It would take some time, Beak knew, for her to do all that he’d asked-I just told a captain what to do! And she’s doing it! Does that mean she loves me right back? He shook himself. Not a good idea, letting his mind wander just now. He edged out from the cover of the trees lining this side of the stony road. Crouched to pick up a small rock, which he then spat on and set back down-to hold the Mockra in place-as he closed his eyes and sought out the White Candle.
Hood. Death, a cold, cold place. Even the air was dead. In his mind he looked in on that realm as if peering through a window, the wooden sill thick with melted candle wax, the white candle itself flickering to one side. Beyond, ash-heaped ground strewn with bones of all sorts. He reached through, closed a hand on the shaft of a heavy longbone, and drew it back. Working quickly, Beak pulled as many bones as would fit through the wandering window, always choosing big ones. He had no idea what the beasts had been to which all these bones belonged, but they would do.
When he was satisfied with the white, dusty pile heaped on the road, Beak closed the window and opened his eyes. Glancing across he saw the captain standing at the stables, gesturing at him.
Beak waved back, then turned and showed the bones the Purple Candle. They lifted from the road like feathers on an updraught, and as the mage hurried over to join Faradan Sort the bones followed in his wake, floating waist-high above the ground.
The captain disappeared back inside the stables before Beak arrived, then emerged, leading the horses, just as he padded up to the broad doors.
Grinning, Beak went into the stables, the bones tracking him. Once inside, smelling that wonderful musty smell of horses, leather, dung and piss-damp straw, he scattered the bones, a few into each stall, snuffing out the purple candle when he was done. He walked over to the mound of straw at one end, closed his eyes to awaken the Orange Candle, then spat into the straw.
Rejoining the captain outside he said to her, ‘We can go now.’
‘That’s it?’
‘Yes sir. We’ll be a thousand paces down the road before the Tellann lights up-’
‘Fire?’
‘Yes sir. A terrible fire-they won’t even be able to get close-and it’ll burn fast but go nowhere else and by the morning there’ll be nothing but ashes.’
‘And charred bones that might belong to horses.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘You’ve done well tonight, Beak,’ Faradan Sort said, swinging up onto one of the saddled horses.
Feeling impossibly light on his feet, Beak leapt onto the other one then looked back, with pride, at the remaining seven beasts. Decent animals, just badly treated. Which made it good that they were stealing them. Malazans knew how to care for their horses, after all.
Then he frowned and looked down at his stirrups.
The captain was doing the same, he saw a moment later, with her own. ‘What is this?’ she demanded in a hiss.
‘Broken?’ Beak wondered.
‘Not that I can see-and yours are identical to mine. What fool invented these?’
‘Captain,’ said Beak, ‘I don’t think we have to worry much about Letherii cavalry, do we?’
‘You’ve that right, Beak. Well, let’s ride. If we’re lucky, we won’t break our necks twenty paces up the road.’
The father of the man named Throatslitter used to tell stories of the Emperor’s conquest of Li Heng, long before Kellanved was emperor of anywhere. True, he’d usurped Mock on Malaz Island and had proclaimed himself the island’s ruler, but since when was Malaz Island anything but a squalid haven for pirates? Few on the mainland took much notice of such things. A new tyrannical criminal in place of the old tyrannical criminal.
The conquest of Li Heng changed all that. There’d been no fleet of ships crowding the river mouth to the south and east of the city; nothing, in fact, to announce the assault. Instead, on a fine spring morning no different from countless other such mornings, Throatslitter’s father, along with thousands of other doughty citizens, had, upon a casual glance towards the Inner Focus where stood the Palace of the Protectress, noted the sudden inexplicable presence of strange figures on the walls and battlements. Squat, wide, wearing furs and wielding misshapen swords and axes. Helmed in bone.
What had happened to the vaunted Guard? And why were tendrils of smoke rising from the barracks of the courtyard and parade ground? And was it-was it truly-the Protectress herself who had been seen plunging from the High Tower beside the City Temple at the heart of the cynosure?
Someone had cut off Li Heng’s head in the Palace. Undead warriors stood sentinel on the walls and, a short time later, emerged in their thousands from the Inner Focus Gate to occupy the city. Li Heng’s standing army-after a half-dozen suicidal skirmishes-capitulated that same day. Kellanved now ruled the city-state, and officers and nobles of the high court knelt in fealty, and the reverberations of this conquest rattled the windows of palaces across the entire mainland of Quon Tali.
