She heard amusement in the reply. ‘Unless my greatest deceit is the announcement of my own existence! There are rules in language, and language is needed for the stating of the rules. As K’rul understood, the blood flows out, and then it returns. Weak, then enlivened. Round and round. Who then, ask your-self, who then is the enemy?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Not yet, perhaps. You will need to find out, however, Seren Pedac. Before we are through.’
She smiled. ‘You give me a purpose?’
‘Dialogue, my love, must not end.’
‘Ours? Or the other one?’
‘Your companions think you fevered now. Tell me, before we part, which you would choose. For your experiments?’
She blinked up at the half-circle of faces. Expressions of concern, mockery, curiosity, indifference. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It seems… cruel.’
‘Power ever is, Seren Pedac.’
‘I won’t decide, then. Not yet.’
‘So be it.’
‘Seren?’ Kettle asked. ‘What is wrong with you?’
She smiled, then pushed herself to her feet, Udinaas-to her astonishment-reaching out to help her regain her balance.
Seeing her wince, he half smiled. ‘You landed hard, Acquitor. Can you walk?’ His smile broadened. ‘Perhaps no faster than the rest of us laggards, now?’
‘You, Udinaas? No, I think not.’
He frowned. ‘Just the two of us right now,’ he said.
Her eyes flickered up to meet his, shied away, then returned again-hard. ‘You heard?’
‘Didn’t need to,’ he replied under his breath as he set the Imass walking stick into her hands. ‘Had Wither sniffing at my heels long before I left the north.’ He shrugged.
Silchas Ruin and Clip had already resumed the journey.
Leaning on the Imass spear, Seren Pedac walked alongside the ex-slave, struggling with a sudden flood of emotion for this broken man. Perhaps, true comrades after all. He and I.
‘Seren Pedac’
‘Yes?’
‘Stop shifting the pain in your knees into mine, will you?’
Stop-what? Oh.
‘Either that or give me that damned stick back.’
‘If I say “sorry” then, well…’
‘You give it away. Well, say it if you mean it, and either way we’ll leave it at that.’
‘Sorry.’
His surprised glance delighted her.
The rising sea level had saturated the ground beneath the village. Anyone with half their wits would have moved to the stony, treed terrace bordering the flood plain, but the sordid remnants of the Shake dwelling here had simply levered their homes onto stilts and raised the slatted walkways, living above fetid, salty bog crawling with the white-backed crabs known as skullcaps.
Yan Tovis, Yedan Derryg and the troop of lancers reined in at Road’s End, the ferry landing and its assorted buildings on their left, a mass of felled trees rotting into the ground on their right. The air was chill, colder than it should have been this late into spring, and tendrils of low-lying fog hid most of the salt marsh beneath the stilts and bridged walkways.
Among the outbuildings of the landing-all situated on higher ground-there was a stone-walled stable fronted by a courtyard of planed logs, and beyond that, facing the village, an inn without a name.
Dismounting, Yan Tovis stood beside her horse for a long moment, her eyes closing. We have been invaded. I should be riding to every garrison on this coast-Errant fend, they must know by now. Truth delivered the hard way. The empire is at war.
But she was now Queen of the Last Blood, Queen of the Shake. Opening her weary eyes she looked upon the decrepit fishing village. My people, Errant help me. Running away had made sense back then. It made even more sense now.
Beside her, Yedan Derryg, her half-brother, loosened the strap of his visored helm, then said, ‘Twilight, what now?’
She glanced over at him, watched the rhythmic bunching of his bearded jaw. She understood the question in all its ramifications. What now? Do the Shake proclaim their independence, rising eager in the chaos of a Malazan-Letherii war? Do we gather our arms, our young whom we would call soldiers? The Shake cry out their liberty, and the sound is devoured by the shore’s rolling surf.
She sighed. ‘I was in command on the Reach, when the Edur came in their ships. We surrendered. I surrendered.’
To do otherwise would have been suicidal. Yedan should have said those words, then. For he knew the truth of them. Instead, he seemed to chew again for a moment, before turning to squint at the flat, broad ferry. ‘That’s not slipped its mooring in some time, I think. The coast north of Awl must be flooded.’
