She had smiled, and I had really had no answer to that. I pictured that smile now. I wanted to tell her that she was right. Not because she didn’t know that she was right. I wanted her to know that I had learned.
It was a pointless wish. All it did was make everything hurt a little more. So did standing here, waiting for nothing.
Get this done.
I walked on, and the entrance loomed higher and higher above me. The massive oak doors opened as I approached, and Rhen Karoff stepped out onto the porch to greet me.
‘Welcome to Malveil, lord-governor,’ he said, bowing low.
‘Thank you, Karoff. It’s good to see you.’
I had only ever met Leonel a couple of times. By contrast, I had come to know Karoff quite well during my time as governor-regent. He had been the only point of contact between Leonel and the outside world, a frustrating, thankless task he had undertaken with quiet, endlessly patient dignity.
He had been old then, and he was ancient now. No one else had served the Strocks longer than he had. Seeing him made me feel, for the first time, that I had indeed returned home. He stood straight, despite his age. He was bald, his face deeply lined but his cheekbones and chin still prominent. His brow was heavy, shadowing his eyes, lending him an air of perpetual deliberation. He moved with careful precision, slower now than when I had last seen him, but not frail.
Karoff stood to one side and invited me in. ‘Work began as soon as we received word of your return…’ he began.
‘But there is still a lot to do,’ I finished. ‘There is no need to apologise. I could not have expected things to be otherwise. The house has been empty for a long time.’
‘It has. It will be good to see it live again.’
The entrance hall took up the echoes of our voices, bouncing them off the marble floor and carrying them up the wide staircase that, ahead and to the left, rose to the landing. Doorways on both sides opened into cavernous halls. The one on the left held a dining table almost twenty feet long. Its dark surface gleamed, reflecting the candlelight from the great iron chandelier above. The sight of the dining hall held me for a moment. ‘When was this last used to entertain?’ I asked Karoff.
There was the slightest hesitation before he answered. ‘I believe your wife entertained guests here once,’ he said, and I managed not to wince. ‘Before that, I could not say. It has been a long time.’
I nodded. I did not say that things were about to change. I was not about to host gala receptions at Malveil. At the same time, the thought of eating alone in that space was too melancholy to contemplate.
The dining room and, to the right of the entrance, the great hall had been thoroughly cleaned. Even so, an air of faded grandeur pervaded their space. The paintings on the walls had grown dark, their subjects difficult to make out. Webs of gossamer-thin cracks covered the walls. Malveil might stand forever. It would also decay forever.
We were about to take the main staircase when I stopped, not sure what I had heard. ‘Are there children here?’ I asked.
‘No, my lord.’
‘I thought I heard one laugh just now. Didn’t you?’
‘No, my lord,’ he said again. ‘There are no children in this house.’ He was emphatic. ‘None of the serfs bring them here. This is no place for children.’
‘I must have been mistaken, then.’ A distorted echo of voices at work, I guessed.
‘Shall I show you your chamber?’ Karoff asked.
I nodded, and we climbed the staircase. I took in the polish of the wood steps. There was no dust on the intricate ironwork of the balustrade. ‘You have overseen impressive work already,’ I said. From elsewhere in the house, I could hear the confused, muffled din of the ongoing efforts to restore Malveil into a functioning residence.
‘We have focused on the areas that will be most visible, or see the most use, lord-governor,’ said Karoff. ‘Much of the house is still in disrepair. There are many rooms that are nothing but storage, of a kind.’
‘In other words, filled with debris.’
‘Yes, and furniture, collections of objects, and much else. It will be the work of years to set it to rights, and there are what appear to be family records too, which we cannot touch.’
‘I understand. Eliana wasn’t here long enough to undo much of what happened under my uncle.’ I managed to refer to Eliana almost casually. I changed the focus of the conversation quickly. ‘How bad did things get during Leonel’s decline?’ I had some idea from my dealings with Karoff during my regency. I guessed the full picture was worse than I had known then, and had become much worse afterwards.
‘They were as bad as could be, lord-governor. I did not even know the full extent until after your uncle’s death. In his final years, he rarely left his bedchamber. There were many days when he barred the house to all, including the staff.’
‘To you as well?’
‘Yes. When he died, it was many days before we found him.’
That was a lonely thought.
None of the serfs who worked at Malveil lived within its walls. Karoff, in the gatehouse, was the one closest to the hall. All the others had quarters in Valgaast. They arrived at the gates with dawn, and the last of them would leave each night after I retired. This had been the way of things for generations. I doubted if anyone knew if this tradition had developed to respect the privacy of the Strocks or for some other reason. Given the frequently troubled history of my family, I could well imagine that even when, as with Leonel, serfs were forbidden to live in the house, they likely would have chosen not to anyway, preserving a necessary, sanity-maintaining distance between themselves and their unstable master.
I pictured Leonel, alone in his colossal house, floating through the corridors like a phantom, finally dying with no one around, no one to know, no one to grieve.
And then, unwillingly, I saw Eliana too, also alone, swallowed by all this immensity, another phantom lost to the night spaces of Malveil.
She had moved into Malveil after Leonel’s death. I was Leonel’s closest living descendant, and the house had come to us. I could not return to take up the governorship, and Senior Councillor Veth Montfor had succeeded in blocking any attempt to have Eliana declared acting-governor in my absence. I had been too successful in making the regency stable. With hindsight, I realised that I should have been more suspicious of the council’s cooperation than I had been. Still, Eliana’s residence in Malveil had been intended to remind the council that the Strocks still ruled Solus. Katrin and Zander did not accompany her. They were away in boarding schola, in the early phases of education that would take them across Solus and train them in their responsibilities as nobles. They did not return to Valgaast until well after her death.
That was a small mercy. At least it was one.
We reached the first floor, where a long gallery led to the private chambers. The wall was lined with portraits of my ancestors, half concealed by gloom and the waxy reflections of candle flame. The windows at the far end of the gallery barely admitted enough light from the dull day to see by. Karoff led me to a door at the eastern end of the gallery, which opened to another flight of stairs. We were in one of the corner towers now, and my bedchamber was at the top, with an iron ladder outside the door leading to a trapdoor and the roof. It took up the entire width of the tower. Windows looked out on all four sides. There was more natural light here than in what I had seen of the rest of the house so far, though the glass was thick, old and stained. My view of the grounds was bleary. The landscape looked swathed in fog.
The furnishings were old too, though in good repair. A four-poster bed dominated the centre of the chamber, and there was room enough for a desk in the north-east corner and a pair of deep armchairs next to a fireplace in the western wall. A spiral tapestry carpet covered the floor. It was from Donum, in the southern hemisphere of Solus. It depicted the ascendance of the world, over
its history, into the light of the Emperor, which radiated from the centre. The carpet was worth more than the entire apartment my family and I had lived in during my regency.
I looked at the bed. After decades of cots, it seemed grotesquely huge.
And empty.
‘Was this room my wife’s?’ I asked.
‘Yes,’ said Karoff. ‘It is the master bedchamber,’ he explained. ‘Do you wish to move?’
‘No. I wanted to know, that’s all.’
‘It was not here that…’ he began.
‘I know. I know. Thank you, Karoff. That will be all for now.’
Karoff withdrew, leaving me alone in the room that I should have shared with Eliana. Instead, we would both sleep here, decades apart. I felt physically close to her as I stood there. At the same time, her absence was a sudden blade in my chest.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said aloud. My words sounded muffled, falling dead in the still air of the chamber. ‘I miss you.’
The silence felt like an accusation.
Guilt following me like a shadow, I went to the south window and looked down onto the hard ground below.
Chapter 3
I was composed again as Belzhek drove me through Valgaast, towards the Council Hall. I had passed through the first trial of my return. Another lay ahead. I did not expect my first encounter with the ruling council to go smoothly. That was not the trial, though. I welcomed the coming struggle. It was a battlefield I was determined to conquer. I was hoping for a campaign that would silence the clamour of the dead of Clostrum. The trial was going to be Zander. He would be there.
I was going to see my son for the first time in over thirty years.
‘Do you find Valgaast much changed, lord-governor?’ Belzhek asked.
‘Somewhat. Not as much as I might have expected.’
‘Changed for the worse, though, I expect. If I may speak freely.’
‘I thank you for doing so. And yes. Things look worse.’
Though Valgaast was the largest population centre on Solus, it was not a big city by Imperial standards. The people of this world were spread across the globe, the vast majority working its great farms. The population levels were not permitted to rise past a point that would see settlements impinge upon precious fertile land. The tithes to the Nightmarch held Solus’ numbers at a stable level.
Valgaast itself was home to a few hundred thousand souls. It was the more important off-world transportation hub on the planet, and it was where the administration of exports and tithe quotas was overseen. The city was home to the upper echelons of the farming authorities as well. Disputes between the huge collectives were settled here, and productivity targets were set based on regional conditions. This was where the wealth of the world was concentrated, and it seemed that in the years since my departure, that wealth had grown more concentrated.
Public works were being neglected. Too many of the roads on which we travelled were not being properly maintained. The buildings were dingier, shabbier.
‘From what I see,’ I said, ‘the council should be doing more, wouldn’t you say?’
Belzhek snorted.
‘And please,’ I added, ‘continue to speak freely.’
‘A great many might say that the council is doing quite enough, thank you very much.’
‘Quite enough for themselves, you mean.’
‘Aye, lord-governor. And quite enough squeezing of riches from everyone else to them. But when something needs repairing, there’s always a good reason why it can’t be done. The treasury is strained. There are other demands. We must all do what we can, since the Imperium is at war.’
‘As I’m sure you all do,’ I said. ‘Except, perhaps, the councillors?’
‘They don’t appear to be tightening their belts, lord-governor. No, they do not. Nor their friends.’
‘The big landowners.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
‘And somehow, Solus’ exports have still been dropping.’
‘It is a mystery,’ said Belzhek wryly. ‘Truly, it is.’
The industrial sector that had grown up at the base of Malveil’s hill had turned into a ghost town since the mines had shut down. The first part of the decay that I witnessed was, in fairness, something beyond the council’s control. We bumped down pitted streets between the empty shells of manufactoria. Some complexes were still active, chimneys belching black and brown smoke into the sky, but the activity of the zone had easily been cut in half.
Further in were the residential sectors. The ones nearest the manufactoria were dark, crowded slums. The further we left the manufactoria behind, the wealthier the districts became. The facades of the hab blocks showed ornamentation instead of filth, and the citizens were visibly more prosperous. But here, too, the streets were narrow, barely wide enough for a single lane of traffic, the buildings close together as if huddling against the coming winter.
Valgaast was far north of Solus’ equator. The moist climate that made the land fertile turned the city clammy, shivering in the months after the harvest.
We crossed a bridge over the sluggish waters of the Oblivis River and entered the administrative sector of the city. At its centre, the Cathedral of Faith Unmerciful faced the Council Hall across the wide Square of the Emperor’s Bounty. Belzhek dropped me off in front of the ornate facade of the hall. Above the main entrance was a winged representation of War’s Harvest. It had sheaves of wheat at its feet. In one hand it held a sickle, and in the other, a sword. Above War’s Harvest, stretching across half the facade, was a golden aquila.
I looked up at the double-headed eagle as I mounted the stairs to the doors. Its majesty and size gave me purpose. The gold made me think of what I had come to fight. The aquila predated the regency, but it seemed now a symbol of the councillors’ ostentation and hypocrisy. They had sworn to serve the Emperor. They served the gold instead.
A militia guardsman saluted and pulled the brass doors open for me. The first drops of rain began to fall, thick drops splattering against the paving stones of the square, and I stepped inside.
The entrance hall was an echoing stone space, its vaulted ceiling overlooking ten floors of arched galleries. Ahead of me was a great marble staircase flanked by two huge winged skulls in bronze. Waiting for me at the foot of the stairs was Veth Montfor.
‘Thank you for meeting me, senior councillor,’ I said.
She gave me a polite, cold smile. ‘I feel this greeting is inadequate. For Solus to once again have a governor after so long is, one would think, an event that should be properly marked.’
‘I think it is being properly marked,’ I said. ‘I am here to get things done, not to indulge in ceremony. It would be wrong to begin in a way that was not in keeping with that goal. Wouldn’t you say?’
She bowed slightly in acquiescence. ‘As you wish. Shall we?’
We climbed the stairs together, two enemies taking the measure of each other.
Montfor was maybe ten years older than I was. She wore her long, grey hair pulled back with severity. Her face was lined with experience, and it was the experience of the great river of corruption that was so deep an inheritance of her family that it seemed a point of pride. Her nose had rotted away, and a long, tubal prosthetic coiled from her nasal cavity, around the back of her head, then plunged through her throat, linking to her bionic larynx. Her voice was patrician, yet flat, and buzzed around the edges. She wielded her monotone like a rapier. She walked with a diamond-headed cane, rapping its tip on the marble with a proprietary firmness.
I had dealt with her as little as possible during my regency. Our families had a long history of enmity. The Montfors had been the most powerful house on Solus until the mineral wealth of Malveil’s hill had pushed the Strocks into ascendance. The Montfors had never forgiven us for taking away the rulership of Solus, which they felt was rightfully theirs. While Leo
nel was still alive, I did not have the full authority of the governorship. Direct confrontations with Veth Montfor would have been counterproductive, and the bad blood between us would have made our conflicts look like a personal feud. Perhaps they would have been. She was not as powerful then as she was now, so I had been able to work around her. I did not delude myself into thinking that I could do the same thing again.
‘I suppose,’ Montfor said, ‘that it would be too much to hope that we could work together, rather than against each other.’ The corner of her mouth curled in mockery.
‘I don’t see why we can’t,’ I said, fencing. ‘Do we not both serve the Emperor? Do we not both have the welfare of Solus at heart?’
‘Oh, we do,’ she said. ‘At least, I think we do. Of course, some of my fellow councillors might understandably wonder whether the intentions of an outsider are entirely trustworthy.’
‘You amuse me, senior councillor.’
‘I’m glad to hear it.’
Montfor took me to the uppermost floor, and the chamber of the Inner Council. The full body of the council had representatives from every region of Solus. Its sessions were more in the order of an airing of grievances than anything else. The actual governance of the planet was in the hands of a small number of Solus’ most powerful families.
The banners of the agri sectors of Solus hung over the assembly. The coats of arms of the great houses were mounted on the walls, resplendent in images of harvest and blade. The conjunction of the banners and shields implied an inherent connection between the families and the agri sectors. This was very close to the truth. The nobility had its roots sunk deeply into the soil of the world. Power did not change hands easily on Solus. The rise of the Strocks had acquired an almost mythical status because it was the first and only major shift in a family’s fortunes and the power it wielded in many centuries.
The council thrones were arranged in a horseshoe shape, at the top of which was the lord-governor’s seat, so long empty. On its right was the throne of the senior councillor.
The House of Night and Chain Page 3