House of Chains

by Steven Erikson

  Nil spoke. ‘We want to go home,’ he said. ‘To the Wickan plains.’

  The Adjunct studied them for a moment, then, gaze unwavering, said, ‘Temul, Coltaine placed you in charge of the Wickan youths from the three tribes present in the Chain of Dogs. What is the complement?’

  ‘Thirty,’ the youth replied.

  ‘And how many Wickans were among the wounded delivered by ship to Aren?’

  ‘Eleven survived.’

  ‘Thus, forty-one in all. Are there any warlocks among your company?’

  ‘No, Adjunct.’

  ‘When Coltaine sent you with the historian Duiker, did he attach warlocks to your company at that time?’

  Temul’s eyes flicked to Nil and Nether for a moment, then his head jerked in a nod. ‘Yes.’

  ‘And has your company been officially dissolved, Temul?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In other words, Coltaine’s last command to you still obtains.’ She addressed Nil and Nether once more. ‘Your request is denied. I have need of both you and Captain Temul’s Wickan lancers.’

  ‘We can give you nothing,’ Nether replied. ‘The warlock spirits within us are silent,’ Nil added. Tavore slowly blinked as she continued to regard them. Then she said, ‘You shall have to find a means of awakening them once more. The day we close to battle with Sha’ik and the Whirlwind, I expect you to employ your sorcery to defend the legions. Captain Temul, are you the eldest among the Wickans in your company?’

  ‘No, Adjunct. There are four warriors of the Foolish Dog, who were on the ship bearing the wounded.’

  ‘Do they resent your command?’

  The youth drew himself straighter. ‘They do not,’ he replied, his right hand settling on the grip of one of his long knives. Gamet winced and looked away.

  ‘You three are dismissed,’ the Adjunct said after a moment. Temul hesitated, then spoke. ‘Adjunct, my company wishes to fight. Are we to be attached to the legions?’

  Tavore tilted her head. ‘Captain Temul, how many summers have you seen?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  The Adjunct nodded. ‘At present, Captain, our mounted troops are limited to a company of Seti volunteers, five hundred in all. In military terms, they are light cavalry at best, scouts and outriders at worst. None have seen battle, and none are much older than you. Your own command consists of forty Wickans, all but four younger than you. For our march northward, Captain Temul, your company will be attached to my entourage. As bodyguards. The ablest riders among the Seti will act as messengers and scouts. Understand, I have not the forces to mount a cavalry engagement. The Fourteenth Army is predominantly infantry.’

  ‘Coltaine’s tactics—’

  ‘This is no longer Coltaine’s war,’ Tavore snapped.

  Temul flinched as if struck. He managed a stiff nod, then turned on his heel and departed the chamber. Nil and Nether followed a moment later.

  Gamet let out a shaky breath. ‘The lad wanted to bring good news to his Wickans.’

  ‘To silence the grumbling from the four Foolish Dog warriors,’ the Adjunct said, her voice still holding a tone of irritation. ‘Aptly named indeed. Tell me, Fist, how do you think the discussion between Blistig and Tene Baralta is proceeding at this moment?’

  The old veteran grunted. ‘Heatedly, I would imagine, Adjunct. Tene Baralta likely expected to retain his Red Blades as a discrete regiment. I doubt he has much interest in commanding four thousand Malazan recruits.’

  ‘And the admiral, who waits below in the mess hall?’

  ‘To that, I have no idea, Adjunct. His taciturnity is legend.’

  ‘Why, do you think, did he not simply usurp High Fist Pormqual? Why did he permit the annihilation of Coltaine and the Seventh, then of the High Fist’s own army?’

  Gamet could only shake his head.

  Tavore studied him for another half-dozen heartbeats, then slowly made her way to the scrolls lying on the tabletop. She drew one out and removed its ties. ‘The Empress never had cause to question Admiral Nok’s loyalty.’

  ‘Nor Dujek Onearm’s,’ Gamet muttered under his breath. She heard and looked up, then offered a tight, momentary smile. ‘Indeed. One meeting remains to us.’ Tucking the scroll under one arm, she strode towards a small side door. ‘Come.’

  The room beyond was low-ceilinged, its walls virtually covered in tapestries. Thick rugs silenced their steps as they entered. A modest round table occupied the centre, beneath an ornate oil lamp that was the only source of light. There was a second door opposite, low and narrow. The table was the chamber’s sole piece of furniture.

  Tavore dropped the scroll onto its battered top as Gamet shut the door behind him. When he turned he saw that she was facing him. There was a sudden vulnerability in her eyes that triggered a clutching anxiety in his gut—for it was something he had never before seen from this daughter of House Paran. ‘Adjunct?’

  She broke the contact, visibly recovered. ‘In this room,’ she quietly said, ‘the Empress is not present.’

  Gamet’s breath caught, then he jerked his head in a nod. The smaller door opened, and the Fist turned to see a tall, almost effeminate man, clothed in grey, a placid smile on his handsome features as he took a step into the chamber. An armoured woman followed—an officer of the Red Blades. Her skin was dark and tattooed in Pardu style, her eyes black and large, set wide above high cheekbones, her nose narrow and aquiline. She seemed anything but pleased, her gaze fixing on the Adjunct with an air of calculating arrogance. ‘Close the door behind you, Captain,’ Tavore said to the Red Blade. The grey-clad man was regarding Gamet, his smile turning faintly quizzical. ‘Fist Gamet,’ he said. ‘I imagine you are wishing you were still in Unta, that bustling heart of the empire, arguing with horse-traders on behalf of House Paran. Instead, here you are, a soldier once more—’

  Gamet scowled and said, ‘I am afraid I do not know you—’

  ‘You may call me Pearl,’ the man replied, hesitating on the name as if its revelation was the core of some vast joke of which only he was aware. ‘And my lovely companion is Captain Lostara Yil, late of the Red Blades but now—happily—seconded into my care.’ He swung to the Adjunct and elaborately bowed. ‘At your service.’

  Gamet could see Tavore’s expression tighten fractionally. ‘That remains to be seen.’

  Pearl slowly straightened, the mockery in his face gone. ‘Adjunct, you have quietly—very quietly—arranged this meeting. This stage has no audience. While I am a Claw, you and I are both aware that I have—lately—incurred my master Topper’s—and the Empress’s—displeasure, resulting in my hasty journey through the Imperial Warren. A temporary situation, of course, but none the less, the consequence is that I am at something of a loose end at the moment.’

  ‘Then one might conclude,’ the Adjunct said carefully, ‘that you are available, as it were, for a rather more . . . private enterprise.’ Gamet shot her a glance. Gods below! What is this about? ‘One might,’ Pearl replied, shrugging.

  There was silence, broken at last by the Red Blade, Lostara Yil. ‘I am made uneasy by the direction of this conversation,’ she grated. ‘As a loyal subject of the empire—’

  ‘Nothing of what follows will impugn your honour, Captain,’ the Adjunct replied, her gaze unwavering on Pearl. She added nothing more. The Claw half smiled then. ‘Ah, now you’ve made me curious. I delight in being curious, did you know that? You fear that I will bargain my way back into Laseen’s favour, for the mission you would propose to the captain and me is, to be precise, not on behalf of the Empress, nor, indeed, of the empire. An extraordinary departure from the role of Imperial Adjunct. Unprecedented, in fact.’ Gamet took a step forward, ‘Adjunct—’

  She raised a hand to cut him off. ‘Pearl, the task I would set to you and the captain may well contribute, ultimately, to the well-being of the empire—’

  ‘Oh well,’ the Claw smiled, ‘that is what a good imagination is for, isn’t it? One can scrape patterns in the blood no m
atter how dried it’s become. I admit to no small skill in attributing sound justification for whatever I’ve just done. By all means, proceed—’

  ‘Not yet!’ Lostara Yil snapped, her exasperation plain. ‘In serving the Adjunct I expect to serve the empire. She is the will of the Empress. No other considerations are permitted her—’

  ‘You speak true,’ Tavore said. She faced Pearl again. ‘Claw, how fares the Talon?’

  Pearl’s eyes went wide and he almost rocked back a step. ‘They no longer exist,’ he whispered.

  The Adjunct frowned. ‘Disappointing. We are all, at the moment, in a precarious position. If you are to expect honesty from me, then can I not do so in return?’

  ‘They remain,’ Pearl muttered, distaste twisting his features. ‘Like bot-fly larvae beneath the imperial hide. When we probe, they simply dig deeper.’

  ‘They none the less serve a certain . . . function,’ Tavore said. ‘Unfortunately, not as competently as I would have hoped.’

  ‘The Talons have found support among the nobility?’ Pearl asked, a sheen of sweat now visible on his high brow.

  The Adjunct’s shrug was almost indifferent. ‘Does that surprise you?’

  Gamet could almost see the Claw’s thoughts racing. Racing on, and on, his expression growing ever more astonished and . . . dismayed. ‘Name him,’ he said.

  ‘Baudin.’

  ‘He was assassinated in Quon—’

  ‘The father was. Not the son.’

  Pearl suddenly began pacing in the small chamber. ‘And this son, how much like the bastard who spawned him? Baudin Elder left Claw corpses scattered in alleys throughout the city. The hunt lasted four entire nights . . .’

  ‘I had reason to believe,’ Tavore said, ‘that he was worthy of his father’s name.’

  Pearl’s head turned. ‘But no longer?’

  ‘I cannot say. I believe, however, that his mission has gone terribly wrong.’

  The name slipped from Gamet’s lips unbidden but with a certainty heavy as an anchor-stone: ‘Felisin.’

  He saw the wince in Tavore’s face, before she turned away from all three of them to study one of the tapestries.

  Pearl seemed far ahead in his thoughts. ‘When was contact lost, Adjunct? And where?’

  ‘The night of the Uprising,’ she replied, her back to them still. ‘The mining camp called Skullcup. But there had been a . . . a loss of control for some weeks before then.’ She gestured at the scroll on the table. ‘Details, potential contacts. Burn the scroll once you have completed reading it, and scatter the ashes in the bay.’ She faced them suddenly. ‘Pearl. Captain Lostara Yil. Find Felisin. Find my sister.’

  The roar of the mob rose and fell in the city beyond the estate’s walls. It was the Season of Rot in Unta, and, in the minds of thousands of denizens, that rot was being excised. The dreaded Cull had begun.

  Captain Gamet stood by the gatehouse, flanked by three nervous guards. The estate’s torches had been doused, the house behind them dark, its windows shuttered. And within that massive structure huddled the last child of Paran, her parents gone since the arrests earlier that day, her brother lost and presumably dead on a distant continent, her sister—her sister . . . madness had come once again to the empire, with the fury of a tropical storm . . .

  Gamet had but twelve guards, and three of those had been hired in the last few days, when the stillness of the air in the streets had whispered to the captain that the horror was imminent. No proclamations had been issued, no imperial edict to fire-lick the commoners’ greed and savagery into life. There were but rumours, racing through the city’s streets, alleys and market rounds like dust-devils. ‘The Empress is displeased.’

  ‘Behind the rot of the imperial army’s incompetent command, you will find the face of the nobility.’

  ‘The purchase of commissions is a plague threatening the entire empire. Is it any wonder the Empress is displeased?’

  A company of Red Blades had arrived from Seven Cities. Cruel killers, incorruptible and far removed from the poison of noble coin. It was not difficult to imagine the reason behind their appearance.

  The first wave of arrests had been precise, almost understated. Squads in the dead of night. There had been no skirmishes with house guards, no estates forewarned to purchase time to raise barricades, or even flee the city.

  And Gamet thought he knew how such a thing came to pass. Tavore was now the Adjunct to the Empress. Tavore knew . . . her kind.

  The captain sighed, then strode forward to the small inset door at the gate. He drew the heavy bolt, let the iron bar drop with a clank. He faced the three guards. ‘Your services are no longer required. In the murder hole you’ll find your pay.’

  Two of the three armoured men exchanged a glance, then, one of them shrugging, they walked to the door. The third man had not moved. Gamet recalled that he’d given his name as Kollen—a Quon name and a Quon accent. He had been hired more for his imposing presence than anything else, though Gamet’s practised eye had detected a certain . . . confidence, in the way the man wore his armour, seemingly indifferent to its weight, hinting at a martial grace that belonged only to a professional soldier. He knew next to nothing of Kollen’s past, but these were desperate times, and in any case none of the three new hirelings had been permitted into the house itself.

  In the gloom beneath the gatehouse lintel, Gamet now studied the motionless guard. Through the tidal roar of the rampaging mob that drew ever closer came shrill screams, lifting into the night a despairing chorus. ‘Make this easy, Kollen,’ he said quietly. ‘There are four of my men twenty paces behind you, crossbows cocked and fixed on your back.’

  The huge man tilted his head. ‘Nine of you. In less than a quarter-bell several hundred looters and murderers will come calling.’ He slowly looked around, as if gauging the estate’s walls, the modest defences, then returned his steady gaze to Gamet.

  The captain scowled. ‘No doubt you would have made it even easier for them. As it is, we might bloody their noses enough to encourage them to seek somewhere else.’

  ‘No, you won’t, Captain. Things will simply get . . . messier.’

  ‘Is this how the Empress simplifies matters, Kollen? An unlocked gate. Loyal guards cut down from behind. Have you honed your knife for my back?’

  ‘I am not here at the behest of the Empress, Captain.’

  Gamet’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘No harm is to come to her,’ the man went on after a moment. ‘Provided I have your full co-operation. But we are running out of time.’

  ‘This is Tavore’s answer? What of her parents? There was nothing to suggest that their fate would be any different from that of the others who’d been rounded up.’

  ‘Alas, the Adjunct’s options are limited. She is under some . . . scrutiny.’

  ‘What is planned for Felisin, Kollen—or whoever you are?’

  ‘A brief stint in the otataral mines—’

  ‘What!?’

  ‘She will not be entirely alone. A guardian will accompany her. Understand, Captain, it is this, or the mob outside.’

  Nine loyal guards cut down, blood on the floors and walls, a handful of servants overwhelmed at flimsy barricades outside the child’s bedroom door. Then, for the child . . . no-one. ‘Who is this “guardian”, then, Kollen?’

  The man smiled. ‘Me, Captain. And no, my true name is not Kollen.’

  Gamet stepped up to him, until their faces were but a hand’s width apart. ‘If any harm comes to her, I will find you. And I don’t care if you’re a Claw—’

  ‘I am not a Claw, Captain. As for harm coming to Felisin, I regret to say that there will be some. It cannot be helped. We must hope she is resilient—it is a Paran trait, yes?’

  After a long moment, Gamet stepped back, suddenly resigned. ‘Do you kill us now or later?’

  The man’s brows rose. ‘I doubt I could manage that, given those crossbows levelled behind me. No, but I am to ask that you now escort me to a s
afe house. At all costs, we must not permit the child to fall into the mob’s hands. Can I rely upon your help in this, Captain?’

  ‘Where is this safe house?’

  ‘On the Avenue of Souls.’

  Gamet grimaced. Judgement’s Round. To the chains. Oh, Beru guard you, lass. He strode past Kollen. ‘I will awaken her.’

  Pearl stood at the round table, leaning on both hands, his head lowered as he studied the scroll. The Adjunct had departed half a bell past, her Fist on her heels like a misshapen shadow. Lostara waited, arms crossed, with her back against the door through which Tavore and Gamet had left. She had held silent during the length of Pearl’s perusal of the scroll, her anger and frustration growing with each passing moment.

  Finally, she’d had enough. ‘I will have no part of this. Return me to Tene Baralta’s command.’

  Pearl did not look up. ‘As you wish, my dear,’ he murmured, then added: ‘Of course I will have to kill you at some point—certainly before you report to your commander. It’s the hard rules of clandestine endeavours, I regret to say.’

  ‘Since when are you at the Adjunct’s beck and call, Pearl?’

  ‘Why,’ he glanced up and met her gaze, ‘ever since she unequivocally reasserted her loyalty to the Empress, of course.’ He returned his attention to the scroll.

  Lostara scowled. ‘I’m sorry, I think I missed that part of the conversation.’

  ‘Not surprising,’ Pearl replied, ‘since it resided in between the words actually spoken.’ He smiled at her. ‘Precisely where it belonged.’

  With a hiss, Lostara began pacing, struggled against an irrational desire to take a knife blade to these damned tapestries and their endless scenes of past glories. ‘You will have to explain, Pearl,’ she growled.

  ‘And will that relieve your conscience sufficiently to return you to my side? Very well. The resurgence of the noble class in the chambers of imperial power has been uncommonly swift. Indeed, one might say unnaturally so. Almost as if they were receiving help—but who? we wondered. Oh, absurd rumours of the return of the Talons persisted. And every now and then some poor fool who’d been arrested for something completely unrelated went and confessed to being a Talon, but they were young, caught up in romantic notions and the lure of cults and whatnot. They might well call themselves Talons, but they did not even come close to the real organization, to Dancer’s own—of which many of us Claw possessed firsthand experience.