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the city on the barrow
Tavore could not remember a time when she did not trust the integrity of her doubts. The flinch back from spitting coals, the cold astonishment rocking one heel back from a cliff's edge. Such things were hidden mechanisms joined to the engine that moved the world; and she was a child watching many-ringed serpents slither toward her from the tall grass verging the woods behind her family's estate. Run, some silvery voice had whispered through the gap-tooth gears that turned stars at night; and she had fled as though every star suddenly began to plummet from its black bracket overhead. Later, Ganoes had shown her a book illustrated with the patterns of loops and bands that told of poison in scaled beasts. Among the alien enkar'al and wyval of distant regions she had found a perfect match for those thin snakes that had sleeked the ravine behind her. Deceptively plain yet deadly as a dragon. She would not forget that drawing, nor the realization that her doubt had saved her. She had been caught in a black trap scratched deep, just ahead of the true precipice. It had saved her. And while her childish awe in the discovery gradually gave way, as much of childhood's brilliance and intensity seemed to do, its essence stayed with her. She pored over books for all the arms and armour that knowledge could provide, and ever took doubt as a warning that some crucial choice lay hidden beneath the horizon's ashen hinge. Only a madman walked unhesitating to stand at the brink of judgement. All his fears were inverted, transformed into a plain and peaceful lightness. Even as he stepped down on the rift. Even as he fell through the sky.
If ever she knew doubt, Tavore reasoned, she could not be like that. She knew that she could not be mad.
So she assured herself as the muted coast shielding Aren grew like mildew against the sodden sky. For the better part of a bell, it had thickened and drifted but refused to draw nearer. Instead, the screams of gulls and crows and vultures came gliding out to them through the sizzle of soft rainfall upon the flat, grey water. Long cries, distant and spectral. A grim herald, T'amber said of the sound; but that is all she would say of it. She shook off any questions put to her as if they were bloodflies and paced the deck like a great, golden cat stolen from the savannah.
Watching her prowl unhappily in the rain, Tavore felt something lower onto her shoulders, heavy as a wet pelt. Her inexhaustible wonder at T'amber's presence faltered briefly, overwhelmed by a bleak insight more invasive than dread. The twitch of a cold finger where none should reach; the plucking of red threads strung from rib to rib. They had arrived, Tavore realized, too late. No shock waited for her in that thought. Only dull acknowledgement. T'amber had been suggesting the possibility for days. Now it was real in her lowered eyes, her restless steps. The crew saw the truth of it when Froth Wolf finally drew close enough to pier for the harbour hands looked up her salt-scabbed hull, their eyes like graves. Throughout the disembark, Tavore readied herself to hear the words from the High Fist himself — and so, she found herself uniquely ill-prepared to receive the news that the High Fist himself was among the tens of thousands dead outside Aren's gate. T'amber's expression was stone when they were met at the gangplank and informed that an immediate debriefing would be led within the palace. The attending officers would be no more than two, a commander and a captain. The closest thing to high command that remained.
Did you know? Tavore wondered as they were led around a plaza filled with men and women and children who wept and wilted, thin as summer shadows. She was ever aware of T'amber's prescience, her strange connection to the power of inevitability, her warmth and her nearness; but even now she could not begin to guess at its limits. Nor could she bring herself to question the charity of T'amber's intentions. Later, perhaps, there would be time to ask how descriptive the Deck had become in their last days of travel, how long she had understood the true extent of the tragedy that soaked Aren's trembling walls and the bloody road that so wounded them — and whether she had been suffering with the knowledge. How grievous, after all, the loss of life; and how harrowing, the path that the survivors would have to walk to leave it behind. Ascending the palace steps felt like climbing from a tomb. Did you know and keep this from me, knowing too that I could offer no help?
T'amber was gazing at her, gold eyes soft and sad. Their warmth was like a flash of sunlight through trees, suddenly pressing the pieces of Tavore's splintered focus together. With biting clarity, she heard the commander, Blistig, say: " — Imperial Historian among our losses, since he accompanied the High Fist's retinue outside. Some of the others from the refugee escort are still with us though their state is — "
"Duiker?" Tavore asked sharply. Blistig halted and stared at her, clearly expecting that she would continue; but her thoughts were on a page that could not be turned. A single page in a plainly-bound book. It would be tucked away at the back of a bowed shelf in the archive at Unta. Duiker's Imperial Campaigns, a volume recording Kellanved and Dancer's activities at the birth of the empire. It was a personal account; Duiker had been there, companion to the man who would become emperor. Tavore had studied the content at length years ago and put it in a hidden alcove, intending to return to it again. She wondered: could that book still rest where she had left it? Or would Laseen's order for the revision of all such things have ensured the destruction of every last original?
Blistig cleared his throat, looked to Captain Keneb as though for confirmation. So it was Keneb, dusty-haired and watchful, who finally ventured: "Yes, Adjunct. Did you," and he frowned into the implausibility of his question as it formed in full, "know him?"
"No," Tavore replied slowly. "No. Not personally." To her irritation, her thoughts remained flat. "This is enough for now. If any current records of the city's treasury and storage facilities are available, please have them sent to this room. Any inventories at all; larders, armories, well heights, lists of undercrofts. I stress they will be needed as soon as possible. For now, you are dismissed with my thanks."
Both men simply nodded and saluted for the sake of a quick exit. Their eyes, Tavore noted, grew dull without coordination as each realized he was being excused. It was not unhappiness that she glimpsed. It was the blank look of a soldier whose purpose had been removed. It was. in fact, the mirror in which she could look to see the disposition of all the city's soldiers; and she could not bear to look at that for long.
At the door, Keneb paused and turned, surrounded by light. "Adjunct, perhaps it goes without saying, but you have the city."
Before the latch had fallen and shadows fully swept in, she sat. Hunched over the scarred table where she would be planning the march of a military force already half-stitched into Hood's banner. T'amber's hand was on her hair but she could not look up. If ever she knew doubt, she reminded herself, she knew that she could not be mad. It meant she approached a precipice. It meant, she prayed, that she had finally found a sheer drop leading down into the last, great fall.
the face of a card
Every morning Tavore woke first, her fingers curled in a shining sprawl of T'amber's hair; but T'amber was always the quickest to rise and gather her needs for the day, as if sleep was a game she only played until its novelty ebbed away. As if she had slipped the leash of dreaming itself. In the thin bars of sunlight dividing their tiny room at dawn, she would rise and fold herself up in her copper-edged robes with a single, long sweep of her arms. Her longest pause, each day, came when she settled herself on the chest the foot of their bed and combed out her hair. She let the sun pick strands to gild as if they were gold in truth. She let Tavore sit up and watch her in silence, the frayed blankets and furs heaped at her hips while she smiled faintly into her favourite moment, warmed. An indulgence exceeding all others. A moment of stillness.
Unable to last. With a smile that shamed even the brightest morning, T'amber would rise again, replace her comb in the battered chest and vanish into tireless motion again. Closing the slat blinds against the day. Taking up the small leather bag containing her brushes and inks and sanded blanks, all tucked alongside the wax-wrapped meal for noon that Tavore insisted she carry. Leaning forward to clasp Tavore's ankle beneath the blanket, trying to slip back untouched, but no, Tavore was the faster hand once a day; she would catch T'amber's wrist, kiss it. And then she would be gone, and the room darker for it.
Self-led, Tavore's studies sometimes left her in comforting gloom for hours, tucked back under furs drawn up her chin; but she would rise and ready herself in her own time, drawn forth by the reassurances of a strict routine. She would dress herself in an undyed tunic, leggings and cloak; eat the rich bread left out for her by T'amber; take her stacked notebooks under one arm and leave the room locked behind her. An abrasively simple life for the eldest daughter of House Paran. She cherished it, down to every last detail, imagining the furor there would be if she should have come from any other name. The nettled pride of wealthy parents, the gossip among the wider pantheon of connected families. Even now, there was quiet talk, mostly behind sleeves and handkerchiefs. Threading the crowded streets of Unta to the Imperial Archive, she felt that even the buildings arranged in their patrician lanes seemed to lean over her, puzzling. It was a great relief that her mother and father, at least, had never troubled her to make gestures of affluence and etiquette. Though sometimes Tavore was sure that they looked at her, risen tall and cold, in the absence of her brother; that they thought of legacy and they wondered.
That was the cost of simplicity. Its many moving parts were delicate and those who could not maintain them would soon possess a simple life in shambles, ripped apart by partners or patrons or family — provided they lived at all. From the start, Tavore had known it would not endure; had, in fact, composed her affairs to give way as smoothly and quickly as possible under the first whisper of duress, like a woven skin of leaves over a hunter's pit. It would be easy, she had thought, to leave her old life behind. The trick lay in holding steady, never glancing at the trap's mouth, waiting for the quarry's trip — and seeing, the instant before, when it would come.
But even a simple plan can falter. Nearly three years had gone by, the routine of growing ready slowly sweetening into something she could hope to keep, to protect. She began to see another skein of conflict buried in the war games she had played out at the family's manor, guided first by Fists introduced to her by her father and then alone, wholly alone, her focus uninterrupted: waiting weakened the spirit. Lingering in the same reading rooms in the same archive. Buying the same sweet from the same vendor twice a week. Easier than leaving was thinking: Why? Without the feral concentration T'amber brought to their shared pursuits, Tavore was sure that there would be nothing left of her resolve.
What, then, could she make of the evening when she returned to their small, dark room overlooking the webbed streets of the city outside and it was T'amber herself who greeted her with outstretched hands full of the arcane? A sign? Tavore wondered, staring at her. Or a threat?
"A full Deck," T'amber said, savage in her satisfaction. Cards clattered and gleamed between her fingers, only a handful of the complete set. "I finished it today. You must come and see."
Tavore could not quite explain the cold ache under her breastbone or the sudden, elastic slack threatening to fold her knees as she stepped forward. She approached the square table set into their lightless kitchen nook, following the gleam of T'amber smile. Two candles were wavering from recesses in the wall; the first time Tavore had ever seen them burning. She pushed through the cards spread out on the tabletop and felt her fingertips grow numb against an imperceptible trembling.
"They are beautiful," she said truthfully. "Beautiful."
"Thank you." With appalling, endearing disregard, T'amber scooped the pieces together in her arms and carried them to the bed. She threw them down and they scattered across the furs like chips of steel from the shattering of a shield. "Will you ask a question? I would be interested to see how they behave while still unbound to the proper ceremony."
"Proper," Tavore echoed; and though she carefully withheld all the obvious signs of her amusement, T'amber sighed and began to shuffle a handful of cards self-consciously.
"Prescribed," she allowed. "I love them as they are, made while we live here like this. It frightens me to think about what they could become, after being aspected. What they might see. What must be done."
The thread of melancholy in her voice stirred Tavore like great wings in a lair of coals. The desire to step forward against some physical threat bloomed red and ragged beside her heart and she crossed the room. Took T'amber's waist in her hands and drew her down to sit on the edge of the bed. She looked, Tavore thought, too small; felt too small to match the weight and depth of her presence.
"If I ask a question," Tavore said at length, "so must you."
T'amber stared, her eyes transformed into a mystic place by the warm wink of candlelight. "I suppose I must."
Together they gathered cards, laid them out face down in rows. The task was performed in silence. Together they considered the anonymous edges and smooth, subtle grain.
"Will I fail?" Tavore asked.
As she passed her hand over the cards, scrambled and discordant, T'amber sank into an impossible stillness; she seemed not to shake, or blink, or breathe. To spare her, Tavore flipped a card immediately. Paused. Turned another and then, quickly, several more. Until finally she had uncovered, by some strange chance, the whole of High House Shadow.
Comprehension of the Deck of Dragons was an innate ability that Tavore did not possess. To her, the cards were inert; speech without voice, daggers dulled to dowsing rods. She knew their power only by the proof of things that came to pass. And even she could see how gleefully this Deck laughed up at her.
T'amber gazed at the spread for a long time without speaking. It seemed, now and then, that she regarded Tavore from the corner of her luminous eye. Finally she murmured, "No. You shall not."
"Never?"
"Not even once." Her smile, while beautiful, was strange and sudden. "Though sometimes you may wonder."
"Something to consider. And your question?"
T'amber turned the exposed cards down again but did not bother to shuffle the arrangement. They would find their places, Tavore supposed, when the moment came.
"Is this Deck complete?" she asked eventually, and picked up the last card Tavore had touched. Then let it fall from her hand.
Blank, Tavore realized. Sealed with shining lacquer but unmarked by any ink or carving. She discovered that she was on her feet, that she had drawn T'amber up and pushed her back, shielding her from those veiled wooden eyes, staring in the poor light, nictating with glimpses of prophecy. As the cards lay still and T'amber shifted against her impatiently, Tavore began to feel foolish. But she could not bring herself to step closer, or to look away for an instant.
"I thought," she said quietly, "that you had finished the last of these today."
The hands on her back steadied her with their fierce pressure until the contact nearly felt like a rebuke, a collision with the scarred flank of an animal striding forward to defend its claim. There was dominance in T'amber's touch, control — and comfort beneath it. The promise of peace and clarity, even in the lock of combat or uncertainty. She lifted those gentle fingers to Tavore's face and terror fled. She kissed her and the press of her lips was a blessing that had no name.
When T'amber drew back, she took a small smile with her as a prize. She did not look at the cards; she seemed, instead, to have forgotten them. Wistfully, she said, "So did I."
the sword in her hand
A child's fancy could rule the world; as far, at least, as its borders reached in the scope of childhood. With the reenactment pieces intended for mock battles, Ganoes would play out stories for Felisin on those rare evenings when guests were led out of the convention room into the patio gardens for lighter entertainment. Tavore did not invest in fancy for herself, but her parents would urge her to stay inside with her siblings, watch over them. She felt that it meant something more than she could discern from the words. Through the ornate doors, left to stand open so that long shadows leaned against Felisin and Ganoes where they crouched, she could hear the faint murmur of sober voices, all stripped of the upward leaps of laughter and cries she had come to expect from parties. If it had been quiet inside, she might have overheard their conversations, but the tales that Felisin had so favoured then were audacious and enthralling, a series of shouts and crashes and fell beasts roaring. Every time it seemed they would scratch the hardwood floor in a new place, which have to be disguised with a slight shifting of the grand map table — no small task for three adolescents. Tavore still recalled the mossy scent of nightfall, the struggle to move a weight far greater than she could manage alone; and most of all the tales themselves. Their dramatic arcs and lofty morals echoed in her mind like songs in a deep valley. The stalwart hero. The worthy quest. The magic sword.
And then, the tales ended. Children grew up and parents died. Taking Ganoes far away. Leaving Felisin, a child no longer, to look upon the true face of the world and her place within it. A place shaped not to her own fancies or wishes. Shaped to nothing at all.
While they had still resided together at the manor, Tavore paid little attention to her restlessness. Without Ganoes to fill her mind with flights of dragons, she became belligerent, though no less astute; in fact, she had a ravenous mind full of questions and images that she struggled to frame with even the most complex language she possessed, so she searched for more. If only, her tutors lamented, these were the studies that had been put before her. If only she would learn responsibility and control. Thinking of her own youth, Tavore believed that she would bring her difficulties to heel in time. That she would settle into some single talent, or a suitable marriage, or both. Something that might take her far away. And all would be well as House Paran rapidly ascended from apparent disgrace. The shocking treason rendered by its eldest son. Alone, Tavore had spent days practicing the words that would advance her to a defensible position: no brother of mine.
In the reception hall outside the throne room, Tavore paced beneath the gentle eyes of painted nymphs. Dozens of swords and spears and arrows tracked her movements, thrust out in the hands of ornate statues. She wore a dross of silk and silver chain draped on her shoulders, enough that she would not stand out against the lavishness of the Imperial Palace's public rooms. She waited, and waited; and when it began to feel possible that her presence had been forgotten, the heavy doors to the throne room thumped and eased open in silence, pushed by no force or hand she could see. So, without waiting for summons, she entered.
The chamber beyond was great and towering but plain. Distressingly plain, she felt, after the display she had left behind. The marble underfoot was very fine, and the forest of tall columns that stretched to the high-canopied ceiling were masterfully formed; but there was no flourish here, no fancy. A much more austere demonstration of luxury — with few angles, Tavore noted, to distract the eye. There was no easy way to approach the throne without being made into a spectacle for those already gathered around it.
Laseen was not waiting for her upon the throne. She stood unattended in the centre of the room, her hand steadying a sheathed sword balanced on its tip at her side. As Tavore drew near, she nodded and gestured vaguely. The motion might have meant anything. So Tavore knelt at her feet and looked up to see in Laseen's smile that she had guessed wisely.
"And where," the empress said, warmly, wonderingly, "did you come from?"
Lifted and balanced across her callus-corded hands, the otataral sword of the Adjunct's office seemed to spit and shiver like something primeval. A coiled cobra; a strand of lava still luminous from the vent. A sword, she thought, with no magic in it at all. A sword that would devour any hero who took it up. Tavore reached out and grasped it without a word, squeezing the scabbard until her glove creaked.
Laseen lowered her arms. Smiled. "That," she added in a hush, "is what they'll all say."
the girl in the sun
Like a lion, her army slept. Deaf to the thunder of the stampeding sun, it stretched out flat. A starving beast with its back all in patches, a thousand low tents pitched to raise a pitiable sanctuary against the sharp spur of midday. Tavore lay on bare earth under a stained canvas, her hands kept in fists. Listening to the sand and the glassy stone beneath her head crackle. Imagining ropes in her hands, a pair of leashes, both skinning her palms as the twin horrors of thirst and despair fought to tear free of her grasp. The power of her fears appalled her. True, if thirst should grow too wild she had a dagger for its withered throat; but what was the cure for immortal, formless despair? She had lived with it at length, felt its dragging weight distort time itself. She knew that her army would not rise again if despair gripped its core. How could we? she wondered. How could anyone despairing rise to face what walks alongside us now?
And yet they rose, conjured by dusk. And yet they walked, unyielding. As the glass road cooled each night she felt the hot, failing breath of her soldiers wreath her like an embrace she could not return. She could not answer that tenacity as it deserved. There was not enough left in her from the start — and then came the children, those dark motes blown in like ashes from the dawn, resolving before her like ruined heirlooms, like ghosts awakened long before their time — and they astonished her with their strength. She only had mouthfuls of water and flavourless dried meat to offer for all their pain. And they asked only for good mothers, good fathers, a safe place to sleep. Simple things, it seemed to her, that had been taken from them on the shattered road they had traversed, never to be seen again. To say so, however, was too cruel. They were given the wagon beds, tucked in with wrapped food and bundled bedding, shielded by stretched hides at all hours. A safer place than the shattered road. And when they spoke to Tavore, when they called her Mother, she would nod to them, knowingly. A calm face to accompany the comforting word.
Not enough. All she had was not enough in exchange for such astonishing strength.
Edging out from beneath her canvas, Tavore pushed the otataral sword out into the heat ahead of her. As if the Glass Desert was a deadly enchantment to be dispelled. As if the sword might have any power to guide or defend her now. Within its heavy scabbard, she believed that she could feel it squirming, desperately. Thrashing like a serpent held in long, black talons. She did not know what it meant. She did not remember what it had been like believe that she was prepared to withstand any hardship, any task. Loss was mantled over her, feasting on pieces of her body, strips of her soul, on all of the men and women who followed her. In the ravenous light, she felt that she could look upon every one of their faces. She could do nothing else. She had brought them here, and she could do nothing else.
The sun was a white hole in the sky, tacked to the very centre of all things suspended beyond human reach. Tavore stood, and found her flesh slow to follow. When she raised her head, an acrid burning like smoke stung her eyes. She blinked away tears and, as her vision drew back its focus, she saw Felisin, standing in a gap between wagons with the long, shivering line of the horizon at her back.
"No fair," her sister said, sounding childish; and that was not quite right. Her eyes were wise. Her dark hair streamed and whipped, though the only wind was as thin and hot as steam from a kettle. "You were supposed to count to ten."
"Felisin," Tavore said. Tried. Little more than a gasp escaped her red, raw throat.
"There are rules. How come you can remember that for war games but not for hide and seek? It's practically the same thing."
Practically. As a child, she had used the word in every sentence for weeks after hearing it from Ganoes. "I'm sorry," Tavore whispered. "I'll count now."
"You have to close your eyes, too. And no peeking. If anyone tells you where I went," and she paused, seemed to frown at something just beyond Tavore's shoulder, "that's cheating too."
Tavore closed her eyes. Counted down. Knew as she opened them that Felisin would be gone from her sight forever, and looked down to spare herself that new, terrible loss.
In time, precisely, to see her shadow turn underfoot. Fringe over umbra, spreading like a stain, a movement cruelly liquid against the tessellated stones underfoot. She watched it extend like fingers uncurling. East. Further, that way, into the sifting sand. Misery, that way, with the last whisper of a different life sliding away like hands from her back. She decided that was well and fair. A dream of her sister had gone into the desert, and the ashes of her heart had been scattered at its edge. Better to push east, where another heart waited. Webbed with scars, sick with power, dripping from the raw fist of Assail. The heart of Kaminsod.
A poor match for the hole in her chest, Tavore conceded. But then, she did not go to it in the hope that it would be hers. She had precious little hope; and that thought made her walk numbly to the covered carts, reach under the canvas, gaze at the figures huddled there in shadow. Precious little which she would hold with all her strength, she thought as small fingers grasped her cloak and hands for reassurance; for it seemed that nothing precious was hers for long.
the heart
Scout-eyes, blinking lazily left to right from a long rain trough cut into the earth behind rows of small, squat tents. Gleam-eyes, full of prickling interest. Rats bore Bottle's presence easily, not because they were the most pliable; no, they were the most curious and by far the most willing, as if with a twitching of whiskers they could unravel the whole tangled knot of his questing spirit and look straight to the tasks he asked of them. Brilliant little beasts, he knew. Map makers of the lowest paths and darkest corners, glad to sort the tumbling puzzle of his thoughts. Interested, even, in the larger pictures that puzzle could form. Rejoining the Malazan encampment had pleased them and he didn't figure it was only the smell of the offal heaps that had gotten them so excited. They'd known he was looking for the Bonehunters, so they brought him straight to Fid's own parley out there under the stars. They'd known to scout the camp for an empty communal tent for the squads to claim afterward — "the commandeered tent" as it were, the find that made Bottle the night's first hero.
Dutiful too, they kept up their watch in earnest as a game of knuckles began and Bottle's focus slipped. Without his direction, they simply reverted to what they enjoyed most. Seeking, exploring, discovering. On their own they did not know the names of objects or creatures. Rather than hoping to find certain foods, they ate what they found. Rather than seeking paths turned in a certain direction, they quested down the paths that formed under their paws.
Rather than recognizing the Adjunct, they felt an abstract urge to follow her.
Rather than wondering where she was headed, they raced to precede her.
"Uh," Bottle said suddenly, blinking even in the low glow of untended coals. "Sergeant? I mean, sorry, Captain? I mean. Fid."
Perched over the game state on the table, Fiddler shot him a look. "I ain't been promoted to Emperor, Bottle, relax."
"No. No, it's not that. We got a problem that goes by the title of Adjunct," Bottle said, and all the marines gathered around him suddenly recoiled as if he had hacked up a wild boar. Their game of knuckles — half-finished and entirely forgotten on the gouged table — went clattering to the packed floor in a shower of prophecy that none of the assembled could read. The closest thing to a real divination came from Koryk, who sighed in relief as the proof of his losing throw was dashed from sight.
"What d'you mean," Fiddler asked, low and dangerous, "the Adjunct?"
"I mean she coming straight for us!"
Some dreadful expression seemed to pinch Fiddler's face from inside his skull. "Well, how long do we have?" he demanded in the exact moment Tavore strode into the smoky cloister of the community tent. And froze, studying the faces turned toward her and the way they snapped aside when her eyes drifted near. Though Fiddler made himself as small as possible, she found him with bone-chilling ease.
"Adjunct," he said, voice just high enough to set himself on edge. "Have a seat?"
Across the table, Bottle jumped up. Couldn't have done it faster if his chair had been on fire. To his credit, he managed a very sharp salute — at which point everyone else straightened smartly as though compelled — and nodded when Tavore looked at him, her eyebrows raised, the question left unasked. So she walked over and sat.
She cut an ominous figure against the low fires, wrapped tight in silver and black. For a long time no one spoke. Embers popped inside scattered metal pans and bowls, and feet were shifted, and throats were cleared. That was fine. In fact if anyone could hope to achieve greater eloquence, Fiddler thought, he or she had no business being a soldier.
"All of you," Tavore said at last, reaching into a dark leather pack strapped to her hip, "forgive me."
Fiddler swallowed. He had no explanation for the glittering tide of dread inching up from the core of his bones but he was beginning to recognize the flavour of it. "Adjunct. Sir, I don't think — "
A sharp wave of her hand cut him short, though not the motion alone. It was the object she held that transfixed him, a packet folded up in paper that gleamed with wax.
"The offering I present to you cannot be fairly divided or shared. So I give this to your sergeant, requesting that you agree he shall hold it on your collective behalf."
She pushed the packet into the centre of the table, exactly halfway between them. There it sat, its sharp corners reflecting the light like copper fangs clenched on a secret. For a moment, her fingertips lingered over it. Then withdrew. Knowing that his own hand would be shaking harder than a dog in a monsoon, Fiddler scooped it up as soon as she'd leaned back out of reach, flicked open the unsealed edge and peeled the paper back deftly.
To reveal a Deck of Dragons, one he'd held before. Felt like a lifetime away. He thumbed through it, brows rising higher and higher as each passing card greeted him with polite familiarity. T'amber's Deck. The very Deck he'd been given to deal in Froth Wolf's cabin. Of its art and its resonance, he was certain. He had been in league with these very cards before.
"Yours to keep," Tavore said. "Treasure it. Please."
Unable to look up, Fiddler replied: "Well, thanks." Then remembered to add: "Adjunct. I'll, uh, take good care of it."
"Having become familiar with your readings, Captain," Tavore said, "I doubt that."
At that he did look up, quick as a crossbow shaft. The tension cracked, then dissolved. Against his better judgement, Fiddler grinned. "Yeah. Well. I mean it'll see proper use with us. Help to suss out serious scraps beforehand, keep us in on the joke. You ever hear the one about the House of Durhang?"
With a slight shrug, Tavore allowed several of the onlookers to imagine that a smile hid in the shadows dancing across her face. "Highest in the pantheon."
The laughter, scattered and incredulous at first, rose slow and steady like ocean tide. Polite of them, she thought. Everybody knew the one about High House Durhang.
Rubbing thoughtfully at his mouth, Fiddler curled his free hand over the Deck, drew it closer under dozens of approving eyes. "Hope it's not bad form to say, Adjunct, but you're all right. In fact, you know who'd have really liked your style? Kel—"
Something in her expression brought his teeth down on the name, even as she rose — slowly — and studied the firelit faces bent toward her, looking for all the world like a child counting the rings on a serpent: three fine, two thick and you could almost see her lips move over the word venomous? And then — she nodded. A movement barely discernible in the gloom, but there it was. The press of bodies seemed to fold around her, like wings or a friendly arm, as she turned to leave. Through the canvas flap. Off into the cookfire smoke drifting between tents, alone. Just like that.
A moment passed in weighty silence.
"—lanved," Fiddler finished, shuffling the Deck sheepishly. "What?"
Bottle settled onto one end of a bench nearby. "Dunno," he said. "But you did it. We all saw."
"Spooked her," Smiles hissed. Her eyes, fixed on the cards, glimmered with something halfway between fury and delight. "Did something to our luck, I'll bet. Sir."
Fiddler grimaced. No need to count rings with the snake still hanging from his ankle. "Did nothing. That was a lie, friends. She'd have got Old Shadey chewing cussers in no time with that sense of humour."
"Lyin' to the Adjunct," Cuttle gasped, just before a voice in the back of the tent trilled: "Flagrantly disrespectin' Ascendants!"
"Shut it, all of you," Fiddler snapped. "Especially you, Throaty. Flagrantly? Really?"
Bottle shifted next to him nervously. "Well, just take it easy with that talk, Captain. You looked at yourself in the mirror lately? Notice where we're marching? What d'you think we'd see if you dealt out that Deck right n— wait, don't actually do it! I'm just saying you got to choose your words real careful from now on or you might end up making us," and he paused, shuddered, "legendary."
With firelight restoring brassy red patches to the frightful whiteness still frosting his beard, Fiddler creaked back on his chair, whistling. "Adjunct Tavore and her legendary Bonehunters, eh? That's what you're afraid'll come down on us?" Eyeing the flickering circle of nods hemming him in, Fiddler snorted. "I'll tell you something: fear not, o fabled boneheads. There ain't nothing so memorable about us."
When his chair slammed forward again, half the tent jumped. Another half sneaked toward the flaps as he began to shuffle his fine, new cards — gifted, lacquered, and wise — with purpose; though not, he decided, the same half. No. And anyway, they'd all be back. Oh, yes. Of that, he had no doubt.