Night of Knives Read Free Page A

the battlement wall of Mock’s Hold and looked out over the edge of the stone crenel. A hundred fathoms below, the cliff swept down into froth and a roll of breakers. He glanced over his shoulder to the grey barrel wall of the inner keep: its slit windows shone gold. Shadows moved within.
    He muttered into the wind, ‘Trapped between Hood and the damned Abyss.’
    What could there possibly be for an Imperial official – a woman, an Imperial Fist – at this backwater post? He nearly jumped the first ship out when she’d arrived on the island three days ago. But he’d managed to drown that urge in the dark ale at Coop’s Hanged Man Inn. None of this, he told himself, over and over, had anything more to do with him.
    He stretched and winced. The surprisingly chill evening had revived the twinge of an old back injury: a javelin thrust many years past. A Seven City skirmisher had ruined the besthauberk he’d ever owned, as well as come damned close to killing him. The wound had never healed right. Perhaps it was time again to see that young army medicer, Seal. He scratched his chin and wondered whether it was bad luck to recall death’s brush when the sun was lowering. He’d ask Corinn if he saw her.
    Just three days ago he’d stood with hundreds of others at the harbour wall to watch the Imperial official disembark. Cries of surprise had run up and down the streets as first light revealed the blue-black sails and equally dark-tarred hull of a Malazan man-of-war anchored in the bay. Only too well did men and women of the city remember their last visitors: elements of the Third Army rendezvousing with recruits and enforcing the Imperial Regent’s new edict against magery. The riots that followed engulfed a quarter of the town in flames.
    News of the ship’s arrival had drawn Temper up the narrow staircase at Coop’s. Finished shaving, he’d tossed a towel over his shoulder and ambled down to Front Way. He squinted between warehouses to the harbour and the bay beyond. Anji, Coop’s serving-girl and sometime mistress, came labouring up the Way carrying twin buckets of water. She lowered them to the cobbles, pushed her long brown hair from her flushed face and scowled in the harbour’s direction. ‘Gods, what is it now?’
    Temper frowned. ‘A man-of-war. Front-line vessel. Built for naval engagements, convoy escort, blockades. Not your usual troop transport or merchant scow.’
And what in the name of Togg’s teats was it doing here?
    ‘Must be on its way south to Korel,’ said Anji. A hand shading her eyes, she turned her gaze to him. ‘You know, the war and all that.’
    Temper hawked up a wad of phlegm and spat to one side. No one would order a man-of-war down to Korel all on itslonesome. And – from what he’d heard – Hood knew it would take more than one warship to turn the tide down south.
    Skiffs bobbed into view out from the wharf. Long sweeps powered them across to the enormous vessel. Temper guessed the garrison commander, Pell, of honorary Sub-Fist rank himself, might be floundering seasick in one of them. He took a deep breath of the chill morning air. ‘Guess I’ll have a look.’
    Anji again pushed back her long hair. ‘Why bother? For certain it means more of our blood spilled.’ She hefted the buckets. ‘As if we haven’t paid enough.’
    The harbour view proved no more enlightening. At the warehouse district, Temper overheard whispers that the vessel must hold a new garrison commander, or that the Hold was being re-activated as command base for a new campaign against Korel. But he also heard the opposite: that the vessel carried Imperial Command from Korel, in full retreat. One old fisherman voiced the opinion that it might be the Emperor himself, returned. Men and women raised their hands in signs against evil and edged away. The fisherman lent Temper a wink.
    Boxed cargo appeared at the vessel’s high side and the crew lowered it into skiffs that rocked along its skirts like water