She snorted.
The Gral cocked his head, and she could feel his contempt. ‘What happens now?’ he asked.
‘Now? Very little. There are secure residences, for you and your champion. As for when the Emperor chooses to face his challengers, that is up to him. Sometimes, he is impatient and the clash occurs immediately. Other times, he waits, often for weeks. But I will tell you what will begin immediately.’
‘What is that?’
‘The burial urn for Icarium, and his place in the cemetery where resides every challenger Rhulad has faced.’
‘Even that place will not survive,’ Taralack Veed muttered.
The Gral, feeling sick to his stomach, walked over to Icarium. He did not want to think of the destruction to come. He had seen it once, after all. Bum, even in your eternal sleep, you felt the stabbing wound that is Icarium-and none of these people here countenanced it, none was ready for the truth. Their hands are not in the earth, the touch is lost-yet look at them: they would call me the savage.
‘Icarium, my friend-’
‘Can you not feel it, Taralack Veed?’ In his unhuman eyes, the gleam of anticipation. ‘This place… I have been here before-no, not this city. From the time before this city was born. I have stood on this ground-’
‘And it remembered,’ growled Taralack Veed.
‘Yes, but not in the way you believe. There are truths here, waiting for me. Truths. I have never been as close to them as I am now. Now I understand why I did not refuse you.’
Refuse me? You considered such a thing? Was it truly so near the edge? ‘Your destiny will soon welcome you, Icarium, as I have said all along. You could no more refuse that than you could the Jaghut blood in your veins.’
A grimace. ‘Jaghut… yes, they have been here. In my wake. Perhaps, even, on my trail. Long ago, and now again-’
‘Again?’
‘Omtose Phellack-the heart of this city is ice, Taralack Veed. A most violent imposition.’
Are you certain? I do not understand-’
‘Nor I. Yet. But I shall. No secret shall survive my sojourn here. It will change.’
‘What will change?’
Icarium smiled, one hand resting on the pommel of his sword, and did not reply.
‘You will face this Emperor then?’
‘So it is expected of me, Taralack Veed.’ A bright glance. ‘How could I refuse them?’
Spirits below, my death draws close. It was what we wanted all along. So why do I now rail at it? Who has stolen my courage?
‘It is as if,’ Icarium whispered, ‘my life awakens anew’
The hand shot out in the gloom, snatching the rat from atop the wooden cage holding the forward pump. The scrawny creature had a moment to squeal in panic before its neck was snapped. There was a thud as the dead rat was flung to one side, where it slid down into the murky bilge water.
‘Oh, how I hate you when you lose patience,’ Samar Dev said in a weary tone. ‘That’s an invitation to disease, Karsa Orlong.’
‘Life is an invitation to disease,’ the huge warrior rumbled from the shadows. After a moment, he added, ‘I’ll feed it to the turtles.’ Then he snorted. ‘Turtles big enough to drag down this damned ship. These Letherii live in a mad god’s nightmare.’
‘More than you realize,’ Samar Dev muttered. ‘Listen. Shouts from shore. We’re finally drawing in.’
‘The rats are relieved.’
‘Don’t you have something you need to do to get ready?’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know. Knock a few more chips off your sword, or something. Get it sharp.’
‘The sword is unbreakable.’
‘What about that armour? Most of the shells are broken-it’s not worthy of the name and won’t stop a blade-’
‘No blade will reach it, witch. I shall face but one man, not twenty. And he is small-my people call you children. And that is all you truly are. Short-lived, stick-limbed, with laces I want to pinch. The Edur are little different, just stretched out a bit.’
‘Pinch? Would that be before or after decapitation?’
He grunted a laugh.
Samar Dev leaned back against the bale in which some-thing hard and lumpy had been packed-despite the mild discomfort she was not inclined to explore any further. Both the Edur and the Letherii had peculiar ideas about what constituted booty. In this very hold there were amphorae containing spiced human blood and a dozen wax-clad corpses of Edur ‘refugees’ from Sepik who had not survived the journey, stacked like bolts of cloth against a bloodstained conch-shell throne that had belonged to some remote island chieftain-whose pickled head probably resided in one of the jars Karsa Orlong leaned against. ‘At least we’re soon to get off this damned ship. My skin has all dried up. Look at my hands-I’ve seen mummified ones looking better than these. All this damned salt-it clings like a second skin, and it’s moulting-’
‘Spirits below, woman, you incite me to wring another rat’s neck.’
‘So I am responsible for that last rat’s death, am I? Needless to say, I take exception to that. Was your hand that reached out, Toblakai. Your hand that-’
‘And your mouth that never stops, making me need to kill something.’
‘I am not to blame for your violent impulses. Besides, I was just passing time in harmless conversation. We’ve not spoken in a while, you and I. I find I prefer Taxilian’s company, and were he not sick with homesickness and even more miserable than you…’
‘Conversation. Is that what you call it? Then why are my ears numb?’
‘You know, I too am impatient. I’ve not cast a curse on anyone in a long time.’
‘Your squalling spirits do not frighten me,’ Karsa Orlong replied. ‘And they have been squalling, ever since we made
–
the river. A thousand voices clamouring in my skull-can you not silence them?’
Sighing, she tilted her head back and closed her eyes. Toblakai… you will have quite an audience when you clash swords with this Edur Emperor.’
‘What has that to do with your spirits, Samar Dev?’
‘Yes, that was too obscure, wasn’t it? Then I shall be more precise. There are gods in this city we approach. Resident gods.’
‘Do they ever get a moment’s rest?’
‘They don’t live in temples. Nor any signs above the doors of their residences, Karsa Orlong. They are in the city, yet few know of it. Understand, the spirits shriek because they are not welcome, and, even more worrying, should any one of those gods seek to wrest them away from me, well, there is little I could do against them.’
‘Yet they are bound to me as well, aren’t they?’
She clamped her mouth shut, squinted across at him in the gloom. The hull thumped as the ship edged up along-side the dock. She saw the glimmer of bared teeth, feral, and a chill rippled through her. ‘What do you know of. that?’ she asked.
‘It is my curse to gather souls,’ he replied. ‘What are spirits, witch, if not simply powerful souls? They haunt me… I haunt them. The candles I lit, in that apothecary of yours-they were in the wax, weren’t they?’
‘Released, then held close, yes. I gathered them… after I’d sent you away.’
‘Bound them into that knife at your belt,’ Karsa said. ‘Tell me, do you sense the two Toblakai souls in my own weapon?’
‘Yes, no. That is, I sense them, but I dare not approach.’
‘Why?’
‘Karsa, they are too strong for me. They are like fire in the crystal of that flint, trapped by your will.’
‘Not trapped,’ he replied. ‘They dwell within because they choose to, because the weapon honours them. They are my companions, Samar Dev.’ The Toblakai rose suddenly, hunching beneath the ceiling. ‘Should a god be foolish enough to seek to steal our spirits, I will kill it.’
She regarded him from half-closed eyes. Declarative statements such as that one were not rare utterances from Karsa Orlong, and she had long since learned that they were not empty boasts, no matter how absurd the assertion might have sounded. ‘That would not be wise,’ she said after a moment.