‘You have grown far too quiet, old friend.’
Endest Silann looked up from the dying flames. Dawn was fast approaching. ‘I was reminded… the way that wood crumbles into dissolution.’
‘The release of energy. Perhaps a better way of seeing it.’
‘Such release is ever fatal.’
‘Among plants, yes,’ said Caladan Brood.
Among plants… ‘I think of the breath we give them-our gift.’
‘And the breath they give back,’ said the warlord, ‘that burns if touched. I am fortunate, I think,’ he continued, ‘that I have no appreciation for irony.’
‘It is a false gift, for with it we claim ownership. Like crooked merchants, every one of us. We give so that we can then justify taking it back. I have come to believe that this exchange is the central tenet of our relationship… with everything in the world. Any world. Human, Andii, Edur, Liosan. Imass, Barghast, Jaghut-’
‘Not Jaghut,’ cut in Caladan Brood.
‘Ah,’ said Endest Silann. ‘I know little of them, in truth. What then was their bargain?’
‘Between them and the world? I don’t even know if an explanation is possible, or at least within the limits of my sorry wit. Until the forging of the ice-defending against the Imass-the Jaghut gave far more than they took. Excepting the Tyrants, of course, which is what made such tyranny all the more reprehensible in the eyes of other Jaghut.’
‘So, they were stewards.’
‘No.’The notion of stewardship implies superiority. A certain arrogance.’
‘An earned one, surely, since the power to destroy exists.’
‘Well, the illusion of power, I would say, Endest. After all, if you destroy the things around you, eventually you destroy yourself. It is arrogance that asserts a kind of separation, and from that the notion that we can shape and reshape the world to suit our purposes, and that we can use it, as if it was no more than a living tool composed of a million parts.’ He paused and shook his head. ‘See? Already my skull aches.’
‘Only with the truth, I think,’ said Endest Silann. ‘So, the Jaghut did not think of themselves as stewards. Nor as parasites. They were without arrogance? I find that an extraordinary thing, Warlord. Beyond comprehension, in fact.’
‘They shared this world with the Forkrul Assail, who were their opposites. They were witnesses to the purest manifestation of arrogance and separation.’
‘Was there war?’
Caladan Brood was silent for so long that Endest began to believe that no answer was forthcoming, and then he glanced up with his bestial eyes glittering in the ebbing flames of the hearth.’”Was”?’
Endest Silann stared across at his old friend, and the breath slowly hissed from him. ‘Gods below, Caladan. No war can last that long.’’It can, when the face of the army is without relevance.’ The revelation was… monstrous. Insane. ‘Where?’
The warlord’s smile was without humour. ‘Far away from here, friend, which is well. Imagine what your Lord might elect to do, if it was otherwise.’ He would intervene. He would not be able to stop himself. Caladan Brood rose then. ‘We have company.’
A moment later the heavy thud of wings sounded in the fading darkness above them, and Endest Silann looked up to see Crone, wings crooked now, riding shifting currents of air as she descended, landing with a scatter of stones just beyond the edge of firelight.
‘I smell fish!’
‘Wasn’t aware your kind could smell at all,’ Caladan Brood said.
‘Funny oaf, although it must be acknowledged that our eyes are the true gift of perfection-among many, of course. Why, Great Ravens are plagued with excellence-and do I see picked bones? I do, with despondent certainty-you rude creatures have left me nothing!’
She hopped closer, regarding the two men with first one eye and then the other. ‘Grim conversation? Glad I interrupted. Endest Silann, your Lord summons you. Caladan Brood, not you. There, messages delivered! Now I want food!’
Harak fled through Night. Old tumbled streets, the wreckage of the siege picked clean save for shattered blocks of quarried stone; into narrow, tortured alleys where the garbage was heaped knee-high; across collapsed buildings, scrambling like a spider. He knew Thove was dead. He knew Bucch was dead, and a half-dozen other conspirators. All dead. Killers had pounced. Tiste Andii, he suspected, some kind of secret police, penetrating the cells and now slaughtering every liberator they could hunt down.
He’d always known that the unhuman demon-spawn were far from the innocent, benign occupiers they played at, oh, yes, they were rife with deadly secrets. Plans of slavery and oppression, of tyranny, not just over Black Coral, but beyond, out to the nearby cities-wherever humans could be found, the Tiste Andii cast covetous eyes. And now he had proof.