“Are my instructions understood, Captain?”
He glanced over at the man and waved a hand. “Well enough.”
Snarling, Topper spread wide his arms. The Imperial Warren yawned behind him. He stepped back and was gone.
Paran leaned forward, his head in his hands.
It was the Season of Currents and in the port city of Genabaris the heavy Malazan transports rocked and twisted, straining at their ropes like massive beasts. The piers, unused to such gargantuan craft moored alongside them, creaked ominously with every wayward, savage pull on the bollards.
Crates and cloth-wrapped bundles crowded the yards, supplies fresh in from the Seven Cities and destined for the front lines. Supply clerks clambered over them like monkeys, hunting sigils of identification and chattering to each other over the heads of clockmen and soldiers.
The agent leaned against a crate at the foot of the pier, his burly arms crossed and his small, narrow eyes fixed on the officer sitting on a bundle some thirty yards further down the pier. Neither had moved in the last hour.
The agent was having a hard time convincing himself that this was the man he'd been sent to retrieve. He looked awfully young, and as green as the rancid water of this bay. His uniform still bore its maker's chalk lines, and the leather grip of his longsword showed not a single sweatstain. He had the stink of nobility about him like a perfumed cloud. And for the past hour he'd just been sitting there, hands in lap, shoulders hunched, watching like some stupid cow the frenzied activity swirling around him. Though he ranked captain, not a single soldier even bothered to salute him-the stink wasn't subtle.
The Adjunct must have been knocked on her head during that last assassination attempt on the Empress. It was the only possible explanation for this farce of a man rating the kind of service the agent was about to deliver. In person, yet. These days, he concluded sourly, the whole show was being run by idiots.
With a loud sigh, the agent pushed himself upright and sauntered over to the officer.
The man didn't even know he had company until the agent stepped in front of him, then he looked up.
The agent did some quick rethinking. Something in this man's gaze was dangerous. There was a glitter there, buried deep, that made the man's eyes seem older than the rest of his face. “Narne?” The agent's question was a strained grunt.
“Took your time about it,” the captain said, rising.
A tall bastard, too. The agent scowled. He hated tall bastards. “Who're you waiting for, Captain?”
The man looked up the pier. “The waiting's over. Let's walk. I'll just take it on faith you know where we're going.” He reached down and retrieved a duffel bag, then took the lead.
The agent moved up beside the captain. “Fine,” he growled. “Be that way.” They left the pier and the agent turned them up the first street on the right. “A Green Quorl came in last night. You'll be taken directly to Cloud Forest, and from there a Black will take you into Pale.”
The captain gave the agent a blank stare.
“You never heard of Quorls?”
“No. I assume they're a means of transportation. Why else would I be removed from a ship a thousand leagues distant from Pale?”
“The Moranth use them, and we're using the Moranth.” The agent scowled to himself. “Using them a lot, these days. The Green do most of the courier stuff, and moving people around like you and me, but the Black are stationed in Pale, and the different clans don't like to mix. The Moranth are made up of a bunch of clans, got colours for names, and wear them too. Nobody gets confused that way.”
“And I'm to ride with a Green, on a Quorl?”
“You got it, Captain.”
They headed up a narrow street. Malazan guards milled around every crossing, hands on their weapons.
The captain returned a salute from one such squad. “Having trouble with insurrections?” he asked.
“Insurrections, yeah. Trouble, no.”
“Let's see if I understand you correctly.” The captain's tone was stiff. “Instead of delivering me by ship to a point nearest Pale, I'm to ride overland with a bunch of half-human barbarians who smell like grasshoppers and dress like them, too. And this way, no one will notice, especially since it'll take us a year to get to Pale and by then everything will have gone all to hell. Correct so far?”
Grinning, the agent shook his head. Despite his hatred for tall men or rather, men taller than himself, he felt his guard going down. At least this one talked straight-and, for a noble, that was pretty impressive. Maybe Lorn still had the old stuff after all. “You said overland? Well, hell, yes, Captain. Way overland.” He stopped at a nondescript doorway and turned to the man. “Quorls, you see, they fly. They got wings. Four in fact. And you can see right through every one of them, and if you're of a mind you can poke your finger through one of those wings. Only don't do it when you're a quarter-mile up, right? “Cause it may be a long way down but it'll seem awfully fast at the time. You hear me, Captain?” He opened the door. Beyond rose a staircase.