Reaper's Gale (The Malazan Book of the Fallen 7)

Another sleepless night, Udinaas?’

He looked across the fire at Seren, but she was intent on the flames licking beneath her outstretched hands, as if the question had been rhetorical.

‘I can see my bones,’ she then said.

‘They’re not real bones,’ Kettle replied, settling down with her legs drawn up. ‘They look more like twigs.’

‘Thank you, dear.’

‘Bones are hard, like rock.’ She set her hands on her knees and rubbed them. ‘Cold rock.’

‘Udinaas,’ Seren said, ‘I see puddles of gold in the ashes.’

‘I found pieces of a picture frame.’ He shrugged. ‘Odd to think of K’Chain Nah’ruk hanging pictures, isn’t it?’

Seren looked up, met his eyes. ‘K’Chain-’

Silchas Ruin spoke as he stepped round a heap of cut stone. ‘Not pictures. The frame was used to stretch skin. K’Chain moult until they reach adulthood. The skins were employed as parchment, for writing. The Nah’ruk were obsessive recorders.’

‘You know a lot about creatures you killed on sight,’ Fear Sengar said.

Clip’s soft laughter sounded from somewhere beyond the circle of light, followed by the snap of rings on a chain.

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Another sleepless night, Udinaas?’

He looked across the fire at Seren, but she was intent on the flames licking beneath her outstretched hands, as if the question had been rhetorical.

‘I can see my bones,’ she then said.

‘They’re not real bones,’ Kettle replied, settling down with her legs drawn up. ‘They look more like twigs.’

‘Thank you, dear.’

‘Bones are hard, like rock.’ She set her hands on her knees and rubbed them. ‘Cold rock.’

‘Udinaas,’ Seren said, ‘I see puddles of gold in the ashes.’

‘I found pieces of a picture frame.’ He shrugged. ‘Odd to think of K’Chain Nah’ruk hanging pictures, isn’t it?’

Seren looked up, met his eyes. ‘K’Chain-’

Silchas Ruin spoke as he stepped round a heap of cut stone. ‘Not pictures. The frame was used to stretch skin. K’Chain moult until they reach adulthood. The skins were employed as parchment, for writing. The Nah’ruk were obsessive recorders.’

‘You know a lot about creatures you killed on sight,’ Fear Sengar said.

Clip’s soft laughter sounded from somewhere beyond the circle of light, followed by the snap of rings on a chain.

Fear’s head lifted sharply. ‘That amuses you, pup?’

The Tiste Andii’s voice drifted in, eerily disembodied. ‘Silchas Ruin’s dread secret. He parleyed with the Nah’ruk. There was this civil war going on, you see…’

‘It will be light soon,’ Silchas said, turning away.

Before too long, the group separated as it usually did. Striding well ahead were Silchas Ruin and Clip. Next on the path was Seren Pedac herself, while twenty or more paces behind her straggled Udinaas-still using the Imass spear as a walking stick-and Kettle and Fear Sengar.

Seren was not sure if she was deliberately inviting solitude upon herself. More likely some remnant of her old profession was exerting on her a disgruntled pressure to take the lead, deftly dismissing the presence ahead of the two Tiste warriors. As if they don’t count. As if they’re intrinsically unreliable as guides… to wherever it is we’re going.

She thought back, often, on their interminable flight from Letheras, the sheer chaos of that trek, its contradictions of direction and purpose; the times when they were motionless-setting down tentative roots in some backwater hamlet or abandoned homestead-but their exhaustion did not ease then, for it was not of blood and flesh. Scabandari Bloodeye’s soul awaited them, like some enervating parasite, in a place long forgotten. Such was the stated purpose, but Seren had begun, at last, to wonder.

Silchas had endeavoured to lead them west, ever west, and was turned aside each time-as if whatever threat the servants of Rhulad and Hannan Mosag presented was too vast to challenge. And that made no sense. The bastard can change into a damned dragon. And is Silchas a pacifist at heart! Hardly. He kills with all the compunction of a man swatting mosquitoes. Did he turn us away to spare our lives? Again, unlikely. A dragon doesn’t leave behind anything alive, does it? Driven north, again and again, away from the more populated areas.

To the very edge of Bluerose, a region once ruled by Tiste Andii-hiding still under the noses of Letherii and Edur-no, I do not trust any of this. 1 cannot. Silchas Ruin sensed his kin. He must have.

Suspecting Silchas Ruin of deceit was one thing, voicing the accusation quite another. She lacked the courage. As simple as that. Easier, isn’t it, to just go along, and to keep from thinking too hard. Because thinking too hard is what Udinaas has done, and look at the state he’s in. Yet, even then, he’s managing to keep his mouth shut. Most of the time. He may be an ex-slave, he may be ‘no-one’-but he is not a fool.

So she walked alone. Bound by friendship to none-none here, in any case-and disinclined to change that.

The ruined city, little more than heaps of tumbled stone, rolled past on all sides, the slope ahead becoming ever steeper, and she thought, after a time, that she could hear the whisper of sand, crumbled mortar, fragments of rubble, as if their passage was yet further pitching this landscape, and as they walked they gathered to them streams of sliding refuse. As if our presence alone is enough shift the balance.

The whispering could have been voices, uttered beneath the wind, and she felt-with a sudden realization that lifted beads of sweat to her skin-within moments of understanding the words. Of stone and broken mortar. I am sliding into madness indeed-

‘When the stone breaks, every cry escapes. Can you hear me now, Seren Pedac?’