Dancer's Lament

Chapter 8

GETTING OUT OF Li Heng proved far easier than Silk imagined it ought to be. He received orders to join a foraging party assembling in the pre-dawn hours on a north section of the Outer Round. Here he found Shalmanat, cloaked, her head wrapped in cloth and veil, awaiting him among a crew of their regular scouts and scavengers.

They were let down the wall by rope then jogged off through a maze of burned hovels. ‘What of the Kanese?’ he asked as they ran.

‘They do not chase these parties. I believe they hope to encourage deserting.’ Then Shalmanat raced off, and proved a tireless runner. Silk struggled to keep up. The path she chose took them past the churned dirt of one-time market gardens to surrounding burned fields, and then on to the open plains. Here the land lay gently rolling – uncounted leagues of unbroken grasslands dotted with copses of trees, small streams, and modest lakes stretching all the way north to the Fenn mountains. The country of the Seti horse clans, Ferret, Wolf, and Eagle. And the warrior society of the White Jackal who worshipped Ryllandaras, the Elder Hero himself. Brother, some said, to Treach, the tiger god of summer.

They jog-trotted through the heat of the day, Silk suffering terribly. He was no soldier. His namesake shirt hung from him soaked in sweat, and no doubt ruined by the salt stains to come. His feet in their heeled boots screamed in pain; he was certain he’d scoured all the flesh from his ankles.

Late in the day he commented, ‘We have seen no war bands.’

‘The Kanese have bribed them to hunt elsewhere.’

‘And Ryllandaras? What of him? How will you call him?’

‘He knows already that I have stepped on to his lands.’

‘You make him sound like some patron god of the plains.’

She cast him a long look. Only her dark eyes showed between head-wrap and veil. ‘He is. Of a sort.’

That silenced him. For a time. In the late afternoon she slowed her pace, perhaps out of consideration for him. He was only mildly chagrined – he had not the training, and she was not human, after all. Side by side they pushed through the tall sharp-edged grasses. ‘And what will we eat?’ he asked, by now quite hungry.

‘What did you bring?’

He laughed, a touch uneasily. ‘No one said anything about bringing food.’

‘There are no wayside inns or taverns out here, dear Silk.’

‘You are teasing me.’ At least he hoped she was. She handed him a strip of some fibrous dark material that resembled old burlap. ‘What is this?’

‘Dried meat.’

He sniffed it. It smelled of nothing. ‘What does one do with it, pray tell?’

‘Hold a bite of it in your cheek for the rest of the afternoon.’

He made a face. ‘Gods forgive me, what a disgusting thing to do.’

She laughed. ‘You are an urban creature, Silk.’

‘And urbane.’ He examined the desiccated strip, sniffed it again. ‘What was it?’

‘Horse.’

He put it away, grimacing. ‘I think I’ll wait.’

She laughed again, high and sweet-sounding, and Silk was pleased to hear it.

Towards dusk, however, he began to feel a little worried. No one ever travelled the Seti Plains in such a small party. It was tantamount to suicide. Even the Seti kept to war bands of twenty or more armed warriors. When the sun finally fell below the western horizon and the midges and other such biting insects multiplied into clouds surrounding them, he asked, ‘Should we not start a fire for the night?’

‘I will start a fire,’ she answered, and, peering round, pointed out the tallest of the modest hills about. Silk felt a growing unease; it seemed she was truly determined to invite a visit from the man-beast.

Atop the hillock, she searched about then selected an area and sat cross-legged. He sat next to her, wrapped his arms about his aching knees. ‘Why choose me – to accompany you, I mean?’

She nodded at the question. ‘I could not bring Ho. He and Ryllandaras have fought before.’

Silk’s brows shot up at this casual revelation. ‘Really? They’ve fought?’

‘Yes, once or twice. He and Ryllandaras . . . well, they have much in common. I could not bring Koroll, as the man-beast would take his presence as a challenge. Likewise Mara or Smokey.’

Silk observed, rather drily, ‘You are saying that he will not judge me a challenge?’

‘You are offended?’

‘Just my pride.’

She cast him another long look. ‘I did not think you so easily dismayed by the opinions of others.’

He offered a reassuring smile. ‘I am not.’

‘Good. That is one of the things I value about you, Silk. Your . . . independence of thought.’ She turned her attention to the ground before her then, and Silk said nothing as he recognized the beginnings of ritual preparations – though the exact ritual itself was a mystery to him, as it was of Tiste Liosan. Her slim pale hands danced in graceful designs and her breathing laboured in precise increments. Then she leaned back, her breath levelling in a long exhalation, and rested her hands on her knees. ‘It is done.’

‘I see nothing.’

‘Look through your Warren.’

It was a chill night as the sky was almost completely clear. The stars shone hard and bright. The constellation of the Mariner was high in the east, while the Weaver curved now towards the western horizon. He summoned his Warren. What was revealed drove him backwards like a glimpse into a furnace. A churning pillar of puissance spun before him. He bent his head back but could not glimpse its top. ‘What is this?’ he yelled, awed, though the spectacle was utterly silent.

‘A beacon few can see.’

‘More than he will see this.’

‘And they are welcome to approach – knowing he will be coming as well.’

He shivered despite his patron’s complete confidence. ‘What now?’

‘Now we wait.’

He nodded, accepting this, though unhappy about it. He’d detested the dried meat, but now found himself wishing there was more of it. Or at least a drink. He’d brought nothing of the sort himself. He drew breath and asked, ‘Have you any—’

Shalmanat held out a curved goat-hide waterskin, such as the Seti carry. Now definitely chagrined, he took it and pulled out the wooden stopper and drank. It was plain water, but warm from having been carried next to her body. Perhaps hung over her breast, or her stomach. He savoured the warmth.

Stoppering the waterskin, he handed it back and regarded her, now sitting within his arm’s reach. Her silver hair hung about her shoulders, blown lightly by the weak night winds; her face was long – too long by contemporary Hengan standards of beauty. The eyes too far apart, the lips too thin. But he knew her secret now. She was of the Tiste. An ancient race with a sad history, if he recalled the songs he’d heard correctly.

He cleared his throat and asked, ‘Why Li Heng? I mean, what brought you here? If I may ask.’

She nodded absently at the question and leaned back, setting her hands to the earth behind her. ‘A fair question, Silk.’ Then she was quiet for a time, gathering her thoughts. ‘I fought in the wars, you know.’

‘What wars?’

She turned to him, surprised. ‘Why, the wars of light and darkness, of course.’

His breath was punched from him in stunned amazement. Oh, of course . . .

She continued, perhaps unaware of his astonishment, ‘I was a staff aid to – well, to one of Osserc’s officers. They used to call them the Daughters of Light, unofficially. The Andii never did become accustomed to war, you know. But we did. We had the tradition of an older legion to guide us. Yes, we Liosan took to war far too well.’ She clenched her lips then, and lowered her gaze. ‘I, however, lost my taste for it. I came to . . . admire . . . one of the leaders of the Andii. In time I came to see the struggle as . . . self-defeating.’

Her gaze rose, perhaps tracing the height of the invisible pillar of Liosan magery before her. ‘I fled the bloodshed,’ she murmured, almost dreamily. ‘Found these crossroads. And here I set my seat and tried to establish a peace. Tried to build something rather than destroy. And,’ she lifted her shoulders in a shrug, ‘there you are.’

Silk had no idea what to say. What could one say to such a confidence? He cleared his throat once more. ‘Well . . . we are grateful for all that you have done.’

She smiled, wistfully. ‘Thank you.’

Unable to set his fears to rest, he asked, ‘And Ryllandaras? You do not fear him?’

‘Fear him? Yes, I fear him greatly. However, I know that he will not harm me.’

And what of me, Silk wondered? Perhaps she assumed her personal safety extended to him – in which case he hoped it was more than mere assumption. Nevertheless, he recalled how she had stressed that it was all about challenge with the man-beast, so he resolved not to draw any weapon, and to work on projecting his utter harmlessness, a particular specialty of his.

Was this why she’d brought him? Because of this rather unusual talent? Well, he supposed he would find out soon enough.

The night darkened as they waited. Eventually, it became too much for him, exhausted as he was. His eyes kept drooping, his head nodding. Despite his dread and the cold, he gave in and lay down. He tucked his head on one arm, and slept.

A stink woke him. A pervasive animal musk penetrated his uneasy dreams until it made him wrinkle his nose and nearly cough. The shortage of breath choked him and he started up, making a face. ‘What is that—’

A curt wave from Shalmanat silenced him.

She was standing, facing the west. He clambered to his feet with an effort, kneaded his numb legs. It was light, but the sun had yet to rise above the eastward rim of the world. Thin streamers of clouds high above glowed pink and gold. The wind pulled at his shirt and vest, uncomfortably chill.

Something was approaching. It walked with a slow heavy gait, swinging from side to side, its heavy arms hanging forward, ash-grey in the dim light. While Silk watched – aching to draw a weapon – it paused, raising a black snout to scent the air, warily.

The man-beast wary? This was a new revelation for Silk. But then he considered all the many stories relating the countless hunts that had set out against this one. All of which had come to singularly messy ends.

Evidently satisfied, the beast continued onward, climbing the hillock. Silk could not help but sidle over a touch closer to Shalmanat. As the beast closed, it reared taller and taller until a daunted Silk realized that even hunched over as it was, nearly on all four limbs, it yet stood twice the height of a man; should it straighten fully it would no doubt reach thrice. Its tangled pelt of sandy-yellow fur lightened to creamy white down its throat and chest. Muscles knotted its thick wiry limbs and its long fingers ended in amber claws the length of fighting knives. Its blackened muzzle was long yet thick, carrying something of the jackal, or hunting dog. However, the obvious intelligence in its pale blue eyes suggested wolfishness to Silk. Ryllandaras was an embodiment of the canine-human melding in all its various manifestations.

The creature closed upon them until Silk almost shouted his alarm and shrank away. Then, just as Shalmanat raised a hand in greeting, it halted and, astonishingly, sank to one knee.

Silk thought he had reached the limits of horror until the beast spoke, when it stirred his hair to hear intelligible words issue from such a monstrosity.

‘Shalmanat, I greet you,’ it ground out in a slurred and distorted voice. ‘My enemy . . . and my love.’

‘I do not seek your regard,’ she answered, ‘but I thank you.’

Straightening, the creature now loomed over them like a pale thundercloud. It motioned one clawed hand to Silk. ‘Is this your trap, then, my love? Am I to dismiss this one to my peril?’

The Protectress shook her head. ‘No. No traps. Merely someone to watch my back out here upon these plains. For I hear it is dangerous to travel them.’

Something like a cross between a growling bark and a laugh from the beast answered that. ‘Indeed it is. And as I have said before – no trap is necessary for you have already captured me.’

The Protectress’s answering smile was warm, though tinged by sadness. ‘Is this to be yet another tale of star-crossed lovers? The old story of the terrifying monster captivated by beauty?’

‘To me you are terrifying, this is true.’

Shalmanat laughed so freely that Silk felt a knife-blade of jealousy twist his gut. Her smile fading, she crossed her arms. ‘I invoke our agreement,’ she said. ‘I would have you fall upon these Kanese invaders.’

The creature rumbled a low growl that set the ground beneath Silk’s feet vibrating. ‘There are far easier prey upon the plains,’ it answered, reluctant.

‘It is my request. Would you deny it?’

The beast did not answer. Only its low panting breath sounded in the night. It scanned the nearby grounds as if searching for enemies.

It fears something, Silk realized. Some hold Shalmanat has over it.

‘Shall I withdraw my prohibitions upon travel and trade across the plains?’ she asked. ‘Shall I allow trading posts to be built at every seasonal camp? Every butte or river fork? What will become of the Seti then? What will become of you when towns rise round those posts? When game grows scarce and the ground is broken to the plough? Where will you run then?’

The creature waved a heavy clawed hand, growling and hissing. ‘You are the monster here, Shalmanat. You know my answer.’

She raised her chin, her mouth set. ‘Very well. Obey, then.’

‘So it shall be. So my love remains my greatest enemy. And the one who has chained me.’

A vision came to Silk of the subterranean chamber, the stone sarcophagus, and the chains bumping and rattling in the dark. Was this beast prescient? Perhaps some gift of foresight was afforded it as it was to some, after all, a god.

Shalmanat nodded curtly. ‘We are done, then. Drive them from the north shore.’

The beast inclined its great mangy head. ‘It shall be as you command.’ And with that it turned and loped off on all fours, quickly reaching a pace Silk was certain no horse could hope to match.

The two watched it disappear between the rolling hills as the sun broached the east. Shalmanat let go a long sigh and rubbed one arm. Silk thought her mood certainly melancholy, perhaps even regretful. And he, who had never known the emotion in regard to anyone, found himself jealous of a monster.

* * *

She stood on a rooftop in the quiet of night, overlooking a large compound in the north of the outermost precinct of the city. The strange phenomena disturbing Kurald Galain, the Elder Warren of Darkness, seemed to emanate from there.

She wished to solve this mystery, but she was wary as well. Was this a renegade priestess of Elder Dark? Or a gifted thaumaturgic researcher, a sorcerer out of Jacuruku? For all she knew it might even be one of her brothers or sisters. Not all were accounted for. Barging in would force a confrontation . . . one the city surrounding her might not survive.

And K’rul would disapprove.

She lowered her gaze to her hands, turning them over as if examining them for the first time. So clumsy, so ineffectual, these instruments. How hard it was to be the last. The last to give herself over to a role, persona, or manifestation – call it what you would. Not that any choice remained even if she wished to abandon her path. The High King’s curse had seen to that.

The mortal’s realm yet remained open to her. And with it – a mortal’s fate.

She clenched her fists. Felt the slide of the ligaments pulling the bones together; felt the pulse of the blood within. Such a fragile vessel. It was a wonder anything could be accomplished by them. And yet, wonders had.

It was a mystery beyond her kind’s ken. How could this be? Were they missing something? Was there some flaw within them? This was the mystery she had given over her life to solving.

She felt, rather than heard, the light footfalls about her and let her head sink in frustration. ‘I thought your masters and I had reached an agreement,’ she said.

‘We acknowledge only one master,’ a voice responded from her rear.

She turned, took in four black-clad figures ranged about her. ‘Go back and ask him if this is his will,’ she answered.

‘We do not take orders from you,’ said another.

She turned to the second speaker. ‘That was not an order. That was a way out. I suggest you take it.’

‘We suggest you leave the city. We grant no special privileges.’

She drew a hard breath to control her annoyance, then said, slowly and deliberately: ‘I neither have, nor want, any part in your little dispute.’

‘You force us to act, then,’ the second answered, and the four shifted, readying fighting daggers, their blades as dark as night.

She merely stilled momentarily and in that instant the tiles beneath her feet gathered a layer of frost and the air around her crackled. Mist now ran from her in rivulets, curling and streaming. She reached out to a Nightblade and he gasped, clutched at a throat now choked by crystals of frost, and toppled.

The other three rushed at once.

She brushed aside the first’s thrust. The wrist froze and shattered as she blocked. The blade of the second burst into shards as it slammed against her, while the body of the third fell one way and the head another when the woman’s hand brushed through the neck as if it were thin cloth.

The first two tore at their throats, unable to produce a sound, and fell.

The woman knelt over one, considered the man’s cowled upturned face. Ice glittered on the cloth. She watched as a wave of crystals swept over the eyes, turning them into frosted milky orbs as hard as stone. ‘I am Sister of Cold Nights,’ she told the corpse. ‘Do not try my ire.’

Straightening, she examined her hands once again and cursed under her breath. This was not, she knew, what K’rul had intended. She crossed the rooftop and descended to the street, still irritated; that had been one of the best overlooks she’d found.

* * *

Hallens had everyone on full alert in the days and nights following the Nightblades’ intimation of an attack upon the Protectress. Nothing, however, changed at all. No alarms, searches, attempted arrests, or condemnations. No tumult or confusion showed itself among the staff and functionaries of the palace. Food was delivered as before; laundry taken away for cleaning without dispute.

It was, Iko had to admit, the strangest house arrest she’d ever heard of. The only change of behaviour was enforced among the Sword-Dancers themselves: none walked alone during the day; twice the normal numbers stood watch through the night; and a self-imposed curfew was in force.

Questions raised by these new orders were met by silence from Hallens. Iko’s personal status as the sisters’ whipping-girl remained. She found no opportunity for any private conversation with her commander.

The situation was almost more of a trial to her patience than she could bear. Her sisters’ disdain and superior airs galled her more than she ever imagined it would have. Was status among her sisters so important to her after all? She was, she decided, a disappointment to herself.

All this time she’d been so certain that common opinion meant nothing to her. That she knew her value and those who could not see it were fools. Now, staring out of a barred window, her arms crossed fiercely, fists knotted beneath her upper arms, she wondered who was the fool after all. When all those around you considered you a fool, so you were, by all accounts. And thus to history as well. For when people were questioned regarding the past they would say, ‘That little fool? She was no use.’ And so it would be recorded, and so is history shown to be as accurate as those consulted in its compiling.

To add to her foul mood the worst of the offenders among her sisters, led by Yvonna and Torral, now came crowding around her. ‘Is this your doing, then?’ Yvonna sneered.

Still facing out of the window, and knowing full well what they meant, she answered, ‘Is what my doing?’

‘All these new rules. The curfew.’

‘What do you care? You never went out anyway.’

‘Did you try running off?’ Torral taunted. ‘You a traitor to our lord king?’

Iko rounded on this one – not the best swordswoman of them, but one of the stronger, and certainly the most gleefully brutal. ‘Don’t push me today, Torral,’ she said, sounding tired even to her ears.

The woman’s eyes lit up with the chance to deal pain. ‘I wouldn’t even break a sweat.’

‘Just take your stupid games elsewhere.’

Torral pursed her full lips into a moue of petulance. ‘Oh, poor little Iko. Poor little baby girl. Run to Hallens now, won’t you?’

Iko raised her eyes to the roof and hissed a long-suffering breath between her teeth. ‘Fine.’ She waved Torral to follow. ‘C’mon. Let’s do this. I’m bored to death anyway.’

Torral’s one-sided smile climbed even higher. ‘You’re stupider than I thought.’ She pushed on ahead to the main hall of their rooms, trailed by her gaggle of hangers-on. ‘Practice blades here!’ she shouted.

Iko followed, alone.

All the sisters gathered round. Furniture and rugs were hurriedly pushed aside. Iko stripped down to loose trousers and a tunic, slipped off her sandals. One of her sisters, Rei, crossed to her carrying a wooden practice blade.

‘She’ll go for the ribs,’ Rei warned, speaking low.

‘I know. And thanks.’

Rei just gave a sour smile. ‘Better win, or she’ll be unbearable afterwards.’

‘Don’t I know it.’ Iko glanced about, saw Hallens among the crowd, her arms crossed, looking on with barely concealed disapproval. But not interfering. No, better to let them vent a little steam, Iko imagined. Not that that would help her when she was lying on the ground with a broken skull.

Torral’s gang urged her on and laughed at muttered comments too low for Iko to make out.

No one offered her any encouragement. Most, however, were quiet.

Torral stepped out quickly, making the air hum with cuts from her blade. ‘Let’s go, little one. No chance to run away now.’

Iko couldn’t believe how infuriating the woman was; she decided to come out fighting. ‘Does it look like I’m running, you stupid cow?’

Torral’s brows shot up and her hard smile widened. ‘Oho! The kitten’s trying out its claws! Have to slap her down, I think.’

Iko stepped out and struck a ready stance, her body sideways, the blade extended, its tip resting at just over the height of her nose. Torral bowed mockingly then responded. She eased forward until a single sword-length separated them – they were now, effectively, committed to a mutual kill zone.

Iko waited, her attention on her opponent’s chest – her centre of gravity. At the same time, however, she took in the wider picture as a sort of flowing commentary on where that centre of gravity might be headed.

Torral shifted into an overhead ready position, blade held downward in a vertical line bisecting her shoulder.

Iko ignored the invitation to enter into the dance of stance, pose, and counter-pose. The dance might be stylish and impressive to onlookers – especially the ignorant ones – but in her view it had no place in a real fight. Torral, she knew, wanted the fight. And so she would wait; Torral would have to come to her.

Iko was a counter-attacker by instinct. She tended to wait for her opponent to commit herself then responded in the most deadly and efficient manner. She also knew that her waiting suited Torral; the woman loved to rush in to overbear and punish her opponents. In short, Iko had the advantage of knowing Torral better than Torral knew her.

After a series of pretty stances – all technically very well executed – meant to impress her lackeys and admirers among the Sword-Dancers, Torral turned serious. She struck the forward ready pose, a power stance, her favourite. Iko noted the tensing of the shoulders, the flaring nostrils as Torral drew in extra air for the rush.

The flurry came so fast she had no chance to think. At this level everything moved beyond conscious thought; the body ran on muscle memory, moving instinctively, while the mind . . . well, the mind floated, attempting not to interfere just yet. No one this proficient planned what to do. You did not plan . . . you waited. Waited for an opening.

The staccato clack of the training swords rang like an avalanche of clattering rocks within the chambers. Torral would have driven Iko right across the great main central plaza if Iko were not so true to the rule of always stepping sideways, always circling round. Torral followed raining blow after blow that Iko slipped and parried while she watched . . . waiting.

Iko almost felt sorry for her sister. For they were in truth dancing now.

And she was leading.

Her opening came when she was piqued to see Torral employ the same series of cuts twice in a row. Was this how low her opinion was of her, she wondered, that she should be so careless? Or perhaps it was a measure of how sure she was of winning. In any case, Iko had one possible key and waited, watching.

Torral continued in her relentless attack, ever swinging, her blade clacking from Iko’s in an unremitting display of aggression. Another would have bided her time, waiting for the woman to pause out of utter exhaustion, but Iko knew better. This was Torral’s natural pace – she could maintain it all day. Keep and hold the initiative was the woman’s credo.

And so Iko circled, ever watching for the first of that repeated series of cuts. It appeared, and in that instant Iko’s body twitched in muscle memory. She slipped the second cut to ride over the extended blade and strike the woman across the left of her face with the crack of wood against bone.

Torral staggered backwards, more in shock than pain. She pressed a hand to her mouth and came away with blood. Her dark pupils, fixed upon Iko, grew wide in outrage. ‘You little shit,’ she breathed, nearly in disbelief, and charged once more.

The bout should have been over at the moment of that killing blow. But none intervened as Torral’s blade was a blur against Iko’s, hammering and thrusting in a dizzying display of fury and technical brilliance.

And still Iko circled, giving ground, leading her opponent in another dance.

Until she saw a chance to counter, this time across the gut. Winded, the other woman fell to her knees, gasping for breath. Iko considered the bout finished then.

Yet Torral struggled to rise once more, gasping and spitting, slurring curses.

Iko had had enough. She stepped in, sword raised, meaning to strike at half-power across the back of the skull to knock the fool out, when a shout of command from Hallens froze her arms.

‘Enough!’

She backed away from where Torral still struggled to rise. The swordwomen parted for Hallens. ‘We will need all swords for what is to come,’ she told Iko, waving her off. She yanked Torral up by the arm, shook her. ‘A good bout. A good lesson – yes, Torral?’ Wiping the spit and blood from her chin the dazed woman gave a curt resentful nod. ‘Yes. Very good,’ Hallens answered for her. She pushed her into the arms of her followers among the Sword-Dancers then walked off without any acknowledgement of Iko’s performance.

Across the way, grinning like a cat, Rei mouthed a silent Well done.

Iko handed over the battered wooden blade and stormed away. What stupidity! What a useless unnecessary waste of time and effort. None of this was bringing them any closer to an answer to their current predicament.

She returned to the barred window, crossed her quivering, numb arms. She didn’t even feel good about winning. It could be bad for the unit’s cohesion. Torral might just be dense enough to be resentful of the beating, though she’d brought it upon herself. Iko feared she might have made an enemy among her sisters. Better, perhaps, if she’d simply taken a hit and gone down. Then it would be over. Everyone would be satisfied and leave her alone as not worth their time.

Now she had yet one more stupid thing to worry about.

* * *

He decided he would do it before the striking of the mid-night bell. Rafall usually stayed up far into the later hours going over his books. He would not expect a visitor. It would be routine; no different from all his earlier visits.

Rafall would be alone, as he almost always was. He’d enter, strike, and leave with none even being aware of his arrival. Rafall would even greet him as a friend. Invite him to sit. Offer a drink. It would be simple. Comically so. Not a test of his abilities at all, he reflected.

No – this was intended as a test of something very different.

Something Dorin was not certain he wished to succeed in.

He yanked on the cord wrapped round his forearm, tested the tiny collapsed grapnel snug there against his wrist and wondered, why this hesitation?

The test was straightforward, surely.

Yes. A test of his dependability. His degree of, dare he say . . . pliability? Or perhaps . . . prostration?

His teeth were clenched now, and he clasped his hands to either side of his neck, where a hidden iron lip, a slim collar, rose from his armoured vest. It was meant as a channel that could possibly catch a blade – a light one, of course. Something he’d yet had to test, though a compatriot in Tali swore by the precaution.

He ran his thumbs along the cloth-disguised iron ridge and the memory came to him of that prick, Tran, yanking Loor by the hair to a pillar for his test. His initiation, Tran had called it. His initiation into humiliation, degradation, and meek submission in order to belong.

Pung, he believed, suspected some sort of prior patronage or business relationship between him and Rafall. And thus the test. This initiation into Pung’s ranks.

Was this to be his test of submissiveness and self-degradation?

Yet what did it matter? He’d trained as a killer. It was his job. Nothing more. Why then the distaste for this one? It was not a question of morality. No, he’d dispensed with any such artificial external measures of right or wrong long ago. It was internal. It had everything to do with his own self-measure.

The problem was, he’d sworn a vow to himself. More than a vow, really. A pledge to what he considered himself to be. To his integrity. His pride.

He might kill any man or woman . . . but he would bend to none.

There. It was out in the open. Now the question was what to do about it. He let go a long hard exhalation and grasped hold of the edges of the window before him and leaned there, breathing loudly into the night. His arms trembled, rigid. As if ready to yank him out instantly – or to hold him back. He felt as if he were drowning.

He’d agreed. He had to go through with it. Yet he’d already decided not to join any crew or gang or party where any sort of submission was the condition of entry. He was too stupidly proud, he supposed, to compromise himself. That’s just how it was.

The answer, it came to him, would be to leave it to Rafall. The man had done right by him so far. Certainly, he’d knocked him down the day he’d entered the city – but that was business, before they’d struck any agreement or professional understanding. He held no grudge for that. It had been a rather bracing lesson, in fact.

There. He would put the point to Rafall. Yes. And the argument would be very pointed indeed.

*

The yell rang through the rooms in the early pre-dawn hours. Rafall’s guards bolted from their chairs where they dozed before the only access to their boss’s rooms – the base of a steep ladder up to the garret chambers. They bashed and hammered the closed trapdoor, but found it blocked by some weight above, and so dashed down the stairs and out to the street to climb up from the outside.

Yet Rafall’s headquarters had been deliberately designed to be near impossible to access from without, and so it was some time before the nimblest and lightest of his boys and girls managed the tricky ascent. Along the way, up gable and overhang, they encountered splashes of fresh drying blood and signs of a struggle in broken slate shingles, scraps of torn cloth, and a dropped bloodied knife – one of Rafall’s.

Within, they levered the furniture from the trapdoor and allowed the guard’s entrance. They searched, but amid the clutter of the struggle found no sign of Rafall himself. Blood lay everywhere, quite liberally so. One girl discovered a crossbow bolt driven into the soft wood panelling of the wall opposite the man’s desk. Their patron’s last ditch defence, missing its mark.

Suspicion immediately fixed upon Pung. The ugly toad had long been envious of Rafall’s ease and camaraderie with the street youths – a touch wholly beyond him. Many were for going after him themselves. But Gremain, Rafall’s long-time lieutenant and eldest among the thieves and clubbers, reined in the hotter heads, cuffed a few, and ordered them to clean up while he and a few others took word of this to Urquart. It would then be up to him, the man Rafall answered to, to decide on any course of action.

This settled the matter and everyone set to clearing up – simultaneously pocketing whatever they could lay their hands on and searching for any hidden cache. Gremain nodded to a few of his most trusted lads and they came down the ladder after him. He knew that if Urquart were true to form, then all Rafall’s old territory should come to him in an orderly straightforward descent. In the meantime, he’d let the others ransack the man’s quarters. It would serve to help smooth over any resentment among those who might otherwise consider the job theirs.

*

At noon the next day, a battered half-sunk open boat loaded with refugees fleeing Heng pulled up on the south shore of the Idryn. Kanian soldiers met them there and searched for any weapons, while confiscating any valuables they could find. Their captain then read aloud from a prepared document stating that it was solely by the grace of the good King Chulalorn of Itko Kan, head of the Southern League, that the refugees were granted freedom from the Hengan yoke, and that from this point onward they were to consider themselves subjects of said Southern League, and legally owed their allegiance to King Chulalorn.

Among the rag-tag mass of refugees was one rather overweight Hengan with a full oiled beard, his fingers bearing indentations where rings had been yanked away by the soldiers, and bleeding earlobes where other rings had been just as brutally removed. He wore a torn and bloodstained shirt and trousers of fine buff leather. He’d obviously taken a head wound recently as the cloth wrapped there was still red with fresh blood. Long after most of the others had gone their way this fellow stood peering westward, to where the distant walls of Heng were just visible through the trees lining the shore. He sighed, his thick rounded shoulders rising and falling, and he tucked his hands into the belt that held his wide belly and frowned pensively. Then he too turned away, shaking his head, and started on the long walk east downriver to Cawn.