She barked a harsh laugh. 'And is that not the Malazan way, Whiskeyjack?'
'This is not a Malazan war!'
'Isn't it? Are you sure?'
He studied her through slitted eyes. 'What do you mean? We're outlawed, woman. Onearm's Host is…' He fell silent, seeing a flatness come to Korlat's gaze, then realized — too late — that he had just failed a test. And with that failure had ended the trust that had grown between them. Damn, I walked right into it. Wide-eyed stupid.
She smiled then, and it was a smile of pain and regret. 'Dujek approaches. You might as well await him here.'
The Tiste Andii turned and strode from the tent.
Whiskeyjack stared after her, then, when she'd left, he flung his gauntlets on the map table and sat down on Dujek's cot. Should I have told you, Korlat? The truth? That we've got a knife at our throats. And the hand holding it — on Empress Laseen's behalf — is right here in this very camp, and has been ever since the beginning.
He heard a horse thump to a halt outside the tent. A few moments later Dujek Onearm entered, his armour sheathed in dust. 'Ah, wondered where you'd got to-'
'Brood knows,' Whiskeyjack cut in, his voice low and raw.
Dujek paused but a moment. 'He does, does he? What, precisely, has he worked out?'
'That we're not quite as outlawed as we've made out to be.'
'Any further?'
'Isn't that enough, Dujek?'
The High Fist strode over to the side table where waited a jug of ale. He unstoppered it and poured two tankards full. 'There are … mitigating circumstances-'
'Relevant only to us. You and I-'
'And our army-'
'Who believe their lives are forfeit in the Empire, Dujek. Made into victims once again — no, it's you and I and no-one else this time.'
Dujek drained his tankard, refilled it in silence. Then he said, 'Are you suggesting we spread our hand on the table for Brood and Korlat? In the hopes that they'll do something about our … predicament?'
'I don't know — not if we're hoping for absolution for having maintained this deceit all this time. That would be a motive that wouldn't sit well with me, even if patently untrue. Appearances-'
'Will make it seem precisely that, aye. "We've been lying to you from the very beginning to save our own necks. But now that you know, we'll tell you …" Gods, that's insulting even to me and I'm the one saying it. All right, the alliance is in trouble-'
A thud against the tent flap preceded the arrival of Artanthos. 'Your pardon, sirs,' the man said, flat eyes studying the two soldiers in turn before he continued, 'Brood has called for a counsel.'
Ah, standard-bearer, your timing is impeccable.
Whiskeyjack collected the tankard awaiting him and drained it, then turned to Dujek and nodded.
The High Fist sighed. 'Lead the way, Artanthos, we're right behind you.'
The encampment seemed extraordinarily quiet. The Mhybe had not realized how comforting the army's presence had been on the march. Now, only elders and children and a few hundred rearguard Malazan soldiers remained. She had no idea how the battle fared; either way, deaths would make themselves felt. Mourning among the Rhivi and Barghast, bereft voices rising into the darkness.
Victory is an illusion. In all things.
She fled in her dreams every night. Red and was, eventually, caught, only to awaken. Sudden, as if torn away, her withered body shivering, aches filling her joints. An escape of sorts, yet in truth she left one nightmare for another.
An illusion. In all things.
This wagon bed had become her entire world, a kind of mock sanctuary that reappeared each and every time sleep ended. The rough woollen blankets and furs wrapped around her were a personal landscape, the bleak terrain of dun folds startlingly similar to what she had seen when in the dragon's grip, when the undead beast flew high over the tundra in her dream, yielding an echo of the freedom she had experienced then, an echo that was painfully sardonic.
To either side of her ran wooden slats. Their patterns of grain and knots had become intimate knowledge. Far to the north, she recalled, among the Nathii, the dead were buried in wood boxes. The custom had been born generations ago, arising from the more ancient practice of interring corpses in hollowed-out tree trunks. The boxes were then buried, for wood was born of earth and to earth it must return. A vessel of life now a vessel of death. The Mhybe imagined that, if a dead Nathii could see, moments before the lid was lowered and darkness swallowed all, that Nathii's vision would match hers.