The House of Night and Chain

by David Annandale

  ‘I found her journal. Just this morning.’

  ‘Does it say why she turned her back on her family and her duty?’ Katrin asked.

  Zander winced at his sister’s anger. I held back the impulse to rush furiously to Eliana’s defence. This was anger born of pain. ‘You believe that is what she did?’ I said gently.

  ‘How could anyone say otherwise? Killing herself was an act of cowardice. She shamed us all.’

  ‘We don’t know why she did it,’ Zander said. ‘We don’t know what she was going through. We–’

  ‘None of that matters,’ Katrin snapped. ‘Actually, I withdraw my question. I don’t care why she did it. She abandoned us, she abdicated her responsibilities to the Adeptus Administratum and to Solus, and she betrayed the Emperor. There are no reasons that can justify her actions.’

  ‘Unless that isn’t what happened,’ I said.

  ‘You think she didn’t kill herself?’ Zander asked.

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘There has never been any evidence to suggest otherwise,’ Katrin pointed out.

  ‘No, there hasn’t. But it is also true that her death was useful for some people. One in particular.’

  ‘Montfor?’ said Katrin.

  ‘Since Eliana’s death was to her advantage, she had a motive. But the corruption of this council has depended on maintaining an almost invisible profile. An obvious assassination would be a problem.’

  Zander looked shocked and confused, much as he had been at the session the day before. Katrin seemed thoughtful.

  ‘What you say makes sense, but it is only speculation.’

  ‘For the moment.’

  ‘What does mother’s journal reveal?’ Now Katrin sounded genuinely interested.

  ‘I’ve only just started reading it,’ I said. ‘She wrote a lot. It will take some time to go through it properly. There may very well not be anything in it that is helpful in finding out what happened, but even if there isn’t, when I read it, I hear your mother’s voice again. That is worth something.’

  ‘I’d like the chance to hear her voice too,’ Zander said quietly, with a slight tremble.

  ‘Of course,’ I said. His face was open, vulnerable. His studied nonchalance was gone. ‘I’ll pass the journal on to you when I’m through.’

  ‘How did you find it?’

  ‘She kept it in our bedchamber.’ The lie was simpler and easier to believe than the truth. ‘It’s been waiting for me to find it since she died.’ That felt like the truth, though it made me uncomfortable. ‘I do think we should all read it.’

  ‘Is that why you asked us here?’ Zander asked. ‘To tell us about the journal?’

  ‘No. I have been a stranger to you for most of your lives. And you have been becoming strangers to each other as well. I would like this to change. I believe it is part of our family duty as Strocks to be strong, and we will be stronger together.’ I had just made the easy part of the argument. The appeal to honour and duty came naturally for me to use, and for Katrin, at least, to accept. ‘And I miss you,’ I went on. ‘I never thought I would return to Solus. We have been granted another chance at union. I think we should take it.’

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ said Zander. He was recovering his poise, but there was a note of eagerness in his tone.

  ‘What do you propose?’ he asked. ‘Dinner here once a week?’ His tone was casual, but there was a look in his eyes of cautious hope, as if he wanted me to ask for more but couldn’t bring himself to risk making the suggestion.

  ‘I was going to ask you and Katrin to live at Malveil.’

  That took them both by surprise. They stared at me for a long time, then at each other.

  ‘Why?’ Katrin finally asked. ‘Why is that important?’

  ‘Because this is the seat of our family. Malveil is a symbol. Your mother’s death rendered it vacant, and that symbolism strengthened the council’s regency. To have it occupied again, not just by me but by the family would matter at least as much. It would be a show of continuity and power. It would show our unity in this struggle.’

  Zander squirmed. ‘This isn’t my fight,’ he said.

  ‘It should be.’

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on between you and the council, and I really don’t care to. It has nothing to do with me.’

  ‘Are you really that naive?’ said Katrin. ‘Or just that cowardly?’

  ‘Neither,’ he said with a smile. ‘I’m just lazy.’ He made the confession without a trace of embarrassment. ‘I can tell when something underhanded is going on, and I’m good at making sure I don’t find out what it is. Montfor wants me at arm’s length, and that’s where I’m comfortable. An anti-corruption fight is a lot of effort, but so is corruption. I’m not good at effort. I’m really not.’

  ‘At least you’re honest about it,’ Katrin said sourly.

  ‘I think it’s best for everyone to know that about me. That way they are never disappointed.’ He looked pleased with himself, as if his logic were unassailable.

  ‘You aren’t going to be able to follow that path any longer,’ I told him. ‘I am at war with Veth Montfor and her creatures. I have been commanded to put an end to their criminal endeavour, and so I shall. Montfor is going to fight back, and she will use any weapon she can. She won’t allow you to remain an amused spectator. She will try to suborn you.’

  ‘She’ll fail.’

  I finally heard some determination in Zander’s voice. I was glad. There was Strock blood in him after all. ‘Then she’ll threaten you to get to me. There is no safety on the sidelines. Not any longer.’

  Zander sighed. ‘You know, father, I was rather enjoying my life until now. It’s very unkind of you to upset things in this way.’

  I smiled. ‘Perhaps. But there we are.’

  ‘There we are,’ he repeated.

  ‘Well?’ Katrin pushed him. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘I do. I won’t pretend I’m happy about it. But if I’m going to be forced to choose my camp, then that’s what I’m going to do. And I’m not going to side with Montfor against my family.’ So there was iron in his blood, deny it as he would. The declaration of loyalty came easily, as if it were an instinct, a deep one, coming from a core that was pure Strock despite a shell of indolence.

  ‘And will you stay here?’

  ‘Can I think about that?’

  ‘Of course. I’m not going to take you prisoner.’ I looked at Katrin. ‘What about you?’

  ‘I agree with the principles you just espoused. I agree that our family has clear duties and responsibilities.’

  And you thought you were the only one who was still true to them, I thought. I was careful not to say anything.

  ‘The arrest of Councillor Trefecht gives me hope,’ Katrin said.

  ‘That I will stand by what I say?’ That I did not betray your trust on Clostrum, and that I will not abandon you again?

  She thought for a moment. ‘That something will be done,’ she said.

  ‘It will be.’

  ‘Then I will think seriously about taking up residence here.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Thank you both. I don’t ask this lightly, and I don’t expect your decisions to be instant, either. As a first step, if you are willing, I have had chambers readied for you to spend the night here. Of course, Belzhek will take you back to your homes if you prefer.’

  They both accepted. The surge of joy I experienced pushed the nightmare further to the back of my mind. I was relieved that neither Katrin nor Zander had asked precisely what Eliana did say in her journal. They could read it in due course, once things were more settled, once we were all closer.

  Perhaps I didn’t need to be cautious. But the first few pages I had read made me uneasy.

  I couldn’t sleep. The voices of memory weren’t assailing me th
is time, and I welcomed the reprieve. The knowledge that my children were under the same roof as me for the first time in decades gave me comfort, even as the thrill of hope also kept me awake. For a while, I even indulged myself in imagining that it was not a grim schola progenium indoctrinator and a genial, ambition-free wastrel sleeping in the chambers below my tower, but the young children I had left behind and never had the chance to see grow. I had come back to my past, and the tiny boy who needed holding and the little girl who clutched my hand did not feel very far away from me at all.

  I got up. I had to work off some nervous energy or I wouldn’t sleep at all. I looked at Eliana’s journal, sitting on the bedside table. I decided against reading more just now. I didn’t need my mind racing even more than it was, and Eliana’s reactions to Malveil disturbed me. If I had not known her handwriting, I might have suspected a forgery. The voice that those words conveyed did not sound like the Eliana I thought I remembered.

  For one thing, her sense of direction had been impeccable. It was hard to picture her having such difficulty trying to get her bearings in the house.

  The systematic attempt, though, was in character. It was also a challenge. After several days, there were still regions of Malveil I had yet to explore. I will follow in your footsteps. The thought appealed to me, as if in this way I could feel a little closer to her again. And maybe I could banish the dream from my thoughts.

  I headed down to the ground floor. I would start there, in the west wing, and go as far as the Old Tower. One section at a time, one day at a time, if need be, I would make myself familiar with every corner of the house.

  In the dining hall, I took up a candelabra from the table and used it to light my way through the dim corridors. I mimicked Eliana’s approach, pausing to note every intersection, imagining I was echoing her gestures. I told myself that this made me feel closer to her.

  I was moving through a sea of shadows whose waves rose and fell with the flickering of candle flame. The house faded into vague darkness ahead and behind, and I began to see how Eliana might have become confused. The mistake is to do this at night. But I was going to finish what I had started, and I kept going. At last, I reached the door that led into the Old Tower.

  It was massive, banded in iron, and of wood so thick and ancient it seemed petrified to black stone. It was forbidding, a barrier more than an entrance, and I half expected it to be locked against me. It wasn’t, but I had to pull hard on the heavy iron ring before the door opened, iron grinding against rockcrete, hinges turning into a screeching choir.

  A jagged, hulking mass heaved at me as I crossed the threshold. I recoiled, but the movement was an illusion conjured by the candles. It took me several long moments to understand what I was seeing. It was grotesquely absurd. It defied what I believed to be possible, and what I wanted to believe.

  I was standing on a staircase that spiralled up the interior wall of the tower, rising to my right and descending to an unknown depth on my left. The tower was hollow, and it was filled by the largest, most impossible pile of debris I had encountered in Malveil. It was a frozen vortex, twisting up from the darkness below, rising into the darkness above. Edges of portraits, crates, furniture and many more objects I could not identify in the gloom thrust out from the vortex, and it seemed to grow wider as it climbed higher, a cyclone of wreckage contained within the tower. I had to stare long and hard to make sure that it was not moving. It should have collapsed. I could not imagine how the configuration of chance and mass contrived to keep the twisted, inverted pile steady.

  Did Leonel do this? That, too, was hard to credit. How much of a lifetime would it take to create this monument to waste? To accumulate so much, to haul it into the tower one piece at a time, to climb the stairs and hurl the objects down… To do all of this would require an army of serfs, and years upon years of obsession.

  Or maybe generations of madness.

  Eliana took part in this too. What she had done in one chamber, she could have done here as well.

  It seemed to me that I was staring into the heart of madness, as if the accumulations began here, rising from the depths of the Old Tower to spread throughout the house. And as I looked, I began to feel a cold breeze. It blew up from the darkness below, coming up from a core of ice. It touched my cheeks. Then it pushed against them. It was turning into a wind.

  Air from the mines? Do the foundations connect to the tunnels?

  The explanation seemed strange. The lack of one was worse.

  The cold began to numb my face.

  I backed out of the Old Tower, put my shoulder to the door and pushed it closed, shutting away the sight and its implications for now. This was something to be dealt with in daylight. It was not my purpose tonight.

  The Old Tower had taken away my appetite for exploration, though. I no longer cared about creating a mental map of the west wing. I was suddenly very weary. I turned from the tower and started back to my room. My legs were heavy. I stared dully at the floor, no longer paying attention to my surroundings. I just wanted to sleep.

  I thought I was taking the direct route back to the main entrance. I didn’t think I had turned or branched off into a side corridor. I must have, though, because I came to a dead end. I raised the candelabra higher and looked around, confused. I didn’t recognise the room I was in. It was empty except for a dusty, cobwebbed ruin of a table in one corner. I turned back, and found three doors leading from the chamber. I couldn’t remember through which I had entered.

  We need to head east. Which wall is east?

  I didn’t know.

  I couldn’t stay there. I wasn’t about to go to sleep on the floor. I looked through each of the doorways. They led into narrow corridors. The pictures hanging on the walls, impossible to make out in the dark, made the passages seem cramped. I could not recall having been in any of them before. It was just the dark, I told myself. I couldn’t really see any of the spaces I was passing through.

  Stop being a fool. Enough of this stumbling around in the gloom. Get some light.

  There had to be some lumen globes in the corridors. I took one of the halls at random and moved cautiously down its length, feeling along the wall for a sconce. I walked past several doorways before I hit another dead end, but found nothing to light my way. The candles I carried were dwindling, and their light seemed dimmer, dirtier, as if it were being choked off by smoke and dust.

  I started back up the hall, and now I could not tell which room had led me here. I peered through the doorways, and half the spaces beyond looked identical in their empty dereliction.

  I kept walking. I turned right at the first intersection with another corridor. It was just as unfamiliar as the last, its doorways leading to still more foreign territory, taking me to other halls, and other rooms, some vacant, some choked with heaps of discards.

  I’m lost.

  How? How do you get lost going in a straight line?

  It wasn’t straight. I took a wrong turn.

  How? HOW?

  I had no answer.

  There was nothing to do but keep going. One of the corridors had to take me back to a main hall. Malveil was big, but not infinite. Yet I could not shake the impression that I was burrowing deeper and deeper into a maze of halls, larger than any battleship. I could not even find a room with windows. I was trapped in a web of stone, and when I reached its centre, Malveil would consume me.

  ‘No,’ I said aloud. ‘That is ridiculous, unworthy fancy.’

  The words fell dully into the dark, muffled and hollowed out of force. The darkness tightened around me. Then, as if it had been waiting for my feeble attempt to break the silence, the laughter of children began again.

  My mouth went dry. The giggling came from somewhere behind me, and I pictured children crouching behind a door, watching me, their smiles too wide and cold. And there was only the laughter. Clostrum was a lifetime away, its scr
eams and blood suddenly the torment of another soul, someone I might once have known, but no longer.

  I couldn’t pretend the laughter was my imagination.

  I had to insist that it was. I clung to the fact of my exhaustion with a death grip.

  I entered another hall, as strange to me as all the others. I walked more quickly, trying to get away from the laughter. It followed. The children I knew could not be real kept pace with me, always hiding around the corner I had just turned, inside the room I had just passed.

  ‘Katrin!’ I called, swallowing my humiliation. ‘Zander! I seem to be lost! Can you hear me?’

  The laughter behind me answered. And then, ‘Father?’ Katrin’s voice. Katrin as a child. I turned, and there she was as I remembered her, as I knew her. The woman who slept on the floor above was a stranger to me. I could see a faint resemblance between her and the daughter of my memory, but it was so faint, she could have been an imposter. Here, in front of me, was my little girl. Behind her, peeking around a doorway, hand over his mouth to stifle his giggles, was Zander as he lived in my heart. Though their faces were mischievous, they looked at me with the love that I also remembered, and that my soul had held close during the years of our separation. I smiled back and took a step forward.

  ‘Maeson!’

  Eliana’s cry made me look over my shoulder. There was no one there. And when I turned back to the children, they were gone. I realised belatedly that they could never have been there.

  ‘Maeson!’ Eliana’s voice shouted again.

  I spun around and almost collided with the librarium door. I had not been standing outside it a moment ago. I would have known where I was.

  It’s just the dark. I’m just having trouble seeing, that’s all.

  Yet I would have sworn there had been a stretch of corridor where the door now was.

  ‘Maeson!’ The cry came one more time, weaker and despairing.

  I hurried into the librarium. Eliana wasn’t there, because she couldn’t be there, because the voices were all in my head. An impulse that felt external to me summoned me to the shelf where I had discovered Eliana’s journal the night before.