Gardens of the Moon (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #1)

Gardens of the Moon (The Malazan Book of the Fallen #1) Page 131

Kruppe studied them. They spoke well the Daru tongue, but to one who listened carefully there was the hint of an accent-an accent that did not belong. “Oh, my,” Kruppe said, stepping back. He adjusted his coat, took a deep breath, then opened the gate and walked into the street.

The fat little man with the flopping sleeves walked from the house's gate and turned left. He seemed in a hurry.

Sergeant Whiskeyjack wiped the sweat from his brow with a scarred forearm, his eyes slits against the bright sunlight.

“That is the one, Sergeant,” Sorry said, beside him.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I'm sure.”

Whiskeyjack watched the man winding through the crowd. “What's so important about him?” he asked.

“I admit,” Sorry replied, “to some uncertainty as to his significance. But he is vital, Sergeant.”

Whiskeyjack chewed his lip, then turned to the wagon bed where a city map had been laid flat, its corners anchored down by chunks of rock. “Who lives in that estate?”

“A man named Baruk,” Sorry answered. “An alchemist.”

He scowled. How did she know that? “Are you saying that fat little man is this Baruk?”

“No. He works for the alchemist. Not a servant. A spy, perhaps. His skills involve thievery, and he possesses: talent.”

Whiskeyjack looked up. “A Seer?”

For some reason Sorry winced. The sergeant watched, bemused, as Sorry's face paled. Damn, he wondered, what on earth is going on with this girl?

“I believe so,” she said her voice trembling.

Whiskeyjack straightened. “All right. Follow him.

She nodded shakily, then slipped into the crowd.

The sergeant rested his back against the wagon's side-wall. His expression soured as he studied his squad. Trotts was swinging his pick as if on a battlefield. Stones flew everywhere. Passers-by ducked, and cursed when ducking failed. Hedge and Fiddler crouched behind a wheelbarrow, flinching each time the Barghast's pick struck the street. Mallet stood a short distance away, directing pedestrians to the other pavement.

He no longer bellowed at the people, having lost his voice arguing with an old man with a donkey wobbling under an enormous basket of firewood. The bundles now lay scattered across the street-the old man and the donkey nowhere to be seen-providing an effective barrier to wheeled vehicles.

All in all, WhiskeyJack concluded, everyone with him had assumed the role of heat-crazed street worker with a facility he found oddly disturbing.

Hedge and Fiddler had acquired the wagon, loaded down with cobbles, less than an hour after their midnight landing at a public dock on the Lakefront. Exactly how this had been accomplished, Whiskeyjack was afraid to ask. But it suited their plans perfectly. Something nagged at the back of Whiskeyjack's mind but he dismissed it. He was a soldier and a soldier followed orders. When the time came, there would be chaos at every major intersection of streets in the city.

“Planting mines ain't gonna be easy,” Fiddler had pointed out, “so we do it right in front of everyone's nose. Road repair.”

Whiskeyjack shook his head. True to Fiddler's prediction, no one had yet questioned them. They continued ripping up streets and replacing the old cobbles with Moranth munitions encased in fire-hardened clay. Was everything going to be so easy?

His thoughts returned to Sorry. Not likely. Quick Ben and Kalam had at last convinced him that their half of the mission was better off without her. She'd tagged along with his crew, eyes never still, but otherwise offering little in the way of assistance. He admitted to feeling some relief that he'd sent her off on that fat man's trail.

But what had pulled a seventeen-year-old girl into the world of war?

He couldn't understand it-he couldn't get past her youthfulness, couldn't see beyond to the cold, murderous killer behind those dead eyes.

As much as he told his squad that she was as human as any of them, the doubts grew with every question about her that he could not answer. He knew almost nothing about her. The revelation that she could manage a fishing boat had come from seemingly nowhere. And here in Darujhistan she'd hardly acted like a girl raised in a fishing village. There was a natural poise about her, a measure of assurance more common to the higher, educated classes. No matter where she was, she carried herself as if she belonged there.

Did that sound like a seventeen-year-old girl? No, but it seemed to match Quick Ben's assertions, and that galled him. How else to match her with that icy-cold woman torturing prisoners outside Nathilog? He could look at her and part of him would say: “Young, not displeasing to the eye, a confidence that makes her magnetic.”