Not quite. I tore it apart. Only to have Quick Ben make sure most of it came back. Do I feel different? Am I changed? How would I even know?
But I miss the Bonehunters. I miss my miserable squad. I miss the damned Adjunct.
We’re nothing but the sword in her hand, but we’re a comfortable grip. Use us, then. Just do it in style.
‘Camp glow ahead,’ said Masan Gilani, who once more rode her horse. ‘Looks damned big.’
‘Her allies have arrived,’ said Ruthan Gudd, then added, ‘I expect.’
Bottle snorted. ‘Does she know you’re alive, Captain?’
‘Why should she?’
‘Well, because …’
‘I’m a captain, soldier.’
‘Who rode alone into the face of a Nah’ruk legion! Armoured in ice! With a sword of ice! A horse—’
‘Oh, enough, Bottle. You have no idea how much I regret doing what I did. It’s nice not being noticed. Maybe one day you humans will finally understand that, and do away with all your mad ambitions, your insipid self-delusional megalomania. You weren’t shat out by some god on high. You weren’t painted in the flesh of the divine – at least, not any more than anyone or anything else. What’s with you all, anyway? You jam a stick up your own arse then preen at how tall and straight you’re standing. Soldier, you think you put your crawling days behind the day you left your mother’s tit? Take it from me – you’re still crawling, lad. Probably always will.’
Bludgeoned by the tirade, Bottle was silent.
‘You two go on,’ said Masan Gilani. ‘I need to piss.’
‘That last time was the horse then?’ Rudd asked.
‘Oh, funny man – or whatever.’ She reined in.
‘So they bowed to you,’ Bottle said as he and the captain continued on. ‘Why take it out on me?’
‘I didn’t – ah, never mind. To answer you, no, the Adjunct knows nothing about me. But as you say, my precious anonymity is over – or it is assuming the moment we’re in camp you go running off to your sergeant.’
‘I’m sure I will,’ Bottle replied. ‘But not, if you like, to babble about you being an Elder God.’
‘God? Not a god, Bottle. I told you: it’s not what you think.’
‘I’ll keep your ugly little secret, sir, if that’s how you want it. But that won’t change what we all saw that day, will it?’
‘Stormrider magic, yes. That.’
‘That.’
‘I borrowed it.’
‘Borrowed?’
‘Yes,’ he snapped in reply. ‘I don’t steal, Bottle.’
‘Of course not, sir. Why would you need to?’
‘Exactly.’
Bottle nodded in the gloom, listening as Masan rode back up to them. ‘Borrowed.’
‘A misunderstood people, the Stormriders.’
‘No doubt. Abject terror leaves little room for much else.’
‘Interestingly,’ Ruthan Gudd said in a murmur, ‘needs have converged somewhat. And I’m too old to believe in coincidence. No matter. We do what we do and that’s that.’
‘Sounds like something Fiddler would say.’
‘Fiddler’s a wise man, Bottle. He’s also the best of you, though I doubt many would see that, at least not as clearly as I do.’
‘Fiddler, is it? Not the Adjunct, Captain?’
He heard Ruthan Gudd’s sigh, and it was a sound filled with sorrow. ‘I see pickets.’
‘So do I,’ said Masan Gilani. ‘Not Malazan. Perish.’
‘Our allies,’ said Bottle, glaring at Ruthan Gudd, but of course it was too dark for him to see that. Then again, what’s darkness to a Hood-cursed ice-wielding Imass-kneeling Elder God?
Who then spoke. ‘It was a guess, Bottle. Truly.’
‘You took my anger.’
The voice came out of the shadows. Blinking, Lostara Yil slowly sat up, the furs sliding down, the chill air sweeping around her bared breasts, back and belly. A figure was sitting on the tent’s lone camp stool to her left, cloaked, hooded in grey wool. The two hands, hanging down past the bend of his knees, were pale as bone.
Lostara’s heart thudded hard in her chest. ‘I felt it,’ she said. ‘Rising like a flood.’ She shivered, whispered, ‘And I drowned.’
‘Your love summoned me, Lostara Yil.’
She scowled. ‘I have no love for you, Cotillion.’
The hooded head dipped slightly. ‘The man you chose to defend.’
His tone startled her. Weary, yes, but more than that. Lonely. This god is lonely.
‘You danced for him and none other,’ Cotillion went on. ‘Not even the Adjunct.’
‘I expected to die.’
‘I know.’
She waited. Faint voices from the camp beyond the flimsy walls, the occasional glow of a hooded lantern swinging past, the thud of boots.
The silence stretched.
‘You saved us,’ she finally said. ‘For that, I suppose I have to thank you.’
‘No, Lostara Yil, you do not. I possessed you, after all. You didn’t ask for that, but then, even all those years ago, the grace of your dance was … breathtaking.’
Her breath caught. Something was happening here. She didn’t understand it. ‘If you did not wish my gratitude, Cotillion, why are you here?’ Even as she spoke, she flinched at her own tone’s harshness. That came out all wrong—
His face remained hidden. ‘Those were early days, weren’t they. Our flesh was real, our breaths … real. It was all there, in reach, and we took it without a moment’s thought as to how precious it all was. Our youth, the brightness of the sun, the heat that seemed to stretch ahead for ever.’
She realized then that he was weeping. Felt helpless before it. What is this about? ‘I took your anger, you said.’ And yes, she could remember it, the way the power filled her. The skill with the swords was entirely her own, but the swiftness – the profound awareness – that had belonged to him. ‘I took your anger. Cotillion, what did you take from me?’
He seemed to shake his head. ‘I think I’m done with possessing women.’
‘What did you take? You took that love, didn’t you? It drowned you, just as your anger drowned me.’
He sighed. ‘Always an even exchange.’
‘Can a god not love?’
‘A god … forgets.’
She was appalled. ‘But then, what keeps you going? Cotillion, why do you fight on?’
Abruptly he stood. ‘You are chilled. I have disturbed your rest—’
‘Possess me again.’
‘What?’
‘The love that I feel. You need it, Cotillion. That need is what brought you here, wasn’t it? You want to … to drown again.’
His reply was a frail whisper. ‘I cannot.’
‘Why not? I offer this to you. As a true measure of my gratitude. When a mortal communes with her god, is not the language love itself?’
‘My worshippers love me not, Lostara Yil. Besides, I have nothing worthy to give in exchange. I appreciate your offer—’
‘Listen, you shit, I’m trying to give you some of your humanity back. You’re a damned god – if you lose your passion where does that leave us?’
The question clearly rocked him. ‘I do not doubt the path awaiting me, Lostara Yil. I am strong enough for it, right to the bitter end—’
‘I don’t doubt any of that. I felt you, remember? Listen, whatever that end you see coming … what I’m offering is to take away some of its bitterness. Don’t you see that?’
He was shaking his head. ‘You don’t understand. The blood on my hands—’
‘Is now on my hands, too, or have you forgotten that?’
‘No. I possessed you—’
‘You think that makes a difference?’
‘I should not have come here.’
‘Probably not, but here you are, and that hood doesn’t hide everything. Very well, refuse my offer, but do you really think it’s just women who feel love? If you decide never again to feel … anything, then best you swear off possession entirely, Cotillion. Steal into us mortals and we’ll take what we need from you, and we’ll give in return whatever we own. If you’re lucky, it’ll be love. If you’re not lucky, well, Hood knows what you’ll get.’