Deadhouse Landing

Urko grunted his agreement. He lifted the lid from a large blackened kettle that hung over the fire. Steam billowed out. ‘You do that.’

*   *   *

After a bowl of watery soup Cartheron went to find Surly. Their best mage, Hawl, was currently guarding the door. The woman was no beauty, with wide lumpy features and a thick build, yet she and Grinner somehow maintained a relationship that satisfied them both. ‘Surly?’ he asked her.

She raised her gaze to the ceiling. He nodded and headed for the stairs. Surly had taken the largest room on the second floor as her private quarters. Approaching the door he heard the shush of quick steps and the thump of blows. He was not alarmed; he knew the sound of her training.

He knocked and waited. After a few moments the door opened a crack and Lady Sureth peered out, her hair and light Napan-blue features gleaming with sweat, her taut chest rising and falling beneath a damp shirt.

Seeing him, she turned away, leaving the door open.

He entered, shutting the door behind him. Inside, the room stood nearly empty but for a thick training pillar at its centre, the hard blackwood beaten, scuffed and dented. The only hint that anyone lived here was bedding kicked up against one wall. Surly had returned to the tall training piece and was practising knife-hand strikes.

‘I’ve been promoted to steersman,’ he said.

‘Good. We can use the money.’

He leaned back against a wall. ‘I’ll say. No one’s downstairs.’

She glanced at him, her eyes gauging. Years of working together allowed her to ask directly: ‘What is it?’

‘Urko wants to know why we haven’t torn Geffen’s house down around him. I take it that’s because you’re trying for something a little more subtle.’

She switched to alternating right and left kicks at head height. Her bare feet snapped up with blurring speed, yet such was her control that each touched with the lightest of taps. ‘We don’t want Mock’s attention,’ she explained. ‘We don’t want these damned Malazans uniting against us. And … I’m waiting for a ship.’

He nodded to himself. ‘Met one of these would-be bosses. Is he why you’re training so hard?’

She cast him a dark look over one shoulder. ‘Get better armed. You’re on babysitting duty.’

He grimaced. ‘Managed the soup, but I’ll eat elsewhere if that’s okay. Wait, babysitting? What do you mean?’

‘Our employer who claims to be a mage has a habit of wandering off. We have to keep an eye on him.’

Cartheron straightened. ‘Is he for real? Or is he just all talk?’

Surly paused in her strikes. He noticed her hands, loose at her sides, all red and bloodied. She tilted her head, considering. ‘You know, I really have no idea. But if he can’t deliver then we fall back to the old plan.’

He nodded. ‘Grab the shop title and buy a ship.’

She sucked the blood from the side of one hand, studied the wound. ‘He has a fortnight. Dismissed.’

Cartheron saluted. ‘Aye, aye.’

*   *   *

He sat with Grinner and Hawl in the common room and caught up with the news. Back with his old friends he found himself once more being called Crust rather than Cartheron, while his brother was just plain Urko. He didn’t know when or why it started, but it was probably simply easier to bellow ‘Crust’ in storms and battle. He learned that they’d gained control of a few warehouses and shop-fronts and that the main work was in protecting these from being raided or burned to the ground.

‘There’s not enough of us,’ he complained to Hawl.

‘Tell us about it,’ she grunted, slumped in her chair.

He needn’t have said anything. Her exhaustion showed in her dark sunken eyes and lank unwashed hair. Her hands, cracked and red-raw, restlessly tapped at the table and he watched them for a time, thinking, Is that nerves? ‘Any local talent to worry about?’ he asked.

That elicited a snort of disgust. ‘No and yes. Geffen has no one – but there are some damned terrifying powers here on the island. They’re not involved, but I can feel them none the less. My back won’t stop itching.’

Grinner reached out and took her hands in one of his, stilling them. Hawl let out a long breath, her shoulders easing.

‘And our mage employer? Is he for real?’

She nodded. ‘Oh yes. He has access to something all right. Just what that is I don’t know. Whatever it is, it’s damned grating. I’ve felt his raised aspect a few times and let me tell you – for a mage it’s like having needles hammered into your skull. It just ain’t right. I even had a nosebleed one time.’

Cartheron picked up a fist of bread and tapped it to the table. Rock hard. He nodded to Hawl. ‘Okay. What about Amaron and Noc? Any word?’

‘Still in the grass,’ Grinner answered in his soft voice – so jarring from someone so scarred and savage-looking. He looked to Hawl. ‘But I don’t think they’re gonna find any support left on the island. I think the powers that be all consider it a done deal.’

Hawl nodded her sour agreement, and Cartheron had to go along with their assessment. Sureth could not hope for any funds or support from that quarter.