Forge of Darkness

FOURTEEN

When he was young and still living with his family on the Durav estate, Cryl remembered one summer when a tree-fall blocked a stream in the wood of the grounds. Water backed up to form a pool, and then a pond. He recalled seeing the mound of an ant nest in the path of that rising water. Day after day he returned to it, watching one side of the nest slowly crumbling to the seep of water. Atop the mound the ants continued their usual frenetic activity, as if blind to what was coming. On the last day of his visit, he discovered only a sodden heap of mud and twigs where the nest had been, and in the black muck he saw eggs and drowned ants.

He thought of that nest now, inexplicably, as he stood staring at the smear of smoke above the forest to the east, watching it spread across the sky. The procession had drawn to a halt while Lord Jaen rode out with a dozen Houseblades to investigate, a venture from which they were yet to return. Cryl remained with the carriage, ostensibly in command of the remaining eight Houseblades, although there were no orders to give.

Upon this journey, to the place of the wedding, Enesdia was required to remain cloistered, hidden from sight by the closed shutters on the carriage windows, and communicating only via a tube with her maid, Ephalla, who sat beside the driver on the bench. Somewhere, on the north road out from Kharkanas, Lord Andarist would be similarly bound to solitude, assuming they had departed the city yet. There were symbolic meanings to this ancient tradition, but Cryl wasn’t much interested in them. As the poet Gallan once said, traditions hid the obvious and habits steadied the world.

When next he rested eyes upon Enesdia, she would be facing her future husband, on the threshold of the edifice Andarist had built to proclaim his love for her. And Cryl would smile, from where he stood at her father’s side — a hostage made brother and a brother filled with brotherly love.

But I am not her brother.

There was virtually no traffic upon the road, and the line of trees off to their left, gap-holed by the beginnings of trails, seemed empty of life: wood like bone, leaves like flakes of ash. The river on the right showed them a mud-clotted bank where plants had torn away in unseasonal currents and high water. As they had travelled down from Enes House, they had almost kept pace with Dorssan Ryl’s southward flow, but now the familiar water seemed to have rushed past and in its place was something darker, stranger. He knew that such notions were nonsense. The currents were unending, and whatever sources of the river existed high in the mountains of the north, they too never ceased.

After one more long searching study of the trail mouth in which the troop had vanished some time earlier, Cryl turned and strode down from the road to draw closer to the river. The black water held hidden every promise, and even to reach down into it was to find nothing to grasp. He thought of its chill touch, and the numbness waiting in its depths. River god. Your water does not run clear, and so you remain blind to the shore and the lands beyond. But I wonder… do you hunger? For all that you cannot have? All that you cannot defeat? The traditions of current, the habits of flooding, and the mysteries you guard: these are the things the Deniers would worship. And I see no crime in that.

This wedding would be his last responsibility to the Enes family. His days of being a hostage were coming to an end. He felt like a crow lost in a flock of songbirds, beleaguered by gentle songs and shamed by his own croaking call. The Duravs had given themselves to the sword, had made their lives traditions of violence and habits of killing, and though Cryl had yet to end someone else’s life, he knew that should the necessity arise he would not hesitate.

He thought back to Captain Scara Bandaris and his troop, and the miserable, snarling pack of Jheleck children they had been escorting. He had felt comfortable in their presence. Understanding the mind of a soldier was a simple task; even meeting the feral eyes of those savage pups had proved an exercise in recognition, despite the shiver that ran up the back of his neck.

The Enes family now felt alien to him, and his ties to it were stretching, pulling apart, fraying like rotted tendons. He was ready to draw a blade and slash through the last of them. I am done with flighty young women and sad old men. I am done with foul-tempered artists who see too much. Done with giggling maids who flash bared flesh my way at every opportunity, as if I am but a slave to temptation. I leave Osserc to such legendary prowess — if Scara’s tales are of any worth on that account.

Spinnock, where are you now? I would ride at your side, and feel at home.

He might even join Scara’s troop. The Greater House of Durav was dying. It might already be dead, slipping into the shadow of their cousins, the Hend, who were surely on the rise. Cryl had been isolating himself and besides, he had no loyal retainer to bring rumours to him — rumours and opinions none would dare utter to Cryl himself. But he suspected that his station was low, his prospects few. In any case, even the thought of prowling the Citadel, like a cur hunting noble blood, disgusted him.

The river slid past before his eyes. If he surrendered, here and now, and offered up a prayer to the river god, his plea would be modest. Swallow up the turmoil in my skull. Pull it all away and send it down to the dark mud, the furred snags and slimy boulders. Take this all away, I beg you.

A single slash of the sword and love dies.

He heard horses behind him. Riding at a heavy canter. Turning away from the river, his prayer unspoken and no surrender yielded to the bank — his knees free of stains — he made his way back on to the road.

Jaen’s visage was dark, and Cryl immediately saw a pall over the Houseblades behind the Lord. Faces were closed in beneath the rims of helms. Swords rattled loose in their scabbards as the troop reined in. His eyes fixing once more upon Jaen, Cryl was shocked to see a man transformed. The songbird opens wings of black, and in his wake wheel a dozen crows.

I am such a fool. He is a man from the wars — how could I have forgotten this?

Lord Jaen dismounted. Ephalla had bent to set an ear to the tube mouth and was now attempting to snare Jaen’s attention, but the Lord ignored her as he made his way over to Cryl. A gesture invited the young Durav to return once again to the river’s bank.

Upon the muddy fringe, Jaen halted alongside him and stood silent for a time, eyes on the current’s taut twisting, the bulges rising to the surface. Then he drew off his gauntlets. ‘This was a fell intrusion, Cryl Durav.’

‘There has been violence,’ said Cryl.

‘A Denier — well, I was about to say “village”, but I dare say a half-dozen huts scarcely warrant such a name.’ He fell silent again.

‘Lord, the wedding waits. If there are raiders-’

‘This is my land, hostage.’

‘Deniers-’

‘Cryl,’ Jaen’s voice was harsh, grating like a notched blade on rough stone, ‘they could worship a toadstool for all I care. All who dwell on my land are under my protection. This was an attack on House Enes. Raiders? Bandits? I think not.’

‘Sir, I do not understand — who else might have reason to slay Deniers?’

Jaen shot him a gauging look. ‘This is what happens when you hide down a hole dug by your own hands. Surely you’ve kneaded the life out of that broken heart by now? Bury it in that hole, Cryl Durav. The world shakes awake and you sleep on at your peril.’

Cryl was shocked into silence. Never before had Jaen been so abrupt, so cruel. He looked out over the water, his face burning, though with shame or anger he knew not. The Lord’s next words snapped his attention round.

‘The wedding.’ Jaen’s face twisted. ‘A gathering of the highborn. All in one place, all away from their lands. Abyss take me, we’re blind fools.’

‘Sir, you hint of an enemy in our midst. Is it Draconus?’

Jaen blinked. ‘Draconus?’ He shook his head. ‘Cryl, I advance you to the rank of lieutenant in my Houseblades — no, you will have to swallow down your impatience to leave us for a time longer. Take my twelve and ride back to the estate. Muster the entire company under full arms and prepare for an attack.’

‘Sir?’

‘The civil war is upon us — must I strike you about the head to stir your brain to life? You make me doubt your training, not to mention my bold elevation of your rank. Is this all too much for you, Cryl Durav? Be truthful.’

‘No sir. But I am not convinced. Urusander’s Legion would not slaughter innocents — not even lowly Deniers.’

‘There were fears that the Deniers were… enlivened. The river god lives again — that much is certain. Do you truly imagine the Legion cannot justify this war? They do so in the name of the cult of Mother Dark. They raise high banners of faith.’

‘But House Enes has nothing to do with-’

‘I harbour the heretics on my land, Cryl. And I am hardly alone in that — most of the Houses and all the Holds tolerate the Deniers, if only out of pity. But every face has changed. The old masks are discarded.’

‘Sir, we entertained Captain Scara Bandaris and his officers in your very dining hall — and now you would condemn them as murderers. This is beyond countenance.’

‘Bandaris? He’s a man with his own mind, and not one to heel to Hunn Raal. I cannot say for Scara Bandaris, but then, what other troop of armed soldiers has passed down this road of late?’

‘Sir, that enemy could have come from anywhere, even from deeper in the forest. I will accept that there may now be renegade units of the Legion. But Lord Urusander is an honourable man.’

‘He is, if we accept woeful ignorance on his part, Cryl. But if he is not, if he shutters his own eyes to what his lapdog is up to in his name, I will know the truth of him the moment I stand before him and can look him in the eye. For now, renegade units or not, there is malice at loose in the realm.’

Cryl shook his head. ‘Yet you pronounce a conspiracy. Lord, if you are right and the timing of all of this is deliberate, then would not the true target be the wedding itself?’

‘They dare not,’ Jaen said. ‘Not yet — not while they still kill in Mother Dark’s name. The marriage of Andarist? Not even Hunn Raal would risk the personal ire of Anomander and Silchas.’

Not yet? Shaken, Cryl drew a deep breath. ‘I will lead your twelve back to the keep, sir, and prepare for siege.’

‘Tell me it is not preferable to watching her take his hands in wedlock.’

Cryl frowned and then straightened. ‘Sir, it is not.’

Jaen’s nod was sharp. ‘Just so. I knew your courage, Cryl Durav. Go, then.’

‘Very well, Lord. I would a word with your daughter-’

‘No. Leave her. We must move on.’

Cryl bit back a protest, and then felt something crumble inside. Jaen was right. Anything he might say would frighten her, or worse, he might be tempted to invite that fear into his own fate, into whatever awaited him back at the keep. He could not be that selfish, much as it might please him to leave a lingering prick of blood upon her conscience. As a child might do, all unknowing, all uncaring. Or worse, in pleasure of giving hurt.

Saying nothing more, they climbed the bank and returned to the others.

Cryl went to his horse and swung into the saddle. He looked across to the twelve Houseblades who had ridden with Lord Jaen. Their regard was gauging, almost cold. As if all friendship was now gone, and in its place was a new officer, abilities unknown, talents untested. The sudden pressure of their pending judgement was almost physical, descending heavily across his shoulders. Yet he met their eyes levelly, accepting their expectations. ‘Two to point and keep all weapons loose,’ he said. ‘Right flank eyes on the forest line.’

The troop sergeant, Agalas, a sour-faced woman with flat eyes, simply half turned in her saddle and two Houseblades swung their mounts round and set off up the road.

Cryl glanced over at Lord Jaen, but the man had drawn off his eight remaining Houseblades. Whatever he said was a source of obvious agitation among those men and women, some of whom responded with a look back at their comrades. Cryl understood. We may be headed into battle, but you have a young woman to protect, and a lord to serve. Duty is not always worn with ease.

He nodded to the sergeant and together they rode out from the train. As he passed the carriage he thought he heard echoing shouts from Enesdia, muted by wood and curtain, and he saw Ephalla flinch and then cast Cryl a panicked look. In response Cryl shook his head, and then he was past.

Galdan sat in the alley with his back to the tavern wall, his kingdom arrayed before him, his subjects the rats busy scuffling through the rubbish. All kings, he decided, should have but one arm, and thus but one grasping hand. The nightmares were gone, finally, but still the air felt thick as blood. He lifted into view his sole hand and studied its minute trembles. Perhaps he was seeing nothing but the shuddering of his own eyes. Chaos could make the world bright, but blindingly so, painfully so. He felt emptied out, his skin a shell protecting hollows and red-hued darkness. If he could roll back his eyes and look inward, he would see the cavern of his skull, and rats among the rubbish, and a throne on which sat the dried-up husk of his life so far.

Soldiers were in the village, wearing livery Galdan knew all too well. They had drunk all the wine and there was no more to be found, not anywhere. When Galdan had crept into the tavern to beg his share, they’d laughed and then he’d been beaten — but not with any vigour. Lying in the dirt, he had sweated out everything inside him. It had begun with foul, wretched oil, beading flushed flesh, and then bile, followed by blood and then rancid meat, rotting organs, fragments of bone and clumps of brain. Everything had come out until there was nothing left to come out. He could hear a moaning wind inside, tracking the tubular length of his arm, swirling in the flaccid sacks of his legs, sliding up through his neck and into his head.

Moaning, he decided, was the song of absence.

Legion soldiers occupied the village and everyone was afraid. Soldiers had no reason for being in Abara Delack and there were too many of them. So many that they had drunk all the wine.

Muttering filled his head; it sounded far in the depths of his skull, but it was trying to come closer, with urgency. He wanted to turn away; he wanted to run from that voice, but from where he sat he could see all the borders of his kingdom, and in his realm there was nowhere to hide.

She had been sent into the north and east. He knew that much. Sent to the Consort, or so went the rumour though none knew for certain, but the demesne of Lord Draconus was indeed in that direction.

The soldiers — what did they want?

He could hear the voice now, louder although still incoherent; and yet, for all its unintelligibility, its timbre of fear was undeniable. It was trying to warn him, crying out frustrated and helpless, and he needed to do something.

He watched his legs draw up under him, watched as they pushed at the ground, shifted for balance. The alley rocked when he stood and then leaned hard against the tavern wall. His subjects froze for a moment, tilting questing noses in his direction, and then went back to their feasting.

‘The king,’ Galdan gasped, ‘is always free with his bounty.’

One arm, only the one. Where is the other one? She took it — no, she didn’t. But she can give it back. She can do that.

There is danger. Someone is screaming, here in my head. There is danger. She’s in danger.

The Legion is awake. The Legion is on the rise.

Lord Draconus. She’s in danger.

He would leave his kingdom for a time. The realm would thrive without him. Wealth in unending repast. It was time to set out in search of more wine.

Galdan staggered out from the alley, into the street. He paused, reeling as the bright sunlight assailed him. Few people in sight; and those he saw moved quickly, fearfully, with all the furtiveness of hunted vermin. Soldiers filled the tavern and the fine inn down the street. They occupied houses that had been abandoned in the wake of the war. The community pasture was crowded with horses and the air stank of their shit. Smoke rose from unchecked fires at the town’s rubbish heap in the old Denier temple — the one that had been torn down years ago when the monastery went up — out at the western edge where there had once been a grove of old trees. Wood from that grove now held up the ceiling of the fine inn.

He heard laughter from the front steps of the tavern as he stumbled across the street.

The old lady’s bribe had failed. There was no more wine. The deal was finished with. Galdan was finished with it. This is what came when things emptied out.

He wanted nothing to do with horses. But we knew that. He would have to walk. He needed to find her. He needed to save her. Behold, the one-armed king. We go to find our queen. The one hand that reached for wealth now reaches for love.

Galdan knew that the rats would bless him, if they could.

Wreneck wandered up on the high hill overlooking Abara Delack. His ma had told him about the soldiers and this reminded him of the last time he had seen an armed man, the one who’d come for Orfantal’s mother. But that man had been a Houseblade, in the service of a lord. Soldiers were different. They served something else, something vast and maybe even faceless. But his ma had said that these ones who now stayed in the village were here to start trouble.

Lady Nerys Drukorlat was virtually alone in that big house. She had taken to hatred for even the sight of Wreneck, and the night before last she had beaten on his back with a cane. He wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve it, but she’d said terrible things about him, things that weren’t even true. Although maybe they were and he just didn’t know it yet.

With the last horse gone, Wreneck had no work. He had already collected up the last of the dried dung from the pastures, to stock up on fuel, but there wasn’t nearly enough to last the winter. Once the soldiers were gone, she’d said, his laziness would end and he would have to go down and collect in the community fields, but he would have to do that at night, so no one saw. ‘ House Drukorlas shall not be poor in their eyes. Do you understand me, you brainless oaf? Spare me, dear Abyss! Look at those dull eyes — Orfantal had more wits in one finger than you have. You’ll collect in the fields at night.’ He had nodded to show that he understood, thankful for the promise that he’d still be one of the household staff, even if she never let him into the house.

But the soldiers hadn’t left yet, leaving him nothing to do, and that frightened him. She might see how lazy he was and forget what she’d said. He needed to get to those fields, somehow. Though it was probably already too late. The dung wouldn’t even be cured by the time the rains and snows came, and they had nowhere dry to store it except for one blockhouse and that was full of drying brush and sheaves of bark.

He hadn’t eaten yet today. He scanned the high grasses, switch in hand. He’d taken to hunting jump-mice, and if he caught a few he would make a small fire from twigs and grasses, roast the fur off them and finally put something in his aching belly.

Distant motion caught his eye and he looked up to see a half-dozen soldiers coming out from the village, up on the keep road. They were riding at a slow canter, unevenly. As he watched, he saw one loosen the sword in the scabbard at her side. The effort almost toppled her from the saddle and the others laughed upon seeing that, the sound drifting up to where Wreneck stood.

The Lady didn’t like visitors. There was nothing to feed them.

If he ran, he might reach the house in time, to at least warn her. Switch still in one hand, he set off at a lumbering run. He had been clumsy all his life, not like Orfantal, who was like a jackrabbit under the shadow of an owl or a hawk. His knees sometimes knocked together when he ran and that was painful, and the work shoes he had been given were too big, driving his toes hard forward with each stride, and at any moment one of them might fly off.

His breath ached in his chest and he could feel how hot the effort was making him, but on he ran, stumbling once when a foot struck a sunken stone in the grasses. Slowly, he realized that he would not make it in time. The horses were on the climb already.

She might well hide. Pretend to not be there, sending Jinia out to say that her mistress was away, or maybe unwell, and they would leave. She would tell them to visit on another day, maybe in a week or so. So, he was running for nothing. Jinia was smart and besides, he loved her, though she teased him all the time for being slow and stupid, when she was neither and older besides.

At nights, under his blanket, he made himself wet thinking about Jinia, like pee but not pee, wishing she didn’t tease him and wishing that he was let in the house so that he could see more of her and she wouldn’t always complain that he stank of horse shit. If he could be let in the house she might one day fall in love with him and when he was older, as old as she was, they could get married and have children and he would name one Orfantal. If it was a boy, of course.

He reached the pasture fence and slipped through it. He could see the dust from the horses at the front of the house, though he was coming up on the building from its back. They had arrived, and dismounted, and there was more laughter and then a shout, but the shout didn’t sound right.

Then he heard Jinia scream.

Wreneck ran again and came round the corner of the house. The scene before him made no sense. The door of the house was open. A little way from the steps, three of the soldiers stood around Jinia and one gripped her by her upper arm, holding her up so that only the tips of her leather-clad feet touched the ground. Another one, a woman, had her hand up the maid’s tunic. The third soldier, a man, was unbuckling his weapon belt and tugging down his trousers.

The other soldiers must have been inside the house, since there were sounds coming from there, along with crashing. The lady’s harsh voice brayed but it was answered by a barking laugh.

Wreneck rushed towards Jinia, raising the switch in his hand.

Someone collided with him from one side, throwing him off his feet. Winded, Wreneck lay on his back. Above him he saw another soldier — the woman who had loosened the sword. She was grinning. ‘Look here! Another damned Denier — you can tell by the shit on his face.’

Aching to draw breath, Wreneck rolled on to his side. He saw Jinia looking at him, but her eyes were dull. The woman with her hand up the maid’s tunic was making pushing motions, but her other hand was gripping her fellow soldier’s stallion, making the same motions. The third soldier, the one holding Jinia, was using his free hand to lift and twist Jinia’s breasts. Wreneck stared into his love’s eyes and saw nothing, nothing living.

Air rushed back into his lungs. He pushed on to his hands and knees, trying to get up.

‘Mother Dark isn’t good enough for you?’ the woman asked, advancing on him. She kicked him, up into his gut, hard enough to lift him from the ground. Once more the air was driven from his lungs. He curled up in the grit and dust.

Lady Drukorlat was shrieking now, and Wreneck saw one of the soldiers reappear in the doorway, dragging the old woman out by the back of the neck. He propelled her through the air over the steps and she fell hard on the cobbles. Something broke, a bone, and the Lady screamed in pain.

‘Too old to fuck, this one,’ pronounced the soldier as he came down the steps behind Nerys. ‘And the house is fucking near empty, though Pryll’s still looking. No other staff that we could see either. It’s pathetic.’

The woman standing over Wreneck had not moved. Her hands were fists and those fists rested on her hips and it seemed she was watching what was being done to Jinia. She was breathing fast and her face was red. She smelled of wine.

Jinia’s eyes had closed and her head lolled, and if not for the soldier holding her upright she would have fallen over. Wreneck was sure that she was dead. When the woman pulled her hand out from under the tunic, it was red with blood. The man she had been gripping had spilled out the pee that wasn’t pee, and he backed away, pulling free as she laughed at him.

The woman spoke above Wreneck, her voice loud and commanding. ‘Sort this up, all of you. If the captain sees or hears of this, we’ll all hang.’

The man from the steps said, ‘Only one way to sort this, sergeant.’

‘So get on with it,’ she replied. ‘Maybe nobody comes up here like they was saying, but these servants got families somewhere, I bet. Thing is, we need to clean it all up, leave no sign of anything.’

There was blood on the ground, and Lady Nerys had rolled on to one side but her leg or hip was broken and she moaned and moaned.

‘Fine, only how do we do that?’

The sergeant sighed. ‘You really have no brain, do you, Telra? Bodies into the house and burn the fucker down to the ground. We saw the smoke, didn’t get here in time to save anyone. Tragic mess. Farab, did you kill the girl?’

The woman with the blood-smeared hand and forearm shrugged. ‘Probably. In any case, she won’t be coming round any time soon.’

‘Into the house, then.’ The sergeant looked down at Wreneck. He tried meeting her stare but she wouldn’t let him. She drew her sword, pointed it at him. Wreneck tried to curl tight. She pushed the blade into him anyway.

It sliced through his left shoulder, cutting the muscle down to score along the bone, and from there the sharp but rounded tip slid into his chest. It bumped along his ribs, then down into his lower belly, driving up against his hip. When she yanked the weapon free, the pain exploded in Wreneck.

He woke up coughing. Each cough was agony. There was blood everywhere. His left arm was senseless, pinned to the floor under him by his own weight. When he pulled back, more blood spurted, then slowed to a dribble through black smears of dried blood. Smoke filled the room. He was in the house. Looking around, eyes burning, he saw flames everywhere. Jinia was lying beside him, motionless, terribly pale. He reached for her. Her skin was cool, but there was life in it.

He was clumsy, but he wasn’t weak. Long ago he used to lift Orfantal with one arm, to make the boy squirm and squeal. Jinia was heavier, though, and there was a new weakness in him that he didn’t quite understand, but he managed to angle her limp form over his uninjured shoulder. When he stood, gasping under her added weight, he was blinded by the smoke. But he thought he had seen a way through, down the main corridor. He staggered in that direction.

The heat tore at him from both sides but he wouldn’t let himself flinch, since she might fall if he did. So he bore the burns, the lashing tongues that flared in his hair and made him scream.

To the right, at the far end: smoke but no flames. He went that way.

A door hanging open. He stumbled through into a room — Sandalath’s room — he could tell by the window’s shutters. There were no furnishings left, not even wall hangings. The bed had been broken up for firewood. There was nothing to burn. Wreneck made his way to the window.

He was putting it all together. They’d left them on the upper floor. Set fire to everything they could on the ground level. He hadn’t seen the Lady’s body, but he knew it was in here somewhere. He knew also that he had no hope of finding it. He couldn’t be a hero this day. All he could do was save himself and Jinia, the maid he loved.

He set her down beneath the window, and lifted the latches and pushed the shutters back. He looked out and down. Orfantal had once jumped from this floor, from a storeroom above the kitchen, landing catlike on the kitchen wastes. He had stained his clothes and Wreneck had been whipped for letting him do it.

Now, with the floor under him burning the soles of his feet — right through the thin leather of the worn work shoes — he leaned out and looked down. Curing dung was stacked there, because this was the window that wasn’t opened any more, and the wall was sunward and that kept everything dry. He turned and, one-armed, picked Jinia up, pushing her limp form over the sill, feet first. He lost his grip on her and she fell before he was ready. He looked down to see that she had landed in the dung. He couldn’t tell if the fall had broken anything — not with all the blood covering her legs.

Wreneck clambered out and leapt. He went a bit too far and landed on the edge of the heap, and the impact was hard enough to throw him forward, and the stabbed side of his hip gave way under him. He landed on his good shoulder, and that hurt as much as the burns and cuts.

Standing, he limped back to Jinia and pulled her clear of the dung. He saw her eyelids flutter and then grow still again, but she was breathing and that was good — that meant that everything was all right.

Lifting her again was harder this time, since now both shoulders were full of pain, but he managed it. Staggering, he made his way towards the ruins of the burnt-down stables. Heat gusted at his back for most of the way across the cobbles. He slipped in through a gap in the stone foundation wall and here the air was cooler and free of smoke. Laying Jinia down, he sat beside her, leaning his back against the wall.

He stared at her pretty face. She had a wandering eye when she got tired but with her eyes closed he couldn’t see it. Even when he did, he thought it was cute, and this made her even prettier. The trouble now was thinking of what to do next. The people in the village would see the smoke and know that the keep was burning down. But they wouldn’t do anything about it. There wasn’t enough of them. The only people that might care was his ma, and Jinia’s lame uncle.

So, he would wait for them.

And when he got better he would make a spear, the way Orfantal showed him from what he’d learned from somewhere. Finding a shaft of stout wood, heating and trueing it and heating it some more to harden the wood, especially at the point. Once he had his spear, he would go out and hunt down the sergeant who had stabbed him, and then the three who had hurt Jinia, and then the ones in the house who had killed Lady Nerys. He would find them because he had three names. Telra, Farab and Pryll.

He stared down at his scraped knees; and the welts of red from the burns and all the body hair that was now white and fell to dust when he brushed his skin, and all the splashed blood where flies now danced. He could see his pain, inside his head, and it was all red, but he decided to stay away from it.

She called me a Denier, but I never denied nothing. I was never even asked anything, so I couldn’t deny anything, could I? I seen that monastery once, the one on the other side of the river, and it looked like a fortress, or a place where they send criminals. It scared me.

He’d wanted to be a hero. Saving everyone. Saving Lady Nerys just like Orfantal would have done. Nothing ever went right in his life.

She should never have stabbed me. That hurt worse than any caning.

One day I’ll stab her and see how she likes it.

When he heard his ma’s thin voice wafting up, calling his name in helpless anguish, Wreneck shouted wordlessly to bring her to him, and when at last he saw her and she saw him and hurried towards him, he began bawling and could not stop.

Tutor Sagander leaned hard on the crutch. The padding did nothing to ease the ache in his shoulder, but his one remaining leg hurt even more. He had no idea there could be so much pain in one poor body, and every twinge and spasm rode bitter waves. He imagined everything inside, beneath his skin, to be black as pitch, fouled by the pain and the hatred that seemed locked in a savage embrace, like lovers wanting to devour each other. But this was not torment enough. He could still feel the leg that was no longer there, could feel its outrage, its incessant demands. It haunted him, rushing through sensations of brutal cold and searing heat, maddening itch and deep ache.

He stood now, resting, in the narrow corridor, trying to hear the words being spoken at the front gate. From the window of his small cell he had seen Legion soldiers. Things were happening in the outer world, the marching of unheard footfalls; and the isolation he had willed upon himself, in the name of healing, now constricted him, tight enough to unleash a howl in his mind.

That cry battered him. There were Legion soldiers in Abara Delack. A dozen or more had ridden out to the monastery; he’d seen monks mustering under arms, and now it seemed that there was a confrontation at the gate.

And here he was, almost too weak to make his way outside.

The boy had a lot to answer for. Better he had drowned under the ice years ago. And as for the three daughters, well, he’d witnessed enough to know that their father should have slit their throats at birth. House Dracons was cursed, by its own blood, by all its secret histories the Lord guarded so well. But the tutor felt close to some truths. He had not wasted all his time here in the monastery.

He’d rested enough. The pain wasn’t going anywhere. Lurching into motion, Sagander made his way down the corridor. Cell doors were open on both sides, evidence of haste. Within he saw modest possessions, nothing of worth, little of interest.

The cult was reborn. He knew that much. The well in the compound had overflowed. The fountain in the garden ran red for days. That had been unnerving. Kharkanas was probably in an uproar. The Citadel itself had been built around an ancient temple to the river god. Sagander felt a certain satisfaction when thinking about all of that. When one viewed such matters from a distance, it was clear to see that Mother Dark and her cult were but upstarts, and all the blustering and displays of power hid paucity at the heart. His growing sense of contempt for Mother Dark was new, but he found pleasure in its cultivation.

Gasping, he reached the corridor’s end where it opened out to a high-ceilinged intersection. Off to his left ran the colonnaded transept leading to the assembly hall and beyond that the Vigil Chamber and then the front doors. A year ago and he would have traversed this distance in a few score heartbeats. Now it seemed impossible.

He saw no one about, none upon whom he could call for help — although of late they had been less inclined to give it. Their hearts were hardening to him, as he knew they would. Sympathy surrendered to pity and pity gave way to contempt and disgust. He would have to leave here soon. They might well decide to stop feeding him, or bathing him, or carrying him about. People were the same everywhere, no matter what lofty vows they proclaimed. Help was given only in the hope of its being reciprocated. Expectations of reward lurked behind every act of altruism. But he had nothing to offer them, nothing but more need, more weakness, more misery.

They saw his body and thought his mind crippled. And they were fools to think that way.

He intended to use that in bringing down House Dracons, and then his rival scholars in their rich homes and crowded lecture halls, and then, if he could, Mother Dark herself.

Yes, everything has changed. There is a virtue to imperfection, a place of hidden strength and will. The broken find cunning in the confession. The wounded unveil their wounds and sup well on the pity. See this hitching gait. Follow me down into death.

He reached the front doors and paused. Red blushes filled his head in pulsing waves. He was layered in sweat and its smell was wretched. His remaining leg quivered under him. None to carry me. They will pay for that. He struggled with the latch. Nothing was easy any more. They should have given him a servant.

I’ve fallen through the ice.

The thought made him scowl. He finally managed to open the door. Beyond, in radiating heat, the packed white dust of the compound was blinding, making Sagander flinch. He waited for his eyes to adjust, but it seemed that he could not slow his breathing, which remained fast and tight.

Thirty paces opposite him was the main gate. A small grilled window was at head-height and the mistress stood at it, with armed monks flanking her. More of the brothers lined the wooden walkways near the top of the defensive wall. On the crenellated roofs of the corner towers, the arbalests were loose on their swivels, bolts loaded and the heavy weapons held at the ready by watchful crews. The raw belligerence of the scene shocked him.

He made his way out, angling slightly sideways to take the steps. He saw a brother standing nearby. The young man was rethreading a strap on his left vambrace. Sagander lurched over to him. ‘Are we at war, brother?’

The man glanced up. ‘Tutor. You have made quite a journey to come out here. I commend you, sir.’

Sagander fought back a sneer. ‘Next you’ll be expecting me to join you hoeing the rows.’ The answering smile was simply irritating. ‘You did not answer my question, brother.’

‘Our faith is being tested,’ he replied, shrugging.

‘With whom does the mistress treat?’

‘An officer of the Legion company, I would imagine.’

‘Urusander’s Legion — yes, I know that. But which company? Who commands? Is this one of the disbanded companies or a garrison gone astray?’

The man shrugged a second time. ‘If you will excuse me, sir, we’re to make a showing along the wall.’ He set off at a jog.

Sagander reached up and wiped sweat from his brow. The sun and heat were making him feel ill.

The window’s door thudded shut at the gate and he looked over to see the mistress wheel about and march back towards the abbey. She comes straight to me. I could have stayed in the doorway, in the shade. Watching her approach, he saw fury in her dark visage and almost quailed before it.

Before he could speak, she said, ‘Get under cover, tutor. This could get messy.’ And then she was past him, up the steps and inside.

Sagander glared after her, feeling a fool. He’d thought she was coming to speak to him, but the truth was, he’d simply been in her path. Another slight. One of many. These things add up. Ignoring her command, he set out across the compound, towards the gate.

Horses thundered briefly on the other side, but the sound quickly drew away. The delegation was retreating back to Abara Delack. He cursed under his breath and then reconsidered. No. Better this way.

Only one monk remained at the gate itself and he regarded Sagander curiously. ‘Nothing to see any more, sir,’ he said.

‘I’m leaving.’

‘Sir?’

‘You have all been most gracious to me. Do convey my appreciation to the mistress and to all of your brothers. But I have no desire to be trapped in a siege. This is not my battle and I am needed in Kharkanas.’

‘I see that you have none of your possessions, sir-’

‘Send them on when you next have the opportunity. Is it safe beyond this gate — there is no risk in lifting the bar for me?’

‘None, sir. They have left for the moment. Tutor, I feel I should perhaps speak with the mistress first.’

‘I just did, brother — did you not see? She has given me leave. Now, you must understand, the walk into the town will be arduous enough for me. I would venture it now, while I still have the strength, for I tire greatly once dusk arrives.’

‘Then fare you well, sir. I regret we cannot take you down in a wagon.’

‘I fully understand, brother. Do you not all insist I take as much exercise as possible?’

‘But you refused more often than not, sir. I wonder if you are ready.’

‘I eschew exercise for its own sake, brother. Necessity is all I need to become fit.’

The monk lifted the latch and pushed open one of the gate doors.

His smile fixing against all the aches and the misery, Sagander made his way past the man, hobbling through with as much haste as possible. He feared at any moment a shout from the compound, and then hands dragging him back. Instead, he heard the door shut behind him, followed by the heavy settling of the bar.

As easy as that. Mistress, your children are fools.

If servants of Mother Dark were eager to spill Denier blood, they were welcome to it. They could spill all they wanted here, until the blood ran in rivers down this treacherous cobbled road. But the river god was old, appallingly old. It had power and it would understand rage, and vengeance. I have read enough to know. The old cults are blood cults. They thrive on it. They feed on savagery and violence. The god’s river will hold ten thousand bloated corpses on its bosom, and still yearn for more.

Mother Dark, strike your first blows. Kill the brothers and sisters. Slay the mistress here, it’s all she deserves. But this war’s last blow will not be yours.

River god, I will deliver the blood you need. This I promise.

He would find the commander of this company. Crippled though Sagander’s body might be, his mind was not.

There were hidden ways into the monastery, and he knew them all.

A blood bargain, in the name of vengeance. The river god understood. The river god blessed him in this betrayal.

Every step was torture. The commander would feed him, offer him wine. Find him a comfortable chair and a bed and a woman or two — why not? He would earn such rewards. A religious war, when what we had feared was something different, something more confused. Instead, we get this. Simple, the lines sharply drawn and mutual slaughter the only way through.

He imagined himself, at the end, emerging from the smoke and ashes, on a road like this one, with naught but charred bones left in his wake. His rivals dead, their opinions meaningless, their judgements a wasted breath. Draconus: Consort to a corpse. Arathan, gutted, with his entrails wrapped round the shaft of a spear. Raskan — so gentle in pouring hot blood down Sagander’s throat — well, he would drown in the same. And as for the Borderswords… Ville and Galak had been kindly enough, though misers with their commiseration. In return, he would spare them little when their time came.

The triumphs ahead, at the end of this cobbled road, shone with a sceptre’s light, raised high as a torch in the darkness. Flames closed the mouth of my leg — that horrid stump — seared it for ever shut, trapping the howls inside me. I will let them out another way.

By sceptre’s light, this I vow.

Mounted soldiers were gathering below, emerging from the village. It seemed he would not have to walk all the way after all.

They saw a rider ahead of them on the road. The horse was walking and the figure was slumped as if half asleep in the saddle. Their two scouts had reined in halfway between the parties and now faced Cryl and his troop of Houseblades.

Beside Cryl, Sergeant Agalas grunted and then said, ‘No uniform.’

‘We’ll question him.’

The scouts fell in as they continued on.

The man looked up as they cantered closer, as if startled awake. His face was badly bruised and its bones poorly knitted from what must have been a savage beating. One eye was shot with red. Dirt stained his clothes, as did blackened spots of dried blood. He halted his horse.

Agalas gestured and the troop drew up and formed a line behind her and Cryl. The two of them then rode forward to rein in before the stranger.

‘You’ve seen some trouble,’ said Cryl.

The man shrugged. ‘I lived.’

Agalas spoke. ‘Have you seen soldiers of the Legion on this road?’

‘Urusander’s Legion or the Hust Legion?’

Cryl blinked. ‘Hust? No, Urusander’s, sir.’

The man shook his head. ‘Seen no one and been riding all day.’

‘Riding where?’ Agalas asked.

‘Kharkanas. Thought I might hire on. Did some caravan guarding once, might do it again. The country’s unruly these days.’

Agalas seemed annoyed with this response. ‘Where did you come down from?’

‘Riven Keep. Thought to try the Borderswords, but they wasn’t looking to take anyone on, now that peace has come.’

‘That’s a long journey,’ Cryl observed.

The man nodded. ‘Sorry I can’t help you. Of course,’ he added, ‘if there was soldiers about, there’d be less trouble on the roads.’

Cryl turned to the sergeant. ‘Let’s go. We’ll see what we see.’ To the stranger he said, ‘There’s an armed procession ahead of you. You’d be safe enough near to them if you rode a little quicker, sir.’

‘Thank you,’ the man replied. ‘That’s a decent offer.’

Agalas waved the Houseblades forward and they all rode past the stranger.

‘That wasn’t much help,’ Cryl said as they continued on up the road.

‘Sorry, sir,’ said Agalas, ‘but I’m not buying it.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean, sir, he wasn’t quite right. Not sure.’

‘I could see him as a caravan guard.’

She nodded. ‘But his horse was a damned good animal, well groomed and well fed, and the tack was clean.’

Cryl considered. ‘Any man long on the road would do well to take care of his mount and tack.’

‘As to that, sir, he wasn’t carrying much gear. I don’t know, is all I’m saying.’

‘Wonder who gave him that beating. He was armed, after all.’

She shot him a look and then reined in hard. The Houseblades veered past her, drawing up in confusion. Cryl halted his own horse and swung round to face the sergeant. ‘What is it?’

‘His sword, sir. It was Legion issue.’

Cryl frowned. ‘Hardly surprising — those weapons must have flooded the market stalls after the disbanding.’

‘You’d think so, sir, but they didn’t. Maybe you heard different, but I’m saying they didn’t. Soldiers kept their gear.’

‘No, I believe you. I only assumed.’ He looked back down the road but the stranger was already out of sight. ‘So he’s ex-Legion. Might be riding to join up with a renegade troop-’

‘Sir, we went with the Lord this morning. We saw the Deniers, that village, it was a place of slaughter. The killers just cut ’em all down. Children too. It was butchery.’

‘So what was he, then?’ Cryl asked. ‘A scout? If so, he was coming from the wrong direction and heading the wrong way.’

‘I don’t know, sir. I don’t know what to think, but it feels all wrong here. All of it.’

He studied her weathered face, the flat eyes. If she was in an excited state, he’d not know it from looking at her. ‘Sergeant, a word alone, please.’

They rode on ahead and then reined in again.

‘Sir?’

‘I don’t know what to do,’ Cryl confessed. ‘Lord Jaen commanded us to return to Enes House. He fears for his household. If that lone rider’s a scout, then the renegades must be somewhere ahead and that would mean that they’d already hit the estate — assuming they were planning on doing so. But I see no dust above the way ahead, and we’re not close enough to see smoke if they attacked the Lord’s house.’

She said nothing, watching him, her gloved hands folded on the saddle horn.

‘But they wouldn’t attack a wedding procession,’ Cryl said.

‘We need to keep an eye on the road, sir. Study the tracks ahead. Lone rider or lots of riders? Headed which way? Problem is, sir, there’s trails through the forest, some of ’em running parallel with this road.’

‘Is this your suggestion, sergeant?’

‘We can reach Enes House before dusk, sir.’

‘They wouldn’t attack a wedding procession,’ Cryl said again. ‘Deniers — well, you’ve seen the proof of that.’ Still he hesitated. Lord Jaen had promoted him, given him this command, and the orders were explicit. Return to Enes House. Muster the full garrison of Houseblades. Prepare for an attack. ‘Abyss below, one lone stranger on the road and suddenly nothing is clear!’

‘I told you he was wrong, sir. And he is. All wrong.’

‘That beating was days old-’

‘More like a week, sir, or even two. That wasn’t swelling, just dead nerves.’

Cryl fidgeted, hating himself, hating his indecision. Lord Jaen had but eight Houseblades in that train. ‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said again.

She frowned. ‘Sir, you got your orders. Lord Jaen rides to a gathering of highborn.’

‘And no one would dare attack a wedding procession.’

‘Unless they’ve lost their minds. Sir, it’s all down to that rider.’

‘Should we ride back and question him?’

‘If you give me leave, sir, me and two of my Houseblades will do just that. If I have to, I’ll ask my questions with the point of my knife. Why’s he riding south? That’s the key to it all. It don’t make sense.’

‘Take two with the strongest mounts, sergeant, and waste no time,’ Cryl commanded. ‘We will continue on and you ride to catch us up — or you send one rider and take yourself and the other to Lord Jaen, if — well, if it’s necessary. No, wait, take four, not two.’

‘Yes sir. We shouldn’t be long.’

‘If he’s an innocent, I feel for him,’ Cryl said.

‘If he’s an innocent,’ Agalas replied, ‘his run of bad luck ain’t ending soon.’

They rode back. Cryl watched the sergeant select four Houseblades and set off at a gallop. He eyed the eight who remained. She’d left him Corporal Rees, a round-faced veteran with a caustic sense of humour, but there was little amusement in the man’s visage today. ‘Corporal Rees, I’ll have you ride at my side.’

‘Send scouts ahead, sir?’

‘Yes. But we will now ride without rest.’

‘Understood, sir,’ Rees replied. ‘Don’t worry about the sergeant, sir — she’ll get the bastard to talk.’

‘I hope so.’

‘Agalas’s been on the other end of torture, sir.’

‘She has?’

Rees nodded severely. ‘I got drunk one night and cornered her. Told her my whole life story, sir. But she survived. Most of her sanity intact, too.’

Cryl shot the corporal a look. ‘It’s already a day of blood, corporal. I really don’t think you’ll win much laughter with comments like that one.’

‘Wasn’t thinking about laughter, sir.’

Cryl let it pass.

They cantered on, horse hoofs thundering under them.

Ever since the huts and their dead, and the soldiers he’d found camped further along the trail, everything had gone wrong for Kadaspala. His mule had plunged a hoof down a burrow hole and snapped its foreleg in half. The artist had toppled from the animal’s back, landing awkwardly on his paint box, and then received a solid kick from the braying, thrashing beast, leaving his left thigh so bruised he could barely walk.

He had considered making his way back to the soldiers, but by then they had been a half-day behind him — assuming they’d not moved on. His agitation deepened when he realized that he had lost track of the date — that he was, perhaps, at risk of arriving too late to accompany the procession from Enes House. Once his father and sister arrived at the site of Andarist’s new estate, there would be two days of preparations before the ceremony. Even half lame and loaded down with equipment as he was, he expected to reach them before the ceremony. It was, he decided, the best he could hope for.

Cutting the mule’s throat had proved messy and brutal, leaving him sprayed in blood and sickened by the deed.

When he looked down at his stained hands and clothes, he felt as if he had caught a curse from the Deniers’ camp, and blood was now following him everywhere, a trail of culpability steeped in death and dying. The child’s dead face returned to him, no longer ghostly, no longer sketched in the air by the fingers of one hand, but hard with accusation now. That child had made him a consort with the ending of lives, Tiste and beast, the wild into the tamed and the tamed into the decrepit, and all was sullied, all was ruined.

He limped on through the afternoon, the straps rubbing his shoulders raw, the insects biting through his sweat — but with all that he carried he could not brush or wave them away, forcing him to suffer their frenzy.

Art failed reality. Each and every time, it failed in the essence of experience. A work could but achieve the merest hints of what was real and immediate: the tactile discomforts, the pangs of disequilibrium, the smells of endeavour and the shaky unease of a rattled mind. It pawed bluntly at immediate truths and fumbled blindly through all the lies one told oneself in every passing instant, every eternal moment.

He saw now that there was no beginning to anything, and no end, either. Moments fell forward in seamless progression and then fell behind in gathering haze. Colours washed away the moment the observing eyes lost appreciation; or they grew stark and hard when the senselessness of things struck home. He saw now, at the ends of his scraped and stung arms, one hand that etched out creation, and the other that erased it: and by these twin measures he existed, and his entire purpose in living was to insist that he was here, and that this was now, and once those hands fell still, eternally still, all that he proclaimed of himself would vanish.

In his irretrievable absence, they could walk the halls between his paintings; they could walk as things of flesh and heat, blood and bone, thought and unthought, while to either side ran windows on to flattened worlds and reduced lives that were in total all Kadaspala had ever achieved, and with sharpened nail they could poke through those false worlds, and behind them find naught but mortar and stone.

I have always been a liar. I cannot help what I am — and that is the first lie, the one I uttered to myself long ago. Others accepted it, by virtue of my talent, and in accepting it, they let me live the lie. Sweet of them, and such a relief — that I fooled them — and if my contempt now dogs their shadows, wherever I walk in their wake, well, it is no surprise.

Give me the lie and I will take it.

And then give it back to you. In vibrant otherworldly colours — that godly language uttered by ungodly tongues — and yearn for the adoration in your eyes. It’s what I feed on, after all. Give me what I need, to keep the lies alive. To keep me alive.

He kept his honest thoughts to himself, for himself. He risked nothing that way, because if artists were liars first and foremost, in close second were they cowards.

One day he would paint beauty. He would capture its essence, and once it was captured, at the pinnacle of his talent, he could lie back, close his eyes, and drift into death. He would be done, and done with the world. It would have nothing left to give him.

But for now, he would paint in blood.

The trail opened ahead, in tangled scrub and severed stumps, and beyond that was the raised river road.

I leave the wild behind me, with all its perils of raw truth and senseless death. I step into civilization, its shaped stones and lifeless wood, its sun-baked clay and its crowded streets filled with furtive moments we boldly name people. If he had a free hand, his fingers would awaken to paint the scene, in all its desultory glory, and so make things anew, in all the old ways.

If the colours are gods, then another god waits in the death of all colour; in black lines and swaths of drowned light. My hand and my eye are creators of entire worlds, creators of new gods. Behold, artist as creator and world upon world to unfurl, inscribe, delineate, destroy.

He clambered slowly up on to the road, wincing, and swung left — south — and set off.

To a wedding, where beauty was offered up to the sole promise of being sullied, made mundane by mundane necessities and the drudgery of day upon day, night upon night, the host of insipid demands that pulled flesh down, dulled the eyes, made puffy and irresolute the regard — no, he would never paint beauty. It was already too late.

But the scene haunted his mind. The flower petals upon the path, tears of colour already wilting and trodden upon, the bright eyes of the two now bound as one and the lascivious envy of the onlookers. Enesdia’s was a transient beauty, its perfect day almost done, almost in the past. Handfuls of crushed petals thrown into the river, riding the currents down and away. Tree branches hanging low over the water as if weighted with sorrow. The colours watery and muted, as if seen through cold tears. A sky empty of life. The Wedding of Andarist and Enesdia.

If he could — if he dared — he would steal her away. Lock her in a tower like some mad lover in a wretched poem fraught with twisted notions of possession. His hands alone knew the truth of her, and brother or not he would show her every one of those truths, in pleasures she had never imagined — oh, he knew the crimes of such thoughts, but thoughts lived well in realms of the forbidden — he’d seen as much in the eyes of every victim he painted. He could play out his defiance of taboos here in his mind, as he walked this road, and imagine the brush of his fingers as they painted skin and flesh, as they painted gasp and ecstasy, lurid convulsion and spent sigh. Before his talent everything would surrender. Everything.

There had been riders on the road. He saw scores of hoof prints in the dust and dirt, leading in both directions. But the air felt dead, empty, drained of urgency. Here and there, in faint streaks beneath the signs of riders, he saw the tracks of a carriage.

He was indeed behind the procession then, but despite all the traffic suggested by the hoofprints, Kadaspala walked alone and no one else was in sight.

The Wedding of Andarist and Enesdia. Painted with rage. The Wedding of Andarist and Enesdia. Erased by fury. He had the power of both, here in his hands. Such thoughts lived well in this forbidden realm.

Behold, artist as god.

Bruised and scraped and stung, he limped down the road beneath his burden of paints and brushes.

The smell of smoke rode the wind, the smell of dying colours.

Once the Houseblades were out of sight, Narad nudged his mount into a fast trot. Sweat trickled down beneath his shirt, but he felt chilled. He had seen the suspicion in that woman’s hard eyes. Corporal Bursa had sent him on to the road, while the troop travelled along a parallel track in the forest. They needed to know how many were ahead, and Narad now had good news for them. A full dozen Houseblades and an officer were riding back to Enes House.

His nerves were ruined. This wasn’t what he wanted. He had heard that other companies were on the move, and even now death was being delivered across Kurald Galain. This had gone beyond the Deniers, the wretched poor in their foul huts. Things were spiralling out of control. Urusander’s Legion had saved the realm. They were heroes. But they had been treated badly; they had grievances.

He thought about Haral, that old Legion veteran. He thought about the emptiness in that bastard’s eyes when he was breaking Narad’s face — and the others watching, like that ogre, Gripp, as if fists were proper arguments, as if brutality belonged in the company of men and women, and children. That nobleborn brat, with Gripp on his shoulder like a sour crow — who said that that boy was better than anyone else? What made him worth more than Narad, or any of those dead Deniers?

The world was full of lies. And people keep telling us we need them, all in the name of peace. But the peace we got was poison. It’s all kept in place to feed the few — the ones in charge, the ones getting rich off our backs, our sweat. And they sell us the virtue of obeying, and keeping our heads down, and not taking what we want — what they got and we don’t got. They say they worked for it but they didn’t. We did, even when we did nothing — by staying in the shadows, in the alleys, in small filthy rooms, by shovelling the shit they dump on us when they walk past noses in the air.

None of it’s right. So maybe things do have to go down. Maybe it all needs tearing apart, every one of those lies. And maybe brutality is what’ll make us all equal.

Still, he dreamed of killing Haral. And Gripp and that boy.

Every face is ugly. Even the perfect ones.

Horses behind him. He twisted round to see that woman and four others. Coming for him. Terror spasmed in Narad’s chest, throbbed into the cracked bones of his skull like fists punching from the inside out. He drove his heels into his mount’s flanks and leaned forward in the saddle as the beast surged forward, knowing that he was now riding for his life.

She’s another Haral. Abyss spare me — I saw it in her. I saw in her what he had. Those eyes. I can’t take any more beatings. I can’t.

He felt his bowels loosening, and each jolt in the saddle warmed his crotch.

None of this was fair. He was just trying to get by, to get through. Instead, he felt as if he were sliding down, and down, and no matter how he grasped or dug in his nails, he kept sliding. The scene before him was jarred and rocked with every clash of hoofs on the old cobbles. As if the world were breaking apart.

But his horse was fresher. He was outdistancing his pursuers — he could hear it. Once he was out of sight again he would cut into the forest, plunge into it and take any trail he found. He would lose them in the wild. He shot a look over one shoulder.

In time to see a score from Bursa’s troop surge up the bank and hammer like a fist into the five Houseblades. Animals went down with shrill screams. Bodies fell, bounced and flopped on the road.

One Houseblade sought to wheel round, to flee back up the road, but it was Bursa himself who hacked down between the man’s shoulder and neck, sword blade cutting through bone. The blow flung the victim forward, so that he pitched from the saddle and tore the weapon from the corporal’s grip.

Narad had let his mount slow, and now he reined in and pulled the beast round. The five Houseblades were all down, along with two of their horses. Soldiers had dismounted to make certain none still lived. He watched them push their swords into bodies, Tiste and animal, and it seemed there was no difference between the two — the actions were precisely the same, methodical and final.

He trotted towards them. He had fouled himself and this shamed him, but the relief upon seeing his comrades overwhelmed him and he looked through watery eyes.

Bursa had dropped down from his horse to recover his sword, and now he walked towards Narad. ‘You left a heady wake, Narad.’

The others laughed, but to Narad’s astonishment those laughs were not cruel.

‘There’s the river, soldier,’ Bursa added, pointing. ‘Get yourself cleaned up.’

‘Yes sir. It was the thought of another beating-’

‘We know. In your place I’d be the same. We all would. And you can be sure they would have tortured you to get their answers.’

Narad nodded. He dismounted and almost sat down on the road. His legs wobbled under him, but he forced himself to walk down the slope to the river’s bank. Behind him, soldiers were dragging the corpses from the road, back into the forest. Others were tying ropes to the dead horses. For all their efforts, only a blind fool would not see that something terrible had happened here. Blood and gore littered the span, staining black the white dust on the cobbles.

The water was deep, the bank dropping off sharply. He pulled off his boots and leggings and, naked from the waist down, held on to a branch and settled into the bitter cold water. The currents would cleanse him — they would have to as he was not about to let go or risk trying to hold on with one hand. He did not know how to swim.

Bursa edged down the bank. ‘We had someone keeping an eye on you.’

‘I didn’t know that,’ Narad replied in grunts, still gripping the branch and feeling his feet and legs growing numb.

‘Standard doctrine,’ Bursa replied. ‘No one is left on their own, even if it looks like they are. You’re a soldier of the Legion now, Narad. Initiated on a stream of shit and piss.’ He laughed again.

Shaking his head, Narad clambered free of the river. He looked down at his pale, thin legs. They seemed clean enough. He went to the soiled clothing.

‘Throw the trousers away,’ Bursa said. ‘I’ve got a spare pair that you can have, with a rope belt which I think you’ll need.’

‘Thank you, sir. I’ll pay you back.’

‘Don’t insult me, Narad. This kind of debt means nothing in the Legion. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll make the same offer to someone else, and so it goes.’

‘Yes sir. Thanks.’

‘Come back up with me. We have a wedding to attend.’

Narad followed Bursa back on to the road. Seeing his nakedness, the men laughed and the women crowed.

‘That water was cold,’ Narad explained.

The afternoon light was fading. Hobbling on blistered feet, the swelling on his thigh now reaching to the knee, Kadaspala made his way down the slope of the road’s bank. He was spent, too weary to go on. He could see a battered lean-to among the young trees at the forest’s edge. It would have to do for this night.

Arriving, he paused to study the old camp. The ancient necessity for shelter was simple in its beginnings, he reflected, before it strived for such elaborations as to achieve absurdity. But there was nothing elaborate or absurd about this humble construction. It would need work to keep the rain from him, but he knew that there would be no rain, not this night. Beyond that, this shelter’s only surviving function was to comfort the mind.

With a small fire flickering before it, smoke wafting in along with the heat, to keep the insects at bay, he would sleep like a king, albeit a hungry, battered one. When he arrived at Andarist’s house, he would appear like a pauper, a destitute wastrel. Would anyone even recognize him? He imagined a familiar Houseblade grasping him by the scruff of the neck and marching him behind an outbuilding, for a lesson in propriety.

He saw his father’s disgust, his sister’s shock. Hostage Cryl would laugh and drape an arm across his shoulders. All this on the morrow, then. A return to civilization for the wandering artist, the mad painter of portraits, the fool and his brushes.

But even this scene, conceived so tenderly in his mind, was but an illusion. Tiste were killing Tiste. Today’s righteous cause is religion. The gods are paying attention, after all. Wanting you to die in their name. Why? To prove your loyalty, of course. And what of their loyalty, you might wonder? Has your god blessed you and your life? Answered your every prayer? Given proof of its omnipotence?

Where is this god’s loyalty to you? Not loyal enough to spare your life which you give in its name. Not loyal enough to steer you past tragedy and grief, loss and misery. Not loyal enough to save your loved ones. Or the children who had to die as proof of that selfsame loyalty.

No, today the sack is filled with religion. Tomorrow it will be something else. The joy lies in beating it.

‘Poor Enesdia,’ he muttered as he sat down beneath the flimsy shelter. ‘The wrong wedding. At the wrong time.’ Bruised petals on the black currents.

He had asked, once, to paint a portrait of Lord Anomander. This in itself was almost unprecedented. Kadaspala was asked: he did not ask. But, that one time, he had, because he had seen something in that young highborn. Something different. He knew that he would find no answer to this mystery without day upon day devoted to piercing the mien of Anomander of House Purake, to slicing it away sliver by sliver with each stroke of his brush, down to the bone and then through that bone. No one, not even a highborn, should possess what Anomander possessed — that almost ancient assurance, and eyes that saw across a thousand years in an instant.

In other flesh, he would see it as madness. As tyranny, or an historian’s jaded, cynical regard, or both, since surely every historian was a tyrant at heart, so fiercely armed were they with the weapons of fact and truth; and if tyranny did not thrive in delusion and self-delusion, then it thrived nowhere at all. He would know the first honest historian he saw — the one broken and weeping and well beyond words or even a meeting of gazes. Instead, those he knew were mostly smug with their presumed knowledge, and on board or canvas their visages were as flat as anyone else’s.

But he saw no cynicism in Lord Anomander. He barely saw privilege, and the notions of strength and weakness blended in confusion, until Kadaspala wondered if he had not, all through his life, somehow inverted the meanings of each. A man who could offer weakness in strength was a man at peace with power.

Still, Kadaspala was haunted, when thinking of Anomander, by fears and unnamed, faceless dangers. If the lord had not refused him his request, he would now know the truth, from the surface through to the very roots, and all mysteries would be gone, revealed and exposed on board or canvas, and nothing would be quite as dark as it was.

Do not haunt me, Anomander. Not on this night, the night before your brother takes her hand and steals her from me. Not on this night, I beg you, when I curse the growing darkness and the mother who died in order to birth perfect beauty. Died and broke her husband, died and broke her son. Not on this night, when everything ends and nothing new begins.

Andarist, to be the hand that creates. Silchas, the hand that but waits to destroy. Anomander, who owns them both yet stands as would one defenceless and yet impenetrable. You three! War comes and it comes now. How will you answer?

Anomander, where is your weakness, and how can it be in truth your strength? Show this to me, and I in turn promise to not haunt you as you now haunt me. Fail in what comes, however, and I vow to never leave your soul in peace.

If there was one thing he could not deny, it was that, sullied and ruined as she would be, Enesdia would at least be safe. With Andarist and his gentle ways. Safe, but not preserved. The thought sickened him.

He drew his cloak around him and settled into the shelter. Too tired for a fire, too weary for false comforts, he closed his eyes and tried to sleep.

There was a hill overlooking Enes House. A watchtower had once commanded it, but some ancient conflict lost in the family’s history had seen it burned, and then fully dismantled until only the foundation stones remained. The ground surrounding the ring of stones and the rubbish-filled pit was mostly denuded, covered in a gravel of fire-cracked rocks and broken crockery. A single track led down the southeastern side of the hill to the road.

From the summit, Cryl studied the estate. The light was fast fading. The river bent away from the road, circling this hill, and it ran like a black serpent behind the house and its grounds. All looked peaceful.

Beside him, Corporal Rees was studying the ground. A moment later he dismounted and crouched. ‘Lieutenant, it’s as you said on the road — they rode up here, a dozen or so in all. To do just what we’re doing.’

Cryl continued studying the estate. He saw the pole bearing no banner. He could see the front courtyard of the house and the carriage stable, its doors open. Smoke rose from the chimneys of the mess hall. A few figures moved about, and the two guards at the gates were out on the sward, watching them.

‘Scouting,’ Rees said. ‘The Lord was right to fear for his home.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Cryl replied.

‘Sir?’

‘They came up here, studied the estate. They saw it was under-manned. They saw that the Lord was not present, and the carriage was gone.’

‘A perfect time to attack.’

‘Yet they didn’t, did they? Why not?’

‘Loss of nerve?’

Cryl shook his head. Dread was a cold fist tightening in his chest. ‘The estate wasn’t their target, corporal. They didn’t attack, because the procession had already left.’

‘Sir, they would not do that. It is one thing to launch a purge against the Deniers, but what you suggest — against highborn, against a Greater House — they could never justify that in Mother Dark’s name.’

‘Those highborn who harbour Deniers on their lands,’ said Cryl. ‘The Lord spoke of this.’

‘But sir, we are speaking of the bride of Lord Andarist.’

Cryl looked down at the corporal, bemused.

Rees had pulled off his helm, running a hand through his sparse hair. ‘Sorry, sir. It’s just… I have friends in the Legion. Dear friends. Men and women I fought alongside. What you’re saying — none of them I know would ever agree to that. You’re describing a crime. Raw murder. Lord Urusander would be the first to hunt down the killers and hang them all.’

‘Renegades,’ said Cryl. ‘Bandits, even, or perhaps the blame will be laid upon the Deniers. If proper signs are left behind. Abyss knows, they could even implicate Draconus. Deceit is their weapon, and every act of murder and chaos will simply impress upon everyone the need for more order — the need for the Legion’s return.’

‘They would not do that,’ Rees whispered.

‘They need to strike quickly,’ Cryl went on, ‘before those coming up from Kharkanas reach the wedding camp. Don’t you understand, Rees? Strike the brothers to anger — no, to blind rage — and by whose hand will this civil war be unleashed?’ He gathered up his reins. ‘Mount up. We ride to the estate, and there I will hand you over to the castellan.’

‘And you, sir?’

‘A fresh horse. No, two. I will ride through the night — Sergeant Agalas should have caught up with us. Something has happened to them. If the attackers wait for dawn, I should reach Lord Jaen in time-’

‘Sir, don’t you think they’d have watchers on the road?’

‘If I take the other side of the river, there is a ford-’

‘I know the one, sir, but the river is high — no one dares it and for good reason.’

‘Which is why they’ll post no watchers upon it.’

‘Sir, you should not go alone.’

‘Corporal, it may be that Lord Jaen is right and indeed that I am completely wrong. You need to ready yourselves. Explain it all to Castellan Delaran.’

‘Yes sir.’

They swung their weary horses round and set off down the hill.

The night sky was clear and the swirl of stars bright overhead when Narad dismounted with the others in Bursa’s troop. Awaiting them in a glade was another troop of Legion soldiers, although none wore uniforms. From this unlit camp an officer strode out to meet them.

She was tall, well shaped, yet she moved in a loose way, dissolute, and Narad wondered if she was drunk. But when she spoke, her words were sharp and precise.

‘Corporal Bursa, what news do you bring me?’

‘Small troubles only, sir. Taken care of on the road. But we can be certain that no reinforcements from the north will reach them in time. Has Captain Scara Bandaris responded to the rider I sent?’

‘I intercepted your messenger, I’m afraid.’

‘Sir?’

‘Too great a risk, corporal. I deemed it more prudent that no Legion soldier ride to Kharkanas. I understand that you wish for confirmation of your orders. That you feel troubled by events, but you may take the word of Infayen Menand that all we do here is necessary. These first acts, each one but a small letting of blood, are intended to prevent more bloodshed later.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Now, divest yourselves of all Legion attire. There is spare clothing awaiting you.’

Narad had stood close enough, among his comrades, to hear this exchange. He assumed that the officer was this Infayen Menand, although he could not be sure. When Bursa turned back to them, however, Narad could see, even in the darkness, his troubled mien.

‘You heard the lieutenant, then,’ he said to them. ‘Head over to that heap of clothing and be quick about it. Once changed, you can try to get some sleep. We’ll be back on the move, on foot, well before dawn. Supper’s cold tonight. Go on, all of you.’

Narad joined the others in making his way to the spare clothing. When he began picking through it, he felt sticky blood stains on some items.

‘Denier shit,’ the woman beside him muttered. ‘In case any of us get cut down.’

‘We get left behind?’ Narad asked.

‘That’s the way of it, Waft.’

Narad didn’t much like the nickname they’d given him, but he knew enough to not complain, which would only make it worse. Just another lie.

The woman shot him a look. ‘You say something?’

‘No.’

‘Glad for that,’ she snapped under her breath, shaking out a tunic and holding it up. ‘Spent four years going hungry after getting discharged. Four nobleborn boys once caught me worse for wear on a country road. Said I stank and damned near drowned me giving me a bath in the river. They laughed and pawed me and left me lying naked in the mud. I risked my life to see them safe and that was what they did to me? It wasn’t right, and now they’re going to pay.’

Narad stared at her. Others had paused to listen, but he suspected that they’d all heard the tale before. They probably had their own. Lists of wrongs could bind tighter than blood. And I got my face ruined by a Legion veteran, so go to the Abyss all of you. He stood studying a shirt he’d pulled out, and then dropped it. ‘Just realized I don’t need anything from here, since I ain’t wearing any uniform.’

She snorted a laugh. ‘Lucky you. Go get some sleep, Waft. Killing comes with the dawn.’

They were camped in the clearing in front of the new Great House of Andarist, which stood silent, unoccupied but ready. In the darkness, with the Houseblades ranged out to form a protective circle, Enesdia was at last permitted to climb out from the carriage. She was swathed in a thick robe and hooded and the weight of this covering pulled at her.

It was late and her father stood alone by the fire, his eyes upon the huge edifice of the Great House. She moved up alongside him, feeling strangely hollow, almost frightened by what would come in the days ahead.

‘A fine home awaits you,’ Lord Jaen said, reaching out to take her hand.

She felt the warmth of that grip and found strength in it, but also a painful longing. She would leave his side, and everything would change between them. All at once, Enesdia yearned for her life left behind. She wanted to wear the rough clothes of her childhood, and run laughing with Cryl in heated pursuit, the stains of the soft fruit she’d thrown at him all down the front of his new tunic. She wanted to feel the heat of the sun in its younger days, when it never blinked behind a single cloud, and the air smelled of freedom in ways she’d never fully grasped back then, and now would never know again.

‘I am sorry I sent him away,’ her father said then.

He had told her of his fears for his home, but she thought them unwarranted. They were highborn, and to strike at them would be seen — by Andarist, and by Anomander and Silchas — as an act of war. The Legion would not dare that, for they would risk losing all favour in the realm, beginning with that of Mother Dark herself. In truth, she believed her father was being dishonest with her, even if it was with her best interests in mind.

‘It is probably better this way,’ she said, using the words to push down the hurt she was feeling, this wretched sense of abandonment — when she had needed Cryl the most. ‘He was not happy. Hasn’t been for weeks, maybe even months.’

‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s understandable.’

‘No it isn’t,’ she retorted.

‘Beloved daughter-’

‘Why can’t he be happy for me? If it was the other way around, I’d be happy for him!’

‘Would you? Truly?’

‘Of course I would. Love is such a precious gift, how could I not?’

Her father said nothing.

After a time, she frowned, reconsidering his silence. ‘It’s just selfish,’ she concluded. ‘He’s as good as my brother, and no brother would be unhappy for me.’

‘True, no brother would. But then, Cryl is not your brother, Enesdia.’

‘I know that. But that’s not the point.’

‘I’m afraid that it is.’

‘I’m not dense, Father. I know what you’re implying, but it isn’t true. Cryl can’t love me that way — he knows me too well.’

Jaen coughed — but no, not a cough. Laughter.

His reaction should have angered her, but it did not. ‘You think I don’t comprehend my own vanity? The shallowness of my thoughts?’

‘Daughter, if you comprehend such things, then your thoughts are anything but shallow.’

She waved the objection away. ‘Who is the least of the brothers of the Purake?’ she asked. ‘Who among them lacks ambition? Who is the first to smile for no reason?’

‘He smiles because he is in love, daughter.’

‘Before me, I mean. When I first saw him, he was smiling.’

‘His love is for life itself, Enesdia. This is his gift to the world, and I would never consider it of less value than those offered up by his brothers.’

‘Oh, that wasn’t what I meant. Not really. Never mind. It’s too late and I’m tired and overwrought. But I will never forgive Cryl for not being here.’

‘Unfair. I was the one who sent him back.’

‘I doubt he argued overmuch.’

‘On the contrary, he did.’

‘But he went anyway.’

‘Yes, because he would not disobey me. But I think I understand now. All of this. You are punishing him, and you wanted him to see it. So, in your mind, Enesdia, Cryl must have hurt you somehow. But the only way I can think he could have done that leads me to a place where I should not be — not now, only days from your wedding.’

Despite her robes, Enesdia felt herself grow cold. ‘Don’t say that,’ she whispered.

‘Do you love Andarist?’

‘Of course I do! How could I not?’

‘Enesdia.’ He faced her, took hold of her shoulders. ‘To say that I do not value the gift that Andarist possesses, by his very nature, could not be more wrong. I value it above most other qualities among a man or a woman. Because it is so rare.’

‘Did Mother have it? That gift?’

He blinked down at her, and then shook his head. ‘No. But I am glad for that, for otherwise her loss would be impossible for me to bear. Enesdia, speak truth to me here and now. If you do not love him enough, your marriage to him will destroy his gift. It may take decades, or centuries, but you will destroy him. Because you do not love him enough.’

‘Father-’

‘When one loves all things of the world, when one has that gift of joy, it is not the armour against grief that you might think it to be. Such a person stands balanced on the edge of sadness — there is no other way for it, because to love as he does is to see clearly. Clearly. Andarist smiles in the understanding that sadness stalks him, step by step, moment by moment. If you wound him — a thousand small wounds of disregard or indifference — until he stumbles and weakens, sorrow will find him and cut through to his heart.’

‘I do love him,’ she said. ‘More than enough, more than any one man needs. This I swear.’

‘We will return home upon the dawn, daughter, and weather all that comes.’

‘If we do that, Father, then I wound him when he is at his most vulnerable. If we do that, I destroy his gift, and his life.’

He studied her, and she saw in his eyes that he knew the truth of her words. That it was already too late.

‘Cryl did the honourable thing, Enesdia.’

‘I know,’ she replied. ‘But I wish he hadn’t!’ These last words came in a welter of tears and she fell against him.

Her father drew her into a tight embrace. ‘I should have acted,’ he said, his voice gruff, almost broken. ‘I should have said something-’

But she shook her head. ‘No, I’m the fool. I have always been the fool — I showed him that often enough.’

She wept then, as there was nothing more for either of them to say.

There was no sense in the world, she decided, much later when she lay sleepless under furs in the carriage. No sense at all. It had surrendered to the facile creatures like her, gliding through life in a glowing penumbra of petty self-obsession, where every unclear comment was a slight, and every slight personal, and spite and malice bred like vermin, in whispers and hidden glances. That is my world, where everything close to me is bigger than it really is. But the truth is, I know no other way to live.

She would never let Andarist doubt her, never give cause to hurt. Only in imagination would she free herself to betray, and dream of a son of the Durav in her arms, and the face of a young man who knew her too well.

Narad dreamed of women. Beautiful women who turned away from him in revulsion, in disgust. They were crowding close on all sides, and each recoil jostled him. He struggled to hide his face, but it seemed as if his hands were not his own, and that they were helpless in their efforts to find what he sought to hide.

He had not been born with much. He could not recall once basking in the admiring regard of a woman. There was no point in counting all the whores, since they were paid to look pleased; besides, they never held his gaze for very long. Desire was a thing no eye could fake, and its absence was plain enough to unman the boldest man.

Blinking awake, he stared up through the motionless branches and leaves that seemed to fracture the night sky. He would never be desired — even the small hope he had cherished in the wasted years before the beating was now dead.

Not even the gods offered fairness, not without a bargain to be made first. There were tears in his eyes, blurring the scene overhead. Bargain? I have nothing to give up. If gods looked down on him now, their regard was flat, unfeeling. Even pity demanded a soul dropping to its knees, and he would not give that up for so poor a reward. I get pity enough here among the mortals.

The beautiful women look away, look past. Their eyes glide over and that has always been the way of it, long before my face was broken. All they want is a mirrored reflection, another perfect face to match the admiration that is the only wealth they understand.

Behind this broken face waits an honest man, a man capable of love. He wants only what so many others have. Something beautiful to hold on to.

I ask for it, but the gods do not answer. No light or warmth finds their flat eyes. They blink cold. They look away, find something else, something more interesting, more original.

There were no ugly gods. Their first expression of power was in the reshaping of their selves, into forms lovely to behold. Had he the power, he would do the same. He would take this clay in his own hands and mould it into perfection.

But no such gifts awaited him.

He heard low voices, and then a figure moved close to him, one hand reaching out to nudge him. ‘Up, Waft, it’s time. Cold breakfast and then weapons and armour on.’

It was the woman who had spoken so bitterly the night before. He turned his head, studied her dark form. Wishing she was both beautiful and blind, even her fingers senseless and dumb. Wishing he could lie to her and convince her and then slide into her and afterwards feel at peace.

‘You awake?’

‘Yes,’ he replied.

‘Good.’ She moved on to the next sleeping form, and he knew that she had been oblivious of his thoughts.

Just as well. He’d had enough of their laughter.

A short time later, over a hundred armed figures were moving through the forest. Narad was among them, a few steps behind Corporal Bursa. He had drawn his sword but the hand that held it was cold. He was shivering under his clothes yet his skin was slick with sweat, and in his mind there was turmoil.

He saw his life unfurled behind him: all the times when he cut people with words, mocking all their pretensions. When he had viewed with disdain every gesture of kindness or supposed sincerity. It seemed to him now that he had been fighting a war all his life. Nothing was real enough to believe in; nothing was good enough to fight for, barring the patch of useless ground he stood upon, and the flimsy borders of his contempt.

And now he found himself in the company of murderers, just one more shadowy form threading between silent boles. Somewhere ahead slept innocent people. Assuming innocence even existed, and of that he had a lifetime of doubt gnawing the edges of his faith. No matter. Their dawn was about to be shattered in a sudden descent into violence and brutality.

He did not want this, and yet something in him hungered for what was to come, the ugliest part of himself — the outside pulled in and made still more venal, still more disgusting. Among all the soldiers in this midst, he alone bore the physical truth of what was hidden inside each and every one of them.

They had their lists, their grievances, just as he had his own.

Moving through the wood, as it drew the darkness down and around them all. There were different kinds of purity, different kinds of pain, but in the gloom every distinction was lost, made the same. He was no uglier than anyone here, they no more beautiful or handsome than he. We’re all the same.

Every cause is just when it is your own, when feelings count for something. But sometimes, among some people, feelings count for nothing at all.

This was the soldier’s gift, he supposed.

He staggered then, down to one knee, and his breakfast came back up his throat, sprayed out on to the black earth. The convulsions continued, until there was nothing left inside. Head hanging, threads of mucus and bile dangling from his twisted lips, he sensed people moving past him. Heard a few low laughs.

A gloved hand rapped him on the shoulder and the woman who’d woken him leaned down and said, ‘Rancid meat, Waft. Been fighting to keep it down all the way. Get up, stay with me, we’re almost there.’

He pushed himself upright, wondering at her invitation. Had Bursa put her up to this? Did they think him a coward, someone they needed to keep an eye on? Shamed, he wiped his mouth with a sleeve, spat out the bitter taste, and set off, the woman falling in beside him.

‘We’re going to make this a horror, Waft.’

He nodded, a gesture she could not even see.

‘As bad as can be. You can’t let it get to you. You got to shut it all down, understand? Do but don’t think, that’s the soldier’s creed. If you think of anything at all, think of the peace to come, a year or two from now. Think of a new way of things in Kurald Galain, the nobles knocked down and weak, real people — like you and me — living well and living respected.’

Living respected. Empty Abyss, woman, you think that’ll take the place of self-respect? It won’t. You’re fooling yourself. We all are.

‘You with me, Waft?’

‘Yes,’ he said.

There was a lightening of the way ahead, the trees thinning, stumps rising from beaten down grasses. A bulky shape — a carriage — and a row of horses tied to a rope stretching between two upright banners. The glimmer of an ebbing fire.

And figures at the clearing’s edge, motionless, seeming to stare directly at Narad.

Sudden shouts, the hiss of iron on scabbard rims ‘ Let’s go! ’ barked the woman.

And then they were running into the clearing, upon the open grounds of the Great House of Andarist.

Lord Jaen had stood the night, fully dressed, as if in vigil. He had walked the round, checking on his Houseblades, sharing a few quiet words. Andarist and his retinue were at least a day away, with the guests to follow the day after. The night was measured by his circling strides, a slow spiral that, eventually, brought him once more to his position beside the waning fire.

His heart ached for his daughter, for the blindness of youth. And every thought of hostage Cryl was a twisted pressure deep inside him: fear for the young man who might have to defend Enes House from an attack; pain for the wounds his daughter had delivered upon him.

Regret was an empty curse. He had let age take hold of him, as if ennui was an old man’s final gift to himself — the blessed embrace of indifference in the guise of wisdom. Weariness awaited every unmindful soul, no matter its age, no matter its station. He knew that centuries of life awaited him, but that was a truth he could not face without blinking, without shying away. The true curse, the one curse that could fill a soul to bursting, was weariness. Not of the flesh, although that played its part; but of the spirit. He had come to recognize in himself a kind of hapless impatience: the affliction of a man waiting and wanting to die.

Loss and broken hearts could be borne by the young, the strong of will, the robust in spirit. He possessed none of those traits, and so he stood, soon to give away his only daughter, soon to pass into her hands all the promises of youth and none of the unspoken regrets, as befitted a father fading from the light. I am left behind and I am content with that. As content as any old fool can be content. Perhaps I’ll take to drink. Some sordid poison of forgetfulness to plunge days and nights into oblivion.

No longer needed… why should such things feel so cruel?

He stared at the spent fire, the cooling coals that held to their old shapes of stick and branch. Every dying hearth was home to fragile ghosts, and all that glowed on was but the memory of living. That and nothing A sense of motion drew him round. A Houseblade shouted — he saw his guards draw weapons, saw them contract to form a tight line. And from the forest edge, dark shapes boiling out — a gleam of bared iron Appalled, disbelieving, Lord Jaen tugged his sword free. He lunged towards the carriage and drove the pommel of his weapon against the door. ‘Out! Now! Out! ’

The maid, Ephalla, crawled from under the carriage, groggy with sleep. Jaen grasped her arm and lifted her to her feet. He shook her. ‘Listen to me — take my daughter — flee to the house. Do you understand? To the house!’ He flung her hard against the side of the carriage and then wheeled.

His Houseblades were retreating, closing in around the carriage on the side facing the forest.

Behind him he heard the door swing open; heard his daughter’s frightened cry as Ephalla dragged her from the carriage.

‘We withdraw!’ Jaen shouted to his Houseblades. ‘Back to the house. Fall back!’

His guards formed a curved line, backing quickly. Jaen glanced over a shoulder and saw the two women running for the house.

The attackers were rushing closer. There were too many of them.

‘Slow them down!’ he commanded.

The first line of the enemy reached his Houseblades. Weapons clashed, blades slashed down. Two of his guards fell, overwhelmed. The others fought on, desperately hacking at the swords slashing and thrusting towards them. Another fell, his skull crushed.

The ones who remained continued to retreat. Lord Jaen backed up with them, helplessly trapped between his Houseblades and the two women striving to reach the house. Another moment’s hesitation and then, with a curse, Jaen spun round and ran after his daughter and the maid. He would hold the door if he could, knowing that the gesture meant nothing.

Andarist had not built a fortress. A grand home and nothing more. Jaen doubted the bar would even hold.

The women reached the door. Ephalla tugged it open and pushed Enesdia through.

Before her husband — not side by side — ill omen, a marriage doomed -

The thought tore through him on a spasm of absurd guilt.

He heard scores of footfalls thudding on the ground behind him, fast closing. My Houseblades are dead. Another dozen would have made no difference. Oh, Cryl -

He reached the gaping doorway, saw the terrified faces of his daughter and the maid in the hallway inside. He met Ephalla’s eyes and nodded.

She slammed the door shut, even as Enesdia shrieked.

Jaen wheeled on the threshold, readying his sword.

He had lost one of the horses to the river, watched it swept downstream with its head raised and neck straining. Grainy-eyed, feeling leaden, Cryl clung to the remaining beast as it finally reached the far bank and stumbled up the slope. Without a pause he kicked the creature’s flanks and it struggled against its own exhaustion, building into a plodding canter up and on to the road. Still he kicked and somehow the horse found the will to stretch out into a gallop.

He would be coming up to the house from the south. Before him the road was empty, with dawn only now edging the sky.

In the distance he heard shouts and then the clash of blades.

Above a line of trees, he saw the freshly tiled roof of Andarist’s house. Cutting down from the road, he drove his horse hard across an open sward, and then through brush and into the shadow of the trees. Before him, as he rode towards the back of the house, he saw figures spilling to the sides at the run. He understood that Jaen had retreated into the house — his only choice, for there were scores of attackers.

Cryl’s eyes fixed on a shuttered window on the main floor, to the left of the back door. He pushed his mount to even greater speed, riding straight for it.

Someone shouted — they had seen him, but that did not matter. He was almost there.

He kicked his boots free of the stirrups. He clambered up until he was perched on the saddle. At the last moment, as the horse veered of its own accord to avoid colliding with the back of the house, Cryl launched himself across the intervening distance, angling his shoulder down and protecting his face with his arms.

He struck the shutters and wood exploded around him.

Splinters lanced into him as he landed on the floor and skidded across slate tiles. Picking himself up, he drew his sword and rushed towards the front of the house. He could hear hammering against the front door and the sound of splitting wood. The rooms blurred past unseen as he ran.

Enesdia screamed as the front door was battered down.

Cryl plunged into the hallway — saw Enesdia. Ephalla had drawn a dagger and was standing before her mistress. A sword lashed out, the flat of the blade striking the maid’s forearm, breaking bones. Another blade punched into her chest, lifting her from the floor Cryl rushed past Enesdia. He did not even register the faces of the figures before him. His sword flickered out, opened the throat of the man who had murdered Ephalla, tore free to bury half its length in the gut of a second attacker.

‘Run to the back!’ he shouted. ‘Get on the horse! Go!’

‘Cryl!’

More attackers were pushing into the hallway.

From somewhere off to his right, in another room, a window was being broken through. ‘Go!’ he screamed, flinging himself at the three attackers.

He was a Durav. The blood was on fire in his veins. He split the face of one man, sliced through the kneecap of another. A blade stabbed deep into his right thigh. He staggered back, pulling himself free of the weapon. Strength poured out of that leg. Cursing, he stumbled. More were coming in, eager to reach him. He blocked a thrust, felt his blade slice up the length of someone’s arm. And then something slammed into the side of his head and the world flashed white. As he fell forward, twin punches met his chest, pushed him back upright. He looked down to see two swords impaling him.

Another blade slashed, cut through half his neck.

He saw himself falling, in the hallway, almost within reach of the entrance threshold and the hacked body of Lord Jaen lying beyond, where boots and legs crowded past and drew close. Someone stepped on his hand, breaking fingers, but he only heard the sound — the feeling was a sense of wrongness, but there was no pain.

There was only a growing emptiness, black as the river. He waited for it to take him. He did not have to wait long.

They had caught the nobleborn woman in one of the back rooms, trying to climb out through a window, and dragged her into the main hall. And then the raping began.

When Narad was pushed forward — his sword unblooded and hanging from his hand — the woman who had run with him laughed and said, ‘This one to finish her! She’s a beauty, Waft, and she’s all yours!’

To the crass urgings of a dozen onlookers he was shoved to where she was lying on the hearthstone. Her clothes had been torn away. There was blood on the stone under her. Her lips were split from hard kisses and bites, and the once unmarred flesh of her body now bore deep bruises left by hands and fingers. He stared down into her glazed eyes.

She met them unblinking, and did not turn away.

The woman behind Narad was tugging down his trousers, taking him in hand to wake him up. Laughing, nuzzling the side of his neck, she pulled him down until he was on top of the nobleborn.

He felt himself slide into a place of blood and torn flesh.

Having delivered him, the woman stepped back, still laughing.

The nobleborn woman’s body was warm under his, and for all the bruises it was wondrously soft. He reached to hold her tight — to the howls of the others — and he whispered in her ear, asking for forgiveness.

Much later, they told him that she had breathed out her last breath while under him, and Narad had then realized that on that morning, upon the hearthstone, beauty had died in his arms.

Kadaspala woke with a start. He sat up. In his mind there remained the echoes of screaming — a terrible dream he could not even remember. He rubbed at his face, looked down in the pale morning light to see that his bruised thigh had swollen to twice the size of the other. Groaning, he sank back down.

But the faint echoes of the screams did not fade away. They did not fade at all.

No. Oh, no no no no -

Paint and brush boxes left lying on the ground, Kadaspala somehow found himself on his feet, limping through blinding waves of agony, scrabbling up into the road. Trying to run, leg dragging, lurching under him, his breaths raw in his throat.

The sun climbed up through the trees. He hobbled on, wondering what madness had taken him. He could not have heard anything real. The distance was too far — he had been running on this road for ever. Leagues, tens of leagues — but no, the air was still cold from the night just past. Mist clung to the river’s surface like smoke.

He could barely walk, much less run.

When he came within sight of Andarist’s house, he halted. He could see the carriage, but the horses were gone. There was no movement — not a single Houseblade or servant. He limped forward.

Bodies on the ground. His father’s Houseblades and others. He saw faces he had known all his life, each one flat as the thinnest paint, the eyes half-lidded and blank. And everywhere, in lurid hues, gaping wounds. When he brought his hands to his face, he felt only numbness, as if even sensation was in retreat.

Fingers now stabbing the air, he staggered on.

The front door of the house was broken, torn from its hinges.

A sound was coming from Kadaspala, an inhuman sound, a sound of something sliding into a pit, an abyss, a fall into depths unending. The cry surrounded him, greeted the empty morning and its senseless light, and the blood on the earth made shadows beneath motionless bodies. He saw the open carriage door and more bodies beyond — more Houseblades, more strangers in filthy rags, eyes staring as dead eyes always did.

A shape on the steps of the house, a thing in a fine woollen cloak as blue as midnight. Grey hair clotted with black gore. The fingers on the end of Kadaspala’s hand danced in frenetic motion, jerking slashes of the invisible brush, and all the while the cry continued, like a soul in retreat, a soul plummeting for ever.

He stepped over his father’s body, and then over Cryl Durav’s. And saw Ephalla’s still, stained form.

He came to stand before the hearthstone.

This was not her. This… thing. Not her. Never her. I don’t know who this is. It’s not -

The face was all wrong. The bloodless cheeks, the swollen lips cracked and torn. He had never seen this woman before. She was staring at the ceiling. He felt himself pulled over her, stepping forward, shifting to intercept that empty gaze. He heard his own howl of protest. Still he leaned closer, watching the play of his own shadow sliding up over her face. He met her eyes.

The fingers of his hands curled into claws. The keening sound filled the chamber, ran wild, was trapped in corners, jolting free and careening against the ceiling. Its pitch was building, climbing ever higher. A sound tasting of blood, a sound smelling of horror. He staggered back and fell to his knees.

Enesdia.

Don’t look at me like that. Don’t -

His fingers reached up, as he stared at the forlorn figure sprawled on the hearthstone, and the invisible brushes stabbed.

Deep into his eyes.

Pain was a shock, rocking his head back, but the artist would not let go — the brushes dipped deeper, soaked in red paint. The cry was now shrieking in a chorus of voices, bursting from his mouth again and again. He felt his fingers grasp hold of his eyes, felt them clench tight, crushing everything.

And then he tore them away.

And darkness offered its perfect blessing, and he shuddered as if in ecstasy.

The babbling in his skull fell away, until a lone, quavering voice remained. It is the one question that haunts every artist, the one question we can never answer.

How does one paint love?

The brushes had done their work. The gods of the colours were all dead. Kadaspala sat slumped, with his eyes in his hands.