Stillwater

Stillwater
Stillwater by Corporal Nobbs
Biographical information
Race	Human
Gender	Female
Social information
Affiliation	Malazan Empire XIVth Legion
Occupation(s)	Assassin-Mage
Warren(s)	Kurald Emurlahn Rashan

Stillwater was a soldier in Sergeant Drillbent's 4th Squad in the XIVth Legion's 2nd Company. She considered herself a mage-assassin--a profession so obviously powerful she could not believe she had been the first to invent it. It combined the skills of Shadowthrone and his partner Cotillion, and she knew of no others in the Malazan Military who shared the same traits. In addition to her killing talents, she had been taught the ways of Rashan by Filbin, an old friend who perished like many others in her orbit when their usefulness came to an end. Stillwater also had access to Kurald Emurlahn. Drillbent knew of her skillset and made use of it accordingly, but she believed it was otherwise a secret from her fellow soldiers.

In reality, the Malazan Empire had always had assassin-mages in its employ via the Claw--a fact unknown to Stillwater. Her talents were also an open secret amongst the other members of the 2nd Company.

Stillwater often wore a ragged scarf of unbleached linen to conceal the tattoo of a golden finger-thick rope about her neck that revealed her patron as Cotillion, the Lord of Assassins. The tattoo had no beginning or end, signifying her vocation and her devotion to killing as many people as possible. Although her fellow soldiers knew of the tattoo, the scarf was warn for modesty, she believed, so as to not give them shivers. The linen had once covered the face of a witch's corpse whose barrow she had raided with her friend, Brenoch, and still bore the twin stains of her eyes. Stillwater secretly pocketed the two coins she recovered from the otherwise empty tomb, but when they went missing she killed Brenoch in suspicion he had taken them. The coins were never found.

Stillwater was clumsy with the many knives she carried and often caused her own injuries. The Company healer, Benger, regularly played tricks on by refusing to heal these self-injuries and telling her she had to "live with it." In truth, he healed the injury but used Mockra to make it appear as if the wound remained. Stillwater was unaware of the ruse.

Stillwater and fellow marine Anyx Fro were often found together. Stillwater admitted the shorter soldier was like a sister to her--the "kind you try to leave behind when you go off with your friends, but then you turn around and there she is! So you invent a new game and it's called 'tying your sister to a tree'."

Her secondary military training was in surveying and she carried a five-lens eyeglass she had looted from Brightgo's Barrow outside Nathilog.

She had jet-black hair. She wore a hauberk and leather poncho and carried a soft leather bag to fill with sweets whenever somewhere near a market. Her tendency to shred her favourite shirts and stain them with blood was so frequent that Blowlant, the company's seamstress, only pretended to repair them. Instead she roughed up and reseamed new shirts to make them appear weathered with Stillwater none the wiser.

Stillwater did not understand what made jokes funny and often found herself wondering what others were laughing at. She was sure that most laughed only because they were following the example of others.

In The God is Not Willing

Anyx Fro, Stillwater and Benger by Shadaan

(Information needed)

History

Stillwater's original name was Lady Therose Deshar and she came from a wealthy Untan noble family with an estate and servants. She had one sister a year younger and multiple brothers. Stillwater chafed at the dresses she was forced to wear and the banquets she was forced to attend. She and her sister coped by getting drunk under a settee in a hallway. When she was six, her younger sister taught her to smoke Rustleaf, a habit Stillwater still maintained on "special occasions."

For a time in her adulthood she worked in advocacy and law and earned a place on the Untan Council of Magistrates, but gave it up because it was "too cut-throat". Eventually, Stillwater joined the Malazan Military to get away from a lifestyle that rotted away the heart and mind. She saw the marines as the service branch "where not giving a fuck about how rich someone happens to be is pretty much our credo." She believed a soldier was a servant of every citizen of the empire and any soldier who forgot that was not worthy of the title.

Trivia

• Author Steven Erikson says Stillwater is one of his favourite characters in The God is Not Willing. He says, "She barged onto centre stage and stole my heart. I had more fun writing her than any character in a long, long time."
• Of Stillwater Erikson says, "I don't mean this in the derogatory sense, but she is on the spectrum and that's how I wanted to write her."
• Erikson calls Yedan Derryg his "favourite bad-ass" in the Malazan Book of the Fallen. "The one character to my mind that no-one would want to clash with (and by no-one I do include Karsa), would be Yedan Derryg." Although, he says Stillwater would "give him a run for the money...Of all the characters I've ever created, only she would meet Yedan Derryg eye to eye, and not blink."

Notes and references

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