The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen

by Steven Erikson

The sorceress had found the strength to leave her bed. She now stood at the window, leaning with one hand against the frame for support, and looked down on a street crowded with military wagons. The systematic plunder that quartermasters called “resupply” was well under way. The eviction of nobility and gentry from their familial estates for the stationing of the officer corps, of which she was one, had ended days ago, while the repairing of the outer walls, the refitting of sundered gates, and the clearing of “Moon rain” continued apace. She was glad she’d missed the river of corpses that must have filled the city streets during the initial phase of cleanup—wagon after wagon groaning beneath the weight of crushed bodies, white flesh seared by fire and slashed by sword, rat-gnawed and raven-pecked—men, women, and children. It was a scene she had witnessed before, and she had no wish ever to see it again. Now, shock and terror had seeped down and out of sight. Scenes of normality reappeared as farmers and merchants emerged from hiding to meet the needs of occupiers and occupied alike. Malazan healers had swept the city, rooting out the birthing of plague and treating common ailments among all those they touched. No citizen would have been turned from their path. And sentiments began the long, perfectly planned swing. Soon, Tattersail knew, there’d be the culling of the nobility, a scourge that would raise to the gallows the greediest, least-liked nobles. And the executions ...