Mistress to these footprints, Lover to the wake of where He has just passed, for the path he wanders is between us all. The sweet taste of loss feeds every mountain stream, Failing ice down to seas warm as blood threading thin our dreams. For where he leads her has lost its bones, And the trail he walks is flesh without life and the sea remembers nothing.
Lay of the Ancient Holds Fisher kel Tath
A GLANCE BACK. IN THE MISTY HAZE FAR BELOW AND TO THE WEST glimmered the innermost extent of Reach Inlet, the sky’s pallid reflection thorough in disguising that black, depthless water. On all other sides, apart from the stony trail directly behind Seren Pedac, reared jagged mountains, the snow-clad peaks gilt by a sun she could not see from where she stood at the south end of the saddle pass.
The wind rushing past her stank of ice, the winter’s lingering breath of cold decay. She drew her furs tighter and swung round to gauge the progress of the train on the trail below.
Three solid-wheeled wagons, pitching and clanking. The swarming, bare-backed figures of the Nerek tribesmen as they flowed in groups around each wagon, the ones at the head straining on ropes, the ones at the rear advancing the stop-blocks to keep the awkward conveyances from rolling backward.
In those wagons, among other trade goods, were ninety ingots of iron, thirty to each wagon. Not the famed Letherii steel, of course, since sale of that beyond the borders was forbidden, but of the next highest quality grade, carbon-tempered and virtually free of impurities. Each ingot was as long as Seren’s arm, and twice as thick.
The air was bitter cold and thin. Yet those Nerek worked half naked, the sweat steaming from their slick skins. If a stop-block failed, the nearest tribesman would throw his own body beneath the wheel. And for this, Buruk the Pale paid them two docks a day. Seren Pedac was Buruk’s Acquitor, granted passage into Edur lands, one of seven so sanctioned by the last treaty. No merchant could enter Edur territory unless guided by an Acquitor. The bidding for Seren Pedac and the six others had been high. And, for Seren, Buruk’s had been highest of all, and now he owned her. Or, rather, he owned her services as guide and finder – a distinction of which he seemed increasingly unmindful.
But this was the contract’s sixth year. Only four remaining.
Maybe.
She turned once more, and studied the pass ahead. They were less than a hundred paces’ worth of elevation from the treeline. Knee-high, centuries-old dwarf oaks and spruce flanked the uneven path. Mosses and lichens covered the enormous boulders that had been dragged down by the rivers of ice in ages past. Crusted patches of snow remained, clinging to shadowed places. Here the wind moved nothing, not the wiry spruce, not even the crooked, leafless branches of the oaks.
Against such immovable stolidity, it could only howl.
The first wagon clattered onto level ground behind her, Nerek tongues shouting as it was quickly rolled ahead, past Seren Pedac, and anchored in place. The tribesmen then rushed back to help their fellows still on the ascent.
The squeal of a door, and Buruk the Pale clambered out from the lead wagon. He stood with his stance wide, as if struggling to regain the memory of balance, turning with a wince from the frigid wind, reaching up to keep his fur-lined cap on his head as he blinked over at Seren Pedac.
‘I shall etch this vision against the very bone of my skull, blessed Acquitor! There to join a host of others, of course. That umber cloak of fur, the stately, primeval grace as you stand there. The weathered majesty of your profile, so deftly etched by these wild heights.
‘You – Nerek! Find your foreman – we shall camp here. Meals must be prepared. Unload those bundles of wood in the third wagon. I want a fire, there, in the usual place. Be on with it!’
Seren Pedac set her pack down and made her way along the path. The wind quickly dragged Buruk’s words away. Thirty paces on, she came to the first of the old shrines, a widening of the trail, where level stretches of scraped bedrock reached out to the sides and the walls of the flanking mountains had been cut sheer. On each flat, boulders had been positioned to form the full-sized outline of a ship, both prow and stern pointed and marked by upright menhirs. The prow stones had been carved into a likeness of the Edur god, Father Shadow, but the winds had ground the details away. Whatever had originally occupied these two flanking ships had long vanished, although the bedrock within was strangely stained.
The sheer walls of rock alone retained something of their ancient power. Smooth and black, they were translucent, in the manner of thin, smoky obsidian. And shapes moved behind them. As if the mountains had been hollowed out, and each panel was a kind of window, revealing a mysterious, eternal world within. A world oblivious of all that surrounded it, beyond its own borders of impenetrable stone, and of these strange panels, either blind or indifferent.
The translucent obsidian defied Seren’s efforts to focus on the shapes moving on the other side, as it had the past score of times she had visited this site. But that very mystery was itself an irresistible lure, drawing her again and again.
Stepping carefully around the stern of the ship of boulders, she approached the eastern panel. She tugged the fur-lined glove from her right hand, reached and set it against the smooth stone. Warm, drinking the stiffness from her fingers, taking the ache from the joints. This was her secret, the healing powers she had discovered when she first touched the rock.
A lifetime in these hard lands stole suppleness from the body. Bones grew brittle, misshapen with pain. The endless hard rock underfoot soon sent shocks through the spine with each step taken. The Nerek, the tribe that, before kneeling to the Letherii king, had dwelt in the range’s easternmost reach, believed that they were the children of a woman and a serpent, and that the serpent dwelt still within the body, that gently curved spine, the stacked knuckles reaching up to hide its head in the centre of the brain. But the mountains despised that serpent, desired only to drag it back to the ground, to return it once more to its belly, slithering in the cracks and coiled beneath rocks. And so, in the course of a life, the serpent was made to bow, to bend and twist.
Nerek buried their dead beneath flat stones.
At least, they used to, before the king’s edict forced them to embrace the faith of the Holds.
Now they leave the bodies of their kin where they fall. Even unto abandoning their huts. It had been years ago, but Seren Pedac remembered with painful clarity coming over a rise and looking upon the vast plateau where the Nerek dwelt. The villages had lost all distinction, merging together in chaotic, dispirited confusion. Every third or fourth hut had been left to ruin, makeshift sepulchres for kin that had died of disease, old age, or too much alcohol, white nectar or durhang. Children wandered untended, trailed by feral rock rats that now bred uncontrolled and had become too disease-ridden to eat.
The Nerek people were destroyed, and from that pit there would be no climbing out. Their homeland was an overgrown cemetery, and the Letherii cities promised only debt and dissolution. They were granted no sympathy. The Letherii way of life was hard, but it was the true way, the way of civilization. The proof was found in its thriving where other ways stumbled or remained weak and stilted.
The bitter wind could not reach Seren Pedac now. The stone’s warmth flowed through her. Eyes closed, she leaned her forehead against its welcoming surface.
Who walks in there? Are they the ancestral Edur, as the Hiroth claim? If so, then why could they see no more clearly than Seren herself? Vague shapes, passing to and fro, as lost as those Nerek children in their dying villages.
She had her own beliefs, and, though unpleasant, she held to them. They are the sentinels of futility. Acquitors of the absurd. Reflections of ourselves forever trapped in aimless repetition. Forever indistinct, for that is all we can manage when we look upon ourselves, upon our lives. Sensations, memories and experiences, the fetid soil in which thoughts take root. Pale flowers beneath an empty sky.
If she could, she would sink into this wall of stone. To walk for eternity among those formless shapes, looking out, perhaps, every now and then, and seeing not stunted trees, moss, lichen and the occasional passer-by. No, seeing only the wind. The ever howling wind.
She could hear him walking long before he came into the flickering circle of firelight. The sound of his footfalls awakened the Nerek as well, huddled beneath tattered furs in a rough half-circle at the edge of the light, and they swiftly rose and converged towards that steady beat. Seren Pedac kept her gaze fixed on the flames, the riotous waste of wood that kept Buruk the Pale warm while he got steadily drunker on a mix of wine and white nectar, and fought against the tug at one corner of her mouth, that unbidden and unwelcome ironic curl that expressed bitter amusement at this impending conjoining of broken hearts.
Buruk the Pale carried with him secret instructions, a list long enough to fill an entire scroll, from other merchants, speculators and officials, including, she suspected, the Royal Household itself. And whatever those instructions entailed, their content was killing the man. He’d always liked his wine, but not with the seductive destroyer, white nectar, mixed in. That was this journey’s new fuel for the ebbing fires of Buruk’s soul, and it would drown him as surely as would the deep waters of Reach Inlet.
Four more years. Maybe.
The Nerek were mobbing their visitor, scores of voices blending into an eerie murmur, like worshippers beseeching a particularly bemusing god, and though the event was hidden in the darkness beyond the fire, Seren Pedac could see it well enough in her imagination. He was trying, only his eyes revealing his unease at the endless embraces, seeking to answer each one with something – anything – that could not be mistaken for benediction. He was, he would want to say, not a man worthy of such reverence. He was, he would want to say, a sordid culmination of failures – just as they were. All of them lost, here in this cold-hearted world. He would want to say – but no, Hull Beddict never said anything. Not, in any case, things so boldly… vulnerable.
Buruk the Pale had lifted his head at the commotion, blinking blearily. ‘Who comes?’
‘Hull Beddict,’ Seren Pedac answered.
The merchant licked his lips. ‘The old Sentinel?’
‘Yes. Although I advise you not to call him by that title. He returned the King’s Reed long ago.’
‘And so betrayed the Letherii, aye.’ Buruk laughed. ‘Poor, honourable fool. Honour demands dishonour, now that is amusing, isn’t it? Ever seen a mountain of ice in the sea? Calving again and again beneath the endless gnawing teeth of salt water. Just so.’ He tilted his bottle back, and Seren watched his throat bob.
‘Dishonour makes you thirsty, Buruk?’
He pulled the bottle down, glaring. Then a loose smile. ‘Parched, Acquitor. Like a drowning man who swallows air.’
‘Only it’s not air, it’s water.’
He shrugged. ‘A momentary surprise.’
‘Then you get over it.’
‘Aye. And in those last moments, the stars swim unseen currents.’
Hull Beddict had done as much as he could with the Nerek, and he stepped into the firelight. Almost as tall as an Edur. Swathed in the white fur of the north wolf, his long braided hair nearly as pale. The sun and high winds had darkened his visage to the hue of tanned hide. His eyes were bleached grey, and it seemed the man behind them was ever elsewhere. And, Seren Pedac well knew, that place was not home.
No, as lost as his flesh and bones, this body standing before us. ‘Take some warmth, Hull Beddict,’ she said.
He studied her in his distracted way – a seeming contradiction that only he could achieve.
Buruk the Pale laughed. ‘What’s the point? It’ll never reach him through those furs. Hungry, Beddict? Thirsty? I didn’t think so. How about a woman? I could spare you one of my Nerek half-bloods – the darlings wait in my wagon.’ He drank noisily from his bottle and held it out. ‘Some of this? Oh dear, he hides poorly his disgust.’
Eyes on the old Sentinel, Seren asked, ‘Have you come down the pass? Are the snows gone?’
Hull Beddict glanced over at the wagons. When he replied, the words came awkwardly, as if it had been some time since he last spoke. ‘Should do.’
‘Where are you going?’
He glanced at her once more. ‘With you.’
Seren’s brows rose.
Laughing, Buruk the Pale waved expansively with his bottle – which was empty save for a last few scattering drops that hit the fire with a hiss. ‘Oh, welcome company indeed! By all means! The Nerek will be delighted.’ He tottered upright, weaving perilously close to the fire, then, with a final wave, he stumbled towards his wagon.
Seren and Hull watched him leave, and Seren saw that the Nerek had returned to their sleeping places, but all sat awake, their eyes glittering with reflected flames as they watched the old Sentinel, who now stepped closer to the fire and slowly sat down. He held out battered hands to the heat.
They could be softer than they appeared, Seren recalled. The memory did little more than stir long-dead ashes, however, and she tipped another log into the hungry fire before them, watched the sparks leap into the darkness.
‘He intends to remain a guest of the Hiroth until the Great Meeting?’
She shot him a look, then shrugged. ‘I think so. Is that why you’ve decided to accompany us?’
‘It will not be like past treaties, this meeting,’ he said. ‘The Edur are no longer divided. The Warlock King rules unchallenged.’
‘Everything’s changed, yes.’
‘And so Diskanar sends Buruk the Pale.’
She snorted, kicked back into the flames an errant log that had rolled out. ‘A poor choice. I doubt he’ll remain sober enough to manage much spying.’
‘Seven merchant houses and twenty-eight ships have descended upon the Calach beds,’ Hull Beddict said, flexing his fingers.
‘I know.’
‘Diskanar’s delegation will claim the hunting was unsanctioned. They will decry the slaughter. Then use it to argue that the old treaty is flawed, that it needs to be revised. For the lost seals, they will make a magnanimous gesture – by throwing gold at Hannan Mosag’s feet.’
She said nothing. He was right, after all. Hull Beddict knew better than most King Ezgara Diskanar’s mind – or, rather, that of the Royal Household, which wasn’t always the same thing. ‘There is more to it, I suspect,’ she said after a moment.
‘How so?’
‘I imagine you have not heard who will be leading the delegation.’
He grunted sourly. ‘The mountains are silent on such matters.’
She nodded. ‘Representing the king’s interests, Nifadas.’
‘Good. The First Eunuch is no fool.’
‘Nifadas will be sharing command with Prince Quillas Diskanar.’
Hull Beddict slowly turned to face her. ‘She’s risen far, then.’
‘She has. And for all the years since you last crossed her son’s path… well, Quillas has changed little. The queen keeps him on a short leash, with the Chancellor close at hand to feed him sweet treats. It’s rumoured that the primary holder of interest in the seven merchant houses that defied the treaty is none other than Queen Janall herself.’
‘And the Chancellor dares not leave the palace,’ Hull Beddict said, and she heard the sneer. ‘So he sends Quillas. A mistake. The prince is blind to subtlety. He knows his own ignorance and stupidity so is ever suspicious of others, especially when they say things he does not understand. One cannot negotiate when dragged in the wake of emotions.’
‘Hardly a secret,’ Seren Pedac replied. And waited.
Hull Beddict spat into the fire. They don’t care. The queen’s let him slip the leash. Allowing Quillas to flail about, to deliver clumsy insults in the face of Hannan Mosag. Is this plain arrogance? Or do they truly invite war?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘And Buruk the Pale – whose instructions does he carry?’
‘I’m not sure. But he’s not happy.’
They fell silent then.
Twelve years past, King Ezgara Diskanar charged his favoured Preda of the Guard, Hull Beddict, with the role of Sentinel. He was to journey to the north borders, then beyond. His task was to study the tribes who still dwelt wild in the mountains and high forests. Talented warrior though he was, Hull Beddict had been naive. What he had embraced as a journey in search of knowledge, the first steps towards peaceful coexistence, had in fact been a prelude to conquest. His detailed reports of tribes such as the Nerek, and the Faraed and the Tarthenal, had been pored over by minions of Chancellor Triban Gnol. Weaknesses had been prised from the descriptions. And then, in a series of campaigns of subjugation, brutally exploited.
And Hull Beddict, who had forged blood-ties with those fierce tribes, was there to witness all his enthusiasm delivered. Gifts that were not gifts at all, incurring debts, the debts exchanged for land. The deadly maze lined with traders, merchants, seducers of false need, purveyors of destructive poisons. Defiance answered with annihilation. The devouring of pride, independence, and self-sufficiency. In all, a war so profoundly cynical in its cold, heartless expediting that no honourable soul could survive witness. Especially when that soul was responsible for it. For all of it.
And to this day, the Nerek worshipped Hull Beddict. As did the half-dozen indebted beggars who were all that was left of the Faraed. And the scattered remnants of the Tarthenal, huge and shambling and drunk in the pit towns outside the cities to the south, still bore the three bar tattoos beneath their left shoulders – a match to those on Hull’s own back.
He sat now in silence beside her, his eyes on the ebbing flames of the dying hearth. One of his guards had returned to the capital, bearing the King’s Reed. The Sentinel was Sentinel no longer. Nor would he return to the southlands. He had walked into the mountains.
She had first met him eight years ago, a day out from High Fort, reduced to little more than a scavenging animal in the wilds.
And had brought him back. At least some of the way. Oh, but it was far less noble than it first seemed. Perhaps it would have been. Truly noble. Had I not then made sore use of him.
She had succumbed to her own selfish needs, and there was nothing glorious in that.
Seren wondered if he would ever forgive her. She then wondered if she would ever forgive herself.
‘Buruk the Pale knows all that I need to learn,’ Hull Beddict said.
‘Possibly.’
‘He will tell me.’
Not of his own volition, he won’t. ‘Regardless of his instructions,’ she said, ‘he remains a small player in this game, Hull. Head of a merchant house conveniently placed in Trate, with considerable experience dealing with the Hiroth and Arapay.’ And, through me, legitimate passage into Edur lands.
‘Hannan Mosag will send his warriors after those ships,’ Hull Beddict said. ‘The queen’s interest in those merchant houses is about to take a beating.’
‘I expect she has anticipated the loss.’
The man beside her was not the naive youth he had once been. But he was long removed from the intricate schemes and deadly sleight of hand that was so much the lifeblood of the Letherii. She could sense him struggling with the multiplicity of layers of intent and design at work here. ‘I begin to see the path she takes,’ he said after a time, and the bleak despair in his voice was so raw that she looked away, blinking.
He went on, ‘This is the curse, then, that we are so inclined to look ahead, ever ahead. As if the path before us should be any different from the one behind us.’
Aye, and it pays to remind me, every time I glance back.
I really should stop doing that.
‘Five wings will buy you a grovel,’ Tehol Beddict muttered from his bed. ‘Haven’t you ever wondered how odd it is? Of course, every god should have a throne, but shouldn’t it also follow that every throne built for a god is actually occupied? And if it isn’t, who in their right mind decided that it was worthwhile to worship an empty throne?’
Seated on a low three-legged stool at the foot of the bed, Bugg paused in his knitting. He held out and examined the coarse wool shirt he was working on, one eye squeezing into a critical squint.
Tehol’s gaze flicked down at his servant. ‘I’m fairly certain my left arm is of a length close to, if not identical with, that of my right. Why do you persist in this conceit? You’ve no talent to speak of, in much of anything, come to think of it. Probably why I love you so dearly, Bugg.’
‘Not half as much as you love yourself,’ the old man replied, resuming his knitting.
‘Well, I see no point in arguing that.’ He sighed, wiggling his toes beneath the threadbare sheet. The wind was freshening, blessedly cool and only faintly reeking of the south shore’s Stink Flats. Bed and stool were the only furniture on the roof of Tehol’s house. Bugg still slept below, despite the sweltering heat, and only came up when his work demanded light enough to see. Saved on lamp oil, Tehol told himself, since oil was getting dreadfully expensive now that the whales were getting scarce.
He reached down to the half-dozen dried figs on the tarnished plate Bugg had set down beside him. ‘Ah, more figs. Another humiliating trip to the public privies awaits me, then.’ He chewed desultorily, watching the monkey-like clambering of the workers on the dome of the Eternal Domicile. Purely accidental, this exquisitely unobstructed view of the distant palace rising from the heart of Letheras, and all the more satisfying for that, particularly the way the nearby towers and Third Height bridges so neatly framed King Ezgara Diskanar’s conceit. ‘Eternal Domicile indeed. Eternally unfinished.’
The dome had proved so challenging to the royal architects that four of them had committed suicide in the course of its construction, and one had died tragically – if somewhat mysteriously – trapped inside a drainage pipe. ‘Seventeen years and counting. Looks like they’ve given up entirely on that fifth wing. What do you think, Bugg? I value your expert opinion.’
Bugg’s expertise amounted to rebuilding the hearth in the kitchen below. Twenty-two fired bricks stacked into a shape very nearly cubic, and indeed it would have been if three of the bricks had not come from a toppled mausoleum at the local cemetery. Grave masons held to peculiar notions of what a brick’s dimensions should be, pious bastards that they were.
In response to Tehol’s query, Bugg glanced up, squinting with both eyes.
Five wings to the palace, the dome rising from the centre. Four tiers to those wings, except for the shoreside one, where only two tiers had been built. Work had been suspended when it was discovered that the clay beneath the foundations tended to squeeze out to the sides, like closing a fist on a block of butter. The fifth wing was sinking.
‘Gravel,’ Bugg said, returning to his knitting.
‘What?’
‘Gravel,’ the old man repeated. ‘Drill deep wells down into the clay, every few paces or so, and fill ’em with gravel, packed down with drivers. Cap ‘em and build your foundation pillars on top. No weight on the clay means it’s got no reason to squirm.’
Tehol stared down at his servant. ‘All right. Where in the Errant’s name did you come by that? And don’t tell me you stumbled onto it trying to keep our hearth from wandering.’
Bugg shook his head. ‘No, it’s not that heavy. But if it was, that’s what I would’ve done.’
‘Bore a hole? How far down?’
‘Bedrock, of course. Won’t work otherwise.’
‘And fill it with gravel.’
‘Pounded down tight, aye.’
Tehol plucked another fig from the plate, brushed dust from it – Bugg had been harvesting from the market leavings again. Outwitting the rats and dogs. ‘That’d make for an impressive cook hearth.’
‘It would at that.’
‘You could cook secure and content in the knowledge that the flatstone will never move, barring an earthquake-’
‘Oh no, it’ll handle an earthquake too. Gravel, right? Flexible, you see.’
‘Extraordinary.’ He spat out a seed. ‘What do you think? Should I get out of bed today, Bugg?’
‘Got no reason to-’ The servant stopped short, then cocked his head, thinking. ‘Mind you, maybe you have.’
‘Oh? And you’d better not be wasting my time with this.’
‘Three women visited this morning.’
‘Three women.’ Tehol glanced up at the nearest Third Height bridge, watched people and carts moving across it. ‘I don’t know three women, Bugg. And if I did, all of them arriving simultaneously would be cause for terror, rather than an incidental “oh by the way”.’
‘Aye, but you don’t know them. Not even one of them. I don’t think. New faces to me, anyway.’
‘New? You’ve never seen them before? Not even in the market? The riverfront?’
‘No. Might be from one of the other cities, or maybe a village. Odd accents.’
‘And they asked for me by name?’
‘Well, not precisely. They wanted to know if this was the house of the man who sleeps on his roof.’
‘If they needed to ask that, they are from some toad-squelching village. What else did they want to know? The colour of your hair? What you were wearing while standing there in front of them? Did they want to know their own names as well? Tell me, are they sisters? Do they share a single eyebrow?’
‘Not that I noticed. Handsome women, as I recall. Young and meaty. Sounds as though you’re not interested, though.’
‘Servants shouldn’t presume. Handsome. Young and meaty. Are you sure they were women?’
‘Oh yes, quite certain. Even eunuchs don’t have breasts so large, or perfect, or, indeed, lifted so high the lasses could rest their chins-’
Tehol found himself standing beside the bed. He wasn’t sure how he got there, but it felt right. ‘You finished that shirt, Bugg?’
The servant held it out once more. ‘Just roll up the sleeve, I think.’
‘Finally, I can go out in public once more. Tie those ends off or whatever it is you do to them and give it here.’
‘But I haven’t started yet on the trousers-’
‘Never mind that,’ Tehol cut in, wrapping the bed sheet about his waist, once, twice, thrice, then tucking it in at one hip. He then paused, a strange look stealing across his features. ‘Bugg, for Errant’s sake, no more figs for a while, all right? Where are these mountainously endowed sisters, then?’
‘Red Lane. Huldo’s.’
‘The pits or on the courtyard?’
‘Courtyard.’
‘That’s something, at least. Do you think Huldo might have forgotten?’
‘No. But he’s been spending a lot of time down at the Drownings.’
Tehol smiled, then began rubbing a finger along his teeth. ‘Winnin’ or roosin’?’
‘Loosing.’
‘Hah!’ He ran a hand through his hair and struck a casual pose. ‘How do I look?’
Bugg handed him the shirt. ‘How you manage to keep those muscles when you do nothing baffles me,’ he said.
‘A Beddict trait, dear sad minion of mine. You should see Brys, under all that armour. But even he looks scrawny when compared to Hull. As the middle son, I of course represent the perfect balance. Wit, physical prowess and a multitude of talents to match my natural grace. When combined with my extraordinary ability to waste it all, you see, standing before you, the exquisite culmination.’
‘A fine and pathetic speech,’ Bugg said with a nod.
‘It was, wasn’t it? I shall be on my way now.’ Tehol gestured as he walked to the ladder. ‘Clean up the place. We might have guests this evening.’
‘I will, if I find the time.’
Tehol paused at the ragged edge of the section of roof that had collapsed. ‘Ah yes, you have trousers to make – have you enough wool for that?’
‘Well, I can make one leg down all the way, or I can make both short.’
‘How short?’
‘Pretty short.’
‘Go with the one leg.’
‘Aye, master. And then I have to find us something to eat. And drink.’
Tehol turned, hands on his hips. ‘Haven’t we sold virtually everything, sparing one bed and a lone stool? So, just how much tidying up is required?’
Bugg squinted. ‘Not much,’ he conceded. ‘What do you want we should eat tonight?’
‘Something that needs cooking.’
‘Would that be something better when cooked, or something that has to be cooked?’
‘Either way’s fine.’
‘How about wood?’
‘I’m not eating-’
‘For the hearth.’
‘Oh, right. Well, find some. Look at that stool you’re sitting on – it doesn’t really need all three legs, does it? When scrounging doesn’t pay, it’s time to improvise. I’m off to meet my three destinies, Bugg. Pray the Errant’s looking the other way, will you?’
‘Of course.’
Tehol made his way down the ladder, discovering, in a moment of panic, that only one rung in three remained.
The ground-level room was bare except for a thin mattress rolled up against one wall. A single battered pot rested on the hearth’s flatstone, which sat beneath the front-facing window, a pair of wooden spoons and bowls on the floor nearby. All in all, Tehol reflected, elegant in its severity.
He swung aside the ratty curtain that served as a door, reminding himself to tell Bugg to retrieve the door latch from the hearth-bed. A bit of polishing and it might earn a dock or two from Cusp the Tinkerer. Tehol stepped outside.
He was in a narrow aisle, so narrow he was forced to sidle sideways out to the street, kicking rubbish aside with each step. Meaty women… wish I’d seen them squeezing their way to my door. An invitation to dinner now seemed essential. And, mindful host that he was, he could position himself with a clear view, and whatever pleasure they saw on his face they could take for welcome.
The street beyond was empty save for three Nerek, a mother and two half-blood children, who’d found in the recessed niche in the wall opposite a new home and seemed to do nothing but sleep. He strode past their huddled forms, kicking at a rat that had been edging closer, and threaded his way between the high-stacked wooden crates that virtually blocked this end of the street. Biri’s warehouse was perpetually overstocked, and Biri viewed the last reach of Cul Street this side of Quillas Canal as his own personal compound.
Chalas, the watchman of the yard, was sprawled on a bench on the other side, where Cul opened out onto Burl Square, his leather-wrapped clout resting on his thighs. Red-shot eyes found Tehol. ‘Nice skirt,’ the guard said.
‘You’ve lightened my step, Chalas.’
‘Happy to oblige, Tehol.’
Tehol paused, hands on hips, and surveyed the crowded square. ‘The city thrives.’
‘No change there… exceptin’ the last time.’
‘Oh, that was a minor sideways tug, as far as currents go.’
‘Not to hear Biri talk of it. He still wants your head salted and in a barrel rolling out to sea.’
‘Biri always did run in place.’
Chalas grunted. ‘It’s been weeks since you last came down. Special occasion?’
‘I have a date with three women.’
‘Want my clout?’
Tehol glanced down and studied the battered weapon. ‘I wouldn’t want to leave you defenceless.’
‘It’s my face scares ’em away. Exceptin’ those Nerek. Got past me, those ones did.’
‘Giving you trouble?’
‘No. The rat count’s way down, in fact. But you know Biri.’
‘Better than he knows himself. Remind him of that, Chalas, if he starts thinking of giving them trouble.’
‘I will.’
Tehol set out, winding through the seething press in the square. The Down Markets opened out onto it from three sides; a more decrepit collection of useless items for sale Tehol had yet to see. And the people bought in a frenzy, day after blessed day. Our civilization thrives on stupidity. And it only took a sliver of cleverness to tap that idiot vein and drink deep of the riches. Comforting, if slightly depressing. The way of most grim truths.
He reached the other side, entered Red Lane. Thirty strides on and he came opposite the arched entrance to Huldo’s. Down the shadowed walkway and back into the courtyard’s sunlight. A half-dozen tables, all occupied. Repose for the blissfully ignorant or those without the coin to sample the pits in Huldo’s inner sanctum, where various sordid activities were conducted day and night, said activities occasionally approaching the artistic expression of the absurd. One more example, Tehol reflected, of what people would pay for, given the chance.
The three women at a table in the far corner stood out for not just the obvious detail – they were the only women present – but for a host of subtler distinctions. Handsome is… just the right word. If they were sisters it was in sentiment only, and for the shared predilection for some form of martial vigour, given their brawn, and the bundled armour and covered weapons heaped beside the table.
The one on the left was red-haired, the fiery tresses sun-bleached and hanging in reluctant ripples down onto her broad shoulders. She was drinking from a clay-wrapped bottle, disdaining or perhaps not understanding the function of the cup that had accompanied it. Her face belonged to a heroic statue lining a colonnade, strong and smooth and perfect, her blue eyes casting a stony regard with the serene indifference of all such statues. Next to her, and leaning with both forearms on the small tabletop, was a woman with a hint of Faraed blood in her, given the honeyed hue of her skin and the faint up-tilt of her dark eyes. Her hair was either dark brown or black, and had been tied back, leaving clear her heart-shaped face. The third woman sat slouched back in her chair, left leg tipped out to one side, the right incessantly jittering up and down – fine legs, Tehol observed, clad in tight rawhide, tanned very nearly white. Her head was shaved, the pale skin gleaming. Wide-set, light grey eyes lazily scanning the other patrons, finally coming to rest on Tehol where he stood at the courtyard’s threshold.
He smiled.
She sneered.
Urul, Huldo’s chief server, edged out from a nearby shadow and beckoned Tehol over.
He came as close as he dared. ‘You’re looking… well, Urul. Is Huldo here?’
The man’s need for a bath was legendary. Patrons gave their orders with decisive brevity and rarely called Urul over for more wine until the meal was finished. He stood before Tehol now, brow gleaming with oily sweat, hands fidgeting over the wide sash of his belt. ‘Huldo? No, Errant be praised. He’s on the Low Walk at the Drownings. Tehol, those women – they’ve been here all morning! They frighten me, the way they scowl whenever I get close.’
‘Leave them to me, Urul,’ Tehol said, risking a pat on the man’s damp shoulder.
‘You?’
‘Why not?’ With that, Tehol adjusted his skirt, checked his sleeves, and threaded his way between the tables. Halting before the three women, he glanced round for a chair. He found one and dragged it close, then settled with a sigh.
‘What do you want?’ asked the bald one.
‘That was my question. My servant informs me that you visited my residence this morning. I am Tehol Beddict… the one who sleeps on his roof.’
Three sets of eyes fixed on him.
Enough to make a stalwart warlord wilt… but me? Only slightly.
‘You?’
Tehol scowled at the bald woman. ‘Why does everyone keep asking that? Yes, me. Now, by your accent, I’d hazard you’re from the islands. I don’t know anyone in the islands. Accordingly, I don’t know you. Not to say I wouldn’t like to, of course. Know you, that is. At least, I think so.’
The red-haired woman set her bottle down with a clunk. ‘We’ve made a mistake.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that-’
‘No,’ the bald woman said to her companion. ‘This is an affectation. We should have anticipated a certain degree of… mockery.’
‘He has no trousers.’
The dark-eyed woman added, ‘And his arms are lopsided.’
‘Not quite accurate,’ Tehol said to her. ‘It’s only the sleeves that are somewhat askew.’
‘I don’t like him,’ she pronounced, crossing her arms.
‘You don’t have to,’ the bald woman said. ‘Errant knows, we’re not going to bed him, are we?’
‘I’m crushed.’
‘You would be,’ the red-haired woman said, with an unpleasant smile.
‘Bed him? On the roof? You must be insane, Shand.’
‘How can not liking him be unimportant?’
The bald woman, the one named Shand, sighed and rubbed her eyes. ‘Listen to me, Hejun. This is business. Sentiments have no place in business – I’ve already told you that.’
Hejun’s arms remained crossed, and she shook her head. ‘You can’t trust who you don’t like.’
‘Of course you can!’ Shand said, blinking.
‘It’s his reputation I’m not happy with,’ said the third, as yet unnamed, woman.
‘Rissarh,’ Shand said, sighing again, ‘it’s his reputation what’s brought us here.’
Tehol clapped his hands. Once, loud enough to startle the three women. ‘Excellent. Rissarh with the red hair. Hejun, with Faraed blood. And Shand, no hair at all. Well,’ he set his hands on the table and rose, ‘I’m content with that. Goodbye-’
‘Sit down!’
The growl was so menacing that Tehol found himself seated once more, the prickle of sweat beneath his woollen shirt.
‘That’s better,’ Shand said in a more mellow tone. She leaned forward. ‘Tehol Beddict. We know all about you.’
‘Oh?’
‘We even know why what happened happened.’
‘Indeed.’
‘And we want you to do it again.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes. Only this time, you’ll have the courage to go through with it. All the way.’
‘I will?’
‘Because we – myself, Hejun and Rissarh – we’re going to be your courage. This time. Now, let’s get out of here, before that server comes back. We’ve purchased a building. We can talk there. It doesn’t smell.’
‘Now that’s a relief,’ Tehol said.
The three women rose.
He did not.
‘I told you,’ Hejun said to Shand. ‘It’s not going to work. There’s nothing left in there. Look at him.’
‘It’ll work,’ Shand said.
‘Hejun is, alas, right,’ Tehol said. ‘It won’t.’
‘We know where the money went,’ Shand said.
‘That’s no secret. Riches to rags. I lost it.’
But Shand shook her head. ‘No you didn’t. Like I said, we know. And if we talk…’
‘You keep saying you know something,’ Tehol said, adding a shrug.
‘As you said,’ she replied, smiling, ‘we’re from the islands.’
‘But not those islands.’
‘Of course not – who’d go there? And that’s what you counted on.’
Tehol rose. ‘As they say, five wings will buy you a grovel. All right, you’ve purchased a building.’
‘You’ll do it,’ Shand insisted. ‘Because if it comes out, Hull will kill you.’
‘Hull?’ Finally Tehol could smile. ‘My brother knows nothing about it.’
He savoured the pleasure, then, in seeing these three women knocked off balance. There, now you know how it feels.
‘Hull may prove a problem.’
Brys Beddict could not hold his gaze on the man standing before him. Those small, placid eyes peering out from the folds of pink flesh seemed in some way other than human, holding so still that the Finadd of the Royal Guard imagined he was looking into the eyes of a snake. A flare-neck, coiled on the centre of the river road when the rains are but days away. Up from the river, three times as long as a man is tall, head resting on the arm-thick curl of its body. ‘Ware the plodding cattle dragging their carts on that road. ’Ware the drover stupid enough to approach.
‘Finadd?’
Brys forced his eyes back to the huge man. ‘First Eunuch, I am at a loss as to how to respond. I have neither seen nor spoken with my brother in years. Nor will I be accompanying the delegation.’
First Eunuch Nifadas turned away, and walked noiselessly to the high-backed wooden chair behind the massive desk that dominated the chamber of his office. He sat, the motion slow and even. ‘Be at ease, Finadd Beddict. I have immense respect for your brother Hull. I admire the extremity of his conviction, and understand to the fullest extent the motivation behind his… choices in the past.’
‘Then, if you will forgive me, you are farther down the path than I, First Eunuch. Of my brother – of my brothers – I understand virtually nothing. Alas, it has always been so.’
Nifadas blinked sleepily, then he nodded. ‘Families are odd things, aren’t they? Naturally, my own experience precludes many of the subtleties regarding that subject. Yet, if you will, my exclusion has, in the past, permitted me a certain objectivity, from which I have often observed the mechanisms of such fraught relationships with a clear eye.’ He looked up and fixed Brys once more with his regard. ‘Will you permit me a comment or two?’
‘Forgive me, First Eunuch-’
Nifadas waved him silent with one plump hand. ‘No need. I was presumptuous. Nor have I explained myself. As you know, preparations are well along. The Great Meeting looms. I am informed that Hull Beddict has joined Buruk the Pale and Seren Pedac on the trail to Hiroth lands. Further, it is my understanding that Buruk is charged with a host of instructions – none issued by me, I might add. In other words, it is likely that those instructions not only do not reflect the king’s interests, but in fact may contradict our Sire’s wishes.’ He blinked again, slow and measured. ‘Precarious, agreed. Unwelcome, as well. My concern is this. Hull may… misunderstand…’
‘By assuming that Buruk acts on behalf of King Diskanar, you mean.’
‘Just so.’
‘He would then seek to counter the merchant.’
Nifadas sighed his agreement.
‘Which,’ Brys continued, ‘is itself not necessarily a bad thing.’
‘True, in itself not necessarily a bad thing.’
‘Unless you intend, as the king’s official representative and nominal head of the delegation, to counter the merchant in your own way. To deflect those interests Buruk has been charged with presenting to the Edur.’
The First Eunuch’s small mouth hinted at a smile.
Nothing more than that, yet Brys understood. His gaze travelled to the window behind Nifadas. Clouds swam blearily through the bubbled, wavy glass. ‘Not Hull’s strengths,’ he said.
‘No, we are agreed in that. Tell me, Finadd, what do you know of this Acquitor, Seren Pedac?’
‘Reputation only. But it’s said she owns a residence here in the capital. Although I have never heard if she visits.’
‘Rarely. The last time was six years ago.’
‘Her name is untarnished,’ Brys said.
‘Indeed. Yet one must wonder… she is not blind, after all. Nor, I gather, unthinking.’
‘I would imagine, First Eunuch, that few Acquitors are.’
‘Just so. Well, thank you for your time, Finadd. Tell me,’ he added as he slowly rose, indicating the audience was at an end, ‘have you settled well as the King’s Champion?’
‘Uh, well enough, First Eunuch.’
‘The burden is easily shouldered by one as young and fit as you, then?’
‘Not easily. I would make no claim to that.’
‘Not comfortable, but manageable.’
‘A fair enough description.’
‘You are an honest man, Brys. As one of the king’s advisers, I am content with my choice.’
But you feel I need the reminder. Why is that? ‘I remain honoured, First Eunuch, by the king’s faith, and of course, yours.’
‘I will delay you no longer, Finadd.’
Brys nodded, turned and strode from the office.
A part of him longed for the days of old, when he was just an officer in the Palace Guard. When he carried little political weight, and the presence of the king was always at a distance, with Brys and his fellow guardsmen standing at attention along one wall at official audiences and engagements. Then again, he reconsidered as he walked down the corridor, the First Eunuch had called him because of his blood, not his new role as King’s Champion.
Hull Beddict. Like a restless ghost, a presence cursed to haunt him no matter where he went, no matter what he did. Brys remembered seeing his eldest brother, resplendent in the garb of Sentinel, the King’s Reed at his belt. A last and lasting vision for the young, impressionable boy he had been all those years ago. That moment remained with him, a tableau frozen in time that he wandered into in his dreams, or at reflective moments like these. A painted image. Brothers, man and child, the two of them cracked and yellowed beneath the dust. And he would stand witness, like a stranger, to the boy’s wide-eyed, adoring expression, and would follow that uplifted gaze and then shift his own uneasily, suspicious of that uniformed soldier’s pride.
Innocence was a blade of glory, yet it could blind on both sides.
He’d told Nifadas he did not understand Hull. But he did. All too well.
He understood Tehol, too, though perhaps marginally less well. The rewards of wealth beyond measure had proved cold; only the hungry desire for that wealth hissed with heat. And that truth belonged to the world of the Letherii, the brittle flaw at the core of the golden sword. Tehol had thrown himself on that sword, and seemed content to bleed to death, slowly and with amiable aplomb. Whatever final message he sought in his death was a waste of time, since no-one would look his way when that day came. No-one dared. Which is why, I suspect, he’s smiling.
His brothers had ascended their peaks long ago – too early, it turned out – and now slid down their particular paths to dissolution and death. And what of me, then? I have been named King’s Champion. Judged the finest swordsman in the kingdom. I believe I stand, here and now, upon the highest reach. There was no need to take that thought further.
He reached a T-intersection and swung right. Ten paces ahead a side door spilled light into the corridor. As he came opposite it a voice called to him from the chamber within.
‘Finadd! Come quick.’
Brys inwardly smiled and turned. Three strides into the spice-filled, low-ceilinged room. Countless sources of light made a war of colours on the furniture and tables with their crowds of implements, scrolls and beakers.
‘Ceda?’
‘Over here. Come and see what I’ve done.’
Brys edged past a bookcase extending out perpendicularly from one wall and found the King’s Sorceror behind it, perched on a stool. A tilted table with a level bottom shelf was at the man’s side, cluttered with discs of polished glass.
‘Your step has changed, Finadd,’ Kuru Qan said, ‘since becoming the King’s Champion.’
‘I was not aware of that, Ceda.’
Kuru Qan spun on his seat and raised a strange object before his face. Twin lenses of glass, bound in place side by side with wire. The Ceda’s broad, prominent features were made even more so by a magnifying effect from the lenses. Kuru Qan set the object against his face, using ties to bind it so that the lenses sat before his eyes, making them huge as he blinked up at Brys.
‘You are as I imagined you. Excellent. The blur diminishes in importance. Clarity ascends, achieving pre-eminence among all the important things. What I hear now matters less than what I see. Thus, perspective shifts. The world changes. Important, Finadd. Very important.’
‘Those lenses have given you vision? That is wonderful, Ceda!’
‘The key was in seeking a solution that was the antithesis of sorcery. Looking upon the Empty Hold stole my sight, after all. I could not effect correction through the same medium. Not yet important, this detail. Pray indeed it never becomes so.’
Ceda Kuru Qan never held but one discourse at any one time. Or so he had explained it once. While many found this frustrating, Brys was ever charmed.
‘Am I the first to be shown your discovery, Ceda?’
‘You would see its importance more than most. Swordsman, dancing with place, distance and timing, with all the material truths. I need to make adjustments.’ He snatched the contraption off and hunched over it, minuscule tools flicking in his deft hands. ‘You were in the First Eunuch’s chamber of office. Not an altogether pleasing conversation for you. Unimportant, for the moment.’
‘I am summoned to the throne room, Ceda.’
‘True. Not entirely urgent. The Preda would have you present… shortly. The First Eunuch enquired after your eldest brother?’
Brys sighed.
‘I surmised,’ Kuru Qan said, glancing up with a broad smile. ‘Your unease tainted your sweat. Nifadas is sorely obsessed at the moment.’ He set the lenses against his eyes once more. Focused on the Finadd’s eyes – disconcerting, since it had never happened before. ‘Who needs spies when one’s nose roots out all truths?’
‘I hope, Ceda, that you do not lose that talent, with this new invention of yours.’
‘Ah, see! A swordsman indeed. The importance of every sense is not lost on you! What a measurable delight – here, let me show you.’ He slid down from the stool and approached a table, where he poured clear liquid into a translucent beaker. Crouched low to check its level, then nodded. ‘Measurable, as I had suspected.’ He plucked the beaker from its stand and tossed the contents back, smacking his lips when he was done. ‘But it is both brothers who haunt you now.’
‘I am not immune to uncertainty.’
‘One should hope not! An important admission. When the Preda is done with you – and it shall not be long – return to me. We have a task before us, you and I.’
‘Very well, Ceda.’
‘Time for some adjustments.’ He pulled off the lenses once more. ‘For us both,’ he added.
Brys considered, then nodded. ‘Until later, then, Ceda.’
He made his way from the sorceror’s chamber.
Nifadas and Kuru Qan, they stand to one side of King Diskanar. Would that there was no other side.
The throne room was misnamed, in that the king was in the process of shifting the royal seat of power to the Eternal Domicile, now that the leaks in its lofty roof had been corrected. A few trappings remained, including the ancient rug approaching the dais, and the stylized gateway arching over the place where the throne had once stood.
When Brys arrived, only his old commander, Preda Unnutal Hebaz, was present. As always, a dominating figure, no matter how exalted her surroundings. She stood taller than most women, nearly Brys’s own height. Fair-skinned, with a burnished cast to her blonde hair yet eyes of a dark hazel, she turned to face him at his approach. In her fortieth year, she was none the less possessed of extraordinary beauty that the weather lines only enhanced.
‘Finadd Beddict, you are late.’
‘Impromptu audiences with the First Eunuch and the Ceda-’
‘We have but a few moments,’ she interrupted. ‘Take your place along the wall, as would a guard. They might recognize you, or they might assume you are but one of my underlings, especially given the poor light now that the sconces have been taken down. Either way, you are to stand at attention and say nothing.’
Frowning, Brys strode to his old guard’s niche, turned about to face the chamber, then edged back into the shadows until hard stone pressed against his shoulders. He saw the Preda studying him for a moment, then she nodded and swung to face the doorway at the far corner of the wall behind the dais.
Ah, this meeting belongs to the other side…
The door slammed open to the gauntleted hand of a Prince’s Guardsman, and the helmed, armoured figure of that man strode warily into the chamber. His sword was still in its scabbard, but Brys knew that Moroch Nevath could draw it in a single beat of a heart. He knew, also, that Moroch had been the prince’s own candidate for King’s Champion. And well deserved too. Moroch Nevath not only possesses the skill, he also has the presence… And, although that bold manner irritated Brys in some indefinable way, he found himself envying it as well.
The Prince’s Guard studied the chamber, fixing here and there on shadowed recesses, including the one wherein Brys stood – but it was a momentary thing, seeming only to acknowledge the presence of one of the Preda’s guards – and Moroch finally settled his attention on Unnutal Hebaz.
A single nod of acknowledgement, then Moroch stepped to one side.
Prince Quillas Diskanar entered. Behind him came Chancellor Triban Gnol. Then, two figures that made Brys start. Queen Janall and her First Consort, Turudal Brizad.
By the Errant, the entire squalid nest.
Quillas bared his teeth at Unnutal Hebaz as would a dog at the end of his chain. ‘You have released Finadd Gerun Eberict to Nifadas’s entourage. I want him taken back, Preda. Choose someone else.’
Unnutal’s tone was calm. ‘Gerun Eberict’s competence is above reproach, Prince Quillas. I am informed that the First Eunuch is pleased with the selection.’
Chancellor Triban Gnol spoke in an equally reasonable voice, ‘Your prince believes otherwise, Preda. It behoves you to accord that opinion due respect.’
‘The prince’s beliefs are his own concern. I am charged by his father, the king, in this matter. Regarding what I do and do not respect, Chancellor, I strongly suggest you retract your challenge.’
Moroch Nevath growled and stepped forward.
The Preda’s hand snapped out – not to the Prince’s Guardsman, but towards the niche where Brys stood, halting him a half-stride from his position. The sword was already in his hand, and its freeing from the scabbard had been as silent as it had been fast.
Moroch’s gaze flashed to Brys, the startled expression giving way to recognition. The man’s own sword was but halfway out of its scabbard.
A dry chuckle from the queen. ‘Ah, the Preda’s decision for but one guard is… explained. Step forward, if you please, Champion.’
‘That will not be necessary,’ Unnutal said.
Brys nodded and slowly stepped back, sheathing his sword as he did so.
Queen Janall’s brows rose at the Preda’s brusque countermand. ‘Dear Unnutal Hebaz, you rise far above your station.’
‘The presumption is not mine, Queen. The Royal Guard answer to the king and no-one else.’
‘Well, forgive me if I delight in challenging that antiquated conceit.’ Janall fluttered one thin hand. ‘Strengths are ever at risk of becoming weaknesses.’ She stepped close to her son. ‘Heed your mother’s advice, Quillas. It was folly to cut at the Preda’s pedestal, for it has not yet turned to sand. Patience, beloved one.’
The Chancellor sighed. ‘The queen’s advice-’
‘Is due respect,’ Quillas mimed. ‘As you will, then. As you all will. Moroch!’
Bodyguard trailing, the prince strode from the chamber.
The queen’s smile was tender as she said, ‘Preda Unnutal Hebaz, we beg your forgiveness. This meeting was not of our choice, but my son insisted. From the moment our procession began, the Chancellor and I both sought to dissuade him.’
‘To no avail,’ the Chancellor said, sighing once more.
The Preda’s expression did not change. ‘Are we done?’
Queen Janall wagged a single finger in mute warning, then gestured to her First Consort, slipping her arm through his as they left.
Triban Gnol remained a moment longer. ‘My congratulations, Preda,’ he said. ‘Finadd Gerun Eberict was an exquisite choice.’
Unnutal Hebaz said nothing.
Five heartbeats later and she and Brys were alone in the chamber.
The Preda turned. ‘Your speed, Champion, never fails to take my breath away. I did not hear you, only… anticipated. Had I not, Moroch would now be dead.’
‘Possibly, Preda. If only because he had dismissed my presence.’
‘And Quillas would have only himself to blame.’
Brys said nothing.
‘I should not have halted you.’
He watched her leave.
Gerun Eberict, you poor bastard.
Recalling that the Ceda wanted him, Brys swung about and strode from the chamber.
Leaving behind no blood.
And he knew that Kuru Qan would hear the relief in his every step.
The Ceda had been waiting outside his door, seemingly intent on practising a dance step, when Brys arrived.
‘A few fraught moments?’ Kuru Qan asked without looking up. ‘Unimportant. For now. Come.’
Fifty paces on, down stone steps, along dusty corridors, and Brys guessed at their destination. He felt his heart sinking. A place he had heard of, but one he had yet to visit. It seemed the King’s Champion was permitted to walk where a lowly Finadd was not. This time, however, the privilege was suspect.
They came to a pair of massive copper-sheathed doors. Green and rumpled with moss, they were bare of markings and showed no locking mechanism. The Ceda leaned on them and they parted with a grinding squeal.
Beyond rose narrow steps, leading to a walkway suspended knee-high above the floor by chains that reached down from the ceiling. The room was circular, and in the floor were set luminous tiles forming a spiral. The walkway ended at a platform in the chamber’s centre.
‘Trepidation, Finadd? Well deserved.’ Gesturing, Kuru Qan led Brys onto the walkway.
It swayed alarmingly.
‘The striving for balance is made manifest,’ the Ceda said, arms held out to the sides. ‘One’s steps must needs find the proper rhythm. Important, and difficult for all that there are two of us. No, do not look down upon the tiles – we are not yet ready. To the platform first. Here we are. Stand at my side, Finadd. Look with me upon the first tile of the spiral. What do you see?’
Brys studied the glowing tile. It was large, not quite square. Two spans of a spread hand in length, slightly less so in width.
The Holds. The Cedance. Kuru Qan’s chamber of divination. Throughout Letheras there were casters of the tiles, readers of the Holds. Of course, their representations were small, like flattened dice. Only the King’s Sorceror possessed tiles such as these. With ever-shifting faces. ‘I see a barrow in a yard.’
‘Ah, then you see truly. Good. An unhinged mind would reveal itself at this moment, its vision poisoned with fear and malice. Barrow, third from last among the tiles of the Azath Hold. Tell me, what do you sense from it?’
Brys frowned. ‘Restlessness.’
‘Aye. Disturbing, agreed?’
‘Agreed.’
‘But the Barrow is strong, is it not? It will not yield its claim. Yet, consider for a moment. Something is restless, there beneath that earth. And each time I have visited here in the past month, this tile has begun the spiral.’
‘Or ended it.’
Kuru Qan tilted his head. ‘Possibly. A swordsman’s mind addresses the unexpected. Important? We’ll see, won’t we? Begins, or ends. So. If the Barrow is in no danger of yielding, then why does this tile persist? Perhaps we but witness what is, whilst that restlessness promises what will be. Alarming.’
‘Ceda, have you visited the site of the Azath?’
‘I have. Both tower and grounds are unchanged. The Hold’s manifestation remains steadfast and contained. Now, drag your gaze onward, Finadd. Next?’
‘A gate, formed of a dragon’s gaping jaws.’
‘Fifth in the Hold of the Dragon. Gate. How does it relate to Barrow of the Azath? Does the Gate precede or follow? In the span of my life, this is the first time I have seen a tile of Dragon Hold in the pattern. We are witness – or shall be witness – to a momentous occasion.’
Brys glanced at the Ceda. ‘We are nearing Seventh Closure. It is momentous. The First Empire shall be reborn. King Diskanar shall be transformed – he shall ascend and assume the ancient title of First Emperor.’
Kuru Qan hugged himself. ‘The popular interpretation, aye. But the true prophecy, Finadd, is somewhat more… obscure.’
Brys was alarmed by the Ceda’s reaction. Nor had he known that the popular interpretation was other than accurate. ‘Obscure? In what way?’
‘ “The king who rules at the Seventh Closure shall be transformed and so shall become the First Emperor reborn.” Thus. Yet, questions arise. Transformed – how? And reborn – in the flesh? The First Emperor was destroyed along with the First Empire, in a distant land. Leaving the colonies here bereft. We have existed in isolation for a very long time, Finadd. Longer than you might believe.’
‘Almost seven thousand years.’
The Ceda smiled. ‘Language changes over time. Meaning twists. Mistakes compound with each transcribing. Even those stalwart sentinels of perfection – numbers – can, in a single careless moment, be profoundly altered. Shall I tell you my belief, Finadd? What would you say to my notion that some zeroes were dropped? At the beginning of this the Seventh Closure.’
Seventy thousand years? Seven hundred thousand?
‘Describe for me the next four tiles.’
Feeling slightly unbalanced, Brys forced his attention back to the floor. ‘I recognize that one. Betrayer of the Empty Hold. And the tile that follows: White Crow, of the Fulcra. The third is unknown to me. Shards of ice, one of which is upthrust from the ground and grows bright with reflected light.’
Kuru Qan sighed and nodded. ‘Seed, last of the tiles in the Hold of Ice. Another unprecedented appearance. And the fourth?’
Brys shook his head. ‘It is blank.’
‘Just so. The divination ceases. Is blocked, perhaps, by events yet to occur, by choices as yet unmade. Or, it marks the beginning, the flux that is now, this very moment. Leading to the end, which is the last tile – Barrow. Unique mystery. I am at a loss.’
‘Has anyone else seen this, Ceda? Have you discussed your impasse with anyone?’
‘The First Eunuch has been informed, Brys Beddict. To ensure that he does not walk into the Great Meeting blind to whatever portents might arise there. And now, you. Three of us, Finadd.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because you are the King’s Champion. It is your task to guard his life.’
Brys sighed. ‘He keeps sending me away.’
‘I will remind him yet again,’ Kuru Qan said. ‘He must surrender his love of solitude, or come to see no-one when he glances your way. Now, tell me what the queen incited her son to do in the old throne room.’
‘Incited? She claimed the very opposite.’
‘Unimportant. Tell me what your eyes witnessed, what your ears heard. Tell me, Brys Beddict, what your heart whispered.’
Brys stared down at the blank tile. ‘Hull may prove a problem,’ he said in a dull voice.
‘This is what your heart whispered?
‘It is.’
‘At the Great Meeting?’
He nodded.
‘How?’
‘I fear, Ceda, that he might kill Prince Quillas Diskanar.’
The building had once housed a carpenter’s shop on the ground floor, with a modest collection of low-ceilinged residential rooms on the upper level, reached via a drop-down staircase. The front faced out onto Quillas Canal, opposite a landing where, presumably, the carpenter had received his supplies.
Tehol Beddict walked around the spacious workshop, noting the holes in the hardwood floor where mechanisms had been fitted, hooks on walls for tools still identifiable by the faded outlines. The air still smelled of sawdust and stains, and a single worktable ran the full length of the wall to the left of the entrance. The entire front wall, he saw, was constructed with removable panels. ‘You purchased this outright?’ he asked, facing the three women who had gathered at the foot of the staircase.
‘The owner’s business was expanding,’ Shand said, ‘as was his family.’
‘Fronting the canal… this place was worth something…’
‘Two thousand thirds. We bought most of his furniture upstairs. Ordered a desk that was delivered last night.’ Shand waved a hand to encompass the ground level. ‘This area’s yours. I’d suggest a wall or two, leaving a corridor from the door to the stairs. That clay pipe is the kitchen drain. We knocked out the section leading to the kitchen upstairs, since we expect your servant to feed the four of us. The privy’s out in the backyard, empties into the canal. There’s also a cold shed, with a water-tight ice box big enough for a whole Nerek family to live in.’
‘A rich carpenter with time on his hands,’ Tehol said.
‘He has talent,’ Shand said, shrugging. ‘Now, follow me. The office is upstairs. We’ve things to discuss.’
‘Doesn’t sound like it,’ he replied. ‘Sounds like everything is already decided. I can imagine Bugg’s delight at the news. I hope you like figs.’
‘You could take the roof,’ Rissarh said with a sweet smile.
Tehol crossed his arms and rocked on his heels. ‘Let me see if I understand all this. You threaten to expose my terrible secrets, and then offer me some kind of partnership for some venture you haven’t even bothered describing. I can see this relationship setting deep roots, given such fertile soil.’
Shand scowled.
‘Let’s beat him senseless first,’ Hejun said.
‘It’s simple,’ Shand said, ignoring Hejun’s suggestion. ‘We have thirty thousand thirds and with it we want you to make ten.’
‘Ten thousand thirds?’
‘Ten peaks.’
Tehol stared at her. ‘Ten peaks. Ten million thirds. I see, and what precisely do you want with all that money?’
‘We want you to buy the rest of the islands.’
Tehol ran a hand through his hair and began pacing. ‘You’re insane. I started with a hundred docks and damn near killed myself making a single peak-’
‘Only because you were frivolous, Tehol Beddict. You did it inside of a year, but you only worked a day or two every month.’
‘Well, those days were murderous.’
‘Liar. You never stepped wrong. Not once. You folded in and folded out and left everyone else wallowing in your wake. And they worshipped you for it.’
‘Until you knifed them all,’ Rissarh said, her smile broadening.
‘Your skirt’s slipping,’ Hejun observed.
Tehol adjusted it. ‘It wasn’t exactly a knifing. What terrible images you conjure. I made my peak. I wasn’t the first to ever make a peak, just the fastest.’
‘With a hundred docks. Hard with a hundred levels, maybe. But docks? I made a hundred docks every three months when I was a child, picking olives and grapes. Nobody starts with docks. Nobody but you.’
‘And now we’re giving you thirty thousand thirds,’ Rissarh said. ‘Work the columns, Beddict. Ten million peaks? Why not?’
‘If you think it’s so easy why don’t you do it yourselves?’
‘We’re not that smart,’ Shand said. ‘We’re not easily distracted, either. We stumbled onto your trail and we followed it and here we are.’
‘I left no trail.’
‘Not one most could see, true. But as I said, we don’t get distracted.’
Tehol continued pacing. ‘The Merchant Tolls list Letheras’s gross at between twelve and fifteen peaks, with maybe another five buried-’
‘Is that five including your one?’
‘Mine was written off, remember.’
‘After a whole lot of pissing blood. Ten thousand curses tied to docks at the bottom of the canal, all with your name on them.’
Hejun asked in surprise, ‘Really, Shand? Maybe we should get dredging rights-’
‘Too late,’ Tehol told her. ‘Biri’s got those.’
‘Biri’s a front man,’ Shand said. ‘You’ve got those rights, Tehol. Biri may not know it but he works for you.’
‘Well, that’s a situation I’ve yet to exploit.’
‘Why?’
He shrugged. Then he halted and stared at Shand. ‘There’s no way you could know that.’
‘You’re right. I guessed.’
His eyes widened. ‘You could make ten peaks, with an instinct like that, Shand.’
‘You’ve fooled everyone because you don’t make a wrong step, Tehol Beddict. They don’t think you’ve buried your peak – not any more, not after this long with you living like a rat under the docks. You’ve truly lost it. Where, nobody knows, but somewhere. That’s why they wrote off the loss, isn’t it?’
‘Money is sleight of hand,’ Tehol said, nodding. ‘Unless you’ve got diamonds in your hands. Then it’s not just an idea any more. If you want to know the cheat behind the whole game, it’s right there, lasses. Even when money’s just an idea, it has power. Only it’s not real power. Just the promise of power. But that promise is enough so long as everyone keeps pretending it’s real. Stop pretending and it all falls apart.’
‘Unless the diamonds are in your hands,’ Shand said.
‘Right. Then it’s real power.’
‘That’s what you began to suspect, isn’t it? So you went and tested it. And everything came within a stumble of falling apart.’
Tehol smiled. ‘Imagine my dismay.’
‘You weren’t dismayed,’ she said. ‘You just realized how deadly an idea could be, in the wrong hands.’
‘They’re all the wrong hands, Shand. Including mine.’
‘So you walked away.’
‘And I’m not going back. Do your worst with me. Let Hull know. Take it all down. What’s written off can be written back in. The Tolls are good at that. In fact, you’ll trigger a boom. Everyone will sigh with relief, seeing that it was all in the game after all.’
‘That’s not what we want,’ Shand said. ‘You still don’t get it. When we buy the rest of the islands, Tehol, we do it the same way you did. Ten peaks… disappearing:
‘The entire economy will collapse!’
At that the three women all nodded.
‘You’re fanatics!’
‘Even worse,’ Rissarh said, ‘we’re vengeful.’
‘You’re all half-bloods, aren’t you?’ He didn’t need their answers to that. It was obvious. Not every half-blood had to look like a half-blood. ‘Faraed, for Hejun. You two? Tarthenal?’
‘Tarthenal. Letheras destroyed us. Now, we’re going to destroy Letheras.’
‘And,’ Rissarh said, smiling again, ‘you’re going to show us how.’
‘Because you hate your own people,’ Shand said. ‘The whole rapacious, cold-blooded lot of them. We want those islands, Tehol Beddict. We know about the remnants of the tribes you delivered to the ones you bought. We know they’re hiding out there, trying to rebuild all that they had lost. But it’s not enough. Walk this city’s streets and the truth of that is plain. You did it for Hull. I had no idea he didn’t know about it – you surprised me there. You know, I think you should tell him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he needs healing, that’s why.’
‘I can’t do that.’
Shand stepped close and settled a hand on Tehol’s shoulder. The contact left him weak-kneed, so unexpected was the sympathy. ‘You’re right, you can’t. Because we both know, it wasn’t enough.’
‘Tell him our way,’ Hejun said. ‘Tehol Beddict. Do it right this time.’
He pulled away and studied them. These three damned women. ‘It’s the Errant’s curse, that he walks down paths he’s walked before. But that trait of yours, of not getting distracted, it blinds both ways, I’m afraid.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, Shand, that Lether is about to fall – and not through my doing. Find Hull and ask him – I’m sure he’s up there, somewhere. In the north. And, you know, it’s rather amusing, how he fought so hard for your people, for every one of those tribes Lether then devoured. Because now, knowing what he knows, he’s going to fight again. Only, this time, not for a tribe – not for the Tiste Edur. This time, for Lether. Because he knows, my friends, that we’ve met our match in those damned bastards. This time, it’s the Edur who will do the devouring.’
‘What makes you think so?’ Shand demanded, and he saw the disbelief in her expression.
‘Because they don’t play the game,’ he said.
‘What if you’re wrong?’
‘It’s possible. Either way, it’s going to be bloody.’
‘Then let’s make it easier for the Tiste Edur.’
‘Shand, you’re talking treason.’
Her lips pressed into a thin line.
Rissarh barked a laugh. ‘You idiot. We’ve been doing that all along.’
Errant take me, she’s right. ‘I’m not convinced a host of barbaric Edur overlords will do any better.’
‘We’re not talking about what’s better,’ Shand said. ‘We’re talking about revenge. Think of Hull, of what was done to him. Do it back, Tehol.’
I don’t believe Hull would see it that way. Not quite. Not for a long, long time. ‘You realize, don’t you, that I’ve worked very hard at cultivating apathy. In fact, it seems to be bearing endless fruit.’
‘Yes, the skirt doesn’t hide much.’
‘My instincts may be a bit dull.’
‘Liar. They’ve just been lying in wait and you know it. Where do we start, Tehol Beddict?’
He sighed. ‘All right. First and foremost, we lease out this ground floor. Biri needs the storage.’
‘What about you?’
‘I happen to like my abode, and I don’t intend to leave. As far as anyone else is concerned, I’m still not playing the game. You three are the investors. So, put those damned weapons away; we’re in a far deadlier war now. There’s a family of Nerek camped outside my house. A mother and two children. Hire them as cook and runners. Then head down to the Merchant Tolls and get yourselves listed. You deal in property, construction and transportation. No other ventures. Not yet. Now, seven properties are for sale around the fifth wing of the Eternal Domicile. They’re going cheap.’
‘Because they’re sinking.’
‘Right. And we’re going to fix that. And once we’ve done that, expect a visit from the Royal Surveyor and a motley collection of hopeful architects. Ladies, prepare to get rich.’
Looking for solid grounding? Bugg’s Construction is your answer.
Until the flood sweeps the entire world away, that is.
‘Can we buy you some clothes?’
Tehol blinked. ‘Why?’
Seren stared down. The valley stretched below, its steep sides unrelieved forest, a deep motionless green. The glitter of rushing water threaded through the shadows in the cut’s nadir. Blood of the Mountains, the Edur called that river. Tis’forundal. Its waters ran red with the sweat of iron.
The track they would take crossed that river again and again.
The lone Tiste Edur far below had, it seemed, emerged from that crimson stream. Striding to the head of the trail then beginning the ascent.
As if knowing we’re here.
Buruk the Pale was taking his time with this journey, calling a halt shortly after midday. The wagons would not tip onto that rocky, sliding path into the valley until the morrow. Caution or drunk indifference, the result was the same.
Hull stood at her side. Both of them watched the Tiste Edur climb closer.
‘Seren.’
‘Yes?’
‘You weep at night.’
‘I thought you were asleep.’
He said nothing for a moment, then, ‘Your weeping always woke me.’
And this is as close as you dare, isn’t it? ‘Would that yours had me.’
‘I am sure it would have, Seren, had I wept.’
And this eases my guilt? She nodded towards that distant Tiste Edur. ‘Do you recognize him?’
‘I do.’
‘Will he cause us trouble?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I believe he will be our escort back to Hiroth lands.’
‘Noble-born?’
Hull nodded. ‘Binadas Sengar.’
She hesitated, then asked, ‘Have you cut flesh for him?’
‘I have. As he has for me.’
Seren Pedac drew her furs tighter about her shoulders. The wind had not relented, though something of the valley’s damp rot now rode its bludgeoning rush. ‘Hull, do you fear this Great Meeting?’
‘I need only look back to see what lies ahead.’
‘Are you so sure of that?’
‘We will buy peace, but it will be, for the Tiste Edur, a deadly peace.’
‘But peace none the less, Hull.’
‘Acquitor, you might as well know, and so understand me clearly. I mean to shatter that gathering. I mean to incite the Edur into war with Letheras.’
Stunned, she stared at him.
Hull Beddict turned away. ‘With that knowledge,’ he said, ‘do as you will.’