Rage rising within her, Smiles could feel her body straining at the numbing turgid chains – she would not lie unmoving, she would not smile up when her mother kissed her one last time. She would not blink dreamily when the warm water stole over her, into her.
Hear me! All you cursed spirits, hear me! I defy you!
Oh yes, flinch back! You know well enough to fear, because I swear this – I will take you all down with me. I will take you all into the Abyss, into the hands of the demons of chaos. It's the cycle, you see.
Order and chaos, a far older cycle than life and death, wouldn't you agree?
So, come closer, all of you.
In the end, it was as she had known. They'd taken her sister, and she, well, let's not be coy now, you delivered the last kiss, dear girl.
And no durhang oil to soothe away the excuse, either.
Running away never feels as fast, never as far, as it should.
You could believe in whores. He had been born to a whore, a Seti girl of fourteen who'd been flung away by her parents – of course, she hadn't been a whore then, but to keep her new son fed and clothed, well, it was the clearest course before her.
And he had learned the ways of worship among whores, all those women knitted close to his mother, sharing fears and everything else that came with the profession. Their touch had been kindly and sincere, the language they knew best.
A half-blood could call on no gods. A half-blood walked the gutter between two worlds, despised by both.
Yet he had not been alone, and in many ways it was the half-bloods who held closest to the traditional ways of the Seti. The full-blood tribes had gone off to wars – all the young lance warriors and the women archers – beneath the standard of the Malazan Empire. When they had returned, they were Seti no longer. They were Malazan.
And so Koryk had been immersed in the old rituals – those that could be remembered – and they had been, he had known even then, godless and empty. Serving only the living, the half-blood kin around each of them.
There was no shame in that.
There had been a time, much later, when Koryk had come upon his own language, protecting the miserable lives of the women from whom he had first learned the art of empty worship. A mindful dialect, bound to no cause but that of the living, of familiar, ageing faces, of repaying the gifts the now unwanted once-whores had given him in his youth. And then watching them one by one die. Worn out, so scarred by so many brutal hands, the indifferent usage by the men and women of the city – who proclaimed the ecstasy of god-worship when it suited them, then defiled human flesh with the cold need of carnivores straddling a kill.
Deep in the sleep of Carelbarra, the God Bringer, Koryk beheld no visitors. For him, there was naught but oblivion. As for the fetishes, well, they were for something else. Entirely something else.
'Go on, mortal, pull it.'
Crump glowered, first at Stump Flit, the Salamander God, Highest of High Marshals, then at the vast, gloomy swamp of Mott. What was he doing here? He didn't want to be here. What if his brothers found him? 'No.'
'Go on, I know you want to. Take my tail, mortal, and watch me thrash about, a trapped god in your hands, it's what you all do anyway. All of you.'
'No. Go away. I don't want to talk to you. Go away.'
'Oh, poor Jamber Bole, all so alone, now. Unless your brothers find you, and then you'll want me on your side, yes you will. If they find you, oh my, oh my.'
'They won't. They ain't looking, neither.'
'Yes they are, my foolish young friend-'
'I ain't your friend. Go away.'
'They're after you, Jamber Bole. Because of what you did-'
'I didn't do nothing!'
'Grab my tail. Go on. Here, just reach out…'
Jamber Bole, now known as Crump, sighed, reached out and closed his hand on the Salamander God's tail.
It bolted, and he was left holding the end of the tail in his hand.
Stump Flit raced away, laughing and laughing.
Good thing too, Crump reflected. It was the only joke it had.
Corabb stood in the desert, and through the heat-haze someone was coming. A child. Sha'ik reborn, the seer had returned, to lead still more warriors to their deaths. He could not see her face yet – there was something wrong with his eyes. Burned, maybe. Scoured by blowing sand, he didn't know, but to see was to feel pain. To see her was… terrible.
No, Sha'ik, please. This must end, it must all end. We have had our fill of holy wars – how much blood can this sand absorb? When will your thirst end?