‘Tanal, our guest is being most insistent with respect to his suspicions. Sufficient to convince me that we must devote considerable attention to finding the source of the threat.’
‘Invigilator, is the intent sedition or treason, or are we dealing with a thief?’
‘A thief, I should think,’ Karos replied, glancing over at Rautos Hivanar.
The man’s cheeks bulged, before he released a slow sigh. ‘I am not so sure. On the surface, we appear to be facing an obsessive individual, consumed by greed and, accordingly, hoarding wealth. But only as actual coin, and this is why it is proving so difficult to find a trail. No properties, no ostentation, no flouting of privilege. Now, as subtle consequence, the shortage of coin is finally noticeable. True, no actual damage to the empire’s financial structure has occurred. Yet. But, if the depletion continues,’ he shook his head, ‘we will begin to feel the strain.’
Tanal cleared his throat, then asked, ‘Master, have you assigned agents of your own to investigate the situation?’
Rautos frowned. ‘The Liberty Consign thrives precisely because its members hold to the conviction of being the most powerful players in an unassailable system. Confidence is a most fragile quality, Tanal Yathvanar. Granted, a few who deal specifically in finances have brought to me their concerns. Druz Thennict, Barrakta Ilk, for example. But there is nothing as yet formalized – no true suspicion that something is awry. Neither man is a fool, however.’ He glanced out of the window behind Karos Invictad. ‘The investigation must be conducted by the Patriotists, in utmost secrecy.’ The heavy-lidded eyes lowered, settling on the Invigilator. ‘I understand that you have been targeting academics and scholars of late.’
A modest shrug and lift of the brows from Karos Invictad. ‘The many paths of treason.’
‘Some are members of established and respected families in Lether.’
‘No, Rautos, not the ones we have arrested.’
‘True, but those unfortunate victims have friends, Invigilator, who have in turn appealed to me.’
‘Well, my friend, this is delicate indeed. You tread now on the thinnest skin of ground, with naught but mud beneath.’ He sat forward, folding his hands on the desk. ‘But I shall look into it nonetheless. Perhaps the recent spate of arrests has succeeded in quelling the disenchantment among the learned, or at least culled the most egregious of their lot.’
‘Thank you, Invigilator. Now, who will conduct your investigation?’
‘Why, I will attend to this personally.’
‘Venitt Sathad, my assistant who awaits in the courtyard below, can serve as liaison between your organization and myself for this week; thereafter, I will assign someone else.’
‘Very good. Weekly reports should suffice, at least to start.’
‘Agreed.’
Rautos Hivanar rose, and after a moment Karos Invictad followed suit.
The office was suddenly very cramped, and Tanal edged back, angry at the intimidation he felt instinctively rising within him. I have nothing to fear from Rautos Hivanar. Nor Karos. I am their confidant, the both of them. They trust me.
Karos Invictad was a step behind Rautos, one hand on the man’s back as the Master opened the door. As soon as Rautos stepped into the hallway, Karos smiled and said a few last words to the man, who grunted in reply, and then the Invigilator closed the door and turned to face Tanal.
‘One of those well-respected academics is now staining your sheets, Yathvanar.’
Tanal blinked. ‘Sir, she was sentenced to the Drowning—’
‘Revoke the punishment. Get her cleaned up.’
‘Sir, it may well be that she will recall—’
‘A certain measure of restraint,’ Karos Invictad said in a cold tone, ‘is required from you, Tanal Yathvanar. Arrest some daughters of those already in chains, damn you, and have your fun with them. Am I understood?’
‘Y-yes sir. If she remembers—’
‘Then restitution will be necessary, won’t it? I trust you keep your own finances in order, Yathvanar. Now, begone from my sight.’
As Tanal closed the door behind him, he struggled to draw breath. The bastard. There was no warning off her, was there? Whose mistake was all this? Yet, you think to make me pay for it. All of it. Blade and Axe take you, Invictad, I won’t suffer alone.
I won’t.
‘Depravity holds a certain fascination, don’t you think?’
‘No.’
‘After all, the sicker the soul, the sweeter its comeuppance.’
‘Assuming there is one.’
‘There’s a centre point, I’m sure of it. And it should be dead centre, by my calculations. Perhaps the fulcrum itself is flawed.’
‘What calculations?’
‘Well, the ones I asked you to do for me, of course. Where are they?’
‘They’re on my list.’
‘And how do you calculate the order of your list?’
‘That’s not the calculation you asked for.’
‘Good point. Anyway, if he’d just hold all his legs still, we could properly test my hypothesis.’
‘He doesn’t want to, and I can see why. You’re trying to balance him at the mid-point of his body, but he’s designed to hold that part up, with all those legs.’
‘Are those formal observations? If so, make a note.’
‘On what? We had the wax slab for lunch.’
‘No wonder I feel I could swallow a cow with nary a hiccough. Look! Hah! He’s perched! Perfectly perched!’
Both men leaned in to examine Ezgara, the insect with a head at each end. Not unique, of course, there were plenty around these days, filling some arcane niche in the complicated miasma of nature, a niche that had been vacant for countless millennia. The creature’s broken-twig legs kicked out helplessly.
‘You’re torturing him,’ said Bugg, ‘with clear depravity, Tehol.’
‘It only seems that way.’
‘No, it is that way.’
‘All right, then.’ Tehol reached down and plucked the hapless insect from the fulcrum. Its heads swivelled about. ‘Anyway,’ he said as he peered closely at the creature, ‘that wasn’t the depravity I was talking about. How goes the construction business, by the way?’
‘Sinking fast.’
‘Ah. Is that an affirmation or decried destitution?’
‘We’re running out of buyers. No hard coin, and I’m done with credit, especially when it turns out the developers can’t sell the properties. So I’ve had to lay everyone off, including myself.’
‘When did all this happen?’
‘Tomorrow.’
‘Typical. I’m always the last to hear. Is Ezgara hungry, do you think?’
‘He ate more wax than you did – where do you think all the waste goes?’
‘His or mine?’
‘Master, I already know where yours goes, and if Biri ever finds out—’
‘Not another word, Bugg. Now, by my observations, and according to the notations you failed to make, Ezgara has consumed food equivalent in weight to a drowned cat. Yet he remains tiny, spry, fit, and thanks to our wax lunch today his heads no longer squeak when they swivel, which I take to be a good sign, since now we won’t be woken up a hundred times a night.’
‘Master.’
‘Yes?’
‘How do you know how much a drowned cat weighs?’
‘Selush, of course.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You must remember. Three years ago. That feral cat netted in the Rinnesict Estate, the one raping a flightless ornamental duck. It was sentenced to Drowning.’
‘A terrible demise for a cat. Yes, I remember now. The yowl heard across the city.’
‘That’s the one. Some unnamed benefactor took pity on the sodden feline corpse, paying Selush a small fortune to dress the beast for proper burial.’
‘You must be mad. Who would do that and why?’
‘For ulterior motives, obviously. I wanted to know how muc
h a drowned cat weighs, of course. Otherwise, how valid the comparison? Descriptively, I’ve been waiting to use it for years.’
‘Three.’
‘No, much longer. Hence my curiosity, and opportunism. Prior to that cat’s watery end, I feared voicing the comparison, which, lacking veracity on my part, would invite ridicule.’
‘You’re a tender one, aren’t you?’
‘Don’t tell anyone.’
‘Master, about those vaults.’
‘What about them?’
‘I think extensions are required.’
Tehol used the tip of his right index finger to stroke the insect’s back – or, alternatively, rub it the wrong way. ‘Already? Well, how far under the river are you right now?’
‘More than halfway.’
‘And that is how many?’
‘Vaults? Sixteen. Each one three man-heights by two.’
‘All filled?’
‘All.’
‘Oh. So presumably it’s starting to hurt.’
‘Bugg’s Construction will be the first major enterprise to collapse.’
‘And how many will it drag down with it?’
‘No telling. Three, maybe four.’
‘I thought you said there was no telling.’
‘So don’t tell anyone.’
‘Good idea. Bugg, I need you to build me a box, to very specific specifications which I’ll come up with later.’
‘A box, Master. Wood good enough?’
‘What kind of sentence is that? Would good enough.’
‘No, wood, you know, the burning kind.’
‘Yes, would that wood will do.’
‘Size?’
‘Absolutely. But no lid.’
‘Finally, you’re getting specific.’
‘I told you I would.’
‘What’s this box for, Master?’
‘I can’t tell you, alas. Not specifically. But I need it soon.’
‘About the vaults…’
‘Make ten more, Bugg. Double the size. As for Bugg’s Construction, hold on for a while longer, amass debt, evade the creditors, keep purchasing materials and stockpiling them in storage buildings charging exorbitant rent. Oh, and embezzle all you can.’
‘I’ll lose my head.’
‘Don’t worry. Ezgara here has one to spare.’
‘Why, thank you.’
‘Doesn’t even squeak, either.’
‘That’s a relief. What are you doing now, Master?’
‘What’s it look like?’
‘You’re going back to bed.’
‘And you need to build a box, Bugg, a most clever box. Remember, though, no lid.’
‘Can I at least ask what it’s for?’
Tehol settled back on his bed, studied the blue sky overhead for a moment, then smiled over at his manservant – who just happened to be an Elder God. ‘Why, comeuppance, Bugg, what else?’
Chapter Two
The waking moment awaits us all upon a threshold or where the road turns if life is pulled, sparks like moths inward to this single sliver of time gleaming like sunlight on water, we will accrete into a mass made small, veined with fears and shot through with all that’s suddenly precious, and the now is swallowed, the weight of self a crushing immediacy, on this day, where the road turns, comes the waking moment.
Winter Reflections
Corara of Drene
The ascent to the summit began where the Letherii-built road ended. With the river voicing its ceaseless roar fifteen paces to their left, the roughly shaped pavestones vanished beneath a black-stoned slide at the base of a moraine. Uprooted trees reached bent and twisted arms up through the rubble, jutting limbs from which hung root tendrils, dripping water. Swaths of forest climbed the mountainside to the north, on the other side of the river, and the ragged cliffs edging the tumbling water on that side were verdant with moss. The opposite mountain, flanking the trail, was a stark contrast, latticed with fissures, broken, gouged and mostly treeless. In the midst of this shattered façade shadows marked out odd regularities, of line and angle; and upon the trail itself, here and there, broad worn steps had been carved, eroded by flowing water and centuries of footfalls.
Seren Pedac believed that a city had once occupied the entire mountainside, a vertical fortress carved into living stone. She could make out what she thought were large gaping windows, and possibly the fragmented ledges of balconies high up, hazy in the mists. Yet something – something huge, terrible in its monstrosity – had impacted the entire side of the mountain, obliterating most of the city in a single blow. She could almost discern the outline of that collision, yet among the screes of rubble tracking down the sundered slopes the only visible stone belonged to the mountain itself.
They stood at the base of the trail. Seren watched the lifeless eyes of the Tiste Andii slowly scan upward.
‘Well?’ she asked.
Silchas Ruin shook his head. ‘Not from my people. K’Chain Che’Malle.’
‘A victim of your war?’
He glanced across at her, as if gauging the emotion behind her question, then said, ‘Most of the mountains from which the K’Chain Che’Malle carved their sky keeps are now beneath the waves, inundated following the collapse of Omtose Phellack. The cities are cut into the stone, although only in the very earliest versions are they as you see here – open to the air rather than buried within shapeless rock.’
‘An elaboration suggesting a sudden need for self-defence.’
He nodded.
Fear Sengar had moved past them and was beginning the ascent. After a moment Udinaas and Kettle followed. Seren had prevailed in her insistence to leave the horses behind. In a clearing off to their right sat four wagons covered with tarps. It was clear that no such contrivance could manage this climb, and all transport from here on was by foot. As for the mass of weapons and armour the slavers had been conveying, either it would have been stashed here, awaiting a hauling crew, or the slaves would have been burdened like mules.
‘I have never made this particular crossing,’ Seren said, ‘although I have viewed this mountainside from a distance. Even then, I thought I could see evidence of reshaping. I once asked Hull Beddict about it, but he would tell me nothing. At some point, however, I think our trail takes us inside.’
‘The sorcery that destroyed this city was formidable,’ Silchas Ruin said.
‘Perhaps some natural force—’
‘No, Acquitor. Starvald Demelain. The destruction was the work of dragons. Eleint of the pure blood. At least a dozen, working in concert, a combined unleashing of their warrens. Unusual,’ he added.
‘Which part?’
‘Such a large alliance, for one. Also, the extent of their rage. I wonder what crime the K’Chain Che’Malle committed to warrant such retaliation.’
‘I know the answer to that,’ came a sibilant whisper from behind them, and Seren turned, squinted down at the insubstantial wraith crouched there.
‘Wither. I was wondering where you had gone to.’
‘Journeys into the heart of the stone, Seren Pedac. Into the frozen blood. What was their crime, you wonder, Silchas Ruin? Why, nothing less than the assured annihilation of all existence. If extinction awaited them, then so too would all else die. Desperation, or evil spite? Perhaps neither, perhaps a terrible accident, that wounding at the centre of it all. But what do we care? We shall all be dust by then. Indifferent. Insensate.’
Silchas Ruin said, without turning, ‘Beware the frozen blood, Wither. It can still take you.’
The wraith hissed a laugh. ‘Like an ant to sap, yes. Oh, but it is so seductive, Master.’
‘You have been warned. If you are snared, I cannot free you.’
The wraith slithered past them, flowed up the ragged steps.
Seren adjusted the leather satchel on her shoulders. ‘The Fent carried supplies balanced on their heads. Would that I could do the same.’
‘The vertebrae become compacted,’ Silchas Ruin said, �
��resulting in chronic pain.’
‘Well, mine are feeling rather crunched right now, so I’m afraid I don’t see much difference.’ She began the climb. ‘You know, as a Soletaken, you could just—’
‘No,’ he said as he followed, ‘there is too much bloodlust in the veering. The draconean hunger within me is where lives my anger, and that anger is not easily contained.’
She snorted, unable to help herself.
‘You are amused, Acquitor?’
‘Scabandari is dead. Fear has seen his shattered skull. You were stabbed and then imprisoned, and now that you are free, all that consumes you is the desire for vengeance – against what? Some incorporeal soul? Something less than a wraith? What will be left of Scabandari by now? Silchas Ruin, yours is a pathetic obsession. At least Fear Sengar seeks something positive – not that he’ll find it since you will probably annihilate what’s left of Scabandari before he gets a chance to talk to it, assuming that’s even possible.’ When he said nothing, she continued, ‘It seems I am now fated to guiding such quests. Just like my last journey, the one that took me to the lands of the Tiste Edur. Everyone at odds, motives hidden and in conflict. My task was singular, of course: deliver the fools, then stand well back as the knives are drawn.’
‘Acquitor, my anger is more complicated than you believe.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘The future you set before us is too simple, too confined. I suspect that when we arrive at our destination, nothing will proceed as you anticipate.’
She grunted. ‘I will accept that, since it was without doubt the case in the village of the Warlock King. After all, the fallout was the conquest of the Letherii Empire.’
‘Do you take responsibility for that, Acquitor?’
‘I take responsibility for very little, Silchas Ruin. That much must be obvious.’
The steps were steep, the edges worn and treacherous. As they climbed, the air thinned, mists swirling in from the tumbling falls on their left, the sound a roar that clambered among the stones in a tumult of echoes. Where the ancient stairs vanished entirely, wooden trestles had been constructed, forming something between a ladder and steps against the sheer, angled rock.
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