Agayla bowed. ‘I give homage where I choose, m’lady.’
The Enchantress turned her glance upon Kiska. ‘So this is the one.’
The force of the woman’s attention struck her like a blow. Kiska found she could not order her thoughts. It was as if she were standing before a titanic waterfall or a storm front at sea; all she could do was stare, awestruck by the vision.
The woman had advanced and taken her hands, one in each of her own. ‘You would follow a perilous trail, Kiska.’ She searched her face as Agayla had and nodded as if having satisfied some unspoken question. Motes of gold seemed to float in her eyes. ‘It is good you do not pursue this out of some sort of infatuation. For I do not see him capable of such feelings. Still…’ She regarded Agayla. ‘For her to travel alone…’
‘I can think of one or two I would trust,’ Agayla said, frowning. ‘But they have taken on other duties.’
‘There is someone I can call upon-’
‘I can take care of myself,’ Kiska blurted out.
Agayla glared her irritation. The Enchantress waved a hand. ‘That is not the question. You must sleep sometime. And a lone traveller is too much of a temptation. Fortunately I have someone in mind…’ and she gestured aside, inviting.
A man stepped through the barrier. He was of middling height but wiry and obviously powerful. Under desert robes he wore armour Kiska recognized as the style of Seven Cities, a mix of boiled leather and mail. His dark flat features and long black moustache sealed his identity as a son of that region. The most ridiculous weapons hung strapped at his belt: two morningstars. ‘Who is this?’ she demanded.
Again her aunt glared for her silence.
The man appeared similarly unimpressed. He indicated Kiska with a lift of his chin but addressed the Enchantress. ‘When we made our deal I told you I was done with protecting.’
‘I do not need anyone’s protection.’
The Enchantress raised a hand. ‘This is… which name would you prefer?’
‘Damn fool comes to mind,’ the man ground out. Yet he bowed. ‘Jheval.’
‘This is Kiska. She is searching for someone. And it is a mission that has my blessing. The man she wishes to locate may be of interest to you, Jheval. He is Tayschrenn, once High Mage of the Malazan Empire.’
The man’s eyes widened and he almost stepped backwards. ‘You would ask me to help find him?’
‘The gratitude of the Empire would no doubt be extraordinary if he could be found and brought back to them.’
Those dark eyes narrowed then within their many wrinkles and a decidedly wolfish grin climbed his lips in a way that Kiska found hardly reassuring. ‘Thank you for your concern… m’lady,’ she said, ‘but I do not need this fellow.’
‘You will fail if you go alone.’
The finality of that pronouncement chilled Kiska.
‘How are we-’ Jheval began, then corrected himself. ‘That is, how is the man to be tracked down?’
The Enchantress gestured to a burlap sack atop the broad stone at the centre of the circle. Kiska could not recall seeing it there before.
‘The Void that took the High Mage opened on to Chaos and there your trail will take you. When you reach its borders open this. The thing within will then lead you on.’
Kiska wrapped the sack in her cloak. It was dirty, as if it had been buried. From what she could glimpse inside all it seemed to contain were broken twigs and a few scraps of cloth.
‘I can send you on your way from here,’ the Enchantress said. ‘Is that acceptable?’
‘Thank you, m’lady,’ Kiska said, bowing.
Jheval grunted his agreement.
Agayla, whom Kiska had thought uncharactisterically quiet all this time, now embraced her, kissing her cheeks. ‘Be careful,’ she whispered. ‘I see in the weave that this search will not be the simple task you believe. You may not know what it is you are really after.’
Kiska would have spoken, but she was silenced by the tears that brimmed in her aunt’s eyes. A moment ago she would have thought such a thing impossible. I never thought of her as old before yet now, suddenly, I see her so. Time is cruel.
The Enchantress motioned aside. ‘You will see hills. Keep them to your left.’ Kiska bowed again and turned away. Jheval followed, his hands tucked into his leather belt.
After the two had gone, the Enchantress gently brushed a hand across Agayla’s face. ‘Do not cry, Weaver.’
‘I fear I have sent the child to her death.’
‘I cannot see into Chaos. But what she has taken as her failure has wounded her to her core. I can only hope she will come to forgive herself.’
‘So much is on its way, T’riss. I see it in the weft. The knots ahead come so thick they may choke the shuttle. The cloth may part.’
‘It may. We can only do our best to see to it that it only tears in certain places.’
Agayla smiled then, perhaps at her fears. ‘Yes. It will be a new order.’
The Queen of Dreams’ face hardened as she looked off into the distance. ‘Yes,’ she said, her voice taut with something almost like distaste. ‘Let us hope it will be a better one.’
It took Bakune two months of questioning, searching archives, and squeezing minor city officials to track down the family name and possible current residence of the family of Sister Charity. Whether the woman yet lived remained to be discovered.
He left his offices at noon on foot, wrapped in a plain wool cloak. He took the west road until it exited the town proper and here he turned off the way, down towards the coast where a ghetto of shacks and huts spilled down the slope. Dogs raged at his heels, knowing full well he did not belong. Dirty half-naked children stared at him, many obviously the half-breed by-blows of Roolian mothers and the Malazan occupiers. Young toughs collected in the muddy narrow paths, staring silently at what he imagined must be quite the apparition of a Roolian citizen wandering lost in the maze of their neighbourhood. At every turn round a staked tent or wattle and daub hut the crowd seemed to grow until he faced a solid wall of young men and women, dressed no better than the urchins, many carrying wasted limbs, milky blinded eyes, ugly swellings, and other disfigurements of illnesses — all from the filth of their poverty, no doubt.
‘I’m looking for the Harldeth family,’ he called to one of the young men. ‘Harldeth. Do you know the name?’
Blocking Bakune’s way, the fellow just stared. His mouth was twisted in a harelip and Bakune would have suspected him slow but for the unaccountable hostility simmering in his gaze. ‘Stranger,’ a weak voice called from a nearby hut. Bakune ducked his head to squint into the darkness.
‘Yes?’
‘Enter.’
He had to crouch almost double to slip within. He found an old man cross-legged on a woven mat next to a dead blackened hearth. The man was bare-chested despite the gathering cold of autumn. Bakune introduced himself, and was invited to sit. The stink of smoke and old rotten food made him almost gag; he elected to crouch on his haunches. After the old man had sat regarding him for a time, his night-black eyes unreadable, Bakune prompted again, ‘Yes? You know the Harldeth?’
‘I know the family.’
‘Will you take me to them?’
‘Why do you seek them?’
‘I’m assessing a death. I need to question Lithel Harldeth. She was once a nun in the Cloister. I’m told her family now lives out here.’
The old man cocked his head. ‘So, you are assessing a death… Where is the Watch? Where are their truncheons? Where is your signed confession?’
Bakune pulled away, offended. ‘That’s not how we do things. We assess to apportion the balance of innocence and culpability.’
The old man just gave a sad indulgent smile. ‘You should spend more time out here, Assessor Bakune.’ He struggled to rise, pulling up a tall walking stick, which he held horizontal. ‘Come.’