Surprisingly lithe despite its mangled hip, the dog now trotted through the village, down the length of the main avenue. When it came to the south end, it kept on going, downslope, wending through the moss-backed boulders and the bone-piles that marked the refuse of the Uryd.
Its departure was noted by two girls still a year or more from their nights of passage into adulthood. There was a similarity to their features, and in their ages they were a close match, the times of their births mere days apart. Neither could be said to be loquacious. They shared the silent language common among twins, although they were not twins, and it seemed that, for them, this language was enough. And so, upon seeing the three-legged dog leave the village, they exchanged a glance, set about gathering what supplies and weapons were near at hand, and then set out, on the dog’s trail.
Their departure was noted, but that was all.
South, down from the great mountains of home, where condors wheeled between the peaks and wolves howled when the winter winds came.
South, towards the lands of the hated children of the Nathii, where dwelt the bringers of war and pestilence, the slayers and enslavers of the Teblor. Where the Nathii bred like lemmings until it seemed there would be no place left in the world for anyone or anything but them.
Like the dog, the two girls were fearless and resolute. Though they did not know it, such traits came from their father, whom they had never met.
The dog did not look back, and when the girls caught up to it the beast maintained its indifference. It was, as the elders had said, god-touched.
Back in the village, a mother and daughter were told of the flight of their children. The daughter wept. The mother did not. Instead, there was heat in a low place of her body, and, for a time, she was lost in remembrances.
‘Oh frail city, where strangers arrive. .’
An empty plain beneath an empty night sky. A lone fire, so weak as to be nearly swallowed by the blackened, cracked stones encircling it. Seated on one of the two flat stones close to the hearth, a short, round man with sparse, greasy hair. Faded red waistcoat, over a linen shirt with stained once-white blousy cuffs erupting around the pudgy hands. The round face was flushed, reflecting the flickering flames. From the small knuckled chin dangled long black hairs — not enough to braid, alas — a new affectation he had taken to twirling and stroking when deep in thought, or even shallowly so. Indeed, when not thinking at all, but wishing to convey an impression of serious cogitation, should anyone regard him thoughtfully.
He stroked and twirled now as he frowned down into the fire before him.
What had that grey-haired bard sung? There on the modest stage in K’rul’s Bar earlier in the night, when he had watched on, content with his place in the glorious city he had saved more than once?
‘Oh frail city, where strangers arrive. .’
‘I need to tell you something, Kruppe.’
The round man glanced up to find a shrouded figure seated on the other flat stone, reaching thin pale hands out to the flames. Kruppe cleared his throat, then said, ‘It has been a long time since Kruppe last found himself perched as you see him now. Accordingly, Kruppe had long since concluded that you wished to tell him something of such vast import that none but Kruppe is worthy to hear.’
A faint glitter from the darkness within the hood. ‘I am not in this war.’
Kruppe stroked the rattails of his beard, delighting himself by saying nothing.
‘This surprises you?’ the Elder God asked.
‘Kruppe ever expects the unexpected, old friend. Why, could you ever expect otherwise? Kruppe is shocked. Yet, a thought arrives, launched brainward by a tug on this handsome beard. K’rul states he is not in the war. Yet, Kruppe suspects, he is nevertheless its prize.’
‘Only you understand this, my friend,’ the Elder God said, sighing. Then cocked its head. ‘I had not noticed before, but you seem sad.’
‘Sadness has many flavours, and it seems Kruppe has tasted them all.’
‘Will you speak now of such matters? I am, I believe, a good listener.’
‘Kruppe sees that you are sorely beset. Perhaps now is not the time.’
‘That is no matter.’
‘It is to Kruppe.’
K’rul glanced to one side, and saw a figure approaching, grey-haired, gaunt.
Kruppe sang, ‘“Oh frail city, where strangers arrive”. . and the rest?’
The newcomer answered in a deep voice, ‘“. . pushing into cracks, there to abide.”’
And the Elder God sighed.
‘Join us, friend,’ said Kruppe. ‘Sit here by this fire: this scene paints the history of our kind, as you well know. A night, a hearth, and a tale to spin. Dear K’rul, dearest friend of Kruppe, hast thou ever seen Kruppe dance?’
The stranger sat. A wan face, an expression of sorrow and pain.
‘No,’ said K’rul. ‘I think not. Not by limb, not by word.’
Kruppe’s smile was muted, and something glistened in his eyes. ‘Then, my friends, settle yourselves for this night. And witness.’
BOOK ONE
This creature of words cuts
To the quick and gasp, dart away
The spray of red rain
Beneath a clear blue sky
Shock at all that is revealed
What use now this armour
When words so easy slant between?
This god of promises laughs
At the wrong things, wrongly timed
Unmaking all these sacrifices
In deliberate malice
Recoil like a soldier routed
Even as retreat is denied
Before corpses heaped high in walls
You knew this would come
At last and feign nothing, no surprise
To find this cup filled
With someone else’s pain
It’s never as bad as it seems
The taste sweeter than expected
When you squat in a fool’s dream
So take this belligerence
Where you will, the dogged cur
Is the charge of my soul
To the centre of the street
Spinning round all fangs bared
Snapping at thirsty spears
Thrust cold and purged of your hands
CHAPTER ONE
Oh frail city!
Where strangers arrive
Pushing into cracks
There to abide
Oh blue city!
Old friends gather sighs
At the foot of docks
After the tide
Uncrowned city!
Where sparrows alight
In spider tracks
On sills well high
Doomed city!
Closing comes the night
History awakens
Here to abide
Surrounded in a city of blue fire, she stood alone on the balcony. The sky’s darkness was pushed away, an unwelcome guest on this the first night of the Gedderone Fete. Throngs filled the streets of Darujhistan, happily riotous, good-natured in the calamity of one year’s ending and another’s beginning. The night air was humid and pungent with countless scents.
There had been banquets. There had been unveilings of eligible young men and maidens. Tables laden with exotic foods, ladies wrapped in silks, men and women in preposterous uniforms all glittering gilt — a city with no standing army bred a plethora of private militias and a chaotic proliferation of high ranks held, more or less exclusively, by the nobility.
Among the celebrations she had attended this evening, on the arm of her hus shy;band, she had not once seen a real officer of Darujhistan’s City Watch, not one genuine soldier with a dusty cloak-hem, with polished boots bearing scars, with a sword-grip of plain leather and a pommel gouged and burnished by wear. Yet she had seen, bound high on soft, well-fed arms, torcs in the manner of decorated sol shy;diers among the Malazan army — soldiers from an empire that had, not so long ago, provided for Darujhistan mothers chilling threats to belligerent children. ‘Malazans, child! Skulking in the night to steal foolish children! To make you slaves for their terrible Empress — yes! Here in this very city!’