insinuated ourselves in the machinery of Lether’s vast commerce, the most bitter truth is that the causes behind this impending chaos are in fact systemic. Granted, we’re hastening things somewhat, but dissolution-in its truest sense-is an integral flaw in the system itself. It may well view itself as immortal, eminently adaptable and all that, but that’s all both illusional and delusional. Resources are never infinite, though they might seem that way. And those resources include more than just the raw product of earth and sea. They also include labour, and the manifest conceit of a monetary system with its arbitrary notions of value-the two forces we set our sights on, by the way. Shipping out the lowest classes-the dispossessed-to pressure the infrastructure, and then stripping away hard currency to escalate a recession-why are you two staring at me like that?’
Rucket smiled. ‘Defaulting to the comfort of your scholarly analysis to deflect us from your more pathetic fixations. That, Tehol Beddict, is perhaps the lowest you have gone yet.’
‘But we’ve just begun.’
‘You may wish to believe that to be the case. For myself, my own curiosity is fast diminishing.’
‘But think of all the challenges in store for us, Rucket!’
She surged to her feet. ‘I’m going out the back way.’
‘You won’t fit.’
‘Alas, Tehol, the same will never be said of you. Good day, gentlemen.’
‘Wait!’
‘Yes, Tehol?’
‘Well, uh, I trust this conversation will resume at a later date?’
‘I’m not hanging around for that,’ Bugg said, crossing his brawny arms in a show of… something. Disgust, maybe. Or, Tehol reconsidered, more likely abject envy.
‘Nothing is certain,’ Rucket told him. ‘Barring the truth that men are wont to get lost in their illusions of grandeur.’
‘Oh,’ murmured Bugg, ‘very nice, Rucket.’
‘If that hadn’t left me speechless,’ Tehol said as she rolled away, ‘I’d have said something.’
‘I have no doubt of that, Master.’
‘Your faith is a relief, Bugg.’
‘Small comfort in comparison, I’d wager.’
‘In comparison,’ Tehol agreed, nodding. ‘Now, shall we go for a walk, old friend?’
‘Assuming your drape is now unmarred by unsightly bulges.’
‘In a moment.’
‘Master?’
Tehol smiled at the alarm on Bugg’s face. ‘I was just imaging her stuck there, wedged in Huldo’s alleyway. Unable to turn. Helpless, in fact.’
‘There it is,’ he said with a sigh, ‘you did indeed manage to sink lower.’
There was an old Gral legend that had begun to haunt Taralack Veed, although he could not quite grasp its relevance to this moment, here in Letheras, with the Lifestealer walking at his side as they pushed through the crowds milling outside a row of market stalls opposite the Quillas Canal.
The Gral were an ancient people; their tribes had dwelt in the wild hills of the First Empire, and there had been Gral companies serving in Dessimbelackis’s vaunted armies, as trackers, as skirmishers and as shock troops, although this manner of combat ill suited them. Even then, the Gral preferred their feuds, the spilling of blood in the name of personal honour. The pursuit of vengeance was a worthy cause. Slaughtering strangers made no sense and stained the soul, demanding tortured cleansing rituals. Further, there was no satisfaction in such murder.
Two months before the Great Fall, a commander named Vorlock Duven, leading the Karasch Legion deep into the untamed wastes of the southwest, had sent her seventy-four Gral warriors into the Tasse Hills to begin a campaign of subjugation against the tribe believed to rule that forbidding range. The Gral were to incite the Tasse to battle, then withdraw, with the savages hard on their heels, to a place of ambush at the very edge of the highlands.
Leading the Gral was a wise veteran of the Bhok’ar clan named Sidilack, called by many Snaketongue after a sword-thrust into his mouth had sliced down the length of his tongue. His warriors, well blooded after a three-year campaign of conquest among the desert and plains peoples south of Ugari, were skilled at finding the hidden trails leading into the rough heights, and before long they were coming upon rude dwellings and rock shelters in the midst of ancient ruins that hinted that some terrible descent from civilization had afflicted the Tasse long ago.
At dusk on the third day seven woad-painted savages ambushed the lead scouts, killing one before being driven off. Of the four Tasse who had fallen in the clash, only one was not already dead of his wounds. The language of his pain-stricken ravings was like nothing Sidilack and his warriors had ever heard before. Beneath the dusty blue paint the Tasse were physically unlike any other nearby tribes. Tall, lithe, with strangely small hands and feet, they had elongated faces, weak chins and oversized teeth. Their eyes were close-set, the irises tawny like dried grass, the whites blistered with so many blood vessels it seemed they might well weep red tears.
Among all four of the Tasse the signs of dehydration and malnutrition were obvious, and as fighters they had been singularly ineffective with their stone-tipped spears and knotted clubs.
The wounded savage soon died.
Resuming their hunt, the Gral pushed ever deeper, ever higher into the hills. They found ancient terraces that had once held crops, the soil now lifeless, barely able to sustain dry desert scrub. They found stone-lined channels to collect rainwater that no longer came. They found stone tombs with large capstones carved into phallic shapes. On the trail potsherds and white bleached bone fragments crunched underfoot.
At noon on the fourth day the Gral came upon the settlement of the Tasse. Twelve scraggy huts, from which rushed three warriors with spears, shrieking as they lined up in a pathetic defensive line in front of five starving females and a lone two-or three-year-old female child.
Sidilack, the wise veteran who had fought twenty battles, who had stained his soul with the slaughter of countless strangers, sent his Gral forward. The battle lasted a half-dozen heartbeats. When the Tasse men fell their women attacked with their hands and teeth. When they were all dead, the lone child crouched down and hissed at them like a cat.
A sword was raised to strike her down.
It never descended. The clearing was suddenly swallowed in shadows. Seven terrible hounds emerged to surround the child, and a man appeared. His shoulders so broad as to make him seem hunched, he was wearing an ankle-length coat of blued chain, his black hair long and unbound. Cold blue eyes fixed upon Sidilack and he spoke in the language of the First Empire: ‘They were the last. I do not decry your slaughter. They lived in fear. This land-not their home-could not feed them. Abandoned by the Deragoth and their kind, they had failed in life’s struggle.’ He turned then to regard the child. ‘But this one I will take.’
Sidilack, it was said, could feel then the deepest stain settling upon his soul. One that no cleansing ritual could eradicate. He saw, in that moment, the grim fate of his destiny, a descent into the madness of inconsolable grief. The god would take the last child, but it was most certainly the last. The blood.of the others was on Sidilack’s hands, a curse, a haunting that only death could relieve.
Yet he was Gral. Forbidden from taking his own life.
Another legend followed, that one recounting the long journey to Snaketongue’s final end, his pursuit of questions that could not be answered, the pathos of his staggering walk into the Dead Man’s Desert-realm of the fallen Gral-where even the noble spirits refused him, his soul, the hollow defence of his own crime.
Taralack Veed did not want to think of these things. Echoes of the child, that hissing, less-than-human creature who had been drawn into the shadows by a god-to what end? A mystery within the legend that would never be solved. But he did not believe there had been mercy in that god’s heart. He did not want to think of young females with small hands and feet, with sloped chins and large canines, with luminous eyes the hue of savanna grasses.
He did not want to think of Sidilack and the endless night of his doom. The warrior with slaughter’s blood staining his hands and his soul. That tragic fool was nothing like Taralack Veed, he told himself again and again. Truths did not hide in vague similarities, after all; only in the specific details, and he shared none of those with old Snaketongue.
‘You speak rarely these days, Taralack Veed.’
The Gral glanced up at Icarium. ‘1 am frightened for you,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘1 see nothing of the hardness in your eyes, friend, the hardness that perhaps none but a longtime companion would be able to detect. The hardness that bespeaks your rage. It seems to sleep, and I do not know if even Rhulad can awaken it. If he cannot, then you will die. Quickly.’
‘If all you say of me is true,’ the Jhag replied, ‘then my death would be welcome. And justified in every sense of the word.’
‘No other can defeat the Emperor-’
‘Why are you so certain 1 can? I do not wield a magical sword. I do not return to life should 1 fall. These are the rumours regarding the Tiste Edur named Rhulad, yes?’
‘When your anger is unleashed, Icarium, you cannot be stopped.’
‘Ah, but it seems I can.’
Taralack Veed’s eyes narrowed. ‘Is this the change that has come to you, Icarium? Have your memories returned to you?’
‘I believe if they had, I would not now be here,’ the Jhag replied, pausing before one stall offering cord-wrapped pottery. ‘Look upon these items here, Taralack Veed, and tell me what you see. Empty vessels? Or endless possibilities?’
‘They are naught but pots.’
Icarium smiled.
It was, the Gral decided, a far too easy smile. ‘Do you mock me, Icarium?’
‘Something awaits me. I do not mean this mad Emperor. Something else. Answer me this. How does one measure time?’,
‘By the course of the sun, the phases of the moon, the wheel of the stars. And, of course, in cities such as this one, the sounding of a bell at fixed intervals-a wholly absurd conceit and, indeed, one that is spiritually debilitating.’
‘The Gral speaks.’
‘Now you truly mock me. This is unlike you, Icarium.’
‘The sounding of bells, their increments established by the passing of sand or water through a narrowed vessel. As you say, a conceit. An arbitrary assertion of constancy. Can we truly say, however, that time is constant?’
‘As any Gral would tell you, it is not. Else our senses lie.’
‘Perhaps they do.’
‘Then we are lost.’
‘I appreciate your intellectual belligerence today, Taralack Veed.’
They moved on, wandering slowly alongside the canal.
‘I understand your obsession with time,’ the Gral said. ‘You, who have passed through age after age, unchanging, unknowing.’
‘Unknowing, yes. That is the problem, isn’t it?’
‘I do not agree. It is our salvation.’
They were silent for a few more strides. Many were the curious-at times pitying-glances cast their way. The champions were also the condemned, after all. Yet was there hope, buried deep behind those shying eyes? There must be. For an end to the nightmare that was Rhulad Sengar, the Edur Emperor of Lether.
‘Without an understanding of time, history means nothing. Do you follow, Taralack Veed?’
‘Yet you do not understand time, do you?’
‘No, that is true. Yet I believe I have… pursued this… again and again. From age to age. In the faith that a revelation on the meaning of time will unlock my own hidden history. I would find its true measure, Taralack Veed. And not just its measure, but its very nature. Consider this canal, and those linked to it. The water is pushed by current and tide from the river, then traverses the city, only to rejoin the river not far from where it first entered. We may seek to step out from the river and so choose our own path, but no matter how straight it seems, we will, in the end, return to that river.’
‘As with the bells, then,’ the Gral said, ‘water tracks the passage of time.’
‘You misunderstand,’ Icarium replied, but did not elaborate.
Taralack Veed scowled, paused to spit thick phlegm onto his palms, then swept it back through his hair. Somewhere in the crowd a woman screamed, but the sound was not repeated. ‘The canal’s current cannot change the law that binds its direction. The canal is but a detour.’
‘Yes, one that slows the passage of its water. And in turn that water changes, gathering the refuse of the city it passes through, and so, upon returning to the river, it is a different colour. Muddier, more befouled.’
‘The slower your path, the muddier your boots?’
‘Even so,’ Icarium said, nodding.
‘Time is nothing like that.’
‘Are you so certain? When we must wait, our minds fill with sludge, random thoughts like so much refuse. When we are driven to action, our current is swift, the water seemingly clear, cold and sharp.’
‘I’d rather, Icarium, we wait a long time. Here, in the face of what is to come.’
‘The path to Rhulad? As you like. But I tell you, Taralack Veed, that is not the path I am walking.’
Another half-dozen strides.
Then the Gral spoke. ‘They wrap the cord around them, Icarium, to keep them from breaking.’
Senior Assessor’s eyes glittered as he stood amidst a crowd twenty paces from where Icarium and Taralack Veed had paused in front of a potter’s stall. His hands were folded together, the fingers twitching. His breathing was rapid and shallow;
Beside him, Samar Dev rolled her eyes, then asked, ‘Are you about to fall dead on me? If I’d known this walk involved skulking in that Jhag’s shadow, I think I would have stayed in the compound.’
‘The choices you make,’ he replied, ‘must needs be entirely of your own accord, Samar Dev. Reasonably distinct from mine or anyone else’s. It is said that the history of human conflict resides exclusively in the clash of expectations.’
‘Is it now?’
‘Furthermore-’
‘Never mind your “furthermore”, Senior Assessor. Compromise is the negotiation of expectation. With your wayward notions we do not negotiate, and so all the compromising is mine.’
‘As you choose.’
She thought about hitting him, decided she didn’t want to make a scene. What was it with men and their obsessions? ‘He is in all likelihood going to die, and soon.’
‘I think not. No, most certainly I think not.’
Icarium and the Gral resumed their meander through the crowds, and after a moment Senior Assessor followed, maintaining his distance. Sighing, Samar Dev set off after him. She didn’t like this mob. It felt wrong. Tense, overwrought. Strain was visible on faces, and the cries of the hawkers sounded strident and half desperate. Few passers-by, she noted, were buying.
‘Something’s wrong,’ she said.
‘There is nothing here that cannot be explained by impending financial panic, Samar Dev. Although you may believe I am unaware of anything but him, I assure you that I have assessed the condition of Letheras and, by extension, this entire empire. A crisis looms. Wealth, alas, is not an infinite commodity. Systems such as this are dependent upon the assumption of unlimited resources, however. These resources range from cheap labour and materials to an insatiable demand. Such demand, in turn, depends on rather more ethereal virtues, such as confidence, will, perceived need and the bliss of short-term thinking, any one of which is vulnerable to mysterious and often inexplicable influences. We are witness, here, to the effects of a complex collusion of factors which are serving to undermine said virtues. Furthermore, it is my belief that the situation has been orchestrated.’
Her mind had begun to drift with Senior Assessor’s diatribe, but this last observation drew her round. ‘Letheras is under economic assault?’
‘Well put, Samar Dev. Someone is manipulating the situation to achieve a cascading collapse, yes. Such is my humble assessment.’
‘Humble?’
‘Of course not. I view my own brilliance with irony’
‘To what end?’
‘Why, to make me humble.’
‘Are we going to follow Icarium and his pet Gral all afternoon?’
‘I am the only living native of Cabal, Samar Dev, to have seen with my own eyes our god. Is it any wonder I follow him?’
God? He’s not a god. He’s a damned Jhag from the Odhan west of Seven Cities. Suffering a tragic curse, but then, aren’t they all? A figure well ahead of Icarium and Taralack Veed caught her attention. A figure tall, hulking, with a shattered face and a huge stone sword strapped to its back. ‘Oh no,’ she murmured.
‘What is it?’ Senior Assessor asked.
‘He’s seen him.’
‘Samar Dev?’
But he was behind her now, and she was hurrying forward, roughly pushing past people. Expectations? Most certainly. Compromise? Not a chance.
One of the sconces had a faulty valve and had begun producing thick black tendrils of smoke that coiled like serpents in the air, and Uruth’s coughing echoed like barks in the antechamber. His back to the door leading to the throne room, Sirryn Kanar stood with crossed arms, watching the two Tiste Edur. Tomad Sengar was pacing, walking a path that deftly avoided the other waiting guards even as he made a point of pretending they weren’t there. His wife had drawn her dark grey robe about herself, so tight she reminded Sirryn of a vulture with its wings folded close. Age had made her shoulders slightly hunched, adding to the avian impression, sufficient to draw a half-smile to the guard’s mouth.
‘No doubt this waiting amuses you,’ Tomad said in a growl.
‘So you were watching me after all.’
‘I was watching the door, which you happen to be standing against.’
Contemplating kicking through it, no doubt. Sirryn’s smile broadened. Alas, you’d have to go through me, and that you won’t do, will you? ‘The Emperor is very busy.’
‘With what?’ Tomad demanded. ‘Triban Gnol decides everything, after all. Rhulad just sits with a glazed look and nods every now and then.’
‘You think little of your son.’
That struck a nerve, he saw, as husband and wife both fixed hard eyes on him.
‘We think less of Triban Gnol,’ Uruth said.
There was no need to comment on that observation, for Sirryn well knew their opinions of the Chancellor; indeed, their views on all Letherii. Blind bigotry, of course, all the more hypocritical for the zeal with which the Edur had embraced the Letherii way of living, even as they sneered and proclaimed their disgust and contempt. If you are so dis-gusted, why do you still suckle at the tit, Edur? You had your chance at destroying all this. Vs. And our own whole terrible civilization. No, there was little that was worth saying to these two savages.
He felt more than heard the scratch at the door behind him, and slowly straightened. ‘The Emperor will see you now.’
Tomad wheeled round to face the door, and Sirryn saw in the bastard’s face a sudden strain beneath the haughty facade. Beyond him, Uruth swept her cloak back, freeing her arms. Was that fear in her eyes? He watched her move up to stand beside her husband, yet it seemed all they drew from that proximity was yet another tension.
Stepping to one side, Sirryn Kanar swung open the door. ‘Halt in the tiled circle,’ he said. ‘Step past it and a dozen arrows will find your body. No warning will be voiced. By the Emperor’s own command. Now, proceed. Slowly.’
At this moment, a Tiste Edur and four Letherii soldiers approached the city’s west gate on lathered horses. A shout from the Edur sent pedestrians scattering from the raised • road. The five riders were covered in mud and two bore wounds. The swords of the two whose scabbards were not empty were blood-crusted. The Edur was one of those with-out weapons, and from his back jutted the stub of an arrow, its iron head buried in his right scapula. Blood soaked his cloak where the quarrel had pinned it to his back.
This warrior was dying. He had been dying for four days. Another hoarse shout from the Tiste Edur, as he led his ragged troop beneath the gate’s arch, and into the city of Letheras.
The Errant studied Rhulad Sengar, who had sat motionless since the Chancellor had returned to announce the imminent arrival of Tomad and Uruth. Was it some faltering of courage that had kept the Emperor from demanding their immediate presence? There was no way to tell. Even the Chancellor’s cautious queries had elicited nothing.
Lanterns burned on. The traditional torches breathed out smoke, their flickering light licking the walls. Triban Gnol stood, hands folded, waiting.
Within Rhulad’s head battles were being waged. Armies of will and desire contested with the raving forces of fear and doubt. The field was sodden with blood and littered with fallen heroes. Or into his skull some blinding fog had rolled in, oppressive as oblivion itself, and Rhulad wandered lost.
He sat as if carved, clothed in stained wealth, the product of a mad artist’s vision. Lacquered eyes and scarred flesh, twisted mouth and black strands of greasy hair. Sculpted solid to the throne to cajole symbols of permanence and imprisonment, but this madness had lost all subtlety-ever the curse of fascism, the tyranny of gleeful servility that could not abide subversion.
Look upon him, and see what comes when justice is. vengeance. When challenge is criminal. When scepticism is treason. Call upon them, Emperor! Your father, your mother. Call them to stand before you in this inverted nightmare of fidelity, and unleash your wrath!
‘Now,’ Rhulad said in a croak.
The Chancellor gestured to a guard near the side door, who turned in a soft rustle of armour and brushed his gauntleted hand upon the ornate panel. A moment later it opened.
All of this was occurring to the Errant’s left, along the same wall he leaned against, so he could not see what occurred then beyond, barring a few indistinct words.
Tomad and Uruth Sengar strode into the throne room, halting in the tiled circle. Both then bowed to their Emperor.
Rhulad licked his broken lips. ‘They are kin,’ he said.
A frown from Tomad.
‘Enslaved by humans. They deserved our liberation, did they not?’,
‘From the Isle of Sepik, Emperor?’ asked Uruth. ‘Are these of whom you speak?’
‘They were indeed liberated,’ Tomad said, nodding.
Rhulad leaned forward. ‘Enslaved kin. Liberated. Then why, dear Father, do they now rot in chains?’
Tomad seemed unable to answer, a look of confusion on his lined face.
‘Awaiting your disposition,’ Uruth said. ‘Emperor, we have sought audience with you many times since our return. Alas,’ she glanced over at Triban Gnol, ‘the Chancellor sends us away. Without fail.’
And so,’ Rhulad said in a rasp, ‘you proclaimed them guests of the empire as was their right, then settled them where? Why, not in our many fine residences surrounding the palace. No. You chose the trenches-the pits alongside debtors, traitors and murderers. Is this your notion of the Guest Gift in your household, Tomad? Uruth? Strange, for I do not recall in my youth this most profound betrayal of Tiste Edur custom. Not in the House of my family!’
‘Rhulad. Emperor,’ Tomad said, almost stepping back in the face of his son’s rage, ‘have you seen these kin of ours? They are… pathetic. To look upon them is to feel stained. Dirtied. Their spirits are crushed. They have been made a mockery of all that is Tiste Edur. This was the crime the humans of Sepik committed against our blood, and for that we answered, Emperor. That island is now dead.’
‘Kin,’ the Emperor whispered. ‘Explain to me, Father, for I do not understand. You perceive the crime and deliver the judgement, yes, in the name of Edur blood. No matter how fouled, no matter how decrepit. Indeed, those details are without relevance-they in no way affect the punishment, except perhaps to make it all the more severe. All of this, Father, is a single thread of thought, and it runs true. Yet there is another, isn’t there? A twisted, knotted thing. One where the victims of those humans are undeserving of our regard, where they must be hidden away, left to rot like filth.
‘What, then, were you avenging?
‘Where-oh where, Father-is the Guest Gift? Where is the honour that binds all Tiste Edur? Where, Tomad Sengar, where, in all this, is my will? I am Emperor and the face of the empire is mine and mine alone!’
As the echoes of that shriek rebounded in the throne room, reluctant to fade, neither Uruth nor Tomad seemed able to speak. Their grey faces were the colour of ash.
Triban Gnol, standing a few paces behind and to the right of the two Edur, looked like a penitent priest, his eyes down on the floor. But the Errant, whose senses could reach out with a sensitivity that far surpassed that of any mortal, could hear the hammering of that old man’s wretched heart; could almost smell the dark glee concealed behind his benign, vaguely rueful expression.
Uruth seemed to shake herself then, slowly straightening. ‘Emperor,’ she said, ‘we cannot know your will when we are barred from seeing you. Is it the Chancellor’s privilege to deny the Emperor’s own parents? The Emperor’s own blood? And what of all the other Tiste Edur? Emperor, a wall has been raised around you. A Letherii wall.’
The Errant heard Triban Gnol’s heart stutter in its cage. ‘Majesty!’ the Chancellor cried in indignation. ‘No such wall exists! You are protected, yes. Indeed. From all who would harm you-’
‘Harm him?’ Tomad shouted, wheeling on the Chancellor. ‘He is our son!’
‘Assuredly not you, Tomad Sengar. Nor you, Uruth. Perhaps the protection necessary around a ruler might seem to you a wall, but-’
‘We would speak to him!’
‘From you,’ Rhulad said in a dreadful rasp, ‘I would hear nothing. Your words are naught but lies. You both lie to me, as Hannan Mosag lies, as every one of my fellow Tiste Edur lies. Do you imagine I cannot smell the stench of your fear? Your hatred? No, I will hear neither of you. However, you shall hear me.’
The Emperor slowly leaned back in his throne, his eyes hard. ‘Our kin will be set free. This I command. They will be set free. For you, my dear parents, it seems a lesson is required. You left them to rot in darkness. In the ships. In the trench-pits. From these egregious acts, I can only assume that you do not possess any comprehension of the horror of such ordeals. Therefore it is my judgement that you must taste something of what you inflicted upon our kin. You will both spend two months interred in the dungeon crypts of the Fifth Wing. You will live in darkness, fed once a day through chutes in the ceilings of your cells. You will have no-one but each other with whom to speak. You will be shackled. In darkness-do you understand, Uruth? True darkness. No shadows for you to manipulate, no power to whisper in your ear. In that time, I suggest you both think long of what Guest Gift means to a Tiste Edur, of honouring our kin no matter how far they have fallen. Of what it truly means to liberate.’ Rhulad waved his free hand. ‘Send them away, Chancellor. I am made ill by their betrayal of our own kin.’
The Errant, very nearly as stunned as were Tomad and Uruth, missed whatever gesture Triban Gnol used to summon forth the Letherii guards. They appeared quickly, as if conjured from thin air, and closed round Tomad and Uruth.
Letherii hands, iron-scaled and implacable, closed about Tiste Edur arms.
And the Errant knew that the end had begun.
Samar Dev’s hope of ending things before they began did not last long. She was still four strides from Karsa Orlong when he reached Icarium and Taralack Veed. The Toblakai had approached from the side, almost behind the Jhag-who had turned to contemplate the canal’s murky waters
– and she watched as the huge warrior reached out one hand, grasped Icarium by an upper arm, and swung him round.
Taralack Veed lunged to break that grip and his head was snapped by a punch that seemed almost casual. The Gral collapsed onto the pavestones and did not move.
Icarium was staring down at the hand clutching his left arm, his expression vaguely perturbed.
‘Karsa!’ Samar Dev shouted, as heads turned and citizens
– those who had witnessed Taralack Veed’s fate-moved away. ‘If you’ve killed the Gral-’
‘He is nothing,’ Karsa said in a growl, his eyes fixed on Icarium. ‘Your last minder, Jhag, was far more formidable. Now you stand here with no-one to attack me from behind.’
‘Karsa, he is unarmed.’
‘But I am not.’
Icarium was still studying that battered hand gripping his arm-the red weals of scarring left by shackles encircling the thick wrist, the dots and dashes of old tattoos-as if the Jhag was unable to comprehend its function. Then he glanced over at Samar Dev, and his face brightened in a warm smile. ‘Ah, witch. Both Taxilian and Varat Taun have spoken highly of you. Would that we had met earlier
– although I have seen you from across the compound-’
‘She is not your problem,’ Karsa said. ‘I am your problem.’
Icarium slowly turned and met the Toblakai’s eyes. ‘You are Karsa Orlong, who does not understand what it means to spar. How many comrades have you crippled?’
‘They are not comrades. Nor are you.’
‘What about me?’ Samar Dev demanded. ‘Am I not a comrade of yours, Karsa?’
He scowled. ‘What of it?’
‘Icarium is unarmed. If you kill him here you will not face the Emperor. No, you will find yourself in chains. At least until your head gets lopped off.’
‘I have told you before, witch. Chains do not hold me.’
‘You want to face the Emperor, don’t you?’
‘And if this one kills him first?’ Karsa demanded, giving the arm a shake that clearly startled Icarium.
‘Is that the problem?’ Samar Dev asked. And is that why you’re crippling other champions? Not that any will play with you any more, you brainless bully.
‘You wish to face Emperor Rhulad before I do?’ Icarium inquired.
‘I do not ask for your permission, Jhag.’
‘Yet I give it nonetheless, Karsa Orlong. You are welcome to Rhulad.’
Karsa glared at Icarium who, though not as tall, somehow still seemed able to meet the Toblakai eye to eye without lifting his head.
Then something odd occurred. Samar Dev saw a slight widening of Karsa’s eyes as he studied Icarium’s face. ‘Yes,’ he said in a gruff voice. ‘I see it now.’
‘I am pleased,’ replied Icarium.
‘See what?’ Samar Dev demanded.
On the ground behind her Taralack Veed groaned, coughed, then rolled onto his side and was sick.
Karsa released the Jhag’s arm and stepped back. ‘You are good to your word?’
Icarium bowed slightly then said, ‘How could I not be?’
‘That is true. Icarium, I witness.’
The Jhag bowed a second time.
‘Keep your hands away from that sword!’
This shout brought them all round, to see a half-dozen Letherii guards edging closer, their weapons unsheathed.
Karsa sneered at them. ‘I am returning to the compound, children. Get out of my way.’
They parted like reeds before a canoe’s prow as the Toblakai marched forward, then moved into his wake, hurrying to keep up with Karsa’s long strides.
Samar Dev stared after them, then loosed a sudden yelp, before clapping her hands to her mouth.
‘You remind me of Senior Assessor, doing that,’ Icarium observed with another smile. His gaze lifted past her. ‘And yes, there he remains, my very own personal vulture. If 1 gesture him to us, do you think he will come, witch?’
She shook her head, still struggling with an overwhelming flood of relief and the aftermath of terror’s cold clutch that even now made her hands tremble. ‘No, he prefers to worship from a distance.’
‘Worship? The man is deluded. Samar Dev, will you inform him of that?’
‘As you like, but it won’t matter, Icarium. His people, you see, they remember you.’
‘Do they now.’ Icarium’s eyes narrowed slightly on the Senior Assessor, who had begun to cringe from the singular attention of his god.
Spirits below, why was 1 interested in this monk in the first place? There is no lure to the glow of fanatical worship. There is only smug intransigence and the hidden knives of sharp judgement.
‘Perhaps,’ said Icarium, ‘I must speak to him after all.’
‘He’ll run away.’
‘In the compound, then-’
‘Where you can corner him?’
The Jhag smiled. ‘Proof of my omnipotence.’
Sirryn Kanar’s exultation was like a cauldron on the boil, the heavy lid moments from stuttering loose, yet he had held himself down on the long walk into the crypts of the Fifth Wing, where the air was wet enough to taste, where mould skidded beneath their boots and the dank chill reached tendrils to their very bones.
This, then, would be the home of Tomad and Uruth Sengar for the next two months, and Sirryn could not be more pleased. In the light of the lanterns the guards carried he saw, with immense satisfaction, that certain look on the Edur faces, the one that settled upon the expression of every prisoner: the numbed disbelief, the shock and fear stirring in the eyes every now and then, until they were once more overwhelmed by that stupid refusal to accept reality.
He would take sexual pleasure this night, he knew, as if this moment now was but one half of desire’s dialogue. He would sleep satiated, content with the world. His world.
They walked the length of the lowest corridor until reaching the very end. Sirryn gestured that Tomad be taken to the cell on the left; Uruth into the one opposite. He watched as the Edur woman, with a last glance back at her husband, turned and accompanied her three Letherii guards. A moment later Sirryn followed.
‘I know that you are the more dangerous,’ he said to her as one of his guards bent to fix the shackle onto her right ankle. ‘There are shadows here, so long as we remain.’
‘I leave your fate to others,’ she replied.
He studied her for a moment. ‘You shall be forbidden visitors.’
‘Yes.’
‘The shock goes away.’
She looked at him, and he saw in her eyes raw contempt.
‘In its place,’ he continued, ‘comes despair.’
‘Begone, you wretched man.’
Sirryn smiled. ‘Take her cloak. Why should Tomad be the only one to suffer the chill?’
She pushed the guard’s hand away and unlocked the clasp herself.
‘You were foolish enough to refuse the Edur Gift,’ he said, ‘so now you receive’-he waved at the tiny cell with its dripping ceiling, its streaming walls-‘the Letherii gift. Granted with pleasure.’
When she made no reply, Sirryn turned about. ‘Come,’ he said to his guards, ‘let us leave them to their darkness.’
As the last echoes of their footfalls faded, Feather Witch moved out from the cell in which she had been hiding. Guests had arrived in her private world. Unwelcome. These were her corridors; the uneven stones beneath her feet, the slick, slimy walls within her reach, the sodden air, the reek of rot, the very darkness itself-these all belonged to her.
Tomad and Uruth Sengar. Uruth, who had once owned Feather Witch. Well, there was justice in that. Feather Witch was Letherii, after all, and who could now doubt that the grey tide had turned?
She crept out into the corridor, her moccasin-clad feet noiseless on the slumped floor, then hesitated. Did she wish to look upon them? To voice her mockery of their plight? The temptation was strong. But no, better to remain unseen, unknown to them.
And they were now speaking to each other. She drew closer to listen.
‘… not long,’ Tomad was saying. ‘This, more than anything else, wife, forces our hand. Hannan Mosag will approach the women and an alliance will be forged-’
‘Do not be so sure of that,’ Uruth replied. ‘We have not forgotten the truth of the Warlock King’s ambition. This is of his making-’
‘Move past that-there is no choice.’
‘Perhaps. But concessions will be necessary and that will be difficult, for we do not trust him. Oh, he will give his word, no doubt. As you say, there is no choice. But what value Hannan Mosag’s word? His soul is poisoned. He still lusts for that sword, for the power it holds. And that we will not give him. Never within his reach. Never!’
There was a rustle of chains, then Tomad spoke: ‘He did not sound mad, Uruth.’
‘No,’ she replied in a low voice. ‘He did not.’
‘He Was right in his outrage.’
‘Yes.’
‘As were we, on Sepik, when we saw how far our kin had fallen. Their misery, their surrender of all will, all pride, all identity. They were once Tiste Edur! Had we known that from the first-’
‘We would have left them, husband?’
Silence, then: ‘No. Vengeance against the Malazans was necessary. But for our sake, not that of our kin. Rhulad misunderstood that.’
‘He did not. Tomad, those kin suffered the holds of the fleet. They suffered the pits. Rhulad did not misunderstand. We were punishing them for their failure. That, too, was vengeance. Against our very own blood.’
Bitterness now in Tomad’s voice: ‘You said nothing when judgement was cast, wife. Please yourself with this false wisdom if you like. If it is what I must hear from you, then I’d rather silence.’
‘Then, husband, you shall have it.’
Feather Witch eased back. Yes, Hannan Mosag would be told. And what would he then do? Seek out the Edur women? She hoped not. If Feather Witch possessed a true enemy, it was they. Was the Warlock King their match? In deceit, most certainly. But in power? Not any more. Unless, of course, he had hidden allies.
She would need to speak with the Errant. With her god.
She would need to force some… concessions.
Smiling, Feather Witch slipped her way up the corridor.
The fate of Tomad and Uruth Sengar drifted through her mind, then passed on, leaving scarce a ripple.
One subterranean tunnel of the Old Palace stretched inland almost to the junction of the Main Canal and Creeper Canal. This passage had been bricked in at three separate locations, and these barriers Hannan Mosag had left in place, twisting reality with Kurald Emurlahn in order to pass through them, as he had done this time with Bruthen Trana in tow.
The Warlock King’s followers had kept the warrior hidden for some time now, whilst Hannan Mosag worked his preparations, and this had not been an easy task. It was not as if the palace was astir with search parties and the like-the fever of confusion and fear was endemic these days, after all. People vanished with disturbing regularity, especially among the Tiste Edur. No, the difficulty resided with Bruthen Trana himself.
A strong-willed man. But this will do us well, provided 1 can pound into his skull the fact that impatience is a weakness. A warrior needed resolve, true enough, but there was a time and there was a place, and both had yet to arrive.
Hannan Mosag had led Bruthen to the chamber at the very end of the tunnel, an octagonal room of ill-fitted stones. The angular domed ceiling overhead, tiled in once bright but now black copper, was so low the room felt like a hut.
When the Warlock King had first found this chamber, it and at least forty paces of the tunnel had been under water, the depth following the downward gradient until the black, murky sludge very nearly brushed the chamber’s ceiling.
Hannan Mosag had drained the water through a modest rent that led into the realm of the Nascent, which he then closed, moving quickly in his crab-like scrabble to drag seven bundled arm-length shafts of Blackwood down the slimy corridor and into the chamber. It had begun refilling, of course, and the Warlock King sloshed his way to the centre, where he untied the bundle, then began constructing an octagonal fence, each stick a hand’s width in from the walls, two to each side, held mostly upright in the thick sludge covering the floor. When he had completed this task, he called upon his fullest unveiling of Kurald Emurlahn.
At a dreadful cost. Seeking to purge the power of all chaos, of the poisonous breath of the Crippled God, he was almost unequal to the task. His malformed flesh, his twisted bones, the thin, blackened blood in his veins and arteries; these now served the malign world of the Fallen One, forming a symbiosis of life and power. It had been so long since he had last felt-truly felt-the purity of Kurald Emurlahn that, even in its fragmented, weakened state, he very nearly recoiled at its burning touch.
With the air reeking of scorched flesh and singed hair, Hannan Mosag sought to force sanctification upon the chamber. Trapping the power of Shadow in this, his new, private temple. An entire night of struggle, the cold water ever rising, his legs numb, he began to feel his concentration tearing apart. In desperation-feeling it all slipping away-he called upon Father Shadow.
Scabandari.
Despairing, knowing that he had failed-
And sudden power, pure and resolute, burgeoned in the chamber. Boiling away the water in roiling gusts of steam, until oven-dry heat crackled from the stone walls. The mud on the floor hardened, cementing the Blackwood shafts.
That heat reached into Hannan Mosag’s flesh, down to grip his very bones. He had shrieked in agony, even as a new kind of life spread through him.
It had not healed him; had done nothing to straighten his bones or unclench scarred tissue.
No, it had been more like a promise, a whispering invitation to some blessed future. Fading in a dozen heartbeats, yet the memory of that promise remained with Hannan Mosag.
Scabandari, Father Shadow, still lived. Torn from bone and flesh, true, but the spirit remained. Answering his desperate prayer, gifting this place with sanctity.
I have found the path. I can see the end.
Now he crouched on the hard, desiccated ground and Bruthen Trana-forced to hunch slightly because of the low ceiling-stood at his side. The Warlock King gestured to the centre of the chamber. ‘There, warrior. You must lie down. The ritual is readied, but I warn you, the journey will be long and difficult.’
‘I do not understand this, Warlock King. This… this temple. It is true Kurald Emurlahn.’
‘Yes, Bruthen Trana. Blessed by the power of Father Shadow himself. Warrior, your journey itself is so blessed. Does this not tell you that we are on the right path?’
Bruthen Trana stared down at him, was silent for a half-dozen heartbeats, then said, ‘You, among all others, should have been turned away. By Father Shadow. Your betrayal-’
‘My betrayal means nothing,’ the Warlock King snapped. ‘Warrior, we are blessed! This place, it is not simply a temple of Kurald Emurlahn! It is a temple of Scabandari! Of our god himself! The very first such temple in this realm-do you not grasp what that means? He is coming back. To us.’
‘Then perhaps what we seek is pointless,’ Bruthen replied.
‘What?’
‘Scabandari will return, and he will stand before Rhulad Sengar. Tell me, will your Crippled God risk that confrontation?’
‘Do not be a fool, Bruthen Trana. You ask the wrong question. Will Scabandari risk that confrontation? Upon the very moment of his return? We cannot know Father Shadow’s power, but I believe he will be weak, exhausted. No, warrior, it is for us to protect him upon his return. Protect, and nourish.’
‘Has Fear Sengar found him then?’
Hannan Mosag’s dark eyes narrowed. ‘What do you know of that, Bruthen Trana?’
‘Only what most Edur know. Fear left, to seek out Father Shadow. In answer to his brother. In answer to you, Warlock King.’
‘Clearly,’ Hannan Mosag said in a tight voice, ‘there has been a reconciliation.’
‘Perhaps there has. You did not answer my question.’
‘I cannot. For I do not know.’
‘Do you dissemble yet again?’
‘Your accusation is unjust, Bruthen Trana.’
‘Let us begin this ritual. Tell me, will I journey in the flesh?’
‘No. You would die, and instantly, warrior. No, we must tug free your spirit.’
Hannan Mosag watched as Bruthen Trana moved to the centre of the chamber. The warrior divested himself of his sword and belt and lay down on his back.
‘Close your eyes,’ the Warlock King said, crawling closer. ‘Lead your mind into the comfort of Shadow. You shall feel my touch, upon your chest. Shortly after, all sense of your physical body will vanish. Open your eyes then, and you will find yourself… elsewhere.’
‘How will I know when I have found the path I seek?’
‘By virtue of seeking, you will find, Bruthen Trana. Now, silence please. I must concentrate.’
A short time later the Warlock King reached out and settled his hand upon the warrior’s chest.
As easy as that.
The body lying before him drew no breath. Left alone for too long it would begin to rot. But this was sanctified ground, alive now with the power of Kurald Emurlahn. There would be no decay. There would, for the body, be no passage of time at all.
Hannan Mosag pulled himself closer. He began searching Bruthen Trana’s clothing. The warrior had something hidden on him-something with an aura of raw power that struck the Warlock King’s senses like a stench. He worked through the pockets on the underside of the warrior’s leather cloak and found naught but a tattered note of some kind. He emptied the coin pouch tied to the sword-belt. A lone polished stone, black as onyx but nothing more than wave-eroded obsidian. Three docks-the local Letherii currency. And nothing else. With growing irritation, Hannan Mosag began stripping the warrior.
Nothing. Yet he could smell it, permeating the clothing.
Snarling, Hannan Mosag settled back, his hands twitching.
He’s taken it with him. That should have been impossible. Yet… what other possibility is there?
His fevered gaze found the crumpled note. Collecting it, he flattened the linen and read what had been written there.
At first he could make no sense of the statement-no, not a statement, he realized. A confession. A signature he had not seen before, so stylized in the Letherii fashion as to be indecipherable. Moments later, his mind racing, revelation arrived.
His eyes lifted, fixed upon Bruthen Trana’s now naked form. ‘What deceit were you planning with this, warrior? Perhaps you are cleverer than I had imagined.’ He paused, then smiled. ‘No matter now.’
The Warlock King drew his dagger. ‘Some blood, yes, to seal the sacred life of my temple. Scabandari, you would understand this. Yes. The necessity.’
He crawled up beside Bruthen Trana. ‘Deliver the one we seek, warrior. Yes. Beyond that, alas, my need for you ends.’ He raised the knife, then drove it hard into the warrior’s heart.
Glancing over at Bugg, Tehol Beddict saw his manservant complete an entire turn, his eyes tracking the huge Tarthenal as if they had been nailed to the barbaric warrior with his absurd stone sword. The cordon of guards flanking i he giant looked appropriately terrified. ‘Well,’ Tehol said, ‘he’s no Ublala Pung, now is he?’
Bugg did not even seem to hear him.
‘Oh, be like that, then. I think I want to talk to that other one-what did you call him? Oh yes, the Jhag. Any person who would not flinch in the grip of that Tarthenal is either brainless or-oh, not a pleasant thought-even scarier. Perhaps it would do to hesitate at this moment, mindful as ever of loyal manservant’s advice… no? No it is. So please, do stand there like a man whose heart has just dropped through to lodge somewhere underneath his spliver or some such organ I don’t want to know about. Yes, then, do that.’
Tehol set off towards the Jhag. The other savage who had been punched unconscious by the Tarthenal-the Tarthenal whom Ublala Pung had broken into the compound to find-was now sitting up, looking dazedly about. Blood still streamed from his thoroughly broken nose. The woman, attractive in an earthy way, Tehol noted again, was speaking to the tattooed giant, while a dozen paces away a foreigner stood gazing with something like awe upon either the woman or the Jhag.
In all, Tehol decided, an interesting scenario. Interesting enough to interrupt in his usual charming manner. As he drew closer, he spread his arms and announced, ‘Time, I think, for a more proper welcome to our fair city!’ And his blanket slipped down to gather at his feet.
Bugg, alas, missed this delightful introduction, for even as his eyes had clung to the Toblakai, so he found himself walking, following, step after step, as the warrior and his escort marched towards the Champion’s Compound-or whatever unintentionally ironic name the guileless officials of the palace had named it. They had come to within a street of the walled enclosure when all hopes of continuing came to a sudden but confused end. For the street was filled with people.
Emaciated, fouled with excrement, mostly naked flesh covered in welts and sores, they packed the street like abandoned children, lost and forlorn, blinking in the harsh afternoon sun. Hundreds of the wretched creatures.
The Toblakai’s guards halted at this unexpected barrier, and Bugg saw the foremost one reel back as if assailed by a stench, then turn to argue with the others. Their ‘prisoner’, on the other hand, simply bellowed at the mob to clear the way, then walked on, shouldering through the press.
He had gone perhaps twenty paces when he too drew to a halt. Shoulders and head above the crowd, he glared about, then shouted in a rude version of Malazan: ‘I know you! Once slaves of Sepik Island! Hear me!’
Faces swung round. The crowd shifted on all sides, forming a rough circle.
They hear. They are desperate to hear.
‘I, Karsa Orlong, will give answer! So I vow. Your kin refuse you. They cast you out. You live or you die and neither matters to them. Nor to any in this cursed land. To your fate I offer nothing! In vengeance for what has been done to you, I offer everything. Now, go your way-your chains are gone. Go, so that never again will they return to you!’ With that, the Toblakai warrior moved on, towards the compound’s main gate.
Not precisely what they needed to hear, I think. Not yet, anyway. In time, 1 suspect, it may well return to them.
No, this-here and now-this demands another kind of leadership.
The guards had retreated, seeking another route.
The few citizens within sight were doing the same. No-one wanted to see this legacy.
Bugg pushed himself forward. He drew upon his power, felt it struggle at this unseemly purpose. Damn my worshippers-whoever, wherever you are. I will have my way here! Power, devoid of sympathy, cold as the sea, dark as the depths. I will have my way.
‘Close your eyes,’ he said to the mob. The words were little more than a whisper, yet all heard them, solid and undeniable in their minds. Close your eyes.
They did. Children, women, men. Motionless now. Eyes closed tight, breaths held in sudden tension, perhaps even fear-but Bugg suspected that these people were beyond fear. They waited for what would come next. And did not move.
I will have my way. ‘Hear me. There is a place of safety. Far from here. I will send you there. Now. Friends will find you. They will bring healing, and you will have food, clothing and shelter. When you feel the ground shift beneath you, open your eyes to your new home.’
The sea did not forgive. Its power was hunger and swelling rage. The sea warred with the shore, with the very sky. The sea wept for no-one.
Bugg did not care.
Like any tidal pool motionless under the hot sun, his blood had grown… heated. And the smallest pool was filled with the promise of an ocean, a score of oceans-all their power could be held in a single drop of water. Such was Denaeth Rusen, such was Ruse, the warren where life was first born. And there, in that promise of life itself, will I find what I need.
Of empathy.
Of warmth.
The power, when it came, was a true current. Angry, yes, yet true. Water had known life for so long it held no memory of purity. Power and gift had become one, and so it yielded to its god.
And he sent them away.
Bugg opened his eyes, and saw before him an empty street.
In his room once more, Karsa Oflong lifted free his shoulder scabbard, then, holding the weapon and its harness in his hands, he stared down at the long table, on which sat an oil lantern set on low burn. After a moment he laid the sword and rigging down. And grew still once more.
Many things to consider, a heaving of foam and froth from some struck well deep within him. The slaves. Cast out because their lives were meaningless. Both these Edur and the Letherii were heartless, yet cowards. Eager to turn away from witnessing the cost of their indifference. Content to strip fellowship from any whenever it suited them.
Yet they would call him the barbarian.
If so, then he was well pleased with the distinction.
And, true to his savagely clear vision of right and wrong, he would hold in his mind that scene-those starved faces, the liquid eyes that seemed to shine so bright he felt burned by their touch-hold to it when he faced Emperor Rhulad. When he then faced every Letherii and every Edur who chose to stand in his way.
So he had vowed, and so all would witness.
This cold thought held him motionless for another dozen heartbeats, then a second image returned to him. Icarium, the one they called Lifestealer.
He had been moments from breaking that Jhag’s neck.
And then he had seen in the ash-skinned face… something. And with it, recognition.
He would yield to Karsa. He had given his word, and Karsa now knew that would not be broken.
There was Jhag blood in this Icarium, but of that Karsa knew little. Father or mother a Jaghut; it hardly mattered which.
Yet the other parent. Father or mother. Well, he had seen enough in Icarium’s face to know that blood. To know it like the whisper of his very own.
Toblakai.
In his opulent office, Chancellor Triban Gnol slowly sat down with uncharacteristic caution. A dust-laden, sweat-and blood-stained Letherii soldier stood before him, Hanked on his right by Sirryn Kanar, whose return from the crypts had coincided with the arrival of this messenger.
Triban Gnol looked away from the exhausted soldier. He would call in the scrub-slaves afterwards, to wash down the floor where the man now stood; to scent the air once again with pine oil. Eyes on a lacquered box on the desktop before him, he asked, ‘How many did you come in with, (Corporal?’
‘Three others. And an Edur.’
Triban Gnol’s head snapped up. ‘Where is he now?’
‘Died not three steps into the Domicile’s grand entrance, sir.’
‘Indeed? Died?’
‘He was grievously wounded, sir. And I knew enough to prevent any healer reaching him in time. I moved close to help him as he staggered, and gave the arrow in his back a few twists, then a deeper push. He passed out with the pain of that, and as I caught him and lowered him to the floor, I closed my thumb upon the great artery in his neck. I was able to hold that grip for thirty or more heartbeats. That was more than the Edur could withstand.’
And you a mere corporal in my employ? I think not. Sirryn, after we are done here, draft a promotion for this man.’
‘Yes, Chancellor.’
And so,’ Triban Gnol resumed, ‘being of rank among the remaining Letherii, the responsibility for reporting fell to you.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘I need the names of the others.’
The corporal seemed to flinch. ‘Sir, without my soldiers, I would never have-’
‘I understand your loyalty, and I commend you. Alas, we must face this situation with a clear eye. We must recognize necessity. Those soldiers are not mine. Not like you.’
‘They are loyal, sir-’
‘To whom? To what? No, the risk is too great. I will grant you this gift, however.’ The Chancellor’s gaze flicked to Sirryn. ‘Quick and painless. No interrogation.’
Sirryn’s brows rose. ‘None?’
‘None.’
As you command, sir.’
The corporal licked his lips, and then, clearly forcing out the words, he said, ‘I thank you, sir.’
The Chancellor’s nod was distracted, his gaze once more on the gleaming box of Blackwood on his desk. ‘I would ask again,’ he said, ‘there was no indication of who they were? No formal declaration of war?’
‘Nothing like that at all, sir,’ the corporal replied. ‘Hundreds of burning ships-that was their declaration of war. And even then, they seemed… few. No army-no sign at all of the landing.’
‘Yet there was one.’
‘Errant fend, yes! Sir, I rode with twenty Letherii, veterans all, and six Tiste Edur of the Arapay. Edur magic or not, we were ambushed in a clearing behind an abandoned homestead. One moment-thinking to make our camp-we were reining in amidst the high grasses-alone
– and the next there was thunder and fire, and bodies fly
ing-flying, sir, through the air. Or just limbs. Pieces. And arrows hissing in the dusk.’
‘Yet your troop recovered.’
But the corporal shook his head. ‘The Edur commanding us-he knew that the news we were bringing to the capital
– that of the burning ships and the dead Tiste bodies on the roads-that news demanded that we disengage. As many of us as could fight clear. Sir, with the Edur in the lead, we bolted. Seven of us at first-they had killed the other five
Edur in the first breath of the attack-seven, then five.’
‘Did this enemy pursue?’ Triban Gnol asked in a quiet, thoughtful voice.
‘No sir. They had no horses-none that we saw in any case.’
The Chancellor simply nodded at that. Then asked, ‘Human?’
‘Yes sir. But not Letherii, not tribal either, from what we could see. Sir, they used crossbows, but not the small, weak fisher bows such as we use in the shallows during the carp run. No, these were weapons of blackened iron, with thick cords and quarrels that punched through armour and shield. I saw one of my soldiers knocked flat onto his back by one such quarrel, dead in the instant. And-’
He halted when Triban Gnol raised a perfectly manicured finger.
‘A moment, soldier. A moment. Something you said.’ The Chancellor looked up. ‘Five of the six Edur, killed at the very beginning of the ambush. And the discovery of Edur corpses on the roads leading in from the coast. No Letherii bodies on those roads?’
‘None that we found, sir, no.’
‘Yet the sixth Edur survived that initial strike in the glade-how?’
‘It must have seemed that he didn’t. The quarrel in his back, sir, the one that eventually killed him. He was sent tumbling from his saddle. I doubt any one expected him to rise again, to regain his mount-’
‘You saw all this with your own eyes?’
‘I did, sir.’
‘That quarrel-before or after the thunder and fire?’
The corporal frowned, then said, ‘Before. Just before-not even a blink from one to the next, I think. Yes, I am certain. He was the very first struck.’
‘Because he was clearly in command?’
‘I suppose so, sir.’
‘This thunder and fire, where did the sorcery strike first? Let me answer that for myself. In the midst of the remaining Edur.’
‘Yes sir.’
‘You may go now, soldier. Sirryn, remain with me a moment.’
As soon as the door closed Triban Gnol was’ on his feet. ‘Errant fend! A damned invasion! Against the Letherii Empire!’
‘Sounds more like against the Edur,’ Sirryn ventured.
The Chancellor glared across at him. ‘You damned fool. That is incidental-an interesting detail at most. Without true relevance. Sirryn, the Edur rule us-perhaps only in name, yes, but they are our occupiers. In our midst. Able to command Letherii forces as befits their need.’
He slammed a fist down on the table. The lacquered box jumped, the lid clattering free. Triban Gnol stared at what lay within. ‘We are at war,’ he said. ‘Not our war-not the one we planned for-no. War!’
‘We will crush these invaders, sir-’
‘Of course we will, once we meet their sorcery with our own. That too is not relevant.’
‘I do not understand, sir.’
Triban Gnol glared at the man. No, you don’t. Which is why your rank will never rise higher, you pathetic thug. ‘When you are done with silencing the other soldiers, Sirryn-oh yes, and the promotion for our enterprising young corporal-I want you to deliver, by hand, a message to Karos Invictad.’
‘Sir?’
‘An invitation. He is to come to the palace.’
‘When?’
‘Immediately.’
Sirryn saluted. ‘Yes, sir.’
‘Go.’
As the door closed a second time, Triban Gnol stared down at his desk. Down into the box with its dislodged lid. Wherein sat a small, squat bottle. A third of its contents remaining.
Triban Gnol often drew satisfaction from the sight of it, the very knowledge of it when hidden within its box. He would recall pouring the contents into the vessel of wine from which he knew Ezgara Diskanar would drink, there on that last terrible day. In the throne room. Ezgara, and that pathetic First Eunuch. Nisall should have followed. Not Brys. No, anyone but Brys Beddict.
Regrettable, that.