Midnight Tides & The Bonehunters - By Steven Erikson Page 0,675

I witnessed with my own eyes.'

The Taxilian shook his head. 'The Edur Emperor ... he too is a demon. Every cruelty committed by these greyskinned bastards, they claim is by their Emperor's command. And so too this search for warriors. An emperor who invites his own death – how can this be?'

'I don't know,' she admitted. And not knowing is what frightens me the most. 'As you say, it makes no sense.'

'One thing is known,' the man said. 'Their Emperor has never been defeated. Else his rule would have ended. Perhaps indeed that tyrant is the greatest warrior of all. Perhaps there is no-one, no-one anywhere in this world, who can best him. Not even Toblakai.'

She thought about that, as the huge Edur fleet, filling the seas around her, worked northward, the untamed wilds of the Olphara Peninsula a jagged line on the horizon to port. North, then west, into the Sepik Sea.

Samar Dev slowly frowned. Oh, they have done this before. Sepik, the island kingdom, the vassal to the Malazan Empire. A peculiar, isolated people, with their two-tiered society. The indigenous tribe, subjugated and enslaved. Rulhun'tal ven'or – the Mudskins ... 'Taxilian, these Edur slaves below. Where did they find them?'

'I don't know.' The bruised face twisted into a bitter smile. 'They liberated them. The sweet lie of that word, Samar Dev. No, I will think no more on that.'

You are lying to me, Taxilian, I think.

There was a shout from the crow's nest, picked up by sailors in the rigging and passed on below. Samar Dev saw heads turn, saw Tiste Edur appear and make their way astern.

'Ships have been sighted in our wake,' the Taxilian said.

'The rest of the fleet?'

'No.' He lifted his head and continued listening as the lookout called down ever more details. 'Foreigners. Lots of ships. Mostly transports – two-thirds transports, one-third dromon escort.' He grunted. 'The third time we've sighted them since I came on board. Sighted, then evaded, each time.'

'Have you identified those foreigners for them, Taxilian?'

He shook his head.

The Malazan Imperial Fleet. Admiral Nok. It has to be. She saw a certain tension now among the Tiste Edur. 'What is it? What are they so excited about?'

'Those poor Malazans,' the man said with a savage grin. 'It's the positioning now, you see.'

'What do you mean?'

'If they stay in our wake, if they keep sailing northward to skirt this peninsula, they are doomed.'

'Why?'

'Because now, Samar Dev, the rest of the Edur fleet – Tomad Sengar's mass of warships – is behind the Malazans.'

All at once, the cold wind seemed to cut through all of Samar Dev's clothing. 'They mean to attack them?'

'They mean to annihilate them,' the Taxilian said. 'And I have seen Edur sorcery and I tell you this – the Malazan Empire is about to lose its entire Imperial Fleet. It will die. And with it, every damned man and woman on board.' He leaned forward as if to spit, then, realizing the wind was in his face, he simply grinned all the harder. 'Except, maybe, one or two ... champions.'

This was something new, Banaschar reflected as he hurried beneath sheets of rain towards Coop's. He was being followed. Once, such a discovery would have set a fury alight inside him, and he would have made short work of the fool, then, after extracting the necessary details, even shorter work of whoever had hired that fool. But now, the best he could muster was a sour laugh under his breath. 'Aye, Master (or Mistress), he wakes up in the afternoon, without fail, and after a sixth of a bell or so of coughing and scratching and clicking nits, he heads out, onto the street, and sets off, Mistress (or Master), for one of six or so disreputable establishments, and once ensconced among the regulars, he argues about the nature of religion – or is it taxation and the rise in port tithes? Or the sudden drop-off in the coraval schools off the Jakatakan shoals? Or the poor workmanship of that cobbler who'd sworn he could re-stitch that sole on this here left boot – what? True enough, Master (or Mistress), it's all nefarious code, sure as I can slink wi' the best slinkers, and I'm as near to crackin' it as can be ...'

His lone source of entertainment these nights, these imagined conversations. Gods, now that is pathetic. Then again, pathos ever amuses me. And long before it could cease amusing him, he'd be drunk, and so went another passage