‘No, and you’re right, I’m not. It wasn’t just Buruk the Pale, though I should have seen it coming – he as much as told me a dozen times on our way back. I just wasn’t willing to hear, I suppose. The Tiste Edur emperor has a Letherii adviser-’
‘Hull Beddict.’
‘Yes.’
‘You knew him?’
She nodded.
‘And now you’re feeling betrayed? Not only as a Letherii, but personally too. Well, that’s hard, all right-’
‘But there you are wrong, Iron Bars. I don’t feel betrayed, and that’s the problem. I understand him all too well, his decision – I understand it.’
‘Wish you were with him?’
‘No. I saw Rhulad Sengar – the emperor – I saw him come back to life. Had it been Hannan Mosag, the Warlock King… well, I might well have thrown in my lot with them. But not the emperor…’
‘He came back to life? What do you mean by that?’
‘He was dead. Very dead. Killed when collecting a sword for Hannan Mosag – a cursed sword of some kind. They couldn’t get it out of his hands.’
‘Why didn’t they just cut his hands off?’
‘It was coming to that, I suspect, but then he returned.’
‘A nice trick. Wonder if he’ll be as lucky the next time.’
They reached the edge of the wood and saw the others seated on the horses and waiting. At the Avowed’s comment, Seren managed a smile. ‘From the rumours, I’d say yes, he was.’
‘He was killed again?’
‘Yes, Iron Bars. In Trate. Some soldier who wasn’t even from Lether. Just stepped up to him and broke his neck. Didn’t even stay around to carve the gold coins from his body…’
‘Hood’s breath,’ he muttered as they strode towards the others. ‘Don’t tell the others.’
‘Why?’
‘I got a reputation of making bad enemies, that’s why.’
Eleven Tarthenal lived within a day’s walk from the glade and its statues. Old Hunch Arbat had been chosen long ago for the task to which he sullenly attended, each month making the rounds with his two-wheeled cart, from one family to the next. Not one of the farms where the Tarthenal lived in Indebted servitude to a land-owner in Dresh was exclusively of the blood. Mixed-breed children scampered out to greet Old Hunch Arbat, flinging rotten fruit at his back as he made his way to the slop pit with his shovel, laughing and shouting their derision as he flung sodden lumps of faeces into the back of the cart.
Among the Tarthenal, all that existed in the physical world possessed symbolic meaning, and these meanings were mutually connected, bound into correspondences that were themselves part of a secret language.
Faeces was gold. Piss was ale. The mixed-breeds had forgotten most of the old knowledge, yet the tradition guiding Old Hunch Arbat’s rounds remained, even if most of its significance was lost.
Once he’d completed his task, a final journey was left to him: pulling the foul cart with its heap of dripping, fly-swarmed waste onto a little-used trail in the Breeder’s Wood, and eventually into the glade where stood the mostly buried statues.
As soon as he arrived, just past sunset, he knew that something had changed. In a place that had never changed, not once in his entire life.
There had been visitors, perhaps earlier that day, but that was the least of it. Old Hunch Arbat stared at the statues, seeing the burnt grasses, the faint glow of heat from the battered granite. He grimaced, revealing the blackened stumps of teeth – all that was left after decade upon decade of Letherii sweet-cakes – and when he reached for his shovel he saw that his hands were trembling.
He collected a load, carried it over to the nearest statue. Then flung the faeces against the weathered stone.
‘Splat,’ he said, nodding.
Hissing, then blackening, smoke, then ashes skirling down.
‘Oh. Could it be worse? Ask yourself that, Old Hunch Arbat. Could it be worse? No, says Old Hunch Arbat, I don’t think so. You don’t think so? Aren’t you sure, Old Hunch Arbat? Old Hunch Arbat ponders, but not for long. You’re right, I say, it couldn’t be worse.
‘Gold. Gold and ale. Damn gold damn ale damn nothing damn everything.’ Cursing made him feel slightly better. ‘Well then.’ He walked back to the cart. ‘Let’s see if a whole load will appease. And, Old Hunch Arbat, your bladder’s full, too. You timed it right, as always. Libations. The works, Old Hunch Arbat, the works.
‘And if that don’t help, then what, Old Hunch Arbat? Then what?