Something crackled in the portalway of the gate. Shadowthrone and the Hounds flinched.
Paran continued, wondering at his own courage, to bait these Ascendants. Always despised authority, didn't I? 'Half-way between life and death – this promise costs me nothing, you see.'
'Liar, the only Warren that can touch you now is—'
'Death,' Paran said. 'Of course,' he added, 'someone else ... interceded, and was certain to leave long before you and your too-loud Hounds arrived.'
The King of High House Shadow edged forward. 'Who? What does it plan? Who opposes us?'
'Find your own answers, Shadowthrone. You do understand, don't you, that if you send me on my way now, your ... opposition will seek other means? Knowing nothing of who their next tool is, how will you sniff out their next move? You'll be left darting at shadows.'
'Easier to follow you,' the god conceded. 'I must speak with my companion—'
'As you like,' Paran interrupted. 'I wish I could stand ...'
The god rasped laughter. 'If you stand, you walk. One way only. You have a reprieve – and if Hood comes to gather you to your feet, the guiding hand is his, not ours. Excellent. And if you live, so shall my shadow follow you.'
Paran grunted. 'My shadow's a crowded place, these days.' His eyes fell once again on the Hounds. The creatures watched him still, their eyes faint coals. I'll have you yet. As if fanned by his silent promise, the red glows sharpened.
The god resumed speaking, but the world had darkened around Paran, fading, dwindling, until the voice was gone, and with it all awareness but the faint, renewed spinning of a coin.
An unknown span of time passed in which Paran wandered through memories he had thought long lost – his days as a child clinging to his mother's dress and taking his first, tottering steps; the nights of storm when he raced down the chill hallway to his parents' bedroom, tiny feet slapping on the cold stone; holding the hands of his two sisters as they stood waiting on the hard cobbles of the courtyard – waiting, waiting for someone. The images seemed to lurch sideways in his head. His mother's dress? No, an old woman in the service of the household. Not his parents' bedroom, but those of the servants; and there, in the courtyard with his sisters, they'd stood half the morning, awaiting the arrival of their mother and father, two people they barely knew.
In his mind scenes replayed themselves, moments of mysterious import, hidden significance, pieces of a puzzle he couldn't recognize, shaped by hands not his own and with a purpose he couldn't fathom. A tremor of fear travelled the length of his thoughts as he sensed that something – someone – was busy reordering the formative events of his life, turning them on end and casting them into the present new shadows. Somehow, the guiding hand ... played. With him, with his life.
It seemed an odd kind of death—
Voices reached him.
'Aw, hell.' A face bent close to Paran's own, looked into his open blank eyes. The face was Picker's. 'He didn't stand a chance,' she said.
Sergeant Antsy spoke from a few feet away. 'Nobody in the Ninth would've done him like this,' he said. 'Not right here in the city.'
Picker reached out and touched the chest wound, her fingers surprisingly soft on his torn flesh. 'This isn't Kalam's work.'
'You all right here?' Antsy asked. 'I'm going to get Hedge and Mallet, and whoever else has shown up.'
'Go ahead,' Picker replied, seeking and finding the second wound, eight inches below the first. 'This one came later, right-handed and weak.'
A very odd death indeed, Paran thought. What held him here? Had there been another ... place? A place of heat, searing yellow light? And voices, figures faint, indistinct, there beneath the arch of ... of crowds strangely held in place, eyes closed, mouths open. A chorus of the dead ... Had he gone somewhere only to return to these real voices, these real hands on his flesh? How could he see through the empty glass of his eyes, or feel the woman's gentle touch on his body? And what of the pain, rising as from a great depth like a leviathan?
Picker withdrew her hands and rested her elbows on her thighs as she crouched before Paran. 'Now, how come you're still bleeding, Captain? Those knife wounds are at least an hour old.'
The pain reached the surface. Paran felt his gummy lips split. The hinges of his jaw cracked and he drew in a savage gasp. Then screamed.
Picker bolted backwards, her sword appearing in her hand as if from nowhere as she backed to the alley's far wall. 'Shedenul's mercy!'
Boots pounded on the cobbles off to her right and her head whipped around. 'Healer! The bastard's alive!'
The third bell after midnight tolled sonorously through the city of Pale, echoing down streets emptied by the curfew. A light rain had begun, casting the night sky with a murky gold hue. In front of the large, rambling estate, two blocks from the old palace, that had become part of the 2nd's quarters, two marines wrapped in black raincapes stood guard outside the main gate.
'Damned miserable night, ain't it?' one said, shivering.
The other shifted his pike to his left shoulder and hawked a mouthful of phlegm into the gutter. 'You just guessing, mind,' he said, wagging his head. 'Any other brilliant insights you feel ready to toss my way, you just speak up, hear?'
'What did I do?' the first man demanded, hurt.
The second soldier stiffened. 'Hush, someone coming up the street.'
The guards waited tensely, hands on their weapons. A figure crossed from the opposite side and stepped into the torchlight.
'Halt,' the second guard growled. 'Advance slowly, and you'd better have business here.'
The man took a step closer. 'Kalam, Bridgeburners, the Ninth,' he said quietly.
The marines remained wary, but the Bridgeburner kept his distance, his dark face glistening in the rain. 'What's your business here?' the second guard asked.
Kalam grunted and glanced back down the street. 'We didn't expect to be coming back. As for our business, well, it's better that Tayschrenn don't know about it. You with me, soldier?'
The marine grinned and spat a second time into the gutter. 'Kalam – you'd be Whiskeyjack's corporal.' There was a new tone of respect in his voice. 'Whatever you want you've got.'
'Damned right,' the other soldier growled. 'I was at Nathilog, sir. You want us blinded by the rain for the next hour or so, you just say the word.'
'We're bringing in a body,' Kalam said. 'But this never happened on your shift.'
'Hood's Gate, no,' the second marine said. 'Peaceful as the Seventh Dawn.'
From down the street came the sounds of a number of men approaching. Kalam waved them forward, then slipped inside as the first guard unlocked the gate. 'What do you figure they're up to?' he asked, after Kalam had disappeared.
The other shrugged. 'Hope it'll stick something hard and sharp up Tayschrenn, Hood take the treacherous murderer. And, knowing them Bridgeburners, that's exactly what they'll do.' He fell silent as the group arrived. Two men carried a third man between them. The second soldier's eyes widened as he saw the rank of the unconscious man, and the blood staining the front of his baldric. 'Oponn's luck,' he hissed to the Bridgeburner nearest him, a man wearing a tarnished leather cap. 'The pull not the push,' he added.
The Bridgeburner threw him a sharp look. 'You see a woman come after us you get out of her way, you hear me?'
.'A woman? Who?'
'She's in the Ninth, and she might be thirsty for blood,' the man replied, as he and his comrade dragged the captain through the gate. 'Forget security,' he said, over his shoulder. 'Just stay alive if you can.'
The two marines stared at each other after the men had passed. After a moment the first soldier reached to close the gate. The other man stopped him.
'Leave it open,' he muttered. 'Let's find some shadows, close but not too close.'
'Hell of a night,' the first marine said.
'You got a thing about stating the obvious, haven't you?' the other said, as he moved away from the gate.
The first man shrugged
helplessly, then hurried to follow.
Tattersail stared long and hard at the card centred on the field she had laid down. She had chosen a spiral pattern, working her way through the entire Deck of Dragons and arriving with a final card, which could mark either an apex or an epiphany depending on how it placed itself.
The spiral had become a pit, a tunnel downward, and at its root, seeming distant and shadow-hazed, waited the image of a Hound. She sensed an immediacy to this reading. High House Shadow had become involved, a challenge to Oponn's command of the game. Her eyes were drawn to the first card she had placed, at the spiral's very beginning. The Mason of High House Death held a minor position among the overall rankings, but now the figure etched on the wood seemed to have risen to an eminent placing. Brother to the Soldier of the same House, the Mason's image was that of a lean, greying man clothed in faded leathers. His massive, vein-roped hands held stone-cutting tools and around him rose roughly dressed menhirs. Tattersail found she could make out faint glyphs on the stones, a language unfamiliar to her but reminiscent of Seven Cities' script. In the House of Death the Mason was the builder of barrows, the placer of stones, a promise of death not to one or a few but to many. The language on the menhirs delivered a message not intended for her: the Mason had carved those words for himself, and time had worn the edges – even the man himself appeared starkly weathered, his face latticed with cracks, his silvered beard thin and tangled. The role had been assumed by a man who'd once worked in stone, but no longer.
The sorceress was having difficulty understanding this field. The patterns she saw startled her: it was as if a whole new game had begun, with players stepping on to the scene at every turn. Midway through the spiral was High House Dark's Knight, its placement counterpoint to both the beginning and the end. As with the last time the Deck had unveiled this draconian figure, something hovered in the inky sky behind the Knight, as elusive as ever, at times seeming like a dark stain on her own eyes.
The Knight's sword reached a black, smoky streak towards the Hound at the spiral's apex, and in this instance she knew its meaning. The future held a clash between the Knight and High House Shadow. The thought both frightened Tattersail and left her feeling relieved – it would be a confrontation. There would be no alliance between the Houses. It was a rare thing to see such a clear and direct link between two Houses: the potential for devastation left her cold with worry. Blood spilled on such a high level of power cast aftershocks down through the world. Inevitably, people would be hurt. And this thought brought her round back to the Mason of High House Death. Tattersail's heart thudded heavy in her chest. She blinked sweat from her eyes and managed a few deep breaths.
'Blood,' she murmured, 'ever flows downward.' The Mason's shaping a barrow – after all, he is Death's servant — and he will touch me directly. That barrow ... is it mine? Do 1 back out? Abandon the Bridgeburners to their fate, flee from Tayschrenn, from the Empire?
An ancient memory flooded her thoughts, which she had repressed for almost two centuries. The image shook her. Once again she walked the muddy streets of the village where she had been born, a child bearing the Talent, a child who had seen the horsemen of war sweeping down into their sheltered lives. A child who had run away from the knowledge, telling no one, and the night came, a night of screams and death.
Guilt rose within her, its spectre visage hauntingly familiar. After all these years its face still held the power to shatter her world, making hollow those things she needed solid, rattling her illusion of security with a shame almost two hundred years old.
The image sank once again into its viscid pool, but it left her changed. There would be no running away this time. Her eyes returned one last time to the Hound. The beast's eyes seemed to burn with yellow fire, boring into her as if seeking to brand her soul.
She stiffened in her chair as a cold presence washed over her from behind. Slowly, Tattersail turned.
'Sorry for not giving you warning,' Quick Ben said, emerging from the swirling cloud of his Warren. It held a strange, spicy scent. 'Company's coming,' he said, seeming distracted. 'I've called Hairlock. He comes by Warren.'
Tattersail shivered as a wave of premonition brushed her spine. She faced the Deck again and began to collect the cards.
'The situation's just become a lot more complicated,' the wizard said behind her.
The sorceress paused, giving herself a small, tight smile. 'Really?' she murmured.
The wind flung rain against Whiskeyjack's face. Faintly through the dark night the fourth bell clanged. The sergeant pulled his raincape tighter and wearily shifted his stance. The view from the rooftop of the palace's east turret was mostly obscured by sheets of rain. 'You've been chewing on something for days,' he said, to the man beside him. 'Let's hear it, soldier.'
Fiddler wiped the rain from his eyes and squinted into the east. 'Not much to tell you, Sarge,' he said gruffly. 'Just feelings. That sorceress, for one.'
'Tattersail?'
'Yeah.' Metal clinked as the sapper unstrapped his sword belt. 'Hate this damned thing,' he muttered.
Whiskeyjack watched as the man tossed the belt and scabbarded shortsword to the rooftop's pebbled surface behind them. 'Just don't forget it like you did last time,' the sergeant said, hiding a grin.
Fiddler winced. 'Make one mistake and nobody lets you forget it.'
Whiskeyjack made no reply, though his shoulders shook with laughter.
'Hood's Bones,' Fiddler went on, 'I ain't no fighter. Not like that, anyway. Was born in an alley in Malaz City, learned the stone-cutting trade breaking into barrows up on the plain behind Mock's Hold.' He glanced up at his sergeant. 'You used to be a stone-cutter, too. Just like me. Only I'm no fast learner in soldiering like you was. It was the ranks or the mines for me – sometimes I think I went and made the wrong choice.'
Whiskeyjack's amusement died as a pang followed Fiddler's words. Learn what? he wondered. How to kill people? How to send them off to die in some foreign land? 'What's your feeling on Tattersail?' the sergeant asked curtly.
'Scared,' the sapper responded. 'She's got some old demons riding her, is my guess, and they're closing in.'
Whiskeyjack grunted. 'It's rare you'll find a mage with a pleasant past,' he said. 'Story goes she wasn't recruited, she was on the run. Then she messed up with her first posting.'
'It's bad timing her going all soft on us now.'
'She's lost her cadre. She's been betrayed. Without the Empire, what's she got to hold on to?' What has any of us got?
'It's like she's ready to cry, right on the edge, every single minute. I'm thinking she's lost her backbone, Sarge. If Tayschrenn puts her under his thumb, she's liable to squeal.'
'I think you've underestimated the sorceress, Fiddler,' Whiskeyjack said. 'She's a survivor – and loyal. It's not common news, but she's been offered the title of High Mage more than once and she won't accept. It doesn't show, but a head-to-head between her and Tayschrenn would be a close thing. She's a Master of her Warren, and you don't acquire that with a weak spine.'
Fiddler whistled softly, leaned his arms on the parapet. 'I stand corrected.'
'Anything else, Sapper?'
'Just one,' Fiddler replied, deadpan.
Whiskeyjack stiffened. He knew what that tone implied. 'Go on.'
'Something's about to be unleashed tonight, Sergeant.' Fiddler swung round, his eyes glittering in the darkness. 'It's going to be messy.'
Both men turned at the thumping of the roof's trap-door. High Fist Dujek Onearm emerged, the light from the room below a broken beacon rising around him. He cleared the ladder's last rung and stepped on to the roof. 'Give me a hand with this damn door here,' he called to the two men.
They strode over, their boots crunching on the gravel scatter. 'Any word on Captain Paran, High Fist?' Whiskeyjack asked, as Fiddler crouched over the trap-door and, with a grunt, levered it back into place.
'None,' Dujek said. 'He's disappeared. Then again so has that killer of yours, Kal
am.'
Whiskeyjack shook his head. 'I know where he is, and where he's been all night. Hedge and Mallet were the last to see the captain, leaving Knob's Inn, and then he just seems to vanish. High Fist, we didn't kill this Captain Paran.'
'Don't quibble with words,' Dujek muttered. 'Damn it, Fiddler, is that your sword lying over there? In a puddle?'
Breath hissed between Fiddler's teeth and he hurried over to the weapon.
'The man's a hopeless legend,' Dujek said. 'Shedenul bless his hide.' He paused, seeming to reorder his thoughts. 'OK, perish the thought, then. You didn't kill Paran. So where is he?'
'We're looking,' Whiskeyjack said tonelessly.
The High Fist sighed. 'All right. Understood. You want to know who else might be wanting Paran dead, and that means explaining who sent him. Well, he's Adjunct Lorn's man, has been for some time. He's not Claw, though. He's a bloody noble's son from Unta.'
Fiddler had donned his weapon and now stood twenty paces away at the roof's edge, hands on his hips. A good man. They're all good, dammit. Whiskeyjack blinked the rain from his eyes. 'From the capital? Could be someone in those circles. Nobody likes the old noble families, not even the nobles themselves.'
'It's possible,' Dujek conceded, without much conviction. 'In any case, he's to command your squad, and not for just this mission. The assignment's permanent.'
Whiskeyjack asked, 'Is the Darujhistan infiltration his own idea?'
The High Fist replied, 'No, but whose it is is anybody's guess. Maybe the Adjunct, maybe the Empress herself. So what all that means is we're sending you in anyway.' He scowled briefly. 'I'm to relay the final details to you.' He faced the sergeant. 'Assuming Paran is gone for good.'
'May I speak freely, High Fist?'
Dujek barked a laugh. 'You think I don't know it, Whiskeyjack? The plan stinks. A tactical nightmare—'