Soon after that Hegil cleared his throat, and, bowing to Ivanr, left for his own tent. Martal rose as well. ‘Please,’ Ivanr invited. ‘Won’t you stay a little longer?’
She nodded stiffly, but sat. He studied her more closely now while she kept her gaze averted: her smashed nose, the scars of sword cuts on her forearms and the marks of heavy blunt blows to her cheek. Where had this woman gained her military training? Surely not in any Jourilan school, nor among the Dourkans. Yet she had obviously seen fighting all her life.
‘You are not of Fist, or Jasston, or Katakan. Where are you from?’
A smile of nostalgia touched her mouth, but she was still looking away when she spoke. ‘I was born in a minor city named Netor on the Bloorian plains.’
‘Bloor…?’
‘I am Quon Talian by birth. What you would call Malazan.’
Ivanr did not know how to react. All the gods! Should this get out
… No wonder the distance. The air of mystery surrounding this Black Queen served a good purpose. ‘I’m… amazed,’ he managed. She was the enemy. The grasping foreigners who would steal this land from them — or so ran the common wisdom.
‘How came you…’ But of course.
She was nodding. ‘Yes. The invasion. I grew up the daughter of a minor landholder on the border with a neighbouring country. There were always raids and clashes for control of territory. I experienced my first battle — seven of them against five of us — when I was thirteen. Shortly after that I ran away to join the Imperial Army. I was a captain with the Sixth Army when we landed on Fist.’
‘And you… deserted?’
If the woman was offended, she did not show it. Her expression turned more grim as she studied the far tent wall. ‘You’ve heard the stories, haven’t you? Greymane, Stonewielder, denounced by Malazan Command. Betraying the army, or some such nonsense.’
Or consorting with the Stormriders to undermine the Korelri.
She shrugged. ‘In any case, I was too vocal in my support for him. When he was ousted I had to flee, or face the knife.’ She shrugged again. ‘That’s about it. I wandered, was unable to find transport out of the subcontinent. An attempt to travel south overland brought me to Beneth. And he saved my life.’
‘I see,’ Ivanr breathed. What more could one say to such a tale? Dear gods, are you no more than manipulators of chance and fate? No wonder so far her tactics had defeated the Jourilan. Ivanr knew his own land was too tradition-bound in its methods, too tied to known ways of doing things. This woman came trained in a tradition infamous for its pragmatic embrace of the unconventional. These Malazans would adapt whatever worked; and in Ivanr’s eyes that was to be admired, even though such flexibility and adaptation served them ill here in these lands — leaving them Malazan in name and no more.
Martal bowed and left soon after, and Ivanr let her go. He set the revelation far back in his mind — no hint could be given to anyone — and part of him, the tactician, couldn’t help but admire how in a single stroke the admission, the intimacy of the secret, had entirely bought his trust.
And he tried not to dwell on the conversation until word came to the Army of Reform of a second Malazan invasion.
Some days later a runner summoned Ivanr to the command tent. There he found Martal and lesser officers, including Carr, now a captain, cross-examining a sweaty and exhausted citizen.
‘What evidence was there?’ Martal was asking.
The man, dressed like a common labourer, blinked, uncertain. ‘No evidence, Commander. Everyone agreed, though. The entire ship’s company was alive with the news. Malazan vessels had broken the Mare blockade.’
Ivanr looked sharply at Martal. The woman did not glance at him.
‘Ship’s company? How many?’ another officer asked.
‘Over two hundred, sir.’
‘And they were all in agreement?’
The man blushed. ‘I did not question all. But everyone was talking at once on the pier and none contradicted or disagreed with the others. All carried the same news.’
‘And this vessel came from Stygg?’ Carr asked.
‘Yes, sir. From Shroud. Everyone said they saw signs of Stygg readying for invasion.’
Someone else entered behind Ivanr and all the officers stared, quietening. Ivanr turned: it was the mage, Sister Gosh, in her layered muddied skirts, shawls and stringy iron-grey hair. Martal raised a hand. ‘It is all right. She is welcome.’
‘The news is true,’ Sister Gosh said. ‘A second Malazan invasion.’
Martal glared at the old woman. ‘Everyone out,’ she grated. The officers filed out. Sister Gosh and Ivanr remained. Once they were alone, Martal ground out, ‘You knew.’
‘Oh, yes. But you wouldn’t have believed me. Yeull, the Overlord, has managed to keep it quiet. But Malazan forces are marching upon him and a foreign fleet has entered Black Water Strait.’
Martal crossed to a table kept stocked with bread and cheese, meat, wine and tea, but she touched none of it, her back to them. ‘That man, one of Beneth’s agents in Dourkan, also mentioned certain — hardly credible — rumours about who was leading this invasion…’
‘Yes,’ Sister Gosh said softly, her expression softening. ‘They are true as well.’
The woman’s head sank forward and she leaned much of her weight upon the table. Ivanr looked to the mage. ‘Who? Who is it?’
Sister Gosh eased herself down on some cushions. ‘I think we really could use some tea.’ She looked to Ivanr, cocked a brow.
Ah. He went to the table and poured three small glasses. One he left with Martal, who had not moved, had not even acknowledged him. One he gave to Sister Gosh, and the last he sat with.
‘The second invasion is led by the man who led the first,’ Sister Gosh told him.
Ivanr’s gaze snapped to Martal’s rigid back. But that would mean… ‘No. He was discredited, denounced. How could they reinstate him?’ The very man Martal refused to condemn — at the cost of her career, almost her life. Stonewielder. The Betrayer, as the Korelri named him.
Still facing the tent wall, Martal spoke, her voice almost fey. ‘The worship has been stamped out here in these lands, but we Malazans pay homage to chance, or fate, in the persona of twins. Oponn, the two-faced god of luck.’ She shook her head. ‘Who would have thought…’
‘I believe Beneth did,’ said Sister Gosh.
Martal turned and for a fleeting instant Ivanr caught something in her gaze, something like hope, or a desperate yearning, before the woman’s usual cool hard mask reasserted itself and he felt a pang of disappointment. I am no Beneth. To this woman there can be no other Beneth. Like her loyalty to her previous commander, this woman’s devotion is hard won, but once given is never withdrawn.
‘How so?’ she asked, crossing her arms and leaning back against the table.
Unlike so many others, Sister Gosh did not flinch under the commander’s hard stare. ‘Think of the timing. Beneth has been hiding in the mountains for decades, receiving pilgrims, freethinkers, all the disenfranchised and disenchanted, and sending them back out as his agents and missionaries all over the land, into every city, founding sects and congregations of brethren. Laying the groundwork, in short, for a society-wide revolution. Then, out of nowhere, unbidden, inconceivably, his priestess arrives to ignite firestorms of uprisings and outright insurrections all over Jourilan. Yet still Beneth does not act. He waits years. Why?’
Her gaze narrowed, Martal almost sneered, ‘You are suggesting he was awaiting this second invasion?’
The old woman raised her shawl-wrapped shoulders. ‘Think of it. Suddenly, this year, he descends from the safety of his mountain to bring a central organizing presence to this war and reform in Jourilan. Why this year? Perhaps in his visions he saw it.’
‘Coincidence,’ Martal scoffed.
‘Coincidence?’ Sister Gosh answered, a note of scolding in her voice. ‘You who invoke Oponn?’
‘Someone had to act,’ Ivanr mused, almost to himself. ‘The Priestess so much as told me she would not fight.’