Sweetest Sufferance, who had been so named by a mother either resigned to the rigours of motherhood or, conversely, poisoned by irony, blinked rapidly as she was wont to do when returning to reality. She looked round bemusedly, saw her fellow survivors seated with her, the table in their midst a chaotic clutter of cups, tankards, plates, utensils and the remnants of at least three meals. Her soft brown eyes flicked from one item to the next, then slowly lifted, out past the blank-eyed faces of her companions, and took in the taproom of Quip"s Bar.
Quip Younger was barely visible on the counter, sprawled across it with his upper body and head resting on one forearm.
He slept with his mouth hanging open and slick with drool. Almost within reach of the man there squatted a rat on the counter, one front paw lifting every now and then as it seemed to study the face opposite and especially the gaping dark hole of Quip Younger"s mouth.
A drunk was lying just inside the door, pa.s.sed out or dead, the only other patron present this early in the morning (excepting the rat).
When she finally brought her attention back to her companions, she saw Faint studying her, one brow lifting.
Sweetest Sufferance rubbed at her round face, her cheeks reminding her, oddly enough, of the dough her mother used to knead just before the harvest festival, those big round cakes all glittering with painted honey that used to trap ants and it was her task to pick them off but that was all right because they tasted wonderful.
"Hungry again, aren"t ya?"
"You can always tell," Sweetest Sufferance replied.
"When you rub your cheeks, there"s a look comes into your eyes, Sweetie."
Faint watched as Master Quell hissed awake with a sound no different from the noise an alligator might make when one stepped too close. And glared round a moment before relaxing into a relieved slump. "I was dreaming-"
"Yah," cut in Faint, "you"re always dreaming, and when you ain"t dreaming, you"re doing, and now if only those two things were any different from each other, why, you"d actually get some rest, Master. Which we"d like to see, wouldn"t we just."
"Got you through, didn"t I?"
"Losing five shareholders in the process."
"That"s the risks y"take," Quell said, grimacing. "Hey, who"s paying for all this?"
"You might"ve asked that once before. You are, of course."
"How long we been here? G.o.ds, my bladder feels like I"m about to pa.s.s a papaya." And with that he reeled wincing upright, and tottered for the closet behind the bar.
The rat watched him pa.s.s with suspicious eyes, then crept a few waddles closer to Quip Younger"s mouth.
Glanno Tarp jerked alive in his chair. "No more bargains!" he snarled. "Oh," he then said, slouching back down. "Somebody stopped bringing beer can they do that? Sweetest, darling, I dreamt we was making love-"
"Me too," she said. "Only it wasn"t a dream."
Glanno"s eyes widened. "Really?"
"No, it was a nightmare. If you want another round, you"ll have t"wake up Quip Younger."
Glanno squinted over. "He"ll wake up when he can"t breathe, soon as the rat goes for it. A silver council says he swallows instead of spitting out."
At the voicing of a wager Reccanto Ilk"s watery grey eyes sharpened and he said, "I"ll take that one. Only what if he does both? Swallows then chokes and spits out? When you say "swallows" you got to mean he chews if he has to."
"Now that"s quibblering again and when you never done that, Ilk? It"s pointless you saying you want to wager when you keep rectivifying things."
"The point is you"re always too vague, Glanno, with these bets of yours. Y"need precision-"
"What I need is . . . well, I don"t know what I need, but whatever it is you ain"t got it."
"I got it but I ain"t giving it," said Sweetest Sufferance. "Not to none of you, anyhow. There"s a man out there, oh, yes, and I"ll find him one day and I"ll put him in shackles and lock him in my room and I"ll reduce him to a pathetic wreck. Then we"ll get married."
"The marriage prediceeds the wrecking," Glanno said. "So I might dream of you, darling, but that"s as far as it"ll ever go. That"s called self-prevarication."
"Are you sure?" Faint asked him, then, as the front door squealed open, she turned in her chair. An adolescent boy in a voluminous brown robe edged in warily, eyes like freshly laid turtle eggs. Lifting the robe he stepped gingerly over the drunk and padded across to their table and if he had a tail, why, Faint told herself, it"d be half wagging half slipping down between his legs.
"Mmm. Mmmm."
"Would that be "Master"?" Faint asked.
The youth nodded, drew a deep breath, and tried again. "Negotiation, for a delivery, yes?"
"Master Quell is peremptorily predispossessed," Glanno Tarp said.
"Predisposed, he means," Faint explained. "What needs delivering, and where?"
"Not what. Who. Don"t know where."
"Tell you what," Faint said, "go get the who and bring him or her here and we"ll take it from there, all right? There now, watch your step on your way out."
Bobbing head, hurried departure.
"Since when you did the negotiating?" Reccanto asked her, squinting.
"You know," Faint observed, "any half-decent Denul healer could fix your bad eyes, Ilk."
"What"s it to you?"
"What it is to me is you nearly lopped my head off, you d.a.m.ned blind idiot do I look like a snarling corpse?"
"Sometimes. Anyway, I figured it out at the last moment-"
"After I ducked and kicked you between the legs."
"Right, corpses ain"t that smart, so now that"s settled. I was asking you a question."
"He was," chimed in Glanno Tarp. "Look at us, we"re short maybe six, seven we can"t be going nowhere any time soon."
"Maybe not, but maybe it"ll be a quick, easy one."
The others all stared at her.
Faint relented. "Fine. Besides, I was just standing in for Quell, who might never leave that closet."
"Could be he"s dead," Sweetest Sufferance suggested.
"Internally explodicated," said Glanno Tarp, "and don"t think I"m going in for a look."
"There goes the rat!" hissed Reccanto Ilk.
They looked, watched, breathless.
A pause, nose twitching, then a scurry of small steps. Close now, close enough to flinch back at the reeking breath.
"Two councils it falls over dead."
"Be more precise it"s gonna fall over dead some day, ain"t it?"
"G.o.ds below!"
The rat held its ground, edged a mite closer. Then gathered itself, stretched out its neck, and began drinking from the pool of slime with tiny, flickering laps of its slivery tongue.
"That"s what I was thinking it was gonna do," said Sweetest Sufferance.
"Liar."
"So now he ain"t never going to wake up," said Reccanto, "and I"m going to die here of thirst."
The closet door creaked open and out staggered Master Quell, not looking at all refreshed. He hobbled over. "That papaya"s stuck I need a healer-"
"Or a fruit seller," Faint said. "Listen, could be we got us a new contract."
Quell"s eyes bugged slightly, then he spun round and staggered back into the closet.
"Now see what you did!" snapped Reccanto.
"It"s not my my papaya, is it?" papaya, is it?"
So early in the morning, the streets of Darujhistan, barring those of markets, were ghostly, strewn with rubbish and yet somehow magical. The sun"s golden light stroked every surface with a gentle artist"s hand. The faint mists that had drifted in from the lake during the night now retreated once more, leaving the air crisp. In the poorer quarters, shutters opened on upper storeys and moments later the contents of chamber pots sailed out, splashing the alleys and any hapless denizen still lying drunk to the world, and moments later rats and such crept out to sample the fresh offerings.
The dolorous High Priest led Mappo Runt away from the temple quarter and down into the Lakefront District, skirting Second Tier Wall before cutting across towards the Gadrobi District in essence taking the Trell back the way he had come the night before. As they walked, the city awoke around them, rubbed sleep from its eyes, then gawked at the shambling priest and his enormous, barbaric companion.
They eventually arrived upon a narrow, sloped street in which sat a ma.s.sive, ornate carriage of a sort that Mappo had seen before, though he could not for the moment recall where. Six horses stood in their traces, looking bored. Someone had dumped feed all round them, and there was enough fresh dung scattered about to suggest that the animals had been left there a while.
The priest directed Mappo towards a nearby tavern. "In there," he said. "The Trygalle Trade Guild has made a specialty of journeys such as the one you require. Of course, they are expensive, but that is hardly surprising, is it?"
"And one simply seeks out one such caravan, wherever one might find them? That sounds to be an ineffective business plan."
"No, they have offices. Somewhere not a detail I possess, I"m afraid. I only knew of this carriage because its arrival destroyed the front of my cousin"s shop." And, pointing to a nearby ruin, he smiled like a man who had forgotten what real smiling signified. Then he shrugged. "All these twists of fate. Blessed by serendipity and all that. If you fail here, Mappo Runt, you will have a long, tedious walk ahead of you. So do not fail." He then bowed, turned and walked away.
Mappo eyed the front of the tavern. And recalled when he had last seen that sort of carriage.
Tremorlor.
Shareholder Faint had just stood, stretching out all the alarming kinks in her back, when the tavern door opened and a monstrous figure pushed its way in, shoulders squeezing through the frame, head ducking. A misshapen sack slung over one shoulder, a wicked knife tucked in its belt. A d.a.m.ned Trell.
"Glanno," she said, "better get Master Quell."
Scowling, the last driver left alive in their troupe rose and limped away.
She watched as the huge barbarian stepped over the drunk and made his way to the bar. The rat looked up and hastily retreated down the length of the counter. The Trell nudged Quip Younger"s head. The barkeep coughed and slowly straightened, wiping at his mouth, blinking myopically as he lifted his gaze to take in the figure looming over him.
With a bleat he reeled back a step.
"Never mind him," Faint called out. "You want us, over here."
"What I want," the Trell replied in pa.s.sable Daru, "is breakfast."
Head bobbing, Quip bolted for the kitchen, where he was met by a screeching woman, the piercing tirade dimming as soon as the door closed behind him.
Faint dragged a bench from the nearby wall no chair in this dump would survive and waved to it with a glance over to the barbarian. "Come over, then. Sit, but just so you know, we"re avoiding Seven Cities. There was a terrible plague there; no telling if it"s run its course."
"No," the Trell rumbled as he approached, "I have no desire to return to Seven Cities, or Nemil."
The bench groaned as he settled on to it.
Sweetest Sufferance was eyeing the newcomer with a strangely avid intensity. Reccanto Ilk simply stared, mouth open, odd twitches of his scalp shifting his hairline up and down.
Faint said to the Trell, "The truth of it is, we"re really in no shape for anything . . . ambitious. Master Quell needs to put out a call for more shareholders, and that could hold us back for days, maybe a week."
"Oh, that is unfortunate. It is said your Guild has an office here in Darujhistan-"
"It does, but I happen to know we"re the only carriage available, for the next while. Where were you hoping to go, and how quickly?"
"Where is your Master, or are you the one who does the negotiating?"
At that moment Glanno finally succeeded in dragging Quell out from the water closet. The Master was pale, and shiny with sweat, and it seemed his legs weren"t working very well. Faint met his slightly wild gaze. "Better?" she asked.
"Better," he replied in a gasp, as Glanno more or less carried him over to his chair. "It was a d.a.m.ned kidney stone, it was. Size of a knuckle I never thought . . . well, never mind. G.o.ds, who is this?"
The Trell half rose to bow. "Apologies. My name is Mappo Runt." And he sat back down.
Faint saw Quell lick dry lips, and with a trembling hand reach for a tankard. He scowled to find it empty and set it back down. "The most infamous Trell of them all. You lost him, didn"t you?"
The barbarian"s dark eyes narrowed. "Ah, I see."
"Where?" Quell"s voice sounded half strangled.
"I need to get to a continent named Lether. To an empire ruled by Tiste Edur, and a cursed emperor. And yes, I can pay you for the trouble."
Faint had never seen her master so rattled. It was fascinating. Clearly, Quell had recognized the Trell"s name, which signified . . . well, something.
"And, er, did he face that emperor, Mappo? In ritual combat?"
"I do not think so."