‘It won't stand.’
‘Sure it will.’
‘No – not enough support on the right. It'll give on that side and bring the whole thing down.’
‘No, it won't. We packed it tight. There's enough counter-strain.’
The two Malazan marines, a man and a woman, sat on a heap of bricks outside Li Heng's east-facing Dawn Gate. They studied the towering outer arch of the massive gatehouse. To the north and south stretched the curtain walls of Li Heng's legendary ten man-heights of near-invincible defences.
A robed man edged his way out of the gate – a shadowed entrance broad enough to swallow four chariots side by side. He peered about, a hand shading his gaze, and spotted the two. He turned and bellowed something that the acoustics of the long tunnel echoed and magnified into an unintelligible roar. Another man came running out, raced up to the first and extended an umbrella over him. This one straightened his robes, adjusted his wide sleeves, and approached. The second kept pace, umbrella high.
‘You there – you two! Where is your commander?’
The two eyed one another. The woman, wearing a mangled leather cap, touched a finger to it. ‘Magistrate Ehrlann. What brings you out to the construction project you're in charge of? Bad news, I'd wager.’
Ehrlann dabbed a white silk handkerchief to his face, smiled thinly. ‘Your disrespect has long been noted, you, ah, engineers. Criminal conviction, I think, will see a due improvement in manners.’
‘Did you hear that, Sunny?’ said the woman. ‘We're engineers. But how are we gonna keep your walls built for you if you take us to court?’
‘In chains, I imagine,’ smiled the magistrate. ‘Your commander?’
‘Working.’
Ehrlann waved flies away. ‘Drunk, you mean. Jamaer! Switch!’
‘Switch what?’ asked Sunny.
‘Not you fools.’
With his free hand the umbrella-holder extended a stick tied at one end with a tuft of bhederin hair. Ehrlann took it and waved it before his face. ‘Don't bother yourselves. I see him now.’
Ehrlann marched off, stumbling over the loose tumbled brick and rock. Jamaer followed, umbrella held high.
The two eyed one another. ‘Should we go along?’ asked the female saboteur and she adjusted the leather cap on her hacked-short brown hair.
‘Storo might kill him. That'd look bad when we're in court.’
‘You're right.’
They followed.
Ehrlann had stopped at an awning made from a military cloak roped from the side of a towering block of limestone half-buried in the ground. A man was straightening out from under it, weaving, coughing, wiping his hands down the front of his stained loose jerkin.
The two engineers saluted crisply. ‘Captain Storo, sir!’
Storo shot them a dark look, swallowed and grimaced at what he tasted. ‘That's sergeant. What is it now, Ehrlann?’
‘I have come to demand the opening of Dawn Gate, sir. Demand it. Our builders tell us that restorations are long complete. They say the structure is now sound and that commercial access is long overdue.’
Storo scratched his sallow stubbled cheeks, shaded his eyes from the sun. ‘Would those be the same builders the Fist ordered you to fire for turning a blind eye to the wall's dismantling?’
‘Mere nuisance pilfering over the years carried out by these undesirables.’ The magistrate waved his switch to the squatter camp spread out from both sides of the east road.
Storo squinted at the camp. ‘They live in tents, Ehrlann.’
‘Nevertheless, you can delay no longer. Work here is done. Your contract is over. Finished. If we must, the court will report to High Fist Anand that we no longer require the services of his military engineers and that the defences of Li Heng have been returned to their ancient bright glory.’
Sunlight shone on Ehrlann and he winced, snapping, ‘Higher, you fool!’
Jamaer raised the umbrella higher.
‘You can report all you like.’ Storo said. He crouched to retrieve a helmet from under the awning, pulled it on. ‘But the only report Anand will listen to is mine.’
Ehrlann dabbed at the sweat beading his face, took hold of the robes at his front. ‘Do not force the Court of Magistrates to bring formal charges, commander.’
Storo's gaze narrowed. ‘Such as?’
‘There have been unfortunate assaults upon citizens, commander. Harassment of officials in the course of their duties.’
Storo snorted. ‘If I were you, Ehrlann, I would not try to arrest any of my men. Jalor, for one, is a tribesman from Seven Cities. He wouldn't take to it. And Rell –’ Storo shook his head. ‘I'd hate to think of what he'd do. In any case, Fist Rheena wouldn't honour any of your civil writs.’
‘Yes. She would. The city garrison is not behind you, commander.’
‘Meaning you've bought them.’
‘Commander! I object to that language!’
‘Don't bother, Ehrlann. Hurl, Sunny … what's your opinion on the gate fortress, the tunnel, the arches?’
‘Good for fifty years,’ said Hurl.
‘It will fall – sooner than later,’ said Sunny.
‘There you go,’ Storo told Ehrlann.
The magistrate waved the switch before his face, eyed Storo. ‘Meaning … ?’
‘Meaning you have your gate. Open it to traffic tomorrow.’
The magistrate beamed, threw his arms wide as if he would embrace Storo. ‘Excellent, commander. I knew you would listen. All finished then. I must admit it has been an education dealing with you veterans – we do not see too many here in the interior. Tell me, just what was the name of those barbarian lands you conquered all to the glory of the Empress? Gangabaka? Bena-gagan?’
‘Genabackis,’ Storo sighed. ‘And we're not finished. Not yet.’
Ehrlann frowned warily. ‘I'm sorry, commander?’
‘That hill over there,’ Storo lifted his chin to the north.
‘Yes? Executioner's Hill?’
‘I want to take one man's height—’
‘Two,’ said Hurl.
‘Two man-heights off it.’
The switch stopped moving. ‘You are joking, commander.’ Ehrlann pointed the switch. ‘That is where we execute our criminals. That is where city justice is enacted. It is an ancient city tradition. You cannot interfere with that. It is simply impossible.’
‘It's not ancient tradition.’
‘Claims whom?’
‘My mage, Silk. He says it only goes back seventy years and that's good enough for me. In any case, you can strangle your starving poor elsewhere, Ehrlann. After you provide the labour to lower the profile of that hill we'll start on the moat.’
‘The moat? A moat? Where is that, pray?’
‘Right where you're standing.’ Storo picked up his weapon belt and dusty hauberk. ‘Good day, magistrate. Hurl, Sunny. I need a drink.’
Magistrate Ehrlann watched the veterans head to Dawn Gate. He peered down to the loose dirt, broken brick and trampled rubbish at his feet. Sunlight struck the top of his head and he flinched.
‘Jamaer! Umbrella!’
* * *
The fat man in ocean-blue robes walked Unta's street of Dragons deck readers, Wax Witches and Warren Seers – Diviner's Row – with the patient air of a beachcomber searching a deserted shore for lost treasure. Yet Diviner's Row was far from deserted. As the Imperial capital, Unta was the lodestone, the vortex, drawing to it all manner of talent – legitimate or not. Mages, practitioners of the various Warrens, but also that class of lesser ‘talents’, such as readers of the Dragons deck, soothsayers, fortune-tellers of all kinds, be they scholiasts of entrails or diviners of the patterns glimpsed in smoke, read in cracked burnt bone or spelled by tossed sticks.
Divination was the current Imperial fashion. As the day cooled and the blue sky darkened to purple, the Row seethed with crowds from all stations of life, each seeking a hint of – or protection against – Twin Oponn's capricious turns: the Lad's push, or the Lady's pull. Amid the jostling evening crowd charm-sellers touted the vitality of their clattering relics, icons and amulets. Stallkeepers hectored passersby.
‘Your fortune this night, gracious one!’
‘Chart the influences of the Many Realms upon your Path!’
‘The Mysteries of Ascension revealed, noble sir.’
‘A great many enemies oppose you.‘ The plump man in blue robes froze. He peered down at a dirty street-urchin just shorter than he. ‘You risk all,’ the youth continued, his eyes squeezed shut, ‘but for a prize beyond your imaginings.’ The man's brows climbed his seamed forehead and his thick lips tightened, then he threw back his head and guffawed. His laughter revealed teeth stained a fading green that rendered them dingy and ill-looking.
Of course!‘ he agreed. ‘But of course! The future you have right. A great talent is yours, lad.’ He mussed the youth's greasy hair then handed him a coin. Waving to the nearest stallkeeper, he called, ‘A great future I foretell for that bold one!’ then he continued on, leaving a confused foreteller of Dead Poliel's visitations squinting into the crowd.
Hawkers of Dragons decks thrust their wares at the man. He turned a tolerant eye upon all. The merits of each ancient velvet-wrapped stack of cards he queried until finally purchasing one at a greatly reduced sum due to sudden misfortune within the family that had held it for generations.
Passing a stall offering relics, invested jewellery and stacks of charms, he paused and returned. The man beside the cart straightened from his stool, noted the fat, expensively-robed man's gaze fixed upon a sheath of necklaces. He smiled knowingly. ‘Yes. You have a discriminating eye, noble sir.’ The vendor took down the knotted necklaces, offered them to the man who flinched away. ‘Note the links, sir, chains in miniature. And the pendants! Guaranteed slivers of bone from the very remains of the poor victims of that fiend Coltaine's death march.’ The fat man's eyes seemed to bulge in their sockets. He swallowed with difficulty. ‘My Lord is familiar with that sad episode?’
Mastering himself, Mallick Rel found his voice, croaked, ‘Yes.’
‘A most disgraceful tragedy, was it not?’
Mallick straightened his shoulders. His lips drew back from his stained teeth. ‘Yes. An awful failure. Hauntings of it ever return to me like waves.’
‘Thank the wisdom of the Empress in her call for all Quon to rise against the traitorous Wickans.’
‘Yes. Thank her.’
‘Then my Lord must have this relic – may we all learn from what it carries.’
Bowing, the vendor missed Mallick's eyes, deep within their pockets of fat, dart to him with a strange intensity. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A lesson ever to be heeded.’ Then he smiled beatifically. ‘Of course I shall purchase your excellent relic – and is that a charm to deflect Hood's eternal hunger I see next to it?’
*
As the evening darkened into night and moths and bats came out, servants lit lanterns outside the shops of the more enduring fortunetellers and deck-readers. Mallick entered the premises of one Lady Batevari. A recent arrival in the capital herself, Lady Batevari had, in a short space of time, established a formidable reputation as a most profound sensitive to the hints and future patterns to be glimpsed within the controlling influences of the Warrens. Known throughout the streets as the High Priestess of the Queen of Dreams, her official position within the cult remained uncertain since she and the Grand Temple on God's Round determinedly ignored each other. Some dismissed her as a charlatan, citing her claim to be from Darujhistan where no one who had ever been there could remember hearing her name mentioned. Others named her the true practitioner of the cult and pointed to her record of undeniably accurate prophecies and predictions. Both sides of the debate noted Mallick Rel's devotion as proof positive of their position.
Unaware of the debate, or perhaps keenly aware, Mallick entered the foyer. He was met by a servant dressed in the traditional leggings and tunic of a resident of Pale in northern Genabackis – for it had become fashionable for wealthy households to hire such emigrants and refugees from the Imperial conquests to serve as footmen, guards and maids in waiting. Mallick handed the man his ocean-blue travelling robes and the man bowed, waving an arm to the parlour.
At the portal, Mallick froze, wincing. A phantasmagoric assemblage of furniture, textiles and artwork from all the provinces of the Empire and beyond assaulted him. It was as if a cyclone such as those that occasionally struck his Falaran homeland had torn through the main Bazaar of Aren and he now viewed the resultant carnage. Entering, he sneered at a Falaran rug – cheap tourist tat, sniffed at a Barghast totem – an obvious fake, and grimaced at the clashing colours of a Letherii board-painting – a copy unfortunate in its accuracy.
A frail old woman's voice quavered from the portal, ‘Is that you, young Mallick?’
He turned to a grey-haired, stick-limbed old woman shorter even than he. A slip of a girl, Taya, in white dancing robes steadied the old woman at one arm. Mallick bowed reverently. ‘M'Lady.’
Taya steered Lady Batevari to the plushest chair and arranged herself on the carpeted floor beside, feet tucked under the robes that pooled around her. Her kohl-ringed eyes sparkled impishly up at Mallick from above her transparent dancer's veil. The footman entered carrying a tray of sweetmeats and drinks in tall crystal glasses. Mallick and Lady Batevari each took a glass.
‘The turmoil among the ranks of these so-called gods continues, Mallick,’ Batevari announced with clear relish. ‘And it is, of course, reflected here with appropriate turmoil in our mundane Realm.’
Mallick beamed his agreement. ‘Most certainly,’ he murmured.
She straightened, hands clenching like claws at the armrests. ‘They scurry like rats caught in a house aflame!’
Mallick choked into his drink. Gods, it was a wonder the woman's clients hadn't all thrown themselves into Unta Bay. Coughing, he shouted, ‘Yes. Certainly!’
Lady Batevari fell back into her chair. She emptied her glass in one long swallow. Taya gave Mallick a dramatic wink. ‘So, Hero of the crushing of the Seven Cities rebellion,’ the old woman intoned, her black eyes now slitted, ‘what can this poor vessel offer you? You, who have so far to go – and you will go far, Mallick. Very far indeed, as I have said many times …’
‘M'Lady is too kind.’
‘That was not a prediction, she sneered. ‘It is the truth. I have seen it.’
Mallick exchanged quick glances with Taya who rolled her eyes heavenward. ‘I am reassured,’ he answered, struggling to keep his naturally soft voice loud.
‘Should you be?’ Mallick fought a glare. ‘In any case,’ she continued, perhaps not noticing, ‘we were talking of the so-called gods.’ The woman stared off into the distance, silent for a long time.
Mallick examined her wrinkled face, her eyes almost lost in their puckered crow's-feet. Not more of her insufferable posing?
‘I see a mighty clash of wills closing upon us sooner than anyone imagines,‘ she crooned, dreamily. ‘I see schemes within schemes and a scurrying hither and thither! I see the New colliding against the Old and a Usurpation! Order inverted! And as the Houses collapse the powers turn upon one another like the rats they are. Brother ‘gainst sister. They all eye the injured but he is not the weakest. No, yet his time will come. The ones who seem the strongest are … Too long have they stood unchallenged! One hides in the dark while they all contend … Yet does he see his Path truly – if at all? The darkest – he—’ She gasped, coughing and hacking into a fist. ‘His Doom is so close at hand! As for the brightest … He is ever the most exposed while She who watches will miss her chance and the beasts arise to chase one last chance to survive this coming translation. So the Pantheon shall perish. And from the ashes will arise … will arise …’
Mallick, staring, drink forgotten despite his utter scepticism, raised a brow, ‘Yes? What?’
Lady Batevari blinked her sunken eyes. ‘Yes? What indeed?’ She held up her empty glass, frowned at it. ‘Hernon! More refreshments!’
Mallick pushed down an impulse to throttle the crone. Sometimes he, who should know better than anyone, sometimes even he wondered … he glanced to Taya. Her gaze on the old woman appeared uncharacteristically troubled.
‘Your presentiments and prophecies astonish me as always,’ he announced while Hernon, the servant, refilled the Lady's glass. She merely smiled loftily. ‘Your predictions regarding the Crimson Guard, for example,’ he said, watching Hernon leave the room. ‘They are definitely close now. Much closer than any know. As you foresaw. And a firm hand will be needed to forestall them …’
Draining her glass of wine in one long draught, Lady Batevari murmured dreamily, ‘As I foresaw … And now,’ she announced, struggling to rise while Taya hurried to help her. ‘I will leave you two to speak in private.’ A clawed hand swung to Mallick. ‘For I know your true motives for coming here to my humble home in exile, Mallick, Scourge of the Rebellion.’
Standing as well, Mallick put on a stiff smile. He and Taya shared a quick anxious glance. ‘Yes? You do?’
‘Yes, of course I do!’
Leaning close, she leered. ‘You would steal this young flower from my side, you rake! My companion who has been my only solace through my long exile from civilization at sweet Darujhistan.’ She raised a hand in mock surrender. ‘But who am I to stand between youth and passion!’
Bowing, Mallick waved aside any such intentions. ‘Never, m'Lady.’
‘So you say, Confounder of the Seven Cities Insurrection. But do not despair.’ Lady Batevari winked broadly. ‘She may yet yield. Do not abandon the siege.’ Taya lowered her face, covering her mouth.
Stifling her laughter, Mallick knew, feeling, oddly, a flash of irritation.
‘And so I am off to my quarters – to meditate upon the Ineffable. Hernon! Come!’
The footman returned and escorted Lady Batevari from the parlour. Mallick bowed and Taya curtsied. From the hall she called, ‘Remember, child, Hernon shall be just within should our guest forget himself and in the heat of passion press his suit too forcefully.’
Taya covered her mouth again – this time failing to completely mask a giggle. Mallick reflected with surprise on his spasm of anger. If only he knew for certain – senility or malicious insult? He poured himself another glass of the local Untan white.
Taya threw herself into the chair, laughing into both hands.
Mallick waited until certain the old hag was gone. He swirled the wine, noting the dregs gyring like a mist at the bottom. ‘Were not I so sure the waters shallow,’ he breathed, ‘profound depths I would sometime suspect.’
Smiling wickedly, Taya curled her legs beneath her. ‘It's her job to appear profound, Mallick. And she really is rather good – wouldn't you say?’