House of Chains

by Steven Erikson

  ‘Half a day out of the Napan Isles, the first barrel was broached, by a cook’s helper, on the flagship. And straight out through the hole came a snake. A paralt, up the lad’s arm. Sank both fangs into his left eye. Screaming, he ran out on deck, the snake with its jaws wide and holding tight, writhing around. Well, the lad managed two steps before he died, then he went down, already white as a sun-bleached yard. The snake was killed, but as you can imagine, it was too late.

  ‘Nok, being young, just shrugged the whole event off, and when word spread and sailors and marines started dying of thirst—in ships loaded with barrels of fresh water that no-one would dare open—he went and did the obvious thing. Brought up another barrel. Breached it with his own hands.’ Strings paused. He could see that no-one else knew the tale. Could see that he had their attention.

  ‘The damned barrel was full of snakes. Spilling out onto the deck. A damned miracle Nok wasn’t bitten. It was just starting dry season, you see. The paralts’ season in the river was ending. The waters fill with them as they head down to the river mouth on their way out to sea. Every single barrel on those six dromons held snakes.

  ‘The fleet never closed to do battle with the Kartoolians. By the time it made it back to Nap, half of the complement was dead of thirst. All six ships were holed outside the harbour, packed with offerings to D’rek, the Worm of Autumn, and sent to the deep. Nok had to wait until the next year to shatter Kartool’s paltry fleet. Two months after that, the island was conquered.’ He fell silent for a moment, then shook his head. ‘No, I’m not finished. That was a story, a story of how to do things wrong. You don’t destroy an omen by fighting it. No, you do the opposite. You swallow it whole.’

  Confused expressions. Gesler’s was the first to clear and at the man’s grin—startling white in his bronze-hued face—Strings slowly nodded, then said, ‘If we don’t close both hands on this omen, we’re all nothing more than pall-bearers to those recruits in there. To the whole damned army.

  ‘Now, didn’t I hear that captain mention something about a nearby cemetery? Blown clear, the bones exposed to all. I suggest we go find it. Right now. All right, I’m finished talking.’

  ‘That was a damned thigh bone,’ Stormy growled.

  Gesler stared at his corporal.

  ‘We march in two days’ time.’

  Before anything else happens, Gamet silently added to the Adjunct’s announcement. He glanced over at Nil and Nether where they sat side by side on the bench against the wall. Both racked with shivers, the aftermath of the omen’s power leaving them huddled and pale.

  Mysteries stalked the world. Gamet had felt their chill breath before, a reverberation of power that belonged to no god, but existed none the less. As implacable as the laws of nature. Truths beneath the bone. To his mind, the Empress would be better served by the immediate disbanding of the Fourteenth Army. A deliberate and thorough breaking up of the units with reassignments throughout the empire, the wait of another year for another wave of recruits.

  Adjunct Tavore’s next words to those gathered in the chamber seemed to speak directly to Gamet’s thoughts. ‘We cannot afford it,’ she said, uncharacteristically pacing. ‘The Fourteenth cannot be defeated before it sets foot outside Aren. The entire subcontinent will be irretrievably lost if that happens. Better we get annihilated in Raraku. Sha’ik’s forces will have at least been reduced.

  ‘Two days.

  ‘In the meantime, I want the Fists to call their officers together, rank of lieutenant and higher. Inform them I will be visiting each company in person, beginning tonight. Give no indication of which one I will visit first—I want them all alert. Apart from guard postings, every soldier is restricted to barracks. Keep a particular eye on veterans. They will want to get drunk, and stay drunk, if they can. Fist Baralta, contact Orto Setral and have him assemble a troop of Red Blades. They’re to sweep the settlement of the camp followers and confiscate all alcohol and durhang or whatever else the locals possess that deadens the senses. Then establish a picket round that settlement. Any questions? Good. You are all dismissed. Gamet, send for T’amber.’

  ‘Aye, Adjunct.’ Uncharacteristically careless. That perfumed lover of yours has been kept from the sights of everyone here but me. They know, of course. Even so . . .

  Outside in the hallway, Blistig exchanged a nod with Baralta then gripped Gamet’s upper arm. ‘With us, if you please.’

  Nil and Nether shot them a glance then hurried off.

  ‘Take that damned hand off me,’ Gamet said quietly. ‘I can follow without your help, Blistig.’

  The grip fell away.

  They found an empty room, once used to store items on hooks fixed three-quarters of the way up all four walls. The air smelled of lanolin.

  ‘Time’s come,’ Blistig said without preamble. ‘We cannot march in two days’ time, Gamet, and you know it. We cannot march at all. There will be a mutiny at worst, at best an endless bleeding of desertions. The Fourteenth is finished.’

  The satisfied gleam in the man’s eyes triggered a boiling rage in Gamet. He struggled for a moment then managed to clamp down on his emotions, sufficient to lock gazes with Blistig and ask, ‘Was that child’s arrival set up between you and Keneb?’

  Blistig recoiled as if struck, then his face darkened. ‘What do you take me for—’

  ‘Right now,’ Gamet snapped, ‘I am not sure.’

  The once-commander of the Aren garrison tugged the peace-loop from his sword’s hilt, but Tene Baralta stepped between the two men, armour clanking. Taller and broader than either Malazan, the dusk-skinned warrior reached out to set a gloved hand on each chest, then slowly pushed the men apart. ‘We are here to reach agreement, not kill one another,’ he rumbled. ‘Besides,’ he added, facing Blistig, ‘Gamet’s suspicion had occurred to me as well.’

  ‘Keneb would not do such a thing,’ Blistig rasped, ‘even if you two imagine that I might.’ A worthy answer.

  Gamet pulled away and strode to face the far wall, back to the others. His mind raced, then he finally shook his head. Without turning round, he said, ‘She asked for two days—’

  ‘Asked? I heard an order—’

  ‘Then you were not listening carefully enough, Blistig. The Adjunct, young and untested though she may be, is not a fool. She sees what you see—what we all see. But she has asked for two days. Come the moment to march . . . well, a final decision will become obvious, either way, at that moment. Trust her.’ He swung round. ‘For this and this alone, if need be. Two days.’

  After a long moment, Baralta nodded. ‘So be it.’

  ‘Very well,’ Blistig allowed.

  Beru bless us. As Gamet made to leave, Tene Baralta touched his shoulder. ‘Fist,’ he said, ‘what is the situation with this . . . this T’amber? Do you know? Why is the Adjunct being so . . . cagey? Women who take women for lovers—the only crime is the loss to men, and so it has always been.’

  ‘Cagey? No, Tene Baralta. Private. The Adjunct is simply a private woman.’

  The ex-Red Blade persisted, ‘What is this T’amber like? Does she exercise undue influence on our commander?’

  ‘I have no idea, to answer your latter question. What is she like? She was a concubine, I believe, in the Grand Temple of the Queen of Dreams, in Unta. Other than that, my only words with her have been at the Adjunct’s behest. Nor is T’amber particularly talkative . . .’ And that is an understatement of prodigious proportions. Beautiful, aye, and remote. Has she undue influence over Tavore? I wish I knew. ‘And speaking of T’amber, I must leave you now.’

  At the door he paused and glanced back at Blistig. ‘You gave good answer, Blistig. I no longer suspect you.’ In reply, the man simply nodded.

  Lostara Yil placed the last of her Red Blade accoutrements into the chest then lowered the lid and locked it. She straightened and stepped back, feeling bereft. There had been a vast comfort in belonging to that dreaded company. That the Red Blades were hated by their tribal kin, reviled in their
own land, had proved surprisingly satisfying. For she hated them in turn.

  Born a daughter instead of the desired son in a Pardu family, as a child she had lived on the streets of Ehrlitan. It had been common practice—before the Malazans came with their laws for families—among many tribes to cast out their unwanted children once they reached the fifth year of life. Acolytes from numerous temples—followers of mystery cults—regularly rounded up such abandoned children. No-one knew what was done with them. The hopeful among the rough circle of fellow urchins Lostara had known had believed that, among the cults, there could be found a kind of salvation. Schooling, food, safety, all leading to eventually becoming an acolyte in turn. But the majority of children suspected otherwise. They’d heard tales of—or had themselves seen—the occasional nightly foray of shrouded figures emerging from the backs of temples, wending down alleyways with a covered cart, on their way to the crab-infested tidal pools east of the city, pools not so deep that one could not see the glimmer of small picked bones at the bottom.

  One thing all could agree on. The hunger of the temples was insatiable.

  Optimistic or pessimistic, the children of Ehrlitan’s streets did all they could to evade the hunters with their nets and pole-ropes. A life could be eked out, a kind of freedom won, bitter though it might be.

  Midway through her seventh year, Lostara was dragged down to the greasy cobbles by an acolyte’s net. Her shrieks went unheeded by the citizens who stepped aside as the silent priest dragged his prize back to the temple. Impassive eyes met hers every now and then on that horrible journey, and those eyes Lostara would never forget.

  Rashan had proved less bloodthirsty than most of the other cults in the habit of hunting children. She had found herself among a handful of new arrivals, all tasked with maintenance of the temple grounds, destined, it seemed, for a lifetime of menial servitude. The drudgery continued until her ninth year, when for reasons unknown to Lostara she was selected for schooling in the Shadow Dance. She had caught rare and brief glimpses of the dancers—a hidden and secretive group of men and women for whom worship was an elaborate, intricate dance. Their only audience were priests and priestesses—none of whom would watch the actual dancers, only their shadows.

  You are nothing, child. Not a dancer. Your body is in service to Rashan, and Rashan is this realm’s manifestation of Shadow, the drawing of darkness to light. When you dance, it is not you that is watched. It is the shadow your body paints. The shadow is the dancer, Lostara Yil. Not you.

  Years of discipline, of limb-stretching training that loosened every joint, that drew out the spine, that would allow the Caster to flow with seamless movement—and all for naught.

  The world had been changing outside the temple’s high walls. Events unknown to Lostara were systematically crushing their entire civilization. The Malazan Empire had invaded. Cities were falling. Foreign ships had blockaded Ehrlitan’s harbour.

  The cult of Rashan was spared the purges of the new, harsh masters of Seven Cities, for it was a recognized religion. Other temples did not fare as well. She recalled seeing smoke in the sky above Ehrlitan and wondering at its source, and she was awakened at night by terrible sounds of chaos in the streets.

  Lostara was a middling Caster. Her shadow seemed to have a mind of its own and was a recalcitrant, halting partner in the training. She did not ask herself if she was happy or otherwise. Rashan’s Empty Throne did not draw her faith as it did the other students’. She lived, but it was an unquestioning life. Neither circular nor linear, for in her mind there was no movement at all, and the notion of progress was measured only in terms of mastering the exercises forced upon her.

  The cult’s destruction was sudden, unexpected, and it came from within.

  She recalled the night when it had all begun. Great excitement in the temple. A High Priest from another city was visiting. Come to speak with Master Bidithal on matters of vast importance. There would be a dance in the stranger’s honour, for which Lostara and her fellow students would provide a background sequence of rhythms to complement the Shadow Dancers.

  Lostara herself had been indifferent to the whole affair, and had been nowhere close to the best of the students in their minor role in the performance. But she remembered the stranger.

  So unlike sour old Bidithal. Tall, thin, a laughing face, remarkably long-fingered, almost effeminate hands—hands the sight of which awakened in her new emotions.

  Emotions that stuttered her mechanical dancing, that sent her shadow twisting into a rhythm that was counterpoint to that cast by not only her fellow students, but the Shadow Dancers themselves—as if a third strain had slipped into the main chamber.

  Too striking to remain unnoticed.

  Bidithal himself, his face darkening, had half risen—but the stranger spoke first.

  ‘Pray let the Dance continue,’ he said, his eyes finding Lostara’s own. ‘The Song of the Reeds has never been performed in quite this manner before. No gentle breeze here, eh, Bidithal? Oh no, a veritable gale. The Dancers are virgins, yes?’ His laugh was low yet full. ‘Yet there is nothing virginal about this dance, now, is there? Oh, storm of desire!’

  And those eyes held Lostara still, in fullest recognition of the desire that overwhelmed her—that gave shape to her shadow’s wild cavort. Recognition, and a certain pleased, but cool . . . acknowledgement. As if flattered, but with no invitation offered in return.

  The stranger had other tasks that night—and in the nights that followed—or so Lostara would come to realize much later. At the moment, however, her face burned with shame, and she had broken off her dance to flee the chamber.

  Of course, Delat had not come to steal the heart of a Caster. He had come to destroy Rashan.

  Delat, who, it proved, was both a High Priest and a Bridgeburner, and whatever the Emperor’s reason for annihilating the cult, his was the hand that delivered the death-blow.

  Although not alone. The night of the killings, at the bell of the third hour—two past midnight—after the Song of Reeds, there had been another, hidden in the black clothes of an assassin . . .

  Lostara knew more of what had happened that night in the Rashan Temple of Ehrlitan than anyone else barring the players themselves, for Lostara had been the only resident to be spared. Or so she had believed for a long time, until the name of Bidithal rose once more, from Sha’ik’s Apocalypse army.

  Ah, I was more than spared that night, wasn’t I?

  Delat’s lovely, long-fingered hands . . .

  Setting foot onto the city’s streets the following morning, after seven years’ absence, she had been faced with the terrifying knowledge that she was alone, truly alone. Resurrecting an ancient memory of when she was awakened following the fifth birthday, and thrust into the hands of an old man hired to take her away, to leave her in a strange neighbourhood on the other side of the city. A memory that echoed with a child’s cries for her mother.

  The short time that followed her departure from the temple, before she joined the Red Blades—the newly formed company of Seven Cities natives who avowed loyalty to the Malazan Empire—held its own memories, ones she had long since repressed. Hunger, denigration, humiliation and what seemed a fatal, spiralling descent. But the recruiters had found her, or perhaps she found them. The Red Blades would be a statement to the Emperor, the marking of a new era in Seven Cities. There would be peace. None of this interested Lostara, however. Rather, it was the widely-held rumour that the Red Blades sought to become the deliverers of Malazan justice.

  She had not forgotten those impassive eyes. The citizens who were indifferent to her pleas, who had watched the acolyte drag her past to an unknown fate. She had not forgotten her own parents.

  Betrayal could be answered by but one thing, and one thing alone, and the once-captain Lostara Yil of the Red Blades had grown skilled in that answer’s brutal delivery.

  And now, am I being made into a betrayer?

  She turned away from the wooden chest. She was a Red Blade
no longer. In a short while, Pearl would arrive, and they would set out to find the cold, cold trail of Tavore’s hapless sister, Felisin. Along which they might find opportunity to drive a blade into the heart of the Talons. Yet were not the Talons of the empire? Dancer’s own, his spies and killers, the deadly weapon of his will. Then what had turned them into traitors?

  Betrayal was a mystery. Inexplicable to Lostara. She only knew that it delivered the deepest wounds of all.

  And she had long since vowed that she would never again suffer such wounds.

  She collected her sword-belt from the hook above the bed and drew the thick leather band about her hips, hooking it in place.

  Then froze.

  The small room before her was filled with dancing shadows.

  And in their midst, a figure. A pale face of firm features, made handsome by smile lines at the corners of the eyes—and the eyes themselves, which, as he looked upon her, settled like depthless pools.

  Into which she felt, in a sudden rush, she could plunge. Here, now, for ever.

  The figure made a slight bow with his head, then spoke, ‘Lostara Yil. You may doubt my words, but I remember you—’

  She stepped back, her back pressing up against the wall, and shook her head. ‘I do not know you,’ she whispered.

  ‘True. But there were three of us that night, so very long ago in Ehrlitan. I was witness to your . . . unexpected performance. Did you know Delat—or, rather, the man I would eventually learn was Delat—would have taken you for his own? Not just the one night. You would have joined him as a Bridgeburner, and that would well have pleased him. Or so I believe. No way to test it, alas, since it all went—outwardly—so thoroughly awry.’

  ‘I remember,’ she said.

  The man shrugged. ‘Delat, who had a different name for that mission and was my partner’s responsibility besides—Delat let Bidithal go. I suppose it seemed a . . . a betrayal, yes? It certainly did to my partner. Certainly to this day Shadowthrone—who was not Shadowthrone then, simply a particularly adept and ambitious practitioner of Rashan’s sister warren, Meanas—to this day, I was saying, Shadowthrone stokes eternal fires of vengeance. But Delat proved very capable of hiding . . . under our very noses. Like Kalam. Just another unremarked soldier in the ranks of the Bridgeburners.’