‘No, I’m serious. Any day now, there is going to be trouble. Here.’
‘Where am I supposed to go?’
‘You need to contact who’s left of your scholarly friends – find one you can trust—’
‘Tehol Beddict, really now. I have no friends among my fellow scholars, and certainly not one I can trust. You clearly know nothing of my profession. We crush beaks between our teeth as a matter of course. In any case, what kind of trouble are you talking about? This economic sabotage of yours?’
‘Bugg should really learn to keep quiet.’
She was studying him in a most discomforting way. ‘You know, Tehol Beddict, I never imagined you for an agent of evil.’
Tehol smoothed back his hair and swelled his chest.
‘Very impressive, but I’m not convinced. Why are you doing all this? Is there some wound from the past that overwhelms all the others? Some terrible need for vengeance to answer some horrendous trauma of your youth? No, I am truly curious.’
‘It was all Bugg’s idea, of course.’
She shook her head. ‘Try again.’
‘There are all kinds of evil, Janath.’
‘Yes, but yours will see blood spilled. Plenty of it.’
‘Is there a difference between spilled blood and blood squeezed out slowly, excruciatingly, over the course of a foreshortened lifetime of stress, misery, anguish and despair – all in the name of some amorphous god that no-one dares call holy? Even as they bend knee and repeat the litany of sacred duty?’
‘Oh my,’ she said. ‘Well, that is an interesting question. Is there a difference? Perhaps not, perhaps only as a matter of degree. But that hardly puts you on a moral high ground, does it?’
‘I have never claimed a moral high ground,’ Tehol said, ‘which in itself sets me apart from my enemy.’
‘Yes, I see that. And of course you are poised to destroy that enemy with its own tools, using its own holy scripture; using it, in short, to kill itself. You are at the very end of the slope on which perches your enemy. Or should I say “clings”. Now, that you are diabolical comes as no surprise, Tehol. I saw that trait in you long ago. Even so, this bloodthirstiness? I still cannot see it.’
‘Probably something to do with your lessons on pragmatism.’
‘Oh now, don’t you dare point a finger at me! True pragmatism, in this instance, would guide you to vast wealth and the reward of indolence, to the fullest exploitation of the system. The perfect parasite, and be damned to all those lesser folk, the destitute and the witless, the discarded failures squatting in every alley. You certainly possess the necessary talent and genius and indeed, were you now the wealthiest citizen of this empire, living in some enormous estate surrounded by an army of bodyguards and fifty concubines in your stable, I would not in the least be surprised.’
‘Not surprised,’ Tehol said, ‘but, perhaps, disappointed nonetheless?’
She pursed her lips and glanced away. ‘Well, that is another issue, Tehol Beddict. One we are not discussing here.’
‘If you say so, Janath. In any case, the truth is, I am the wealthiest citizen in this empire. Thanks to Bugg, of course, my front man.’
‘Yet you live in a hovel.’
‘Disparaging my abode? You, an un-paying guest! I am deeply hurt, Janath.’
‘No you’re not.’
‘Well, the hens are and since they do not speak Letherii…’
‘Wealthiest citizen or not, Tehol Beddict, your goal is not the ostentatious expression of that wealth, not the fullest exploitation of the power it grants you. No, you intend the collapse of this empire’s fundamental economic structure. And I still cannot fathom why.’
Tehol shrugged. ‘Power always destroys itself in the end, Janath. Would you contest that assertion?’
‘No. So, are you telling me that all of this is an exercise in power? An exercise culminating in a lesson no-one could not recognize for what it is? A metaphor made real?’
‘But Janath, when I spoke of power destroying itself I was not speaking in terms of metaphor. I meant it literally. So, how many generations of Indebted need to suffer – even as the civilized trappings multiply and abound on all sides, with an ever-increasing proportion of those material follies out of their financial reach? How many, before we all collectively stop and say, “Aaii! That’s enough! No more suffering, please! No more hunger, no more war, no more inequity!” Well, as far as I can see, there are never enough generations. We just scrabble on, and on, devouring all within reach, including our own kind, as if it was nothing more than the undeniable expression of some natural law, and as such subject to no moral context, no ethical constraint – despite the ubiquitous and disingenuous blathering over-invocation of those two grand notions.’
‘Too much emotion in your speechifying, Tehol Beddict. Marks deducted.’
‘Retreating to dry humour, Janath?’
‘Ouch. All right, I begin to comprehend your motivations. You will trigger chaos and death, for the good of everyone.’
‘If I were the self-pitying kind, I might now moan that no-one will thank me for it, either.’
‘So you accept responsibility for the consequences.’
‘Somebody has to.’
She was silent for a dozen heartbeats, and Tehol watched her eyes – lovely eyes indeed – slowly widen. ‘You are the metaphor made real.’
Tehol smiled. ‘Don’t like me? But that makes no sense! How can I not be likeable? Admirable, even? I am become the epitome of triumphant acquisitiveness, the very icon of this great unnamed god! And if I do nothing with all my vast wealth, why, I have earned the right. By every rule voiced in the sacred litany, I have earned it!’
‘But where is the virtue in then destroying all that wealth? In destroying the very system you used to create it in the first place?’
‘Janath, where is the virtue in any of it? Is possession a virtue? Is a lifetime of working for some rich toad a virtue? Is loyal employment in some merchant house a virtue? Loyal to what? To whom? Oh, have they paid for that loyalty with a hundred docks a week? Like any other commodity? But then, which version is truer – the virtue of self-serving acquisitiveness or the virtue of loyalty to one’s employer? Are the merchants at the top of their treasure heaps not ruthless and cut-throat as befits those privileges they have purportedly earned? And if it’s good enough for them, why not the same for the lowest worker in their house? Where is the virtue in two sets of rules at odds with each other, and why are those fancy words like “moral” and “ethical” the first ones to bleat out from the mouths of those who lost sight of both in their climb to the top? Since when did ethics and morality become weapons of submission?’
She was staring up at him, her expression unreadable.
Tehol thought to toss up his hands to punctuate his harangue, but he shrugged instead. ‘Yet my heart breaks for a naked hen.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ she whispered.
‘You should have left,’ Tehol said.
‘What?’
Boots clumping in the alley, rushing up to the doorway. The flimsy broken shutter – newly installed by Bugg in the name of Janath’s modesty – torn aside. Armoured figures pushing in.
A soft cry from Janath.
Tanal Yathvanar stared, disbelieving. His guards pushed in around him until he was forced to hold his arms out to the sides to block still more crowding into this absurd room with its clucking, frightened chickens and two wide-eyed citizens.
Well, she at least was wide-eyed. The man, who had to be the infamous Tehol Beddict, simply watched, ridiculous in his pinned blanket, as Tanal fixed his gaze on Janath and smiled. ‘Unexpected, this.’
‘I – I know you, don’t I?’
Tehol asked in a calm voice, ‘Can I help you?’
Confused by Janath’s question, it was a moment before Tanal registered Tehol’s words. Then he sneered at the man. ‘I am here to arrest your manservant. The one named Bugg.’
‘Oh, now really,
his cooking isn’t that bad.’
‘As it turns out, it seems I have stumbled upon another crime in progress.’
Tehol sighed, then bent to retrieve a pillow. Into which he reached, dragging out a live chicken. Mostly plucked, only a few tufts remaining here and there. The creature tried flapping flabby pink wings, its head bobbing this way and that atop a scrawny neck. Tehol held the chicken out. ‘Here, then. We never really expected the ransom in any case.’
Behind Tanal a guard grunted a quickly choked-off laugh.
Tanal scowled, reminding himself to find out who had made that noise. On report and a week of disciplinary duty should serve notice that such unprofessionalism was costly in Tanal Yathvanar’s presence. ‘You are both under arrest. Janath, for having escaped the custody of the Patriotists. And Tehol Beddict, for harbouring said fugitive.’
‘Ah, well,’ Tehol said, ‘if you were to check the Advocacy Accounts for the past month, sir, you will find the official pardon granted Janath Anar, in absentia. The kind of pardon your people always issue when someone has thoroughly and, usually, permanently disappeared. So, the scholar here is under full pardon, which in turn means I am not harbouring a fugitive. As for Bugg, why, when you track him down, tell him he’s fired. I will brook no criminals in my household. Speaking of which, you may leave now, sir.’
Oh no, she will not escape me a second time. ‘If said pardon exists,’ Tanal said to Tehol Beddict, ‘then of course you will both be released, with apologies. For the moment, however, you are now in my custody.’ He gestured to one of his guards. ‘Shackle them.’
‘Yes sir.’
Bugg turned the corner leading into the narrow lane only to find it blocked by a freshly killed steer, legs akimbo, white tongue lolling as Ublala Pung – an arm wrapped about the beast’s broken neck – grunted and pulled, his face red and the veins on his temples purple and bulging. The odd multiple pulsing of his hearts visibly throbbed on both sides of the Tarthenal’s thick neck as he endeavoured to drag the steer to Tehol’s door.
His small eyes lit up on seeing Bugg. ‘Oh good. Help.’
‘Where did you get this? Never mind. It will never fit in through the door, Ublala. You’ll have to dismember it out here.’
‘Oh.’ The giant waved one hand. ‘I’m always forgetting things.’
‘Ublala, is Tehol home?’
‘No. Nobody is.’
‘Not even Janath?’
The Tarthenal shook his head, eyeing the steer, which was now thoroughly jammed in the lane. ‘I’ll have to rip its legs off,’ he said. ‘Oh, the hens are home, Bugg.’
Bugg had been growing ever more nervous with each step that had brought him closer to their house, and now he understood why. But he should have been more than just nervous. He should have known. My mind – I have been distracted. Distant worshippers, something closer to hand…
Bugg clambered over the carcass, pushing past Ublala Pung, which, given the sweat lathering the huge man, proved virtually effortless, then hurried to the doorway.
The shutter was broken, torn from its flimsy hinges. Inside, four hens marched about on the floor like aimless soldiers. Ublala Pung’s pillow was trying to do the same.
Shit. They’ve got them.
There would be a scene at the headquarters of the Patriotists. Couldn’t be helped. Wholesale destruction, an Elder God’s rage unleashed – oh, this was too soon. Too many heads would look up, eyes narrowing, hunger bursting like juices under the tongue. Just stay where you are. Stay where you are, Icarium. Lifestealer. Do not reach for your sword, do not let your brow knit. No furrows of anger to mar your unhuman face. Stay, Icarium!
He entered the room, found a large sack.
Ublala Pung filled the doorway. ‘What is happening?’
Bugg began throwing their few possessions into the sack.
‘Bugg?’
He snatched up a hen and stuffed it in, then another.
‘Bugg?’
The mobile pillow went last. Knotting the sack, Bugg turned about and gave it to Ublala Pung. ‘Find somewhere else to hide out,’ Bugg said. ‘Here, it’s all yours—’
‘But what about the cow?’
‘It’s a steer.’
‘I tried but it’s jammed.’
‘Ublala – all right, stay here, then, but you’re on your own. Understand?’
‘Where are you going? Where is everyone?’
Had Bugg told him then, in clear terms that Ublala Pung would comprehend, all might well have turned out differently. The Elder God would look back on this one moment, over all others, during his extended time of retrospection that followed. Had he spoken true – ‘They’re just gone, friend, and none of us will be back. Not for a long time. Maybe never. Take care of yourself, Ublala Pung, and ’ware your new god – he is much more than he seems.’
With that, Bugg was outside, climbing over the carcass once more and to the mouth of the alley. Where he halted.
They would be looking for him. On the streets. Did he want a running battle? No, just one single strike, one scene of unveiled power to send Patriotist body parts flying. Fast, then done. Before I awaken the whole damned menagerie.
No, I need to move unseen now.
And quickly.
The Elder God stirred power to life, power enough to pluck at his material being, disassembling it. No longer corporeal, he slipped down through the grimy cobbles of the street, into the veins of seepwater threading the entire city.
Yes, much swifter here, movement as fast as thought—
He tripped the snare before he was even aware that he had been pulled off course, drawn like an iron filing to a lodestone. Pulled, hard and then as if in a whirlpool, down to a block of stone buried in darkness. A stone of power – of Mael’s very own power – a damned altar!
Eagerly claiming him, chaining him as all altars sought to do to their chosen gods. Nothing of sentience or malice, of course, but a certain proclivity of structure. The flavour of ancient blood fused particle by particle into the stone’s crystalline latticework.
Mael resisted, loosing a roar that shivered through the foundations of Letheras, even as he sought to reassert his physical form, to focus his strength—
And the trap was so sprung – by that very act of regaining his body. The altar, buried beneath rubble, the rubble grinding and shifting, a thousand minute adjustments ensnaring Mael – he could not move, could no longer even so much as cry out.
Errant! You bastard!
Why?
Why have you done this to me?
But the Errant had never shown much interest in lingering over his triumphs. He was nowhere close, and even if he had been, he would not have answered.
A player had been removed from the game.
But the game played on.
In the throne room of the Eternal Domicile, Rhulad Sengar, Emperor of a Thousand Deaths, sat alone, sword in one hand. In wavering torchlight he stared at nothing.
Inside his mind was another throne room, and in that place he was not alone. His brothers stood before him; and behind them, his father, Tomad, and his mother, Uruth. In the shadows along the walls stood Udinaas, Nisall, and the woman Rhulad would not name who had once been Fear’s wife. And, close to the locked doors, one more figure, too lost in the dimness to make out. Too lost by far.
Binadas bowed his head. ‘I have failed, Emperor,’ he said. ‘I have failed, my brother.’ He gestured downward and Rhulad saw the spear transfixing Binadas’s chest. ‘A Toblakai, ghost of our ancient wars after the fall of the Kechra. Our wars on the seas. He returned to slay me. He is Karsa Orlong, a Teblor, a Tartheno Toblakai, Tarthenal, Fenn – oh, they have many names now, yes. I am slain, brother, yet I did not die for you.’ Binadas looked up then and smiled a dead man’s smile. ‘Karsa waits for you. He waits.’
Fear took a single step forward and bowed. Straightening, he fixed his heavy gaze on Rhulad – who whimpered and shrank back into his throne. ‘Emperor. Brother. You are not the child
I nurtured. You are no child I have nurtured. You betrayed us at the Spar of Ice. You betrayed me when you stole my betrothed, my love, when you made her with child, when you delivered unto her such despair that she took her own life.’ As he spoke his dead wife walked forward to join him, their hands clasping. Fear said, ‘I stand with Father Shadow now, brother, and I wait for you.’
Rhulad cried out, a piteous sound that echoed in the empty chamber.
Trull, his pate pale where his hair had once been, his eyes the eyes of the Shorn – empty, unseen by any, eyes that could not be met by those of any other Tiste Edur. Eyes of alone. He raised the spear in his hands, and Rhulad saw the crimson gleam on that shaft, on the broad iron blade. ‘I led warriors in your name, brother, and they are now all dead. All dead.
‘I returned to you, brother, when Fear and Binadas could not. To beg for your soul, your soul of old, Rhulad, for the child, the brother you had once been.’ He lowered the spear, leaned on it. ‘You drowned me, chained to stone, while the Rhulad I sought hid in the darkness of your mind. But he will hide no longer.’
From the gloom of the doors, the vague figure moved forward, and Rhulad on his throne saw himself. A youth, weaponless, unblooded, his skin free of coins, his skin smooth and clear.
‘We stand in the river of Sengar blood,’ Trull said. ‘And we wait for you.’
‘Stop!’ Rhulad shrieked. ‘Stop!’
‘Truth,’ said Udinaas, striding closer, ‘is remorseless, Master. Friend?’ The slave laughed. ‘You were never my friend, Rhulad. You held my life in your hand – either hand, the empty one or the one with the sword, makes no difference. My life was yours, and you thought I had opened my heart to you. Errant take me, why would I do that? Look at my face, Rhulad. This is a slave’s face. No more memorable than a clay mask. This flesh on my bones? It works limbs that are naught but tools. I held my hands in the sea, Rhulad, until all feeling went away. All life, gone. From my once-defiant grasp.’ Udinaas smiled. ‘And now, Rhulad Sengar, who is the slave?
‘I stand at the end of the chains. The end but one. One set of shackles. Here, do you see? I stand, and I wait for you.’
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