The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

She’d watched the Coin Bearer race down the street, seeming not even to have noticed Moon’s Spawn hanging so close overhead. A moment later, she followed. With the Coin in her hands, the Empress would bring Oponn to its knees. Like a drowning voice, deep within her mind, came a question heavy with dismay and despair: What of your doubts? What of the woman who’d once challenged Tayschrenn, in Pale? Has so much changed? Has so much been destroyed? The Adjunct shook her head, dispelling the plaintive cries. She was the arm of the Empress. The woman called Lorn was dead, had been dead for years, and would remain forever dead. And now the Adjunct moved through these hollow shadows, in a city cowering in fear. The Adjunct was a weapon. Its edge could bite deep, or it could snap, break. She might once have called the latter “death.” Now, it was no more than the misfortune of war, a flaw in the weapon’s design.