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

There would have been peace, for all the Tiste Edur.

Well, he had sent them all back north, had he not? He had begun his preparations. And soon he would join them, as Warlock King. And he would make his dream a reality.

And Rhulad Sengar? Well, 1 leave him a drowned empire, a wasteland of mud and dead trees and rotting corpses. Rule well, Emperor.

He found himself scrabbling against a growing stream of icy water that was working its way down the alley, the touch numbing his hands, knees and feet. He began slipping. Cursing under his breath, Hannan Mosag paused, staring down at the water flowing round him.

From up ahead there came a loud crack! and the Warlock King smiled. My child stirs.

Drawing upon the power of the shadows in this alley, he resumed his journey.

‘Ah, the fell guardians,’ Ormly said as he strode to the muddy bank of Settle Lake. The Champion Rat Catcher had come in from the north side, where he’d been busy in Creeper District, hiring random folk to cry out the name of the empire’s great revolutionary, the hero of heroes, the this and that and all the rest. Tehol Beddict! He’s taken all the money back-from all the rich slobs in their estates! He’s going to give it all to every one of you-he’s going to clear all your debts! And are you listening? I’ve more rubbish to feed you-wait, come back! True, he’d just added on that last bit.

What a busy night! And then a runner from Selush had brought him the damned sausage that a man had once used to pick his nose or something.

All right, there was some disrespect in that and it wasn’t worthy, not of Brys Beddict-the Hero’s very own brother!-nor of himself, Ormly of the Rats. So, enough of that, then.

‘Oh, look, sweetcakes, it’s him.’

‘Who, dove-cookie?’

‘Why, I forget his name. Tha’s who.’

Ormly scowled at the pair lolling on the bank like a couple of gaping fish. ‘I called you guardians? You’re both drunk!’

‘You’d be too,’ Ursto Hoobutt said, ‘if ‘n you had to listen to this simperin’ witch ‘ere.’ He wagged his head to mime his wife as he said: ‘Ooh, I wanna baby! A big baby, with only one upper lip but a bottom one too to clamp onto you know where an’ get even bigger! Ooh, syrup-smoochies, oh, please? Can I? Can I? Can I!’

‘You poor man,’ Ormly commiserated, walking up to them. He paused upon seeing the heaved and cracked slabs of ice crowding the centre of the lake. ‘It’s pushing, is it?’

‘Took your time, too,’ Pinosel muttered, casting her husband her third glowering look since Ormly had arrived. She swished whatever was in the jug in her left hand, then tilted it back to drink deep. Then wiped at her mouth, leaned forward and glared up at Ormly from lowered brows. ‘Ain’t gonna have no jus’ one upper lip, neither. Gonna be healthy-’

‘Really, Pinosel,’ Ormly said, ‘the likelihood of that-’

‘You don’t know nothing!’

‘All right, maybe I don’t. Not about the likes of you two, anyway. But here’s what I do know. In the Old Palace there’s a panel in the baths that was painted about six hundred years ago. Of Settle Lake or something a lot like it, with buildings in the background. And who’s sitting there in the grasses on the bank, sharing a jug? Why, an ugly woman and an even uglier man-both looking a lot like you two!’

‘Watchoo yer callin’ ugly,’ Pinosel said, lifting her head with an effort, taking a deep breath to compose her features, then patting at her crow’s nest hair. ‘Sure,’ she said, ‘I’ve had better days.’

‘Ain’t that the truth,’ mumbled Ursto.

‘An’ I ‘eard that! An’ oose fault is that, porker-nose?’

‘Only the people that ain’t no more ‘ere t’worship us an’ all that.’

“Zactly!’

Ormly frowned at the pond and its ice. At that moment a huge slab buckled with a loud crack! And he found himself involuntarily stepping back, one step, two. ‘Is it coming up?’ he demanded.

‘No,’ Ursto said, squinting one-eyed at the groaning heap of ice. ‘That’d be the one needing his finger back.’

The meltwater fringing the lake was bubbling and swirling now, bringing up clouds of silt as some current swept round the solid mass in the middle. Round and round, like a whirlpool only in reverse.

And all at once there was a thrashing, a spray of water, and a figure in its midst-struggling onto the bank, coughing, streaming muddy water, and holding in one incomplete hand a scabbarded sword.