‘Why not?’
‘I’ve got some damned good reasons for saying no to you, and if you just give me a moment I’ll come up with them.’
The man’s feral smile revealed elongated canines.
‘The Trell is inside,’ Reccanto said. ‘Want me to get him, Quell? We should get going, right?’
‘Gruntle-’
‘I’d like to sign on,’ the caravan guard said, ‘as a shareholder. Just like those re shy;cruits there behind you. Same stakes. Same rules.’
‘When did you last take an order, Gruntle? You’ve been commanding guards for years now. You really think I want arguments with everything I say?’
‘No arguments. I’m not interested in second-guessing you. As a shareholder, just another shareholder.’
The tavern door opened then and out walked Mappo Runt.
His glance slipped past Gruntle then swung back, eyes narrowing. Then he faced Master Quell. ‘Is this one accompanying us? Good.’
‘Well-’
The Trell moved up to the wagon and clambered up its side in a racket of squealing springs to take position behind Glanno Tarp. He looked back down. ‘We’ll probably need someone like him.’
‘Like what?’ asked the witch, Precious Thimble.
‘Soletaken,’ Mappo replied, shrugging.
‘It’s not quite like that,’ Gruntle said quietly as he moved to join Mappo atop the carriage.
Master Quell stared after him, then, shaking himself, said, ‘Everyone get aboard, then. You two Boles, you’re facing astern. Witch, inside with me, where we can have ourselves a conversation. And you too, Mappo. We don’t put passengers up top. Too risky.’
Faint swung herself up to sit beside Glanno Tarp.
Brakes were released. Glanno glanced back to scan the crowd clinging to vari shy;ous handholds on the roof behind him. Grinned, then snapped the reins.
The horses screamed, lunged.
The world exploded around them.
Blaze down, blessed sun, on this city of wonders where all is of consequence. Cast your fiery eye on the crowds, the multitudes moving to and fro on their ways of life. Flow warmth into the rising miasma of dreams, hopes, fears and loves that ever seethe skyward, rising in the breaths expelled, the sighs released, reflected from restive glances and sidelong regard, echoing eternal from voices in clamour.
See then this street where walks a man who had been young the last time he walked this street. He is young no longer, oh, no. And there in the next street, wandering a line of market stalls crowded with icons, figurines and fetishes from a thousand cults — most of them long extinct — walks a woman whose path had, years ago now, crossed that of the man. She too no longer feels young, and if de shy;sire possessed tendrils that could pass through stone and brick, that could wend through mobs of senseless people, why, might they then meet in some fateful place and there intertwine, weaving something new and precious as a deadly flower?
In another quarter of the city strides a foreigner, an impressive creature, tall and prominently muscled, very nearly sculpted, aye, with skin the perfect hue of polished onyx and eyes in which glittered flecks of hazel and gold, and many were the glances sliding over him as he passed. But he was not mindful of such things, for he was looking for a new life and might well find it here in this glorious, ex shy;otic city.
In a poor stretch of the Gadrobi District a withered, weathered woman, tall and thin, knelt in her narrow strip of garden and began placing flatstones into a pattern in the dark earth. So much of what the soil could give must first be pre shy;pared, and these ways were most arcane and mysterious, and she worked as if in a dream, while in the small house behind her still slept her husband, a knuckled monster filled with fear and hate, and his dreams were dark indeed for the sun could not reach the places in his soul.
A woman lounged on the deck of a moored ship in the harbour. Sensing fell kin somewhere in the city and, annoyed, giving much thought to what she would do about it. If anything, anything at all. Something was coming, however, and was she not cursed with curiosity?
An ironmonger held a conversation with his latest investor, who was none other than a noble Councillor and reputedly the finest duellist in all Darujhistan, and therein it was decided that young and most ambitious Gorlas Vidikas would take charge of the iron mines six leagues to the west of the city.
A rickety wagon rocked along the road well past Maiten yet still skirting the lake, and in its bed amidst filthy blankets was the small battered form of a child, still unconscious but judged, rightly so, that he would live. The poor thing.
This track, you see, led to but one place, one fate. The old shepherd had done well and had already buried his cache of coins beneath the stoop behind the shack where he lived with his sickly wife, who had been worn out by seven failed pregnancies, and if there was bitter spite in the eyes she fixed upon the world is it any wonder? But he would do good by her in these last tired years, yes, he would, and he set to one side one copper coin that he would fling to the lake spirits at dusk — an ancient, black-stained coin bearing the head of a man the shepherd didn’t recognize — not that he would, for that face belonged to the last Tyrant of Darujhistan..
The wagon rolled on, on its way to the mines.
Harllo, who so loved the sun, was destined to wake in darkness, and mayhap he was never again to see the day’s blessed light,
Out on the lake the water glittered with golden tears.
As if the sun might relinquish its hard glare and, for just this one moment, weep for the fate of a child.
CHAPTER EIGHT
When can he not stand alone
Where in darkness no shadows are cast
Whose most precious selves deny the throne
While nothing held in life will last a moment longer
Than what’s carved into the very bones
But this is where you would stand
In his place and see all bleak and bridled
An array of weapons each one forged
For violence
When can he not stand alone
Where darkness bleeds into the abyss so vast
Whose every yearning seeks a new home
While each struggle leaves the meek to the stronger
And the fallen lie scattered like stones
But this is the life you would take in hand
To guide him ’cross the path so broken so riddled
Like the weapon of your will now charged
In cold balance
When can he not stand alone
Where in darkness every shadow is lost
Whose weary selves cut away and will roam
While nothing is left but this shielded stranger
Standing against the wind’s eternal moans
But this is your hero who must stand
Guarding your broken desires the ragged flag unfurled
Rising above the bastion to see your spite purged
In his silence
The swath of ground where all the grasses had been worn away might have marked the passing of a herd of bhederin, if not for the impos shy;sibly wide ruts left behind by the enormous studded wheels of a wagon, and the rubbish and occasional withered corpses scatttred to either side, vultures and crows danced among the detritus.
Traveller sat slouched in the Seven Cities saddle atop the piebald gelding. Nearby, at the minimum distance that his horse would accept, was the witch, Samar Dev, perched like a child above the long-legged, gaunt and fierce Jhag horse whose name was, she had said, Havok. The beast’s true owner was somewhere ahead, perhaps behind the Skathandi and the Captain’s monstrous carriage, or be shy;yond it. Either way, she was certain a clash was imminent.
‘He dislikes slavers,’ she had said earlier, as if this explained everything.