Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(23)

The ship’s master met her on deck. ‘Cast off, Master Ghelath.’

The pot-bellied Falari bowed. ‘Aye, aye.’ He stomped off, pointing and shouting. The crew, mostly Falari and Seven Cities outcasts, all sprang into motion. Bare feet slapped the decking.

Bars stood nearby, leaning against the side, and she reached out to grab his wrist. ‘About time, yes Bars?’

The big man returned the clasp. He was smiling, but his mouth remained grim and hard. ‘Yes, Shimmer. About time.’

Others of her new command lingered at the side as well: Cole, Amatt, Lean, Sept, Keel, Reed, Turgal. She answered their greetings then climbed up to the raised stern deck to watch the receding forested shore. She wondered whether he’d just now arrived – moments too late. Would she see his tall lean form on the dock?

‘We are headed east round the Cape of the Stone Army?’ someone asked behind her and she turned to the pilot, an old man hunched over the arm of the side-mounted tiller.

The eastern cape of the Sea of Chimes took its name from the curious formations of octagonal stone pillars that crowded the coast and extended out to sea. The forest of towers marching up out of the waves resembled to some an immense army cursed into eternal petrification. ‘Yes, eastward.’

‘Then on. To Assail lands, hey?’

‘Yes.’

A strange conspiratorial look came to the old man’s lined and wind-darkened face. ‘Havvin’s the name,’ he offered, and he gave her a knowing wink.

Shimmer was taken aback, but before she could frame an answer another voice spoke, its familiar tone grating like a jagged blade down her neck: ‘How nice to be off on another mission.’ She turned to face Cowl.

‘I thought you were travelling with Blues.’

‘Hardly. The man won’t even speak to me.’

Shimmer leaned against the side, returned to studying the passing shore. She felt, rather than saw, him join her there. ‘He’s not coming,’ he murmured, bringing his head close.

‘So you claim.’

‘He’s hiding.’

She glanced at him, saw the ravaged, lined skin of his face, so pale and yet so hardened, resembling dried parchment; his hanging moustache, thin and tatty; the pearly scars glistening at his neck. His pale hazel eyes glared as if heated by the blazing fevers that seemed about to consume him. ‘Hiding from what?’

‘The truth.’

‘And what truth is that?’

‘That we are cursed and he is responsible.’

‘Cursed? You mean the vow.’ She thought of the inhuman Rutana in Jacuruku and what that one had said regarding their vow. ‘Yes, I’ve heard that as well. Cursed in what way?’

The man smiled, or attempted to: he pulled his lips back from his tiny teeth and raised a hand to shake a finger in negation. But like his efforts at a leer, or a knowing grin, the gesture was ruined by his tattered gloves and blackened, broken fingernails. Nails, Shimmer knew, that had clawed their way out of a mound on the grounds of an Azath House. The thought shook her and confirmed her impression of the man: insane. Driven beyond common reason.

‘I will not do his job for him,’ he said. ‘If he chooses to keep you in the dark then take your complaints to him.’

‘Then that is between us.’ She waved him off.

His inarticulate snarl told her that her dismissal infuriated him just as much as she hoped. Yet he did go, his walk stiff with outrage. She leaned once more against the side and returned to scanning the rocky forested shore as it passed. Show yourself, K’azz, she urged the coastline. Walk out and wave. You must come with us – how can we possibly leave without you? Yet we must go. Cal-Brinn has already waited far too long for rescue. And there are questions to be answered.

She watched through noon and on into the late afternoon while the shadows deepened and the sun disappeared behind her into the western horizon. Sept brought her a bowl of stew and a crust of bread which she ate while still standing at the rail.

You stupid stubborn fool, she sent to the shore. You have to come. How could you not? But if you refuse – then I will discover what the Queen of Dreams promised awaited us in Assail. Yet … as the one who invoked the vow, what if these things can only be revealed to you?

She sighed and scraped the wooden spoon round the bowl. Surely he must have considered that. Why allow them to depart on a useless errand? Then she castigated herself: rescuing Cal-Brinn and the Fourth would not be useless, girl! Finally, she pushed off from the side and went below to find an open bunk.

Damn the man for leaving it to her to decide!

Two days later they reached Fortress Recluse. They loaded more supplies and equipment, then Blues and his Blade of chosen Avowed boarded. They set sail that eve. Four days later they were nearing their rounding of the cape. Shimmer was asleep in a hammock when a call from the night watch woke her: ‘Fire on the slate shore! Bonfire ashore!’

She lay half awake for a time, still groggy with sleep. Then a sudden suspicion, almost like a breath from one of the Brethren in her ear: what if …?

She swung her legs from the hammock and ran for the companionway, barefoot, wearing only her thin cotton longshirt and trousers. She gained the deck to find it abandoned, empty but for the night watch. ‘Why are we not investigating?’ she demanded.

‘It’s only a fire,’ the sailor said, and he eyed her up and down as the wind pressed the thin fabric to her form. She cursed the man inwardly and went to the pilot on duty: not Havvin now, but a younger apprentice. ‘Turn for shore,’ she told him.