now they’re come to bite everyone. I don’t know what I can do.’
‘Will you challenge?’ Sall asked.
The man flinched, anguished. ‘No! It’s not my place … yet something’s wrong. Something’s very wrong.’
‘But … you will help, yes?’ Sall asked. It was the closest the youth had come to a plea that Yusek had heard.
The Seventh’s mouth worked with suppressed emotion as he looked away. Finally, he ground out: ‘My record isn’t that encouraging.’ But he did start walking once more, his head lowered.
Spindle was dead asleep when he heard his ma’s voice calling him down in its old familiar cadence: Get your lazy arse out of bed! He fell to the floor, arms and legs flailing in panic. Then he froze dead still. Something had woken him. Something that raised the hair on his head and on his shirt. A sound.
The sound of bottles clanking together.
He flew to the door, rebounded from the jamb, then threw it open and tumbled out into the hall to pound to the common room, yelling: ‘It’s poison! Don’t drink it!’
Blend spat out a great mouthful of drink over the bar and down her front. ‘Gaah! What? Poisoned?’
Spindle hurried over to yank the bottle from her hand and sniff it.
‘Fisher just brought it!’ she complained, wiping her shirt. ‘Kanese red.’
Spindle nodded to the bard, then examined the bottle. ‘Red? Really? Sorry.’ He handed back the bottle. ‘Sorry.’
Blend gave him the withering glare she reserved for hopeless idiots. The one he always got. He gestured to the kitchens. ‘Thought you was using those other bottles, from the back. They’re not wine.’
‘So they’re wine bottles without wine in them.’
‘That’s right.’
‘Paid extra for that, did you?’
‘No! I mean, shut the Abyss up.’ He faced Fisher and poured himself a glass of red. ‘So, what’s the news?’
The bard nodded. He was a tall man, rangy, yet from what Spindle had seen surprisingly strong. Even leaning on a high stool he was still taller than Spindle. Something in the mage resented that. ‘I was just telling Blend,’ the bard said. ‘Whispers from the court. The Seguleh have been defeated out west. The Moranth. And maybe … the Malazans.’
Spindle and Blend shared a look. Damned right. She raised her glass and they drank.
‘Word is they may be expecting an attack.’
Blend waved a hand. ‘Ridiculous. No one has an army big enough to enter Darujhistan, let alone pacify it.’
Fisher lifted his shoulders, conceding he point. ‘That we know of … In any case, the Seguleh have withdrawn to Majesty Hill. Looks like they don’t plan on contesting the city.’
‘Why should they when the mob will do it for them? No, Aragan doesn’t have nearly enough troops. And if the Moranth enter, the entire city will rise against them. Always been bad blood here between them, so I heard.’
Fisher held up his hands. ‘Just reporting what I heard.’ He lifted his glass to Blend. ‘So, what do you think’s happening, then?’
The big woman — big now that she was putting on weight — swirled the wine in her glass, peering down at it. Her hair held more than a touch of grey amid the brown curls and dark circles bruised her eyes. We’re none of us gettin’ enough sleep these days, Spindle reflected. Watchin’ the streets. Too many days waitin’ on edge. Waitin’ for the hammer to fall. Like being back on campaign, it is. Only we’re damned older.
‘So they got their noses bloodied,’ she said, speculating. ‘Now they’ll just sit tight an’ consolidate here in the city. Firm up their grip an’ wait …’ She cocked her head, eyeing Fisher. ‘How many Seguleh do you think there are on that isle of theirs anyway?’
‘Well, there must be several … thousand … No. You don’t think so, do you?’
She shrugged at the uncertainty of it. ‘Why not? These boys and girls we’re looking at here could just be the tip of the spear. A whole army of them could be on the way. A whole people.’
Spindle felt sick to his stomach. Togg deliver them! An entire army of these people? That was too much to imagine. ‘I need to eat somethin’. I feel faint.’ He took his glass to the kitchen.
In a dark empty shop, its floor littered with broken wares and shattered furniture, stood a hulking stone statue inlaid with a mosaic of jade, lapis lazuli and serpentine chips. Its stone gleamed slick with oils and it was slathered in caked powders. The ash of a forest of burnt rare wood sticks lay about its feet, all now long cold. Mice scampering between its wide stone feet suddenly stilled. The bats that perched in the rafters above its head ceased their bickering. They tilted their big pointed ears, listening to the stillness.
Beneath them a grinding noise broke the silence as the statue grated its head to the left, and then ponderously to the right. At its sides further scraping of stone sounded as its fists opened and closed. In agonizing slow motion it leaned forward to grind one carved stone boot out before it across the littered floor. It paused there for a time as if testing its balance. Then it took another step.
CHAPTER XIX
We forge our weapons so that they may never be used.
Once more Torvald gripped the handles of the quorl saddle and hunched behind Galene’s engraved reflective back. Now that he’d grown accustomed to the noise of flight the experience seemed eerily quiet. The straps and jesses snapped in the rushing wind and the near-invisible wings hummed and hissed. Other than this constant background murmur a serene silence reigned.
He fancied he could almost hear the waves of Lake Azur just beneath as they whipped by, so close it seemed he could reach down and touch them. For they were far out over the lake, scudding over the night-dark waves, headed for Darujhistan. Scarves of cloud passed overhead obscuring the mottled reborn moon with its muted pewter glow. The jade banner of the Scimitar also loomed high among the stars. It seemed to have grown perceptibly of late. He’d heard grumbling among the troops that it was about to smash into the land in a great explosion that would mark the end of the world. Brought about, many claimed, by the hubris of the gods.
Behind and to either side flight after flight of quorl floated and darted over the waves. Each was burdened by a passenger and packs of the fearsome munitions. This was Torvald’s own personal end of the world fear. He and the Malazan ambassador, Aragan, had fought hard to blunt the Moranth’s intent to resolve these hostilities in one massive destructive wave. They had argued instead for this first more targeted attack.
Torvald prayed to all the gods below that it would succeed. For the alternative was just too horrific to contemplate.
Ahead, he could hardly discern the cobalt glow of Darujhistan from the lurid sea-green banner of the Scimitar arcing above. Was there a night fog off the lake? Or some trick or trap awaiting them? Never before could he remember seeing the night so dark over the city. Yet the Scimitar more than made up the difference. Their target was unmistakable. So low did the chevrons of quorl whip across the lake that tiny wakes actually glimmered in phosphor white behind. Fishing boats snapped past not below, but to Torvald’s side. Men and women gaped and pointed in the light of the lanterns they hung to draw in their catch.