The old man squinted at the hook, adjusted the foul-smelling bait. ‘Late nights,’ he said.
‘Where? Where you go? I know all the taverns and bars in the whole harbour district.’
‘Do you now?’
‘All of them – where d’you drink, then?’
‘Who said anything about drinking, lad? No, what I do is play .’
The boy drew slightly closer. ‘Play what?’
‘Fiddle.’
‘You play at a bar?’
‘I do, aye.’
‘Which one?’
‘Smiley’s.’ The old man ran out the hook on its weighted line and leaned over to watch it plummet into the depths.
The boy studied him suspiciously. ‘I ain’t no fool,’ he said.
The old man glanced over, nodded. ‘I can see that.’
‘Smiley’s doesn’t exist. It’s just a story. A haunting. People hearing things – voices in the air, tankards clunking. Laughing.’
‘That’s all they hear in the night air, lad?’
The boy licked his suddenly dry lips. ‘No. They hear … fiddling. Music. Sad, awful sad.’
‘Hey now, not all of it’s sad. Though maybe that’s what leaks out. But,’ and he grinned at the boy, ‘I wouldn’t know that, would I?’
‘You’re like all the rest,’ the boy said, facing out to sea once again.
‘Who are all the rest, then?’
‘Making up stories and stuff. Lying – it’s all anybody ever does here, ’cause they got nothing else to do. They’re all wasting their lives. Just like you. You won’t catch any fish ever.’ And he waited, to gauge the effect of his words.
‘Who said I was after fish?’ the old man asked, offering up an exaggeratedly sly expression.
‘What, crabs? Wrong pier. It’s too deep here. It just goes down and down and for ever down!’
‘Aye, and what’s down there, at the very bottom? You ever hear that story?’
The boy was incredulous and more than a little offended. ‘Do I look two years old? That demon, the old emperor’s demon! But you can’t fish for it!’
‘Why not?’
‘Well – well, your rod would break! Look at it!’
‘Looks can be deceiving, lad. Remember that.’
The boy snorted. He was always getting advice. ‘I won’t be like you, old man. I’m going to be a soldier when I grow up. I’m going to leave this place. For ever. A soldier, fighting wars and getting rich and fighting and saving people and all that!’
The old man seemed about to say one thing, stopped, and instead said, ‘Well, the world always needs more soldiers.’
The boy counted this as a victory, the first of what he knew would be a lifetime of victories. When he was grown up. And famous. ‘That demon bites and it’ll eat you up. And even if you catch it and drag it up, how will you kill it? Nobody can kill it!’
‘Never said anything about killing it,’ the old man replied. ‘Just been a while since we last talked.’
‘Ha! Hah! Hahaha!’
High above the harbour, the winds were brisk coming in from the sea. They struck and spun the old battered weathervane on its pole, as if the demon knew not where to turn.
A sudden gust took it then, wrenched it hard around, and with a solid squeal the weathervane jammed. The wind buffeted it, but decades of decay and rust seemed proof to its will, and the weathervane but quivered.
Like a thing in chains.
This ends the Tenth and Final Tale of the
Malazan Book of the Fallen
And now the page before us blurs.
An age is done. The book must close.
We are abandoned to history.
Raise high one more time the tattered standard of the Fallen. See through the drifting smoke to the dark stains upon the fabric.
This is the blood of our lives, this is the payment of our deeds, all soon to be forgotten.
We were never what people could be.
We were only what we were .
