Sure enough, the way led to the walled barracks of those favoured prisoners who stood the wall. Here captives from all over the globe, men and women of proven ability and cooperative spirit, lived in relative luxury and ease. Here his commander in the Crimson Guard, Iron Bars, ranked an entire suite of rooms all to himself. Not that he’s all that cooperative.
At the door to Bars’ rooms Corlo’s escort thrust an arm across the hall. ‘If you value the life of your friend,’ he warned, ‘you’ll remind him of where his best interests lie.’
Corlo edged the man’s arm aside. ‘He’s my friend.’
Behind the narrow slit of his blackened iron helm the man’s dark brown eyes remained unconvinced. We can do without you lot, Corlo read in the hard unswerving gaze. The man lifted his chin to the guards. One unlatched the door.
Corlo pushed aside the heavy iron barrier on to a scene of chaos. Shards of pots and smashed wooden chairs and tables littered the polished floor. Drying pools of wine stained the stones and tossed salvers of fruit and bread lay amid the trampled wreckage. Whimpering brought his gaze down to a girl hunched next to the door, arms wrapped around her knees.
He raised her up and she stood shivering, hugging herself. No, he couldn’t have… He lifted her chin. Kohl had run from her eyelids and was smeared across her face. She would not meet his gaze, but he saw only fear and confusion in her demeanour. Like nothing you’ve ever run into before, hey, child? Yeah, he’s like that.
He gently handed her out to the guards then crept forward through the mess of shattered furnishings. The remains of glass carafes and fine ceramic jars crackled beneath his sandals. He heard the door pulled shut and secured behind him. Eventually, after searching the main room, he found his commander slumped beneath a barred window, unshaven, hair lank with sweat, a wide-bladed knife held to his neck. The man flashed his teeth like a wild animal upon seeing him.
Corlo pointed to the blade. ‘That won’t work.’
The fixed smile was ghastly. Bars let the weapon clatter to the floor. ‘They don’t know that.’ His voice was a hoarse croak.
Corlo didn’t bother asking what had happened. He simply leaned back against the wall, crossed his arms and studied the man, hoping that beneath his regard Bars would come to feel something. Please let him still be able to feel — something.
But the man would not look at him; his gaze roved about the remains of the broken and smashed furniture as if wondering how much it might all cost. ‘I can’t go on like this, Corlo,’ he said, finally, into the long silence. ‘I’m dying.’ And he laughed, making Corlo wince. ‘I’m dying but I cannot die.’ Beneath sweat-tangled hair he shot a quick glance at the mage. ‘Like the irony of that?’
‘Walk away.’
An impatient shrug brought a long silence. Bars reached out to a stoneware jug and took a long pull. ‘I won’t leave any of you behind.’
‘They know that.’
‘So. What to do.’ He rested the jug on his lap.
Corlo studied his hands clasped at his sash, glanced up. ‘They won’t kill us. They say they would, but they won’t. I’ve been listening — they need everyone they can get.’
Bars’ gaze narrowed; they were edging into old territory. ‘To go where…’
‘Stratem-’
The jug exploding over his head made Corlo duck. ‘Fuck Stratem!’
Saying nothing, Corlo straightened, flexed his neck to ease his nervous tension. Bars fell back, frowned after a time at the course of his own thoughts. ‘We were so close. I could sense the Guard Brethren at the end there. I sensed them turning away from the mission to that scum Skinner. And he mocked me. He mocked me!’ The man pressed his hands to his hanging head. ‘The Crimson Guard betrayed its vow and left us to rot. And… I… still… can’t… die!’
Corlo could only remain silent. So. The foundation at last. Betrayal. Failure. Helplessness and futility. What could he possibly say? Feeling ill with self-loathing, he reached for his last remaining tool — the one his captors employed for the very same purpose. He straightened from the wall, pressed his sweaty hands to his sides. ‘For the men, Bars. Hang on.’
His commander bit down on a convulsive laugh. He pushed his hands up through his hair so ferociously Corlo thought he meant to tear it out. ‘Yes. Well. Back to that.’
‘No choice.’
‘No. None.’
Corlo allowed himself a shallow nod of assent. ‘I’ll tell them to clean up.’
Bars said nothing; Corlo thought his eyes looked empty, as if the man had retreated to somewhere far away. He gingerly edged his way to the door, which opened to his knock.
‘You can clean the place up, but leave him alone.’
The Korelri Chosen simply motioned him to follow. The curt ingratitude raised no anger in Corlo; it was shame that burned in his chest as he descended the barracks stairs. I am the same as you, he told the iron-armoured back of his guide. No, perhaps I am even worse. I am a collaborator. A traitor who conspires with the enemy in the enslavement of my friend.
For a hundred years ago the original men and women of the Crimson Guard had sworn a terrible vow: the eternal opposition of the Malazan Empire. And thereby was granted them something approaching immortality — so long as the Empire should endure. But even so Corlo knew they could die. If Bars really want to, he could do it. The wall is high and the waters cold. Nooses throttle. Long thin blades pierce the eye and the brain behind.
That was his fear. That the man would just give up. Most would have by now, probably. But Bars had never given up in the past — that had always been his strength as an Avowed in the Guard. That was what Corlo was counting on.
The man just had to be reminded of it from time to time.
An inhabitant of Malaz city on the isle of that name, out during a night of its frigid autumn rains — a drunk, or a baker, or a night watchman, should there have ever been a night watch in Malaz — might have seen a slim cloaked figure lingering before the iron gate of an abandoned house of particularly evil reputation. The Deadhouse, the locals called it, when forced to acknowledge its existence at all. A house where none live, where the grounds are humped with the mounds of countless burials, and where those who enter never leave.
Such a wet and chilled witness might have seen the figure place a hand upon the gate, obviously intending to enter where no resident would ever dare, and then might have heard a shout, a woman’s voice commanding, ‘Hold!’
No doubt at this point any resident of Malaz, who ought not to have been out in the first place in such fell weather and at such a time, would have had the sense to withdraw, to leave these callers on night-time errands to their dark business, and to speak of such things to no one. And so they would not have seen the taller of the two, revealed as a young woman, take the hand of the speaker, an older woman in a shawl, and kiss it.
Kiska stretched out her legs and peered about at the cramped and cluttered nest of shelves and boxes and stacked burlap sacks that was Agayla’s spice shop. To think as a child it had once seemed roomy to her. She rubbed a towel over her damp short hair and gave a gentle snort; that had been a long time ago. Still, each breath — and she sniffed the heady, redolent melange of countless spices — reminded her of that home.
Her aunt Agayla returned carrying soup on a tray. Not a true blood relation, but close enough for those less bureaucratic days when anyone could take in anyone and damn the local authorities who could go jump in the bay anyway. Her long hair was touched by more grey than Kiska remembered. Her arms were even thinner and more wiry than they had been, but for all that she looked remarkably well preserved.
The woman regarded her now over the steaming bowls. Her narrow severe face was set in hard disapproval.