Steven Erikson - Memories of Ice

'An interesting name. Aptly chosen, if I may so presume. To have dodged the Sirinth's attack — I assume it attacked once you'd released it?'

'Clever,' Quick Ben conceded, 'locking a hold-over spell in that collar, one last command to kill whomever frees it. I assume that doesn't include you, its summoner.'

'I never free my demons,' Bauchelain said.

'Never?'

'Every exception to a magical geas weakens it. I allow none.'

'Poor demons!'

Bauchelain shrugged. 'I hold no sympathy for mere tools. Do you weep for your dagger when it breaks in someone's back?'

'That depends on whether it killed the bastard or just made him mad.'

'Ah, but then you weep for yourself.'

'I was making a joke.'

Bauchelain raised a single, thin eyebrow.

The subsequent silence was broken by Emancipor's return, bearing a tray on which sat a dusty bottle and two crystal goblets.

'Not a glass for yourself?' the necromancer asked. 'Am I so unegalitarian, Emancipor?'

'Uh, I took a swig below, master.'

'You did?'

'T'see if it was flowery.'

'And was it?'

'Not sure. Maybe. What's flowery?'

'Hmm, we must resume your education, I think, of such finer things. Flowery is the opposite of … woody. Not bitter memory of sap, in other words, but something sweet, as of narcissus or skullcrown-'

'Those flowers are poisonous,' Quick Ben noted in faint alarm.

'But pretty and sweet in appearance, yes? I doubt any of us are in the habit of eating flowers, thus in analogy I sought visual cues for dear Emancipor.'

'Ah, I see.'

'Before you pour from that bottle, then, Emancipor. Was the aftertaste bitter or sweet?'

'Uh, it was kind of thick, master. Like iron.'

Bauchelain rose and grasped the bottle. He held it close, then sniffed the mouth. 'You idiot, this is blood from Korbal Broach's collection. Not that row, the one opposite. Take this back to the cellar.'

Emancipor's lined face had gone parchment-white. 'Blood? Whose?'

'Does it matter?'

As Emancipor gaped, Quick Ben cleared his throat and said, 'To your servant, I think the answer would be "yes, it does".'

The crow cackled from the mantelpiece, head bobbing.

The servant sagged on watery knees, the goblets on the tray clinking together.

Frowning, Bauchelain collected the bottle again and sniffed once more. 'Well,' he said, returning it to the tray, 'I'm not the one to ask, of course, but I think it's virgin's blood.'

Quick Ben had no choice but to enquire, 'How can you tell?'

Bauchelain regarded him with raised brows. 'Why, it's woody.'

To Hood with plans. Paran sat slouched on one of the lower benches in the Thrall's council chamber. The night outside seemed to have flowed into the vast, dusty room, dulling the torchlight along the walls. Before him, the floor had been gutted, revealing an array of dust-caked outrigger canoes. The wrapped corpses that had once filled them had been removed by the Barghast in solemn ceremony, but, to the captain's senses, the most important artefacts had been left behind. His eyes never left the seafaring canoes, as if they held truths that might prove overwhelming, if only he could glean them.

The pain in his stomach rode dwindling echoes. He thought he now understood the source of his illness. He was not a man who welcomed power, but it had been thrust upon him regardless. Nothing so clear or obvious as a sword, such as Dragnipur; nothing that he could wield, cutting through enemies like an avenging demon who knelt only before cold justice. Yet, power none the less. Sensitivity to unseen currents, knowledge of the inter-connectedness that bound all things and everyone to everyone else. Ganoes Paran, who despised authority, had been chosen as an adjudicator. A mitigator of power whose task was to assert a structure — the rules of the game — upon players who resented every challenge to their freedom to do as they pleased.

Worse than a Malazan magistrate in Unta. Holding fast to the law, whilst being pressured by every influence imaginable, from rival factions to the wishes of the Empress herself. Prod and pull, push and tug, turning even the easiest and most straight' forward of decisions into a nightmare.

No wonder my body recoils, seeks to reject what has been forced upon me.

He was alone in the Thrall's council chamber. The Bridgeburners had found the Gidrath barracks more to their style and were no doubt gambling and drinking themselves blind with the half-hundred Gidrath who comprised the Thrall's Inner Guard; whilst the priests of the Mask Council had retired for the night.

And it seemed Trake's Mortal Sword, the man named Gruntle, had initiated a friendship with Humbrall Taur's daughter, Hetan, in a manner that Paran suspected might eventually result in kin ties with the White Face clan — the two had made their way into the heart of the Thrall, no doubt in search of somewhere private. Much to the disgust of the woman, Stonny Menackis.

Shield Anvil Itkovian had led his troop back to the barracks near Jelarkan's Palace, to effect repairs and, come the morrow, begin the task of retrieving the refugees hidden in the tunnels beneath the city. The resurrection of Capustan would likely prove torturous and anguished, and the captain did not envy the Grey Sword the task.

We, on the other hand, will have moved on. Itkovian will need to find, among the survivors, someone with royal blood — no matter how thinned — to set on that stained throne. The city's infrastructure is in ruins. Who will feed the survivors? How long before trade is re-established with cities like Saltoan and Darujhistan? Hood knows the Barghast don't owe the people of Capustan anything.

Peace had come to his stomach, finally. He drew a tentative breath, slowly sighed. Power. His thoughts had a way of slipping into mundane considerations — a means to procrastination, he well knew, and it was a struggle to return to the one issue he would have to deal with sooner or later. A storm of plans, each one trying to make me into a fulcrum. I need only spread the fingers of one hand, and so encompass the entire Deck of Dragons. A truth I'd rather not recognize. But I feel those damned cards within me, like the barely articulated bones of a vast beast, so vast as to be unrecognizable in its entirety. A skeleton threatening to blow apart. Unless I can hold on, and that is the task forced upon me now. To hold it all together.

Players in the game, wanting no others. Players outside the game and wanting in. Players to the forefront and ones behind, moving in the shadows. Players who play fair, players who cheat. Gods, where do I begin to unravel all of this?

He thought about Gruntle, Mortal Sword to the newly ascended Treach. In a way, the Tiger of Summer had always been there, silently padding in Fener's wake. If the tales were true, the First Hero had lost his way long ago, surrendered entirely to the bestial instincts of his Soletaken form. Still, the sheer, overwhelming coincidence … Paran had begun to suspect that the Elder Gods had not orchestrated matters to the degree Nightchill had implied; that opportunism and serendipity was as much responsible for the turn of events as anything else. Otherwise, against the Elder Gods, none of us stand a chance, including the Crippled God. If it was all planned, then that plan would have had to involve Treach losing his way — thereby becoming a sleeper in the game, his threat to Fener deftly negated until the moment the First Hero was needed. And his death, too, would have had to have been arranged, the timing made precise, so that he would ascend at the right moment.

And every event that led, ultimately, to Fener's extremity, his sudden, brutal vulnerability, would have had to have been known to the Elder Gods, down to the last detail.