Whiskeyjack smiled. 'Meeting the White Face clans of the Barghast is one such reward. Diversity is worth celebrating, Humbrall Taur, for it is the birthplace of wisdom.'
'Your words?'
'No, the Imperial Historian, Duiker.'
'And he speaks for the Malazan Empire?'
'In the best of times.'
'And are these the best of times?'
Whiskeyjack met the warrior's dark eyes. 'Perhaps they are.'
'Will you two be quiet!' Hetan growled behind them. 'I am about to die.'
Humbrall Taur swung about to study his daughter where she crouched against the barrels of grain. 'A thought,' he rumbled.
'What?'
'Only that you might not be seasick, daughter.''Really! Then what-' Hetan's eyes went wide. 'Spirits below!'
Moments later, Whiskeyjack was forced to lean unceremoniously, feet first, over the barge's gunnel, the current tugging at his boots, the flowing water giving them a thorough cleansing.
A seastorm had struck Maurik some time since its desertion, toppling ornamental trees and heaping seaweed-tangled dunes of sand against building walls. The streets were buried beneath an unmarred, evenly rippled white carpet of sand, leaving no bodies or other detritus visible.
Korlat rode alone down the port city's main thoroughfare. Squat, sprawling warehouses were on her left, civic buildings, taverns, inns and trader shops on her right. Overhead, hauling ropes linked the upper floors of the warehouses to the flat rooftops of the trader shops, festooned now with seagrasses as if decorated for a maritime festival.
Apart from what came with the warm wind's steady sigh, there was no movement down the length of the street, nor in the alleys intersecting it. Windows and doorways gaped black and forlorn. The warehouses had been stripped bare, their wide sliding doors facing onto the street left open.
She approached the westernmost reaches of the city, the smell of the sea behind her giving way to a sweeter taint of freshwater decay from the river beyond the warehouses on her left.
Caladan Brood, Kallor and the others had elected to ride round Maurik, inland, on their way to the flats, Crone flying overhead for a time, before once more winging away. Korlat had never known the Matron Great Raven to be so rattled. If indeed the loss of contact meant that Anomander Rake and Moon's Spawn had been destroyed, then Crone had lost both her master and her murder's roost. Unpleasant notions, both. More than enough to crook the Great Raven's wings with despair as she continued on, south once more.
Korlat had decided to ride alone, taking a route longer than the others — through the city. There was no need for haste, after all, and anticipation had a way of drawing out any stationary wait — better, then, to lengthen the approach at a controlled pace. There was much to think about, after all. If her Lord was well, then she would have to stand before him and formally sever her service — ending a relationship that had existed for fourteen thousand years, or, rather, suspending it for a time. For the remaining years of a mortal man's life. And if some calamity had befallen Anomander Rake, then Korlat would find herself the ranking commander to the dozen Tiste Andii who, like her, had remained with Brood's army. She would make that responsibility shortlived, for she had no wish to rule her kin. She would free them to decide their own fates.
Anomander Rake had unified these Tiste Andii by strength of personality — a quality Korlat well knew she did not share. The disparate causes in which he chose to engage himself and his people were, she had always assumed, each a reflection upon a single theme — but that theme and its nature had ever eluded Korlat. There were wars, there were struggles, enemies, allies, victories and losses. A procession through centuries that seemed random not just to her, but to her kin as well.
A sudden thought came to her, twisting like a dull knife in her chest. Perhaps Anomander Rake was equally lost. Perhaps this endless succession of causes reflects his own search. I had all along assumed a simple goal — to give us a reason to exist, to take upon ourselves the nobility of others. others for whom the struggle meant something. Was that not the theme underlying all we have done? Why do I now doubt? Why do I now believe that, if a theme does indeed exist, it is something other?
Something far less noble.
She attempted to shake off such thoughts, before they dragged her towards despair. For despair is the nemesis of the Tiste Andii. How often have I seen my kin fall on the field of battle, and have known — deep in my soul — that my brothers and sisters did not die through an inability to defend themselves? They died, because they had chosen to die. Shin by their own despair.