Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #9)

by Steven Erikson

She would join the ribby snake soon enough.

When the starvers and the bone-skinned inquisitors marched on the city his mother had sent him running, hand in hand with his sister who was two years older than he was, and they’d run down streets between burning buildings and screams filled the night and the starvers kicked in doors and dragged people out and did terrible things to them, while the bone-skins watched on and said it was necessary, everything here was necessary.

She had almost loved her husband, and had learned to live with his faint disappointment in her, as her youthful beauty gave way to weary motherhood.

die in solitude, as dying was always a thing of solitude, as it must ever be.

A lone wanderer, who spoke in seven voices, who knew himself by seven names. He was many, but he was one. They were all lost, and so was he.

In war we invite our own destruction. In war we punish our children with a broken legacy of blood.

‘I want to sleep with you. I want you to cheat on your wife, Tehol. With me.’ ‘That’s your petition?’ ‘What’s wrong with it?’ Queen Janath spoke. ‘It can’t be cheating. Cheating would be behind my back. Deceit, deception, betrayal. I happen to be sitting right here, Rucket.’

‘Miraculously dispersed in a dreamy sigh, O Chancellor, or whatever you are.’ ‘I’m the Royal Engineers—yes, all of them. Oh, and Treasurer.’

‘Old blood out, shiny coins in. We’d laugh at that, but it wasn’t the happy kind of laugh. More like disbelief, and yes, more than a little cynicism regarding the inherent stupidity of people.

‘Whiskeyjack?’ Hedge shifted uneasily, glanced away, and then shrugged. ‘Funny, that.’ ‘What?’ The sapper nodded towards the two caged birds. ‘Those are jaraks, aren’t they?’

‘Everyone hates you, you know,’ Grub said. ‘Seems fair,’ Kindly replied.

‘Seren Pedac, your child’s father was Trull Sengar.

‘Trull did not choose that title, did he?’ ‘No. Choice plays little part in such things. Perhaps even the Lords and Ladies of the Houses are in truth less omnipotent than they would like to believe. The same, of course, can be said for the gods and goddesses. Control is an illusion, a deceptive one that salves thin-skinned bluster.’

‘Acquitor, these two are the remnants of an ancient pantheon, worshipped by the original inhabitants of the settlement buried in the silts beneath Letheras. In fact, Ursto and Pinosel are the first two, the Lord and the Lady of Wine and Beer. They came into being as a consequence of the birth of agriculture.

humility always arrived uninvited, kicking down doors, shattering walls.

‘Ah, I see. Which was why Quick Ben managed to defeat Sukul Ankhadu, Sheltatha Lore and Menandore.’ Silchas Ruin nodded. ‘Each intended to betray the others. It is the flaw in the blood. More often than not, a fatal one.’ He paused, and then said, ‘So it proved with me and my brother Anomander. Once the Draconic blood took hold of us, we were driven apart.

Giving advice to a child is like flinging sand at an obsidian wall. Nothing sticks. The brutal truth is that we each suffer our own lessons—they can’t be danced round. They can’t be slipped past. You cannot gift a child with your scars—they arrive like webs, constricting, suffocating, and that child will struggle and strain until they break. No matter how noble your intent, the only scars that teach them anything are the ones they earn themselves.’

Had Onrack been there, in the blood-splashed arena of sand, Trull’s back would not have been unguarded. The murderer would never have succeeded in his act of brutal treachery. And Trull Sengar would have lived to see his own child growing in Seren Pedac’s belly, would have witnessed, in awe and wonder, that glow of focused inwardness in the expression of the Acquitor. No male could know such a sense of completeness, of course, for she had become a vessel of that continuity, an icon of hope and optimism for the future world. Oh, if Trull could have witnessed that—no one deserved it more, after all the battles, the wounds, the ordeals and the vast solitude that Onrack could never pierce—so many betrayals and yet he had stood unbowed and had given of himself all that he could. No, there had been nothing fair in this.

Yes, women could be frightening. In their strengths, their capacity to endure.

‘The threat of invasion can make lifelong enemies into the closest allies,’ observed the captain.

There were too many mechanisms in society designed to hide and indeed coddle its myriad fools, particularly since fools generally held the majority. In addition to such mechanisms, one could also find various snares and traps and ambushes, one and all fashioned with the aim of isolating and then destroying smart people. No argument, no matter how brilliant, can defeat a knife in the groin, after all. Nor an executioner’s axe. And the bloodlust of a mob was always louder than a lone, reasonable voice.

It was not pride that made them what they were. It was compassion. The tragic kind of compassion, the kind that sacrifices itself and sees that sacrifice as the only choice and thus no choice at all, one that must be accepted without hesitation.

Indeed, he had come to suspect that no hero, no matter what the time or the circumstance, was anything like the tales told him so many years ago. Or perhaps it was his growing realization that so many so-called virtues, touted as worthy aspirations, possessed a darker side. Purity of heart also meant vicious intransigence. Unfaltering courage saw no sacrifice as too great, even if that meant leading ten thousand soldiers to their deaths. Honour betrayed could plunge into intractable insanity in the pursuit of satisfaction. Noble vows could drown a kingdom in blood, or crush an empire into dust. No, the true nature of heroism was a messy thing, a confused thing of innumerable sides, many of them ugly, and almost all of them terrifying.

A hero without purpose was like a blinded cat in a pit of hounds.

Heed this warning, Conquestor, do not try getting past a Royal blood’s handmaidens—the cruellest assassins this world has ever seen. Word got back to me, of course . . . three days and four nights of the most despicable torture of my agents. And the bitches had the temerity to send me a bottle of their pickled eyeballs. Brazen!’

It was said that Rava’s penis had all the lure of an eviscerated snake belly.

It is said that blood holds neither memory nor loyalty

‘He is my best friend, isn’t he? He gave me chicken.’

‘Good. I’m thirsty. You’re a good friend, Shurq. I want to sex you.’ ‘How sweet. But just so you understand, lots of men sex me and you can’t let that bother you, all right?’

Her damned sister, she was a marine, now. She was one of the Adjunct’s very own—and though that bitch had no idea, it was soldiers like Sinter—the quiet ones, the insanely loyal ones—who were the iron spine of the Bonehunters.

‘Hellian,’ Urb groaned. ‘He’s made that desire plain enough—he wants to marry you—’ She glared. ‘No no, ijit. He wants to wear ’em. All th’rest he don’t know nuffin about. He’s only done it wi’boys, y’see. Kept trying t’get on his stomach under me or me doin’ th’same under ’im wi’ the wrong ’ole showin’ an’ we end up wrasslin’ instead a other more fun stuff. Anyway, les go an’ get our corporal, affore he d’scends into cruption.’

They were a serious, peculiar lot, these Malazans. With a talent for combining offhand casual rapport with the grimmest of subject matter, a careless repose and loose discipline with savage professionalism. He was, he admitted, oddly charmed.

‘Sometimes, Sergeant, mistakes are necessary.’

The Errant’s lone eye seemed to flare. ‘I am the Master of the Tiles—’ ‘And I don’t care. Go on then. Play with your tiles, Elder. You cannot stand against the Master of the Deck—your time, Errant, is past.’

The Elder God sneered. ‘Do you think Brys Beddict can stop me? Can stop what I intend here?’ Fiddler’s brows lifted. ‘I have no idea. But if you take one more step, Errant, the Master of the Deck will come through. Here, now. Will you face him? Are you ready for that?’

‘Sometimes,’ Brys ventured, ‘when nothing can be shared except regret, then regret must serve as the place to begin. Reconciliation does not demand that one side surrender to the other. The simple, mutual recognition that mistakes were made is in itself a closing of the divide.’

‘Desperation delivers poison counsel.’

Oh, they could be lovable enough, when it suited them, and, in sly gift from their true father, both possessed a natural talent for conveying innocence, so pure and so absolute it verged on the autistic, guaranteed to produce nausea in their mother, and other mothers besides.

Such was the power of scepticism. A handful of words to dismantle certainty, like seeds flung at a stone wall—tender greens and tiny roots, yes, but in time they would take down that wall.

Sometimes, belief was suicide.

God, my children, does not await us in the wilderness. God, my children, is the wilderness. Witness its laws and be humbled. In humility, find peace.

On this morning, she did as she always did. Eating her fill of words, drinking deep the spaces in between, and mad—so mad—that none of it gave her any strength.

Letherii got master sergeants; we Malazans got Braven Sergeants, and say it toothy when you say it, lads, and be sure to keep the joke private’—so said Ruthan Gudd and that, Tarr had decided then and there, was a soldier).

There is something unusual about the Malazans. I find them fascinating. Imagine, an entire civilization that does not suffer fools.’

Tehol proposed a meeting to discuss Bugg’s idea of the meeting in advance—oh, listen to me! That man is like an infection!

‘So,’ said Keneb through clenched teeth, ‘we are marching to where the gods are converging. Gods that intend to chain the Crippled God one final time. But we refuse to be anyone’s weapon. If that is so, then what in Hood’s name will we be doing there?’

‘Well done, Bugg. Now then, since I hear the Malazan entourage on its way in the hallway beyond: Brys, how big do you want to make your escort?’ ‘Two brigades and two battalions, sire.’ ‘Is that reasonable?’ Tehol asked, looking round. ‘I have no idea,’ Janath replied. ‘Bugg?’ ‘I’m no general, my Queen.’ ‘We need an expert opinion, then,’ said Tehol. ‘Brys?’

‘That’s the real reason Fid was so reluctant. His reading fed into what Icarium made here all those months back.’

‘You’re saying Icarium went and made a new set of warrens?’

lives every time. Every time.’ She paused. ‘Did I hear right? Some drunk marine sergeant crossed this damned empire from tavern to tavern?’ He nodded. ‘And left a trail of local sympathizers, too. But she wasn’t afraid of spilling blood, Sinter, she just picked out the right targets—people nobody liked. Tax collectors, provosts, advocates.’ ‘But she’s a drunk?’ ‘Aye.’