‘We require fresh food and water,’ Maleneth said, forcing herself to ignore the Slayer’s retort. ‘And a place to rest. Tomorrow we can start looking for someone to give us passage to the Eight Pillars.’
‘Thagi,’ Gotrek spat. Maleneth assumed the duardin insult had been directed at her, and was instinctively forming a Khainite curse back when she noticed Gotrek was moving off into the crowd. She started after him, realising what he had seen.
Aziz tried to run. The crowd around him hemmed him in though, and he squealed with terror as Gotrek snatched him with one scarred fist.
‘Thought you’d seen the last of us, beardless thaggaz,’ the duardin barked.
‘Please no, sellah,’ Aziz wailed, cringing back. ‘I went to get help, I swear!’
‘Then where was it?’ Maleneth demanded, reaching Gotrek’s side.
‘There were riders,’ Aziz insisted, eyes darting between the aelf and the duardin. ‘Three riders, I told them you would pay them well if they could reach you.’
‘Liar,’ Gotrek snarled, and for a second Maleneth though he was going to strike the youth.
‘I can still help you,’ Aziz yelped. ‘Please, sellah, I know many traders here at Khaled-Tush!’
‘We need food,’ Gotrek growled. ‘And shelter for the night, then transport to the Eight Pillars.’
‘I can bring you all of those things, sellah,’ Aziz insisted. ‘My uncle, Fazeel, is a moonfin trader posted here. He will not turn me away.’
‘You are thinking about running,’ Maleneth said, her voice lower and altogether more chilling than Gotrek’s. ‘I know your kind, desert rat. Do not do it. Go to your uncle, and when everything is arranged, return here and find us. Or I will find you and I will skin you, slowly, using these.’
She tapped the long fyresteel knives in her belt. ‘Do you doubt me?’
‘N-no,’ Aziz stammered, tears in his eyes. Gotrek released him, and he stumbled away into the press.
Gotrek harrumphed. ‘We will never see him again,’ the duardin grumbled.
‘We will,’ Maleneth replied. ‘He is but a boy. He is terrified we will use our mystical powers, or blades, to hunt him down.’
‘Aelf nonsense,’ Gotrek said. ‘You don’t know the first thing about mystical. The gods themselves have tried to betray me, slay me even. I have broken daemons and fought deranged wizards and slain beasts and monsters that would tear apart legions of your gold-armoured champions. I have fallen from the skies amidst fire and battled through the depths of the earth for days at a time. I have been flung into an ocean of madness and filth and then clawed my way back out. The boy knows nothing of fear, because these realms know nothing of it. I spit on your idea of fear.’
Maleneth leant against the wheel of the nearest wagon. Exhaustion was trying to drag her down. The pack on her back felt like a lodestone. A part of her just wanted to curl up beneath the closest cart and sleep.
It took her a few seconds to realise that Gotrek was no longer beside her.
‘Duardin,’ she snapped as he headed off deeper into the square. He didn’t stop or turn. Cursing, she followed him.
‘Do your kind never rest?’ she demanded as she caught up.
‘Rest is something for people without anything to do,’ Gotrek said, not looking at her. ‘Rest comes when you find your doom. I have never known rest. Sometimes I wonder whether I ever will.’
The marketplace embraced them. They passed a row of stalls selling Hedina silks, the traders calling for their attention, then had to brush aside the advances of a Hilathi tribal spice-seller offering samples. The aroma of cooking meat drifted over them as they passed a half-tusker being slow-roasted in one of the firepits, and Maleneth’s aching stomach lurched. A little further on they had to move aside for a sect of white-veiled Shezpah priests swinging sweet-smelling censers. None spared either of them a glance. At Khaled-Tush, a weary aelf and a sunburned duardin were hardly the strangest sights on show.
They moved on, deeper into the busy menagerie, the market and its inhabitants pressing in on every side. Maleneth found herself fingering the hilt of one of her daggers, the compulsive motion concealed by her cloak. She didn’t like crowds.
Gotrek seemed unperturbed. She didn’t demand he tell her what he was looking for. She knew he’d give no clear answer. In the months since they had first met, she had grown accustomed to his sudden bouts of melancholy, to his distant gaze and to the unexplained interludes where he would stomp off on his own. Sometimes she left him to do so, trusting he would always return, but occasionally she would follow him. It always seemed as though he were looking for something or someone, though exactly what or who she was never quite sure.
She felt something bump into her shoulder, the pressure a little more than the mere passing of bodies in the teeming space. Her fyresteel knives were out in a flash, faster than the eye could follow, every one of her aelf senses poised to kill before conscious thought had even engaged.
She found herself looking into a pair of dark eyes. To her surprise, there was neither fear nor anger in them, only a reserved, knowing amusement.
‘Shemali, sellah,’ said the woman, taking her hand off Maleneth’s shoulder. She was human, young but almost as tall as the aelf, dusky-skinned and clad in gossamer folds of pink and purple silk. Maleneth realised she was smiling. She took the knife away from her throat.
‘My apologies, travellers,’ she went on, offering a curtsey. ‘I have been sent by the mistress of my troupe.’
Her eyes travelled from Maleneth to Gotrek. The duardin had stopped his progress through the market, and one scarred fist was clenched firmly around the haft of his fyrestorm greataxe.
‘The Fyreslayer with only one rune hammered into his flesh,’ the woman said, her smile dissipating as she addressed him. ‘We possess something of great value to you, Runetamer. A man who has seen the words you seek.’
‘Who are you?’ Gotrek growled. ‘You look too much like another damned aelf to me!’
‘We are dancers of the Alharab,’ the woman said, giving the duardin an elegant bow and producing a slip of paper between two fingers with a flourish. ‘We see much, and hear even more, especially in a place like this. The man my troupe has made contact with is not the only one to have gazed upon the riddle of the Eight Pillars. My mistress, Shaldeen, awaits your pleasure at the black top.’
‘And why would we trust you, or your mistress?’ Gotrek demanded. He reached for the paper, but Maleneth snatched it first.
‘I am only a messenger,’ the woman said, beginning to move away through the crowd. ‘That is not for me to say.’
‘Not much of a message, is it,’ Gotrek growled after her, but she was gone. Maleneth laid a hand on his shoulder. She had glanced down at the parchment – it was an invitation in native Alharabi script, inviting weary travellers to the night-time performance of the Seventeen Blades. Maleneth tensed. The Seventeen Blades was a traditional aelf dance, still popular among the Murder Temples. She had rarely heard of a human troupe performing it.
You remember the last time you saw it danced, don’t you, Witchblade?
‘What is it?’ Gotrek demanded.
‘Nothing,’ Maleneth said, shrugging off the voice of her former mistress. ‘We should not follow her. It is some sort of trap.’
‘If it is, then it’s about time. Almost a day has passed since the last one,’ Gotrek rumbled, shrugging off Maleneth’s hand. ‘I want answers, and I’ll have them whether they want me dead or not.’
‘If only you held your own life as dearly as the Order of the Azyr does,’ Maleneth snapped.