The House of Night and Chain

by David Annandale

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Zander,’ said Veiss.

  ‘What’s he done?’

  ‘It’s what he’s doing.’

  ‘He was spotted going into the Unforgiving Light.’

  ‘Which is…?’

  ‘A private establishment. Owned by Amir Bokanta.’

  I cursed. ‘What does he think he’s doing?’ After everything we had talked about, Zander might as well have put his neck on Montfor’s execution block.

  ‘He isn’t thinking,’ said Veiss.

  ‘That much is clear.’ The recklessness was so extreme, it had to be wilful.

  ‘I’ll take you there,’ Stavaak offered.

  I thanked him, and we climbed into the Taurox that waited at the edge of the square. I raised an eyebrow at the armoured carrier. ‘I don’t think Montfor’s next attempt is going to come this soon and be that obvious.’

  ‘I know,’ Stavaak said. ‘I just thought a show of force would be useful in this circumstance.’

  I agreed.

  We rumbled through Valgaast, heading east. We entered a sector where the streets barely ran for a block before turning at sharp angles. Traffic moved glacially, shouldering through crowds of pedestrians flowing between the hab blocks and the nocturnal gathering places. The people tried to rush out of the way of the menacing growl of the Taurox, but there was too little room. We moved forward slowly. By the time we reached the Unforgiving Light, Zander had had more than enough time to do serious damage. Or to be seriously damaged.

  The establishment was in the basement of a hab block that was itself owned by Bokanta as well. It was more luxuriously appointed than most of those around it. The relief sculptures and gargoyles of its facade were more intricate. Its windows were larger, and its main doors were armourglass, showing off an entrance hall of crimson and gilt. Bokanta cared for those loyal to him, and announced this to the world.

  As we descended from the Taurox, movement caught the corner of my eye. There was so much pedestrian traffic, there was no reason for one person to draw my attention more than another. But this one did. I looked, and saw a shadow at the intersection of the alley leading behind the hab block. It swayed slowly, and its robes moved as if caught in the current of a river.

  It was Eliana. The way she stood, looking at me, her head cocked slightly to the left, even as she swayed strangely. I knew it was her.

  ‘Lord-governor?’ Stavaak asked.

  I was standing stock-still. ‘Over there,’ I said. ‘At the entrance to the alley.’

  ‘Do you see someone?’

  Now I didn’t. She had been there. Now she was gone. I felt comforted all the same. She had her eyes on her family.

  ‘No,’ I lied. ‘I was mistaken.’

  Eliana had appeared to me beyond the confines of Malveil. My blood heating with barely contained exhilaration, I wondered what this could mean. We are growing closer, I decided. The wall between us is thinning. I wondered what Rivas would make of this. When I chose to tell him. For the moment, this secret was mine alone, and I held it tight.

  The doors to the Unforgiving Light were down a wide flight of steps to the right of the hab block’s entrance. Two guards stood before plasteel doors whose engravings depicted the armoured saints of the Emperor yet implied that patrons would discover that what lay beyond considered victory to be more of a revel than a solemn observance.

  Stavaak was not in uniform, but he bore the badge of the Adeptus Arbites. The guards took one look at the image of the fist and scales and stepped aside.

  Inside, lumen globe chandeliers cast a warm but discreet glow over round oak tables surrounded by iron booths whose backs were so high it was difficult to see who was seated at them. The floor of the Unforgiving Light looked like it was filled with miniature cloisters. We didn’t have to search hard for Zander, though. He was highly visible, and making a lot of noise. He was standing on a table, a bottle of amasec in one hand as he shouted to the room.

  ‘Look at me!’ he said. ‘Look at me! Do I look like a threat?’

  ‘You look like a fool,’ someone called out.

  ‘Yes! Yes! Exactly! I see you know me well!’

  His companions laughed with him, as did the onlookers gathering outside the booth.

  ‘What am I fit for? Am I fit for council? Barely. Am I fit to govern? By the Emperor, no! I am fit to be one thing, and that is a fool. Who among you can fear a fool?’

  Arms folded, Bokanta observed my son’s spectacle from a short distance away. He gave me a significant look as we approached. ‘About time you arrived,’ he said.

  ‘It was you who reported that he was here,’ Stavaak said, eyes narrowed.

  ‘A gesture of good will. I thought the lord-governor would like the chance to get things under control before they became embarrassing.’

  ‘My thanks,’ I muttered.

  I strode over to the booth and confronted Zander. ‘Get down,’ I ordered.

  He ignored me. ‘Tell anyone!’ he proclaimed. ‘Tell everyone! And most of all, tell Lady Montfor. I am not a threat. I wouldn’t know how to be one. So no one needs to do anything about me. You won’t even know I’m here.’

  ‘That is enough,’ I snarled. I reached up, grabbed the lapels of his long vest and hauled him off the table. Scattering goblets, he stumbled to the floor. ‘Out,’ I said. ‘Now.’ I dragged him forward.

  ‘But I’m not finished,’ he protested. ‘I want everybody to understand–’

  I cut him off. ‘They understand perfectly.’

  Stavaak stepped forward to help me. Together, we marched Zander out of the Unforgiving Light and into the Taurox.

  We glared at each other in the troop hold of the vehicle. ‘What was that?’ I demanded. ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘Acting out of self-preservation.’

  ‘All I saw was a disgraceful display.’

  He shrugged. ‘Better to be a disgrace than to be dead.’

  ‘You’re speaking like a coward.’ I had never felt so ashamed of my son.

  ‘I’m speaking like a realist.’ He was nowhere near as drunk as he had appeared to be. ‘I’ve seen it,’ he hissed. ‘Did you think we wouldn’t, living in the house? You should have said something. You could at least have been honest.’

  ‘Seen what?’ I asked, my skin turning cold.

  Zander didn’t answer. He leaned back on the bench and glared at me the rest of the way back.

  Katrin emerged from the house when Stavaak left us at Malveil. ‘What have you done?’ she demanded of Zander as we entered.

  ‘What you should be doing if you want to live,’ he snapped.

  ‘He was in a drinking house owned by Councillor Bokanta,’ I said. ‘Shouting his surrender to Montfor.’

  Katrin glared at him, disgusted.

  ‘If you’re smart, you’ll do the same,’ Zander told her, unrepentant.

  ‘So nothing we talked about, about the need to be strong together, means anything to you?’ she said.

  ‘No. It doesn’t.’ He paused. ‘You haven’t seen it, have you? In the librarium?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Come with me.’

  Zander marched to the librarium, his gait angry and steady. I revised my earlier impression. He wasn’t drunk at all. The spectacle at the Unforgiving Light had been entirely for the benefit of his audience. That made me even more angry.

  In the librarium, Zander headed for the wall opposite the window. It was dominated by a crowded bookshelf, but there were gaps on either side of it. On the right was the Strock coat of arms – crossed swords above a great house. On the left was the framed genealogy that had so disturbed Eliana. I had not paid it close attention before reading her thoughts, and since then I had consciously avoided looking at it. I didn’t doubt the accuracy o
f what she had seen. I just didn’t think staring at that pattern would be helpful in breaking it. Zander seemed set on proving me right.

  He jabbed a finger at the genealogy. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘Look! Look what happens to the families of lord-governors. They end!’ He turned to me. ‘You knew about this, didn’t you?’

  I nodded.

  ‘All that talk about heirs,’ he said. ‘So much delusion.’ The hurt in his voice made me flinch.

  Katrin studied the chart. ‘What are you saying this means?’ she asked Zander.

  ‘That we’re doomed.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘How can you say that? When the governorship has never passed directly from parent to child? When every one of the ruling branches stops dead?’

  ‘Our future is not governed by this chart.’

  ‘I want to make sure mine isn’t. That’s why Montfor is going to know I have no designs on anything at all, let alone the governorship. And if I’m worried, you should be terrified. You’re the eldest. You’re next in line. You’re the one at greatest risk.’

  ‘I will take Montfor down,’ I said. ‘I swear that she will not harm this family.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ said Zander. ‘In the meantime, I’ll take myself off her target list.’

  ‘You’re a fool, and a craven one at that,’ said Katrin. ‘Declaring yourself one isn’t going to save you. Montfor isn’t going to leave you alone just because you’re useless. You’re still a Strock. As long as one of us is a threat, she’ll have her eye on all of us. All you’ve done is make yourself useful to her. Now you’re an easier target.’

  ‘Then none of us should be threats!’ Zander cried. ‘Give her what she wants. Is the governorship worth dying for?’

  ‘Solus is worth dying for,’ I said. ‘Duty is worth dying for.’

  ‘Duty!’ Zander laughed bitterly. ‘Look what your duty has done to this family. Look what your duty did to mother.’

  ‘She understood,’ I said, rasping the words through a throat tight with anger and guilt.

  ‘Oh, and that makes it all right, then? She understood what broke her? It’s fine to die for nothing as long as you understand that?’

  ‘You’re pathetic,’ said Katrin. ‘Go on, then. Scream from the rooftops that you are powerless and ignorant.’

  ‘I intend to. I want to stay alive. If you two won’t help, I’ll still do what I can.’

  ‘You’re trying to hide from shadows,’ said Katrin. ‘Are you going to say that there’s a curse? Are you going to speak that heresy?’

  Zander bit back a reply.

  ‘Father is governor now,’ Katrin continued. ‘I will be governor later. You can cower in a bottle.’

  ‘So that’s it? You’re just going to accept your fate?’

  ‘I accept nothing.’

  Zander began to back away from us. ‘I don’t understand how you can see the evidence there on the wall and not be concerned.’

  ‘To accept your interpretation would be to accept heresy,’ said Katrin. ‘What I accept is the Emperor’s will, and whatever may come of it.’

  Zander lost all his energy at once. He deflated, his shoulders sagging, his face drooping with despair. As angry as I was, I saw that what he had done tonight had taken a perverse kind of bravery. Motivated by fear, he had nonetheless taken a stand and was desperately trying to steer us away from what he perceived to be the path to ruin. From his perspective, we were mad.

  From Rivas’ perspective, I was too.

  I wondered as well about how quickly Zander’s belief in our family’s doom had developed, and how fervently he clung to that belief. Had a look at the genealogy been all it had taken? Was it simple chance that had made him notice the chart in the first place? It was not chance that had brought me to Eliana’s diary.

  Maybe Eliana is influencing him too, without his knowing it. Maybe she is trying to save him.

  No. I couldn’t admit the possibility that Zander was correct. That was the road to dereliction of duty.

  Zander sighed. He looked at me with despair, and with sorrow, and with anger. ‘Is this why you came back?’ he said softly. ‘To kill us?’

  He didn’t wait for an answer. He left.

  To my shame, I was relieved. I had no answer to give.

  Chapter 10

  Sleep did not come easily. When it did, I kept thrashing awake. Zander’s fears and accusations roiled through my mind. I was storm-tossed on warring waves of guilt and doubt. I couldn’t believe in the reality of Eliana and dismiss Zander’s terror of a curse. I did not want to credit it. I wanted to know that this time was different, that Eliana’s intervention would make things different. I had no basis for that idea. It was only a hope. And the strange ignorance I had of my predecessors came like a wind to stir the waves to greater turmoil.

  As I replayed the confrontation in my mind again and again, I kept seeing Katrin’s hard, stoic face, and read new meaning into her lack of expression. I wondered if she believed what Zander said more than she was willing to admit. I wondered if what I saw in her was quiet, grim resignation, an acceptance of the dark inevitable.

  Nothing is inevitable.

  Isn’t it? Clostrum was. There was never any hope there at all.

  That was a bad thought, a toxic one. In my somnolent state, I cursed it, fearing another inevitability. I was right, too, because it seized me and pulled me down beneath the waves.

  In my sleep, I plunged away from doubt and into the depths of terrible certainty. The unknown future made way for the implacable horror of the past. I cried out, knowing I was dreaming, knowing the shape the dreams would take. I tried to wake, because I could only drown. And then I returned to Clostrum.

  I was on the battlefield, surrounded by the flames of burning tanks. I was crawling away from the wreckage of the Chimera. The monsters were everywhere. They were a plague, a swarm. They were the embodiment of devouring. Stingers impaled troopers. Claws clutched their mangled bodies. The tyranids raised the corpses to the smoke-filled sky. I beheld a forest of chitinous spears stretching to the crimson horizon. The distortions of dreams fused with the perfect reproduction of memory.

  Clostrum had spared me for several days. It had merely been holding back to strike all the harder now. The memories of my senses ignited. I smelled the unholy stench of the tyranids. I smelled blood, human blood in such quantities that when I breathed, the warm, salty tang of it filled my mouth. Clouds of smoke poured into my lungs, and I was coughing, wracking, painful coughs that woke pain in my ribs and chest. The ground cut my hands.

  So much was real. There was so much in the nightmare that was exactly as I had lived it. In moments, I would try to stand, as I had before. Then I would feel the pain again as the tyranid attacked me. I could feel my right leg and arm. In a few seconds, I would relive the sensation of losing them.

  And there were the elements that my imagination saw fit to add. The twists to reality that sought to break what remained of my spirit. In the dream, the tyranids laughed. A thousand thousand monsters bellowed with cruel mirth. The laughter could not be, and had never been, yet it reverberated in my hearing as fully as the explosions of the vehicles and ammunition. It pierced my soul like the howls of the wounded. It went on and on and on, gigantic bellowing that I had not heard then but heard now, and it was the laughter of a foul intelligence, the laughter of a thing that loomed behind the images of the tyranids and mocked the fragility of the human before it.

  I could not survive the mockery. It grew louder and louder, greater than the roars and the screams, greater than the blows against all my other senses. I screamed, and could not hear my scream. I tried to cover my ears and found my arms were paralysed. I tried to shut my eyes, but they could not close. I shrieked with all my strength. The weakness of nightmares was upon me, and I could do nothing.

  I screamed silence.
I struggled to move. I thought I would go mad.

  I broke the silence. I jolted awake, shrieking loud enough to shatter walls. I gasped. I clawed at the bedclothes and at my chest. I tried to expel the horror. It clung to me as if it had emerged with me from the dream. The laughter would not leave me.

  As I finally started to breathe again, I discovered that the laughter was real. It was rising from the floor below. It was human, the sheer number of voices turning into monsters when I heard the slaughter in my sleep.

  I staggered to my feet. I shook my head, trying to clear it. The fog of sleep lingered. I thought I could still smell the sting of smoke and blood. I couldn’t think straight. Confusion had me, and I walked like a man struggling through a mire. I managed to form a vague sense of anger. There were people here who did not belong. Malveil was ringing with the sound of revelry. It was an insult to me, and to the troopers who had perished on Clostrum.

  I did not stop to wonder how these people could know what I had just been dreaming.

  I yanked my door open and descended the tower. The uproar was deafening in the gallery. It was coming from Zander’s room. I marched towards his door. He was seeking to spite me. He had invited all his reprobate friends while I slept. This was unworthy of him, but if he wanted to witness my rage, then he would. I would grant him that satisfaction. He would regret provoking me. At that moment, I could have wrapped my hands around his throat.

  The din of the merrymaking was extraordinary. The joy in the laughter was violent, savage. It was the sound of hundreds of people. They could not possibly all be inside Zander’s apartment. I knew this, but I ignored the thought. I was too angry.

  I jerked to a stop outside Katrin’s room. My breath caught. Blood seeped from beneath the door, pooling slowly in the hall.

  ‘Katrin!’ I shouted. There was no answer. I called her name again and tried the door. It opened, and I rushed into an abattoir.

  There was blood everywhere. A slick of it covered the floor and walls. The ceiling was drenched, and a soft crimson rain pattered down. Jagged bone fragments nailed flesh to the walls in long, wide strips, as if it had been unrolled from bodies. Chunks of corpses were scattered around the room, on the floor and draped over furniture, a butcher’s display. Clusters of severed hands clutched at each other, their fingers tight and digging into each other’s flesh. A femur dipped in tar and lit at both ends dangled by a chain from the ceiling. It provided the room’s only illumination. It turned gently back and forth, caught in an unfelt draught.