Assail (Malazan Empire, #6)(49)
‘Let the trial begin,’ Luthal announced, and the guards pushed K’azz over the side.
Shimmer and Blues lurched forward, but K’azz shot them a glare over his shoulder as he slipped from sight and shouted, ‘No!’
The pair halted, exchanging looks of disbelief and horror. It was as if both had fully expected that somehow K’azz would escape, reverse the proceedings, or otherwise win through as he always had in the past.
Flanked by his guards, Luthal approached them. His expression was sad, but behind it Shimmer read satisfaction and an untouchable smugness that almost tipped her into a blind fury. ‘I am sorry,’ he said, obviously not sorry at all. ‘However, justice had to be done. The dept is now abrogated and discharged. You and your crew are free to land on the beach – though fees must be levied for such occupation, of course.’
Shimmer stared at the man, stunned by his false assurances of sympathy, his lofty, breathtaking arrogance. Free to land on the beach! Oh yes, quite free. Or equally free to stay on their slowly sinking vessel and drown. Obviously, they were free to choose! No possible coercion here at all.
She longed to stab the man through his uncomprehending skull, but then they’d be forced to kill the rest of them as well – which was clearly what K’azz had wished to avoid. She’d even moved her hand to the worn grip of the dirk at her belt when shouts of disbelief and alarm sounded from the ship’s side.
Luthal’s sailors and soldiers crowded the rail. Shimmer was hardly paying them any attention. She’d already decided to return to Mael’s Greetings and from there launch an attack upon one of the Lether vessels, sinking all the rest as well if it should prove necessary.
Which was what they should have done in the first place! She glanced to Blues and the man edged his head up and down in the slightest of nods. So it was decided, without any words, as only two who had campaigned side by side for years could decide.
As for K’azz and this absurd manner of throwing away his life … what could he have been thinking? Had he hoped for a different sort of trial? That Luthal was bluffing? She had no idea – she only felt tired by it all. Now she wished he hadn’t come with them after all. If the man had wanted to kill himself, he should have simply gone ahead and thrown himself into Lake Jorrick.
Luthal suddenly pushed himself back from the side and hurried to her. Anger darkened his features and he jabbed a finger out over the waters. ‘What trickery is this?’ he demanded.
She blinked at him, her brow crimping. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Do not play coy – you outlanders with your magery and magics. This is simply unacceptable.’
She and Blues brushed past the man. The crossbowmen tracked them with the iron tips of their quarrels as they crossed to the side. Rather reluctantly, she glanced down; she had not wanted her last vision of the man to be of him drowned under fathoms of water.
The lagoon, or stretch of shallowing water, was a clear pale turquoise over the rising slope of the beach, probably because of the sand floor. Shimmer imagined that slope to be quite steep beneath the vessel as it dropped off precipitously into deep midnight blue. Far below there appeared to be a dark figure struggling, moving side to side with a kind of exaggerated gait. For lack of anything else it resembled some sort of monster of the deep making its ungainly way to the land. Yet she wasn’t absolutely certain: the motion of the waves partially obscured it, as did the sunlight glinting and glimmering from the surface.
‘I dismiss this trial as a corrupted test,’ Luthal announced.
Shimmer continued to watch the dark wavering figure as it made its slow laborious way up the white sand slope. To one side lay the half-buried rotting hull of a wreck. Peering down, she noted a number of other such skeletal remains littering the deep lagoon bottom. ‘You mentioned no such provision in the trial,’ she answered, rather distractedly. She fought to keep a smile from pulling at her lips: why hadn’t he told her? Obviously he’d worked out some sort of solution with Gwynn, or Petal, or perhaps all the company mages combined.
‘It is understood,’ Luthal huffed. ‘Everyone knows this.’
‘Sadly, we outlanders are ignorant of such niceties. Everyone knows this.’
Luthal peered over the side and his eyes fairly goggled at the progress the figure below was making. ‘You cannot mean to hold to such an absurd demonstration!’
‘I agree that your practices are absurd. But you insisted.’ The merchant adventurer appeared ready to order his crossbowmen to fire upon her. ‘Perhaps we should take the boat to shore,’ she suggested. ‘To see how the trial ends.’ Luthal snarled under his breath, but he snapped an order to the sailors and they set to lowering rope ladders to waiting launches.
Shimmer found it uncannily odd to find herself floating over her commander’s head while he struggled below to heave his load of stones up the submerged slope. Who was aiding him? she wondered. Could it be Petal on Mael’s Greetings? Or Gwynn? Yet neither of these had ever confessed to any knowledge of Ruse magics. It certainly was not Blues here beside her, frowning down at the water, apparently as completely perplexed as she. However, it occurred to her that the Warren of High Denul, the healing and manipulation of the flesh, could also serve to sustain K’azz. And every Crimson Guard mage, out of necessity, possessed some familiarity with the healing magics of Denul. Perhaps Petal was even now completely engrossed in maintaining K’azz’s breath. This must have been what K’azz had in mind from the beginning; why the man had pressed so hard for a trial. He’d worked it out with the company mages but had not included her. She had to admit to feeling a touch put out.