Night of Knives_ A Novel of the Malazan Empire - By Ian C. Esslemont Page 0,43
with those of people locked into their homes beneath her, and she scrambled away, running from roof to roof, oblivious of the rain-slick tiles.
She leapt down onto second-floor balconies, balancing on their rickety stick railings, and threw herself across lanes to ledges and gables opposite. She scampered up clay tiles, the sound of their fall clattering below, over shake-roofed breeze-ways above alleys, and across flat brick and stone-roofed government buildings. From a featureless gable of one building, she jumped over the gap of a lane to land onto a temple dedicated to Fener. Her gloved hand caught a boar’s head gutter funnel. Grunting, she pulled herself up onto the walkway behind and knelt, hands on knees, drawing air deep into her burning lungs.
Surely it couldn’t follow her here. Not into sacred precincts. Certainly now she must be safe. She raised her head to peer over the stone lip. Shadows swirled like wind-swept veils. She looked away, dizzy, pushed back her hair. Probably nothing had been after her, but who would wait to find out?
A man stepped out from an open archway. A priest of Fener, complete with boar’s tusk tattoos curling across his cheeks. He smiled as he saw her. ‘So this is our fearsome invader.’
Kiska backed away around the walkway.
‘Wait! Stay!’
She heard him coming after her and stepped up and out onto another boar’s head finial, where the wind tugged at her wet clothes.
‘Fener’s blood, child. Don’t!’
She pushed off with her legs as strongly as she could. Her outstretched hands slapped against the ledge of the building opposite. One knee cracked into the stone facings and she almost lost her grip at the shooting pain. She heaved herself up, thanked the gods for the crammed cheek-by-jowl housing of the city, as well as the cheapness of her fellow Malazans, too tight-pursed to pull it all down and start over again.
Prostrate on the rain-slick roof, Kiska saw that the priest still watched her, his face wrinkled with concern. She dragged herself to her feet, then waved.
The old man cupped his hands at his mouth, yelled through the gusting wind: ‘I’ll send a prayer after you!’
She waved one hand in thanks, and limped on despite the burning of her knee.
The final expanse of roof to cross stopped her. Sucking in gulps of cold night air, she stood at the very lip of a third-storey gable, overlooking the stretch of copses and hilly meadow littered by the ruins everyone called Mossy Tors.
She studied the rooftops behind her. What a fool she’d been! To imagine she’d be safe anywhere out of doors! Gods above. Here was high sorcery such as she’d never dreamed to see. It was like stories of great Imperial engagements, when the Malazan mage cadre smashed the Protectress of Heng; the breaking of the legendary island defences of Kartool; the siege of the Holy Cities; or the massed battles far overseas on the Genabakan continent.
As the fear gradually drained away and her heart slowed, she brought her respiration back under control. Dread eased into excitement, a rush such as she’d never known. Her limbs tingled and clenched for action; she felt potent, competent. She could smell the power out there, and she wanted it for herself.
Kiska studied the thinly forested commons. Perhaps her flight hadn’t been as blind as she’d thought. Something was out there, among the trees. She lay down on her stomach alongside the gable. She watched for a time, motionless. Ragged moonlight shone down through the wood; aruscus trunks glowed in the monochrome light as if aflame.
Then movement . . . what she’d thought to be shadows of branches shifting in the uneven wind resolved themselves into shapes flitting from cover to cover. Grey-clad figures, ghostlike, crawled and darted as they closed on the largest of the moss-covered stone mounds. Through the branches of twin tall cedars a flash glimmered then disappeared – what might have been the faintest reflection of moonlight on polished metal.
Well, these cultists had been following her target earlier, so why not now? After all, how many others could be stupid enough to be out on a night like this, other than herself? Kiska turned to find a route down.
After running across a lane and pushing through thick brush, Kiska edged from tree to tree. Near the middle of the green she stumbled across a body. Whoever this grey – Shadow cultist, she corrected herself – had been, she couldn’t have been much older than herself. Her body slumped to one side, propped