'None so… obvious,' Duiker admitted. 'But I have seen enough signs to sense the growing momentum. The new year will bring rebellion.'
'Bold assertion,' Mallick Rel said. He sighed, clearly uncomfortable with standing. 'The new Fist would do well to regard with caution such claims. Many are the prophecies of this land, as many as there are people, it seems. Such multitudes diminish the veracity of each. Rebellion has been promised in Seven Cities each year since the Malazan conquest. What has come of them? Naught.'
'The priest has hidden motives," Sormo said.
Duiker found himself holding his breath.
Mallick Rel's round, sweat-sheened face went white.
'All men have hidden motives,' Coltaine said, as if dismissing his warlock's claim. 'I hear counsel of warning and counsel of caution. A good balance. These are my words. The mage who yearns to lean against walls of stone views me as an adder in his bedroll. His fear of me speaks for every soldier in the Seventh Army.' The Fist spat on the floor, his face twisting. 'I care nothing for their sentiments. If they obey my commands I in turn will serve them. If they do not, I will tear their hearts from their chests. Do you hear my words, Cadre Mage?'
Kulp was scowling. 'I hear them.'
'I am here,' Rel's voice was almost shrill, 'to convey the commands of High Fist Pormqual—'
'Before or after the High Fist's official welcome?' Even as he spoke Duiker regretted his words, despite Bult's bark of laughter.
In response, Mallick Rel straightened. 'High Fist Pormqual welcomes Fist Coltaine to Seven Cities, and wishes him well in his new command. The Seventh Army remains as one of the three original armies of the Malazan Empire, and the High Fist is confident that Fist Coltaine will honour their commendable history.'
'I care nothing for reputations,' Coltaine said. They shall be judged by their actions. Go on.'
Trembling, Rel continued, 'The High Fist Pormqual has asked me to convey his orders to High Fist Coltaine. Admiral Nok is to leave Hissar Harbour and proceed to Aren as soon as his ships are resupplied. High Fist Coltaine is to begin preparations for marching the Seventh overland… to Aren. It is the High Fist's desire to review the Seventh prior to its final stationing.' The priest produced a sealed scroll from his robes and set it on the tabletop. 'Such are the High Fist's commands.'
A look of disgust darkened Coltaine's features. He crossed his arms and deliberately turned his back on Mallick Rel.
Bult laughed without humour. 'The High Fist wishes to review the army. Presumably the High Fist has an attendant High Mage, perhaps a Hand of the Claw as well? If he wishes to review Coltaine's troops he can come here by Warren. The Fist has no intention of outfitting this army to march four hundred leagues so that Pormqual can frown at the dust on their boots. Such a move will leave the eastern provinces of Seven Cities without an occupying army. At this time of unrest it would be viewed as a retreat, especially when accompanied by the withdrawal of the Sahul Fleet. This land cannot be governed from behind the walls of Aren.'
'Defying the High Fist's command?' Rel asked in a whisper, eyes glittering like blooded diamonds on Coltaine's broad back.
The Fist whirled. 'I am counselling a change of those commands,' he said, 'and now await a reply.'
'Reply I shall give you,' the priest rasped.
Coltaine sneered.
Bult said, 'You? You are a priest, not a soldier, not a governor. You are not even recognized as a member of the High Command.'
Rel's glare flicked from Fist to veteran. 'I am not? Indeed—'
'Not by Empress Laseen,' Bult cut in. 'She knows nothing of you, priest, apart from the High Fist's reports. Understand that the Empress does not convey power upon people whom she does not know. High Fist Pormqual employed you as his messenger boy and that is how the Fist shall treat you. You command nothing. Not Coltaine, not me, not even a lowly mess cook of the Seventh.'
'I shall convey these words and sentiments to the High Fist.'
'No doubt. You may go now.'
Rel's jaw dropped. 'Go?'
'We are done with you. Leave.'
In silence they watched the priest depart. As soon as the doors closed Duiker turned to Coltaine. 'That may not have been wise, Fist.'
Coltaine's eyes looked sleepy. 'Bult spoke, not I.'
Duiker glanced at the veteran. The scarred Wickan was grinning.
'Tell me of Pormqual,' Coltaine said. 'You have met him?'
The historian swung back to the Fist. 'I have.'
'Does he govern well?'
'As far as I have been able to determine,' Duiker said, 'he does not govern at all. Most edicts are issued by the man you—Bult—just expelled from this council. There are a host of others behind the curtain, mostly nobleborn wealthy merchants. They are the ones primarily responsible for the cuts in duty taxation on imported goods, and the corresponding increases in local taxes on production and exports—with exemptions, of course, in whatever export they themselves are engaged in. The Imperial occupation is managed by Malazan merchants, a situation unchanged since Pormqual assumed the title of High Fist four years ago.'
Bult asked, 'Who was High Fist before him?'
'Cartheron Crust, who drowned one night in Aren Harbour.'
Kulp snorted. 'Crust could swim drunk through a hurricane, but then he went and drowned just like his brother Urko. Neither body was ever found, of course.'
'Meaning?'
Kulp grinned at Bult, but said nothing.
'Both Crust and Urko were the Emperor's men,' Duiker explained. 'It seems they shared the same fate as most of Kellanved's companions, including Toe the Elder and Ameron. None of their bodies were ever found, either.' The historian shrugged. 'Old history now. Forbidden history, in fact.'
'You assume they were murdered at Laseen's command,' Bult said, baring his jagged teeth. 'But imagine a circumstance where the Empress's most able commanders simply… disappeared. Leaving her isolated, desperate for able people. You forget, Historian, that before Laseen became Empress, she was close companions with Crust, Urko, Ameron, Dassem and the others. Imagine her now alone, still feeling the wounds of abandonment.'
'And her murder of the other close companions—Kellanved and Dancer—was not something she imagined would affect her friendship with those commanders?' Duiker shook his head, aware of the bitterness in his voice. They were my companions, too.
'Some errors in judgement can never be undone,' Bult said. 'The Emperor and Dancer were able conquerors, but were they able rulers?'
'We'll never know,' Duiker snapped.
The Wickan's sigh was almost a snort. 'No, but if there was one person close to the throne capable of seeing what was to come, it was Laseen.'
Coltaine spat on the floor once again. 'That is all to say on the matter, Historian. Record the words that have been uttered here, if you do not find them too sour a taste.' He glanced over at a silent Sormo E'nath, frowning as he studied his warlock.
'Even if I choked on them,' Duiker replied, 'I would recount them nonetheless. I could not call myself a historian if it were otherwise.'
'Very well, then.' The Fist's gaze remained on Sormo E'nath. 'Tell me, Historian, what hold does Mallick Rel have over Pormqual?'
'I wish I knew, Fist.'
'Find out.'
'You are asking me to become a spy.'
Coltaine turned to him with a faint smile. 'And what were you in the trader's tent, Duiker?'
Duiker grimaced. 'I would have to go to Aren. I do not think Mallick Rel would welcome me to inner councils any more. Not after witnessing his humiliation here. In fact, I warrant he has marked me as an enemy now, and his enemies have a habit of disappearing.'
'I shall not disappear,' Coltaine said. He stepped closer, reached out and gripped the historian's shoulder. 'We shall disregard Mallick Rel, then. You will be attached to my staff.'
'As you command, Fist,' Duiker said.
This council is ended.' Coltaine spun to his warlock. 'Sormo, you shall recount for me t
his morning's adventure… later.'
The warlock bowed.
Duiker retrieved his cloak and, followed by Kulp, left the chamber. As the doors closed behind them, the historian plucked at the cadre mage's sleeve. 'A word with you. In private.'
'My thoughts exactly,' Kulp replied.
They found a room further down the hallway, cluttered with broken furniture but otherwise unoccupied. Kulp shut and locked the door, then faced Duiker, his eyes savage. 'He's not a man at all—he's an animal and he sees things like an animal. And Bult—Bult reads his master's snarling and raised hackles and puts it all into words—I've never heard such a talkative Wickan as that mangled old man.'
'Evidently,' Duiker said dryly, 'Coltaine had a lot to say.'
'I suspect even now the priest of Mael is planning his revenge.'
'Aye. But it was Bult's defence of the Empress that shook me.'
'Do you countenance his argument?'
Duiker sighed. 'That she regrets her actions and now feels, in full, the solitude of power? Possibly. Interesting, but its relevance is long past.'
'Has Laseen confided in these Wickan savages, do you think?'
'Coltaine was summoned to an audience with the Empress, and I'd guess that Bult is as much as sewn to his master's side—but what occurred between them in Laseen's private chambers remains unknown.' The historian shrugged. 'They were prepared for Mallick Rel, that much seems clear. And you, Kulp, what of this young warlock?'
'Young?' The cadre mage scowled. 'That boy has the aura of an ancient man. I could smell on him the ritual drinking of mare's blood, and that ritual marks a warlock's Time of Iron—his last few years of life, the greatest flowering of his power. Did you see him? He fired a dart at the priest, then stood silent, watching its effect.'
'Yet you claimed it was all a lie.'
'No need to let Sormo know how sensitive my nose is, and I'll continue treating him as if he was a boy, an impostor. If I'm lucky he'll ignore me.'
Duiker hesitated. The air in the room was stale, tasting of dust when he drew breath. 'Kulp,' he finally said.
'Aye, Historian, what do you ask of me?'
'It has nothing to do with Coltaine, or Mallick Rel or Sormo E'nath. I require your assistance.'
'In what?'
'I wish to free a prisoner.'
The cadre mage's brows rose. 'In Hissar's gaol? Historian, I have no clout with the Hissar Guard—
'No, not in the city gaol. This is a prisoner of the Empire.'
'Where is this prisoner kept?'
'He was sold into slavery, Kulp. He's in the Otataral mines.'
The cadre mage stared. 'Hood's breath, Duiker, you're asking the help of a mage?. You imagine I would willingly go anywhere near those mines? Otataral destroys sorcery, drives mages insane—'
'No closer than a dory off the island's coast,' Duiker cut in. 'I promise that, Kulp.'
'To collect the prisoner, and then what, rowing like a fiend with a Dosü war galley in hot pursuit?'
Duiker grinned. 'Something like that.'
Kulp glanced at the closed door, then studied the wreckage in the room as if he had not noticed it before. 'What chamber was this?'
'Fist Torlom's office,' Duiker answered. 'Where the Dryjhnü assassin found her that night.'
Kulp slowly nodded. 'And was our choosing it an accident?'
'I certainly hope so.'
'So do I, Historian.'
'Will you help me?'
This prisoner… who?'
'Heboric Light Touch.'
Kulp slowly nodded a second time. 'Let me think on it, Duiker.'
'May I ask what gives you pause?'
Kulp scowled. 'The thought of another traitorous historian loose in the world, what else?'
The Holy City of Ehrlitan was a city of white stone, rising from the harbour to surround and engulf a vast, flat-topped hill known as Jen'rahb. It was believed that one of the world's first cities was buried within Jen'rahb, and that in the compacted rubble waited the Throne of the Seven Protectors which legend held was not a throne at all, but a chamber housing a ring of seven raised daises, each sanctified by one of the Ascendants who set out to found Seven Cities. Ehrlitan was a thousand years old, but Jen'rahb the ancient city, now a hill of crushed stone, was believed to be nine times that.
An early Falah'd of Ehrlitan had begun extensive and ambitious building on the flat top of Jen'rahb, to honour the city buried beneath the streets. The quarries along the north coast were gutted, whole hillsides carved out, the ten-tonne white blocks of marble dressed and transported by ship to Ehrlitan's harbour, then pulled through the lower districts to the ramps leading to the hill's summit. Temples, estates, gardens, domes, towers and the Falah'd palace rose like the gems of a virgin crown on Jen'rahb.
Three years after the last block had been nudged into place, the ancient buried city… shrugged. Subterranean archways collapsed beneath the immense strains of the Falah'd Crown, walls folded, foundation stones slid sideways into streets packed solid with dust. Beneath the surface the dust behaved like water, racing down streets and alleys, into gaping doorways, beneath floors—all unseen in the unrelieved darkness of Jen'rahb. On the surface, on a bright dawn marking an anniversary of the Falah'd rule, the Crown sagged, towers toppled, domes split in clouds of white marble dust, and the palace dropped unevenly, in some places no more than a few feet, in others over twenty arm-spans down into flowing rivers of dust.
Observers in the Lower City described the event. It was as if a giant invisible hand had reached down to the Crown, closing to gather in every building, crushing them all while pushing down into the hill. The cloud of dust that rose turned the sun into a copper disc for days afterwards.
Over thirty thousand people died that day, including the Falah'd himself, and of the three thousand who dwelt and worked within the Palace, but one survived: a young cook's helper who was convinced that the beaker he had dropped on the floor a moment before the earthquake was to blame for the entire catastrophe. Driven mad with guilt, he stabbed himself in the heart while standing in the Lower City's Merykra Round, his blood flowing down to drench the paving stones where Fiddler now stood.
His blue eyes narrowed, the sapper watched a troop of Red Swords ride hard through a scattering crowd on the other side of the Round.
Swathed in thin bleached linen robes, the hood pulled up and over his head in the manner of a Gral tribesman, he stood motionless on the sacred paving stone with its faded commemorative script, wondering if the rapid thumping of his heart was loud enough to be heard by the crowds moving nervously around him. He cursed himself for risking a wander through the ancient city, then he cursed Kalam for delaying their departure until he'd managed to make contact with one of his old agents in the city.
'Mezla'ebdin!' a voice near him hissed.
Malazan lapdogswas an accurate enough translation. The Red Swords were born of Seven Cities, yet avowed absolute loyalty to the Empress. Rare—if at the moment unwelcome—pragmatists in a land of fanatical dreamers, the Red Swords had just begun an independent crackdown on the followers of Dryjhna in their typical fashion: with sword edge and lance.
Half a dozen victims lay unmoving on the bleached stones of the Round, amidst scattered baskets, bundles of cloth, and food. Two small girls crouched beside a woman's body near the dried-up fountain. Sprays of blood decorated nearby walls. From a few streets away the alarms of the Ehrlitan Guard were ringing, the city's Fist having just been informed that the Red Swords were once again defying his inept rule.
The savage riders continued their impromptu, indiscriminate slaughter up a main avenue leading off from the Round, and were soon out of sight. Beggars and thieves swooped in on the felled bodies, even as the air filled with wailing voices. A hunchbacked pimp gathered up the two girls and hobbled out of sight up an alleyway.
A few minutes earlier Fiddler had come near to having his skull split wide open upon entering the Round and finding himself in the path of a charging
Red Sword. His soldier's experience launched him across the horse's path, forcing the warrior to swing his blade to his shield side, and a final duck beneath the swishing sword took the sapper past and out of reach. The Red Sword had not bothered pursuing him, turning instead to behead the next hapless citizen, a woman desperately dragging two children from the horse's path.
Fiddler shook himself, breathing a silent curse. Pushing through the jostling crowd, he made for the alley the pimp had used. The tall, leaning buildings to either side shrouded the narrow passage in shadow. Rotting food and something dead filled the air with a thick stench. There was no-one in sight as Fiddler cautiously padded along. He came to a side track between two high walls, barely wide enough for a mule and shin-deep in dry palm leaves. Behind each high wall was a garden, the tall palm trees entwining their fronds like a roof twenty feet overhead. Thirty paces on the passage came to a dead end, and there crouched the pimp, one knee holding down the youngest girl while he pressed the other girl against the wall, fumbling at her leggings.
The pimp's head turned at the sound of Fiddler striding through the dried leaves. He had the white skin of a Skrae and showed blackened teeth in a knowing grin. 'Gral, she's yours for a half jakata, once I've broken her skin. The other will cost you more, being younger.'
Fiddler stepped up to the man. 'I buy,' he said. 'Make wives. Two jakatas.'
The pimp snorted. 'I'll make twice that in a week. Sixteen jakatas.'
Fiddler drew the Gral long-knife he'd purchased an hour earlier and pressed the edge against the pimp's throat. Two jakatas and my mercy, simharal.'
'Done, Gral,' the pimp grated, eyes wide. 'Done, by the Hooded One!'
Fiddler drew two coins from his belt and tossed them into the leaves. Then he stepped back. 'I take them now.'
The simharal fell to his knees, scrabbling through the dried fronds. 'Take them, Gral, take them.'
Fiddler grunted, sheathing the knife and gathering one girl under each arm. Turning his back on the pimp, he walked out of the alley. The likelihood that the man would attempt any treachery was virtually nonexistent. Gral tribesmen often begged for insults to give cause for their favourite activity: pursuing vendettas. And it was reputedly impossible to sneak up on one from behind, so none dared try. For all that, Fiddler was thankful for the thick carpet of leaves between him and the pimp.