The House of Night and Chain

by David Annandale

  ‘Certainly they exist,’ said Vanzel.

  ‘Then I look forward to seeing them. This session is adjourned.’

  No one dared contradict me and suggest that I had interrupted other work. I was acting on adrenaline, and I needed to press the advantage of my survival with an appropriately dramatic show of force.

  Montfor did not bother to hide her anger this time when she left. After only a few days of hostilities, the masks were slipping.

  Good.

  I still made sure I was the last to leave, standing before my throne as a figure of anger and blood. I was ready to fall over. I had to keep going until I was safely back at Malveil.

  Zander and Veiss joined me as I reached the door. ‘I’ll take you home,’ Veiss said.

  ‘There’s no need,’ said Zander. ‘I’m going there too.’

  Veiss’ eyes widened slightly, but I couldn’t tell if she was also a little pleased.

  ‘My driver…’ I said.

  Veiss nodded. ‘I’ll see that she is well cared for.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  As Zander and I arrived at the top of Malveil’s hill, we saw Katrin walking up the last stretch of road to the house. The contrast between my children was painfully stark in that moment. The pampered councillor was being delivered to his destination by his personal driver. Katrin must have taken the maglev trains to the nearest stop, easily two miles from the base of the hill, and walked the rest of the way. Sleet pattered against the black longcoat and cap of a schola progenium indoctrinator. Katrin looked as if she were heading for the trenches of war. Zander looked as if war was a word with no meaning in his universe.

  He also looked shaken and angry. That gave me hope for him.

  ‘You heard?’ Zander asked Katrin when we entered the hall.

  ‘I did. Was that an assassination attempt?’

  ‘I’m sure it was,’ I said. ‘But we will not be able to prove it. My death would have simply seemed an accident.’

  ‘So Montfor would have won that easily.’

  ‘No, she would not have. Because I am not here alone. I have heirs.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll try again?’ Zander asked.

  ‘She will. She’ll have to choose her moment carefully. A second accident too soon after this one would not be credible.’

  ‘She might come after one of us,’ he said.

  ‘And?’ said Katrin. ‘Are you frightened?’

  ‘Yes, I am. I don’t want to die for…’

  ‘For what? For Solus? For the Emperor? Or were you going to say for nothing?’

  Zander shook his head. He didn’t answer.

  ‘We’re at war,’ I told him. ‘In war, there are no sidelines, no matter how much we might wish there are. Solus must fight for the Imperium, and we must fight for Solus.’

  Zander sighed. ‘I was happy before you came back. You understand? My life was good.’

  ‘It was a waste,’ said Katrin.

  ‘Then it was an enjoyable waste. I wasn’t waiting to be assassinated by the senior councillor.’

  ‘You had no hope of defeating her either,’ Katrin said. When Zander did not respond at once, she continued, ‘Are you going to pretend you never wished you were not subject to her?’

  ‘All I had to do was leave her alone.’

  ‘That would never have been enough.’

  ‘War is your salvation,’ I said to Zander. ‘You will never have to pay her price.’

  ‘That’s certain, if nothing else,’ he said, less bitterly than he might have.

  ‘I would not have wished to bring either of you into danger,’ I said. ‘But I have my duty, and performing it has made that unavoidable.’

  ‘Sooner or later, she would have used Zander, and discarded him,’ said Katrin. ‘If he had resisted, she would have targeted me. You only hastened what had to happen.’

  ‘You will be safer here than in Valgaast, and living alone,’ I said.

  ‘You will be too, father,’ said Zander. ‘You’re back, and I’d rather like you to stay. Preferably in one piece. So yes. I will live here.’

  ‘As will I,’ Katrin said.

  I smiled, feeling grateful and determined. ‘Thank you both. I am very glad. Together, we are stronger. We are family, we are blood, and let that be our pact. If Montfor strikes one of us, she will not have the chance to strike another.’

  ‘Stopping her might mean killing her,’ said Katrin.

  ‘It might,’ I agreed.

  ‘If you’re so eager for blood, what’s stopping you from killing her now?’ Zander asked.

  ‘The upheavals that would cause on Solus. I am here to restore order to the world. I will not plunge it into civil war. If Montfor overreaches and visibly draws first blood, she will doom herself.’

  ‘Throne,’ said Zander. ‘The Emperor grant things do not come to that.’

  ‘I don’t think they will.’ I smiled. My children were going to live here. My family was united. Sheltered within the powerful arms of Malveil, the world outside could not touch us.

  Night and dreams were still far enough away for such confidence.

  Chapter 8

  I have been ill for several days now. I don’t know what is wrong, precisely, and neither does the medicae who came to see me. She has given me some ampules that are supposed to combat the lethargy that takes hold of me, but they don’t seem to be doing much good. Each morning, I think I might be better, and will be able to discharge my responsibilities at the Administratum Palace. And each morning, even when driven, I do not make it more than halfway down the hill before I have to turn around again. I am fortunate to have some solid lieutenants to whom I can delegate matters for the time being. They are able enough administrators, they are disciplined, and they are loyal. They are also very stolid. Really quite dull, it must be said. Which is good. I don’t want ambition in an underling when I am unable to be present.

  And now I have been staring at these words for several minutes. I’m trying to decide if they are true. I was quite convinced of them when I wrote them. I want to believe them. Only I don’t think I do. Is this a physical ailment that is keeping me housebound? I have my doubts.

  Let us have an honest accounting. I refuse to lie to myself on these pages. If I am seeking to restore the truth of the Strocks, then I dishonour Maeson’s family if I lie to myself.

  So. I wrote that I am lethargic. Sometimes that is true. But not always. Not even most of the time, when I am in Malveil. My limbs have grown heavy when I have started on the way to Valgaast. That much is true. But that is a suspiciously selective kind of symptom if it only strikes in order to prevent me from fulfilling my duties.

  If I focus too much on the exhaustion, I ignore the other symptoms. I must count fear, or something like it, among them. Before the exhaustion hits, when all I am doing is contemplating heading out to work, I become irrationally nervous. My heartbeat accelerates. My mouth dries. I stare out of the windows as if expecting a catastrophe as terrible as it is vague to loom over the horizon. The last thing I want to do is leave the house. And when I return from my abortive attempts to head into the city, I am overcome with relief.

  In this light, the lethargy looks like a rather convenient physical symptom. An excuse.

  All right. That feels more honest. I also feel more guilt, because I don’t think there’s anything I can do to change things. Maybe this is still some kind of illness. I can’t leave the house. I simply can’t. It would take too much out of me.

  At least I am being productive while I’m here. I have made a lot of progress in my search for family records. The work is long and frustrating, but being able to avail myself of help from Karoff and the serfs during the day has made a big difference. I am able to dig much deeper into the heaps. Karoff organises the disposal of everything that is of no value. I would have thought, given
the endless stream of objects leaving Malveil, that we would have made more headway in emptying the rooms, but we appear to be no closer to reclaiming them. The past lies thick in Malveil, and will not be purged.

  This is an added bit of frustration, because I am trying, despite my preoccupation with the research and my condition (whatever it truly is), to shape a present in Malveil. I believe the house should bear the signs of its current inhabitants. We matter too. And I live in hope for the day that there will be a we here. So I have artisans and tradespeople coming, bringing wares and ideas to add our touch to the house. All right, my touch. For now. I will make an impression on Malveil, though I can see that I will have to purchase quite a bit to do so.

  In the meantime, I am starting to be able to read the past. I am piecing together revealing fragments about the early part of Leonel’s reign. This is archival work at its most difficult. It is also something I take some pride in being very good at, and I have something to show for it. Before now, I knew nothing about Leonel except the long years of his illness, and what was notable about him at that time was his absence. Even Karoff, who was at Malveil before Leonel’s decline, can barely remember anything from then. Granted, Karoff was very young. Leonel’s degeneration set in quite early in his term as lord-governor. What I have found, though, suggests that Solus has done Leonel an injustice in forgetting what he once was. I find signs of a man who thought deeply about what his world needed and was determined to act accordingly.

  I have also discovered some scattered sheets of what may have been a journal. Or possibly just some notes for himself towards possible speeches. They mention the House of Montfor, and are more evidence of the long enmity between that family and the Strocks, and also that the corruption of the Montfors stretches all the way back. The rise of the Strocks was a very fortunate thing for Solus. I cannot imagine what the unchallenged reign of the Montfors would be like.

  There are some other records that I find somewhat disturbing. They certainly do not help with my morale. It seems that Leonel, while still healthy, had the idea to embark on a very similar project to mine. He too wanted to establish a proper history of his ancestors. He made some progress, too. I haven’t discovered much yet to tell me anything about the other lord-governors. What there is so far is either written in Leonel’s hand, which I can now identify quite readily, or was collected by him.

  The repetition of effort is demoralising. I keep finding paradoxes in Malveil. The reign of the Strocks is uninterrupted, yet the immediate families of each governor are always interrupted. The past is everywhere I look in this house, yet it is also opaque.

  I want to talk to someone about this. I want to talk to Maeson about this. I wish he were here. Sometimes this work feels like a conversation I am having with him, one that he may never hear. My love, I know why you cannot be with me, but it is hard. I wonder if you can understand what it truly means to be the one left behind.

  Look at this. My loneliness is speaking out again. My history project is only a partial remedy, then. Of course it is. There can be no full cure for loneliness except for the condition to end.

  Karoff has just come into the librarium. I have an unexpected caller this evening.

  Well. That was interesting. Veth Montfor came to see me. I wonder when a Montfor last set foot inside Malveil. If ever. The same thought must have occurred to her. It looked as if she had to force herself over the threshold. I thought she must have a truly compelling reason for being here.

  Apparently not, though. She said she had come just to see how I was.

  I can only imagine the sceptical face Maeson would have made. I suppose mine must have looked rather similar. If she was offended, Montfor did not show it. And I didn’t see how I could reject a peaceful overture. If I did so, I would be the one engaging in hostilities. That may have been exactly the trap she intended to set, and so had herself invited into her enemy’s stronghold. But the strain on her face when she came inside is hard to reconcile with the idea that this was a strategic victory for her.

  She stayed for a short while. She was very pleasant. I did not let my guard down, or so I am telling myself. I know better than to trust her. I don’t think anyone trusts her. Her enemies don’t. And her allies are just her creatures. They do not trust her. They fear her. To look at her is to see how corruption shapes a face. It gnaws and erodes the features. It twists the remains into something hard. I refuse to imagine what goes on inside Silling, the Montfor keep. I did not want to sit close to her, as if her rot were contagious.

  And yet. And yet. She was friendly. And she was concerned. She had heard that I had not been out recently. She did not think that was good.

  ‘I would like to invite you to dine with me,’ she said.

  If she had stopped there, with the invitation, I would have known that I was being lured into an ambush. Only she didn’t stop there. She clearly was not surprised when I demurred. Her response was actually gentle. There is no other word for it. She told me that she understood. She said, ‘Will you do me a favour? Will you contact some of your friends? Will you go out with them? Don’t invite them to see you. Go to see them.’

  What should I make of this? She spoke softly, yet with great insistence, as if she were making a request of the utmost importance.

  I told her that I would do what I could. I was vague. No matter how friendly her mask is, I know that she would see the Strocks destroyed, if she could. Coming to see me like this must be part of that goal, though I can’t divine how.

  She probably didn’t believe me. She didn’t challenge me, though. She thanked me for my hospitality and left. She appeared relieved to be out of the house. When she was on the porch, she said something odd. She said she hoped I would follow her advice. And then she said, ‘You are not a Strock by blood. Remember that. The house has no claim on you.’

  So. Another puzzle to solve. I have no shortage of those.

  Whatever she meant, in at least one sense, she is wrong. The house does have a claim on me. I am here because it does. I am part of the Strocks. Living here is my regency. I represent the Strocks. Through me, they are in Malveil, and the council is not allowed to forget that even if the rightful governor is absent, he is alive.

  Maeson, I hope you appreciate what I am doing for you. I am giving up a lot of who I am to be you by proxy. The longer I am ill, the more I am losing touch with my identity as it exists outside the boundaries of the Strocks and Malveil.

  You have left me with a burden, Maeson. It is growing heavy.

  Sobbing woke me. The voice was Eliana’s. I knew it right away. I jerked upright in bed, knocking the journal off my chest and onto the floor. I had fallen asleep reading it, and Eliana’s resentment had followed me into unconsciousness. That was what was happening now, I thought.

  ‘This is a dream,’ I said.

  I spoke clearly, my voice slightly rough from sleep, and with none of the strain and suffocating silence of nightmares. The sobbing continued, angry and lost, my wife’s pain cutting the dark and my soul.

  I turned on the lumen globe on the bedside table. Illumination made the room concrete. It pushed the shadows to the periphery and gave precision to the objects around me.

  I was awake.

  I had been mistaken on that count before. I got out of bed, testing the floor, stamping once to feel the impact up my leg. I pinched myself. Everything felt as it should. I really was awake. And I could still hear the sobbing. It sounded like it was just outside the door. It grew louder as I approached, but when I threw open the door, the sound retreated down the stairs and into the hall below.

  I had had enough of fugue states. My heart was pounding. I was not only awake, I felt as if sleep had been banished forever. The sound of Eliana’s tears pulled me, chains wrapped around my heart demanding that I follow them. I wished with the fervour of prayer to ease her suffering. Yet my rational side, fully alert this time, warned me not to
trust what I was hearing. It could not be Eliana making that noise. I could not assume that there was a noise at all. One half of my mind held the other half in deep suspicion.

  I walked down the stairs from my tower and into the main gallery of the first floor. I stopped to light the lantern in the sconce beside the door. The tears were further away again, fainter, perhaps descending the staircase. There was no one to see.

  I’m sorry. I want to follow you. I want to hold you. I can’t. Not like this. You can’t be here. I wish you were, though. Throne, I wish you were.

  I would not let myself get lost this time. With shaking hands, I lit the other lanterns as I made my way down the hall. I passed the doors to Katrin’s and Zander’s rooms, then doubled back. I listened to the echoes of grief a moment longer, then rapped on the doors and called to my children.

  The sobs cut off. There was only silence when Katrin appeared, confused but fully dressed and alert. Zander emerged a few moments later, looking rather more haggard. He had returned to Malveil late that night, and I hadn’t heard him come in.

  ‘What is it, father?’ Katrin asked.

  ‘Have either of you heard anything unusual tonight?’

  Katrin shook her head, and Zander said, ‘I’ve been asleep.’

  ‘Or any other night since you’ve been here?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What is it?’ Katrin asked again.

  ‘Probably nothing.’

  ‘But possibly an intruder,’ she said.

  ‘Possibly.’ I didn’t believe it was. That explanation was still more plausible than a ghost. At least I wasn’t lying to them. Not precisely.

  ‘Let’s look,’ said Katrin. Zander sighed, but nodded.

  I made them wait and listen for a moment. There was only silence.

  Why won’t you speak to the children, Eliana?