Midnight Tides (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #5)
Page 32‘Incited? She claimed the very opposite.’
‘Unimportant. Tell me what your eyes witnessed, what your ears heard. Tell me, Brys Beddict, what your heart whispered.’
Brys stared down at the blank tile. ‘Hull may prove a problem,’ he said in a dull voice.
‘This is what your heart whispered?
‘It is.’
‘At the Great Meeting?’
He nodded.
‘How?’
‘I fear, Ceda, that he might kill Prince Quillas Diskanar.’
The building had once housed a carpenter’s shop on the ground floor, with a modest collection of low-ceilinged residential rooms on the upper level, reached via a drop-down staircase. The front faced out onto Quillas Canal, opposite a landing where, presumably, the carpenter had received his supplies.
‘The owner’s business was expanding,’ Shand said, ‘as was his family.’
‘Fronting the canal… this place was worth something…’
‘Two thousand thirds. We bought most of his furniture upstairs. Ordered a desk that was delivered last night.’ Shand waved a hand to encompass the ground level. ‘This area’s yours. I’d suggest a wall or two, leaving a corridor from the door to the stairs. That clay pipe is the kitchen drain. We knocked out the section leading to the kitchen upstairs, since we expect your servant to feed the four of us. The privy’s out in the backyard, empties into the canal. There’s also a cold shed, with a water-tight ice box big enough for a whole Nerek family to live in.’
‘A rich carpenter with time on his hands,’ Tehol said.
‘He has talent,’ Shand said, shrugging. ‘Now, follow me. The office is upstairs. We’ve things to discuss.’
‘Doesn’t sound like it,’ he replied. ‘Sounds like everything is already decided. I can imagine Bugg’s delight at the news. I hope you like figs.’
‘You could take the roof,’ Rissarh said with a sweet smile.
Tehol crossed his arms and rocked on his heels. ‘Let me see if I understand all this. You threaten to expose my terrible secrets, and then offer me some kind of partnership for some venture you haven’t even bothered describing. I can see this relationship setting deep roots, given such fertile soil.’
Shand scowled.
‘It’s simple,’ Shand said, ignoring Hejun’s suggestion. ‘We have thirty thousand thirds and with it we want you to make ten.’
‘Ten thousand thirds?’
‘Ten peaks.’
Tehol stared at her. ‘Ten peaks. Ten million thirds. I see, and what precisely do you want with all that money?’
‘We want you to buy the rest of the islands.’
Tehol ran a hand through his hair and began pacing. ‘You’re insane. I started with a hundred docks and damn near killed myself making a single peak-’
‘Only because you were frivolous, Tehol Beddict. You did it inside of a year, but you only worked a day or two every month.’
‘Well, those days were murderous.’
‘Liar. You never stepped wrong. Not once. You folded in and folded out and left everyone else wallowing in your wake. And they worshipped you for it.’
‘Your skirt’s slipping,’ Hejun observed.
Tehol adjusted it. ‘It wasn’t exactly a knifing. What terrible images you conjure. I made my peak. I wasn’t the first to ever make a peak, just the fastest.’
‘With a hundred docks . Hard with a hundred levels, maybe. But docks? I made a hundred docks every three months when I was a child, picking olives and grapes. Nobody starts with docks. Nobody but you.’
‘And now we’re giving you thirty thousand thirds,’ Rissarh said. ‘Work the columns, Beddict. Ten million peaks? Why not?’
‘If you think it’s so easy why don’t you do it yourselves?’
‘We’re not that smart,’ Shand said. ‘We’re not easily distracted, either. We stumbled onto your trail and we followed it and here we are.’