‘Commander! I object to that language!’
‘Don't bother, Ehrlann. Hurl, Sunny… what's your opinion on the gate fortress, the tunnel, the arches?’
‘Good for fifty years,’ said Hurl.
‘It will fall — sooner than later,’ said Sunny.
‘There you go,’ Storo told Ehrlann.
The magistrate waved the switch before his face, eyed Storo. ‘Meaning…?’
‘Meaning you have your gate. Open it to traffic tomorrow.’
The magistrate beamed, threw his arms wide as if he would embrace Storo. ‘Excellent, commander. I knew you would listen. All finished then. I must admit it has been an education dealing with you veterans — we do not see too many here in the interior. Tell me, just what was the name of those barbarian lands you conquered all to the glory of the Empress? Gangabaka? Bena-gagan?’
‘Genabackis,’ Storo sighed. ‘And we're not finished. Not yet.’
Ehrlann frowned warily. ‘I'm sorry, commander?’
‘That hill over there,’ Storo lifted his chin to the north.
‘Yes? Executioner's Hill?’
‘I want to take one man's height-’
‘Two,’ said Hurl.
‘Two man-heights off it.’
The switch stopped moving. ‘You are joking, commander.’ Ehrlann pointed the switch. ‘That is where we execute our criminals. That is where city justice is enacted. It is an ancient city tradition. You cannot interfere with that. It is simply impossible.’
‘It's not ancient tradition.’
‘Claims whom?’
‘My mage, Silk. He says it only goes back seventy years and that's good enough for me. In any case, you can strangle your starving poor elsewhere, Ehrlann. After you provide the labour to lower the profile of that hill we'll start on the moat.’
‘The moat? A moat? Where is that, pray?’
‘Right where you're standing.’ Storo picked up his weapon belt and dusty hauberk. ‘Good day, magistrate. Hurl, Sunny. I need a drink.’
Magistrate Ehrlann watched the veterans head to Dawn Gate. He peered down to the loose dirt, broken brick and trampled rubbish at his feet. Sunlight struck the top of his head and he flinched.
‘Jamaer! Umbrella!’
The fat man in ocean-blue robes walked Unta's street of Dragons deck readers, Wax Witches and Warren Seers — Diviner's Row — with the patient air of a beachcomber searching a deserted shore for lost treasure. Yet Diviner's Row was far from deserted. As the Imperial capital, Unta was the lodestone, the vortex, drawing to it all manner of talent — legitimate or not. Mages, practitioners of the various Warrens, but also that class of lesser ‘talents’, such as readers of the Dragons deck, soothsayers, fortune-tellers of all kinds, be they scholiasts of entrails or diviners of the patterns glimpsed in smoke, read in cracked burnt bone or spelled by tossed sticks.
Divination was the current Imperial fashion. As the day cooled and the blue sky darkened to purple, the Row seethed with crowds from all stations of life, each seeking a hint of — or protection against — Twin Oponn's capricious turns: the Lad's push, or the Lady's pull. Amid the jostling evening crowd charm-sellers touted the vitality of their clattering relics, icons and amulets. Stallkeepers hectored passersby.
‘Your fortune this night, gracious one!’
‘Chart the influences of the Many Realms upon your Path!’
‘The Mysteries of Ascension revealed, noble sir.’
‘A great many enemies oppose you.‘ The plump man in blue robes froze. He peered down at a dirty street-urchin just shorter than he. ‘You risk all,’ the youth continued, his eyes squeezed shut, ‘but for a prize beyond your imaginings.’ The man's brows climbed his seamed forehead and his thick lips tightened, then he threw back his head and guffawed. His laughter revealed teeth stained a fading green that rendered them dingy and ill-looking.
Of course!‘ he agreed. ‘But of course! The future you have right. A great talent is yours, lad.’ He mussed the youth's greasy hair then handed him a coin. Waving to the nearest stallkeeper, he called, ‘A great future I foretell for that bold one!’ then he continued on, leaving a confused foreteller of Dead Poliel's visitations squinting into the crowd.
Hawkers of Dragons decks thrust their wares at the man. He turned a tolerant eye upon all. The merits of each ancient velvet-wrapped stack of cards he queried until finally purchasing one at a greatly reduced sum due to sudden misfortune within the family that had held it for generations.
Passing a stall offering relics, invested jewellery and stacks of charms, he paused and returned. The man beside the cart straightened from his stool, noted the fat, expensively-robed man's gaze fixed upon a sheath of necklaces. He smiled knowingly. ‘Yes. You have a discriminating eye, noble sir.’ The vendor took down the knotted necklaces, offered them to the man who flinched away. ‘Note the links, sir, chains in miniature. And the pendants! Guaranteed slivers of bone from the very remains of the poor victims of that fiend Coltaine's death march.’ The fat man's eyes seemed to bulge in their sockets. He swallowed with difficulty. ‘My Lord is familiar with that sad episode?’
Mastering himself, Mallick Rel found his voice, croaked, ‘Yes.’
‘A most disgraceful tragedy, was it not?’
Mallick straightened his shoulders. His lips drew back from his stained teeth. ‘Yes. An awful failure. Hauntings of it ever return to me like waves.’
‘Thank the wisdom of the Empress in her call for all Quon to rise against the traitorous Wickans.’
‘Yes. Thank her.’
‘Then my Lord must have this relic — may we all learn from what it carries.’
Bowing, the vendor missed Mallick's eyes, deep within their pockets of fat, dart to him with a strange intensity. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A lesson ever to be heeded.’ Then he smiled beatifically. ‘Of course I shall purchase your excellent relic — and is that a charm to deflect Hood's eternal hunger I see next to it?’
As the evening darkened into night and moths and bats came out, servants lit lanterns outside the shops of the more enduring fortunetellers and deck-readers. Mallick entered the premises of one Lady Batevari. A recent arrival in the capital herself, Lady Batevari had, in a short space of time, established a formidable reputation as a most profound sensitive to the hints and future patterns to be glimpsed within the controlling influences of the Warrens. Known throughout the streets as the High Priestess of the Queen of Dreams, her official position within the cult remained uncertain since she and the Grand Temple on God's Round determinedly ignored each other. Some dismissed her as a charlatan, citing her claim to be from Darujhistan where no one who had ever been there could remember hearing her name mentioned. Others named her the true practitioner of the cult and pointed to her record of undeniably accurate prophecies and predictions. Both sides of the debate noted Mallick Rel's devotion as proof positive of their position.
Unaware of the debate, or perhaps keenly aware, Mallick entered the foyer. He was met by a servant dressed in the traditional leggings and tunic of a resident of Pale in northern Genabackis — for it had become fashionable for wealthy households to hire such emigrants and refugees from the Imperial conquests to serve as footmen, guards and maids in waiting. Mallick handed the man his ocean-blue travelling robes and the man bowed, waving an arm to the parlour.
At the portal, Mallick froze, wincing. A phantasmagoric assemblage of furniture, textiles and artwork from all the provinces of the Empire and beyond assaulted him. It was as if a cyclone such as those that occasionally struck his Falaran homeland had torn through the main Bazaar of Aren and he now viewed the resultant carnage. Entering, he sneered at a Falaran rug — cheap tourist tat, sniffed at a Barghast totem — an obvious fake, and grimaced at the clashing colours of a Letherii board-painting — a copy unfortunate in its accuracy.
A frail old woman's voice quavered from the portal, ‘Is that you, young Mallick?’