Burastan shared Squint’s measuring glower for a time, then glanced back upstream to where Yusen followed with the main column. ‘All right. Let’s parley. See what they want. Sweetly, Squint, send your boys and girls wide in case there’s more of them.’ They nodded and slogged off. ‘You two, you’re with me.’ She started forward.
Murk followed behind. He shot angry glances to his partner who dragged along even more reluctantly than usual. ‘What’s with you?’ he whispered. ‘You were all happy to be sloshing through the water but now you look like you’re headed to a firing squad. Is there something you’re not telling me?’ He asked because he knew there damn well was.
Sour shook his head. Then he did something very strange: he pushed back his muddy slick hair and brushed away some of the twigs and leaves stuck to his arms and bulging pot-belly stomach. Murk eyed him up and down. What in the Abyss has got into the man?
They rounded a bend in the stream and there they were on one bank: a dumpy middle-aged woman in dirty robes and a lean swordswoman, sitting slumped, cradling her right arm, a half-mask on her face just like a Seguleh. Can’t be real, was Murk’s first thought.
Burastan signed a halt. ‘Who are you?’ she called.
‘I am Rissan, out of Tali,’ the middle-aged woman said in a calm clear voice. Sour, Murk noted, jumped at the name. ‘This is my companion, Ina, from Genabackis. She is ill and in need of healing. You would have my gratitude if you could see your way to curing her infection.’
Burastan grunted, unimpressed. She crossed her arms. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I could very well ask the same question of a Malazan patrol in the middle of Ardata’s territory, but I shall refrain.’
‘You haven’t answered my question.’
The woman sighed. ‘If I must. I am a practitioner. I came to seek out Ardata as have so many over the ages. And,’ she waved helplessly to the surroundings, ‘like so many before me I have found the journey … challenging.’
Burastan grunted her agreement. ‘It is that.’
‘And what of you?’ Rissan asked.
‘Shipwrecked. We’re on our way to negotiate for transport out of this godsforsaken abyss.’
The woman’s gaze sharpened. ‘With what would you bargain?’
Burastan scowled, quite annoyed. She had opened her mouth, obviously meaning to put the woman in her place, when Sour piped up: ‘A term of service, maybe. Or payment from the nearest governorship.’
Burastan turned her scowl on Sour who hunched apologetically. Murk also eyed his partner, wondering, Why the uncharacteristic boldness?
Rissan nodded. ‘Then I offer my services in return for your healing my retainer.’
Murk turned aside and brought his face close to Sour. ‘What do you think?’ he murmured, low. ‘She worth it?’
The scrawny fellow was hugging himself and hopping from foot to foot as if he would explode. ‘Oh yeah,’ he answered in a strangled squeak.
Murk gave the nod to Burastan, who rolled her eyes. ‘Very well. We’ll see what we can do.’
‘You have my gratitude.’
Sour eagerly slogged forward to examine the hunched, supposedly Seguleh woman. Throughout, she had sat immobile, head slightly lowered, but when Sour reached for her she moved in a blur, her sword appearing held one-handed between her and Sour, its point pressed to his chest.
Murk flinched backwards. Okay — so maybe she really is Seguleh.
Burastan went for her blade, cursing. Sour raised his arms and looked to Rissan. The woman spoke to the Seguleh: ‘Allow him to examine you, Ina.’
The woman, Ina, her chest working, swallowed and nodded. She lowered the sword, though she did not let go of it. Sour took hold of her forearm. His breath hissed from between his teeth. He peered up at Rissan. ‘This is very bad.’
The Seguleh woman snorted a laugh. She spoke in short panted breaths: ‘Is this you … trying to be … reassuring, Malazan?’
Sour moved off. He waved Sweetly and Squint to him. They talked in low tones then headed into the jungle in separate directions.
‘I’ll report in,’ Burastan told Murk, and slogged off upstream.
Murk eyed this mage. ‘You are a sorceress, then?’
‘Yes.’
‘Accomplished, I hope. We mean to enter Jakal Viharn.’
Her gaze yet resting on her sick retainer, Rissan answered, ‘If it can be found.’
‘It’s hard to hide things from me,’ Murk said, realizing, as he said it, that it sounded as if he were boasting, or attempting to impress this newcomer. Why in the Abyss should I care? Because there’s something about this one, that’s why. Don’t know why but she scares me.
The woman gave a small smile. ‘Your patron has that predilection.’
Has me pegged already, does she?
The main column came pushing their way through the waist-high water. In its middle were Ostler and Dee, supporting the litter between them on their shoulders. Murk watched them then sneaked a glance to the sorceress. Her gaze followed the litter all the way as it neared.
Don’t like that. ’Course she ought to sense something if she really is a strong practitioner. Could she be here for the shard? Could hardly wrest it from amongst all of us. And she seems to care for this retainer gal. Unless it was all just a handy trick to ingratiate herself.
Damn these adherents of the Enchantress! It’s always so hard to figure out what their game is.
Burastan returned with Yusen. Introductions were made. The captain made the call to camp here and so they offered the best of their ratty remaining blankets to the retainer gal, Ina, and she eased herself back against a tree, her arm cradled on her lap.
It looked to Murk as though she didn’t have long. Not that he was the expert. The sorceress, Rissan, sat nearby on a folded blanket. Murk crossed to Ostler and Dee and motioned for them to follow him. He led them aside, out of sight of Rissan, then signed for them to rest their burden. He sat on a root next to the litter. ‘Extra guards tonight,’ he told Dee, who nodded. ‘Go get some food, you two.’
Dee frowned, rubbed his shaven, and now sunburnt, scalp. ‘Call that food?’ he grumbled. Before Murk could say something disparaging, the big man shrugged. ‘Well, better’n starvin’ anyways. Never complain to the cook, that’s my motto.’ He waved Ostler to follow him. ‘Maybe we can spear us some fish.’
Murk sat staring off into the shadows for some time after that. Dee’s tossed-off observation had struck something in him. The old soldier’s common refrain: don’t complain to the cook. Was that what he’d been doing these last few weeks? Complaining to the cook? Man takes the trouble to pull them through a difficult time and what does he do? Piss over all his efforts? What had he contributed? What problems had he solved?
Murk suddenly felt his face growing very hot indeed.
Don’t complain to the cook. And why? ’Cause it’s just damned ungrateful, that’s why.
And that was just the easy part. The problem with being able to self-reflect meant that it was possible to open up a whole pit o’ ugly writhin’ snakes. Like maybe he was just plain resentful. Used to be he was the man with the answers. He made the calls. Now, he wasn’t even in the lists.
Hard to watch your own star fade while another brightened. A hard lesson in basic humanity — even for those who know what that is.
Staring off into the deep shadows without seeing them, he whispered, ‘Fuck.’
Only thing for him now was to make the human gesture.
When the guards assigned to watch the shard arrived it was twilight. He returned to camp. A fire had been lit, pickets posted for the night. One of the squads was eating at the fire. Sour was with the swordswoman, tending her arm. Some kind of food was out on a broad leaf. Little packets wrapped in leaves. Murk leaned in to pick one up. It had come from the fire, seared in the crisp leaf wrappings.