The House of Night and Chain

by David Annandale

  It was a relief when I did get back. I felt better, if not exactly well, immediately. I won’t be going out again. Not while I feel like this.

  While I was at Treva’s, I tried to combat the terror by analysing it, hoping I could tamp it down if I could identify its source. It was my project, my history of the Strock governors. I’m always thinking about it, but when I was away from Malveil, it felt like the project was in jeopardy. As if only my presence in Malveil could prevent the entire house from going up in flames.

  Nonsense, yes. I didn’t think that would happen. But I felt as if it would.

  So that attempt was a disaster. I didn’t give up, though. I made one more try at doing what Montfor asked. I hope she’d be pleased. Or I hope Maeson would be pleased.

  Maybe I don’t care, after all.

  I acted as though I did. I invited Treva and the others to come and see me in Malveil. I would be less tired that way. I wouldn’t be anxious. I hoped I would enjoy their company. I hoped I wouldn’t be lonely.

  The experience was worse than at Garnheim Manor. I was less nervous. I was less tired. I was able to pay attention this time. That’s why it was worse. I was able to see the truth of things.

  Everyone was pleasant. I can remember what we talked about. None of it mattered. I looked at these people, people whom I thought I knew fairly well. They were hollow. If I had ever really known them, that was no longer the case. Things were changing. Their bodies were present, but they were only shells. They might as well have been servitors, tasked to perform the motions of a social gathering. I felt that if I stared at Treva and the others long enough, I would see right through their bodies. Their skin would become translucent. Inside was nothing, not even bone. These people had not come to see me. They had come to take their leave. They were abandoning me. Even as they sat there talking, they were abandoning me, hollowing themselves out, turning into pantomiming shadows.

  I hated them. I could not get rid of them fast enough. I will not be hosting any other events in Malveil.

  Maeson was the first to abandon me, and he has taken everyone in his wake. First the children, then all the others.

  I am alone.

  I was on my way to the Inner Chamber when Veiss caught up to me and took me aside.

  ‘You’re going to have to do without me today,’ she said.

  ‘I think I can fend Montfor off.’

  ‘I know you can.’

  ‘What will you be doing?’

  ‘Gathering ammunition, I hope. I’ve heard some rumours about Montfor, ones that might be useful to us if there is any truth to them. I’m going to see if there is.’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘To Silling.’

  Montfor’s home. I didn’t like the idea. ‘She may be here, but she will have eyes there.’

  ‘I know. I’m not about to break in. I have a possible informant in the house.’

  ‘Good luck then.’

  ‘I’ll meet you at Malveil after council,’ she said, and headed off back down the hall.

  The council session was relatively calm. We were all gathering our strength for the storm to come. We were engaged in an administrative charade, performing the actions of government with our thoughts elsewhere. Mine certainly were, and the lack of conflict suggested this was the case for my opponents too.

  My thoughts careened from one pressure point to another. Every time I looked at Zander, he was watching me with deep concern. I worried about how much damage I had done that morning. I wondered what Veiss might have found, and what she might be risking. I could easily believe that Montfor had planted the rumours herself, whatever they were, with the goal of ambushing Veiss. I tried to remember that it was Veiss who had warned me about how dangerous Montfor was, and so she would be cautious.

  And I kept thinking about the growing alienation and anger in Eliana’s journal.

  You forgave me, didn’t you? That’s why you’ve come back, isn’t it? In the end, you did forgive. You must have.

  Unending bitterness was not who Eliana was.

  In the end? What end?

  I had no answer.

  I managed to pay just enough attention to the session to make it sound like I was present. That was as much a victory as I could hope for that day. I was lucky that that was the best Montfor and her allies could achieve too.

  No one hid their relief when the Inner Council adjourned. We had done little other than mark time. I felt some shame in that. It was Solus that paid a price while we were distracted by our wars and ghosts.

  Belzhek had already returned to my service. The injuries to her flesh were not extensive, and she was mobile again on a new treaded engine. The vehicle she now drove stopped short of being a Taurox, but it was much more heavily armoured than the previous car had been. She was waiting for me outside the Council Hall, and we headed back towards Malveil through another day of drenching downpours. The temperature was just above freezing. We were spared sleet, and cursed with torrential, frigid rain instead.

  Gutters overflowed. Flash floods roared down the narrower streets, turning the drive back through Valgaast into an interminable journey. We were caught behind a convoy of transports, carrying tonnes of grain. The streets were barely wide enough to contain their massive, squat bodies. They belched clouds of blue exhaust and rocked back and forth over the uneven, pitted roadway.

  The rain came down harder. Even on the main artery of the Boulevard of Toiling Faithful, foaming water rushed past us. If our vehicle had been any lighter, it would have been washed away.

  We crawled towards the Cardinal Reinhardt Bridge. It was one of the older spans over the Oblivis River. It was humpbacked and its rockcrete was porous from centuries of acidic rainfall.

  The transports climbed the bridge. Water from the street gathered at its base. The swollen Oblivis churned against its pillars.

  There was a sudden squall of rain. The world disappeared in the dirty white of the downpour. The rise of the bridge was a vague smudge. At its base, in the middle of the road, I saw a woman’s silhouette. She was motionless, a black shape in the rain.

  ‘Eliana,’ I whispered.

  I could see no features. Only darkness. She was absolutely still. There was nothing to say this was Eliana, except that I knew it was. I could feel the spectre staring into my heart.

  Belzhek did not see her. I gasped, unable to cry a warning or plead forgiveness. And then the bridge began to sway. Its side-to-side rhythm was gentle, but this was rockcrete, which could not be gentle. Belzhek slammed on the brakes and stopped us before we reached the bridge. We watched as the movement of a rocking cradle became a catastrophe.

  The huge transports seemed small now on the back of the stricken beast. The pillars in the river fell with a deep, heavy groan. The span of the bridge broke into three pieces. Through the veil of rain, the fall was beautiful, a slow, graceful dying of stone. The transports plunged into the water. They were just little things, the lives inside them invisible, the screams unheard.

  I opened the car door. The wind blew the rain in, drenching me.

  ‘My lord,’ Belzhek said, trying to stop me.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said. This was not Montfor’s doing. At least, not directly. This time, the event really was an accident. What the council pretended had happened to the manufactorum now had occurred to the Cardinal Reinhardt Bridge. Another collapse, another gasp of Solus’ crumbling infrastructure. The drivers of the transports and the other vehicles that had fallen into the Oblivis had been murdered by the council. The funds that should have gone to restoring the bridge had lined the pockets of the councillors and their cronies instead. Now people were dying.

  I stood at the edge of the shattered span, looking down into the river. The transports had vanished. The wreckage of the bridge thrust up from the turmoil of the river like tombstones. There was no one to rescue, but I s
tayed there until the militia arrived. It was important that I be seen by the growing crowds. I wanted them to know that their lord-governor stood by them.

  I didn’t like thinking about the political advantage this might give me over Montfor. That was a form of pragmatism I despised. I also could not deny the truth of the situation.

  Well done. You’re turning into a politician.

  At length, I acknowledged that there was nothing I could do here, and I climbed back into the car. My clothes were soaked. I was chilled to the core. And I was going to be hours late to meet Veiss. I hoped she’d been able to wait, and that she had found something useful. We had to bring Montfor down. Valgaast could not withstand her corruption much longer.

  The rain was still hammering Valgaast when we finally passed through Malveil’s gates. I was startled to see Karoff standing outside in the cloudburst. We were about a quarter of the way up the hill. He was in the shadow of a rusted crane. He wasn’t moving. I couldn’t see him clearly, but I got the impression he was staring into the middle distance of nothing at all.

  ‘What is he doing?’ I said.

  ‘My lord?’

  ‘Karoff. Look.’

  Belzhek slowed the vehicle. ‘I’m sorry, my lord, but where?’

  He was gone. He must have gone around one of the support columns of the crane.

  ‘Never mind,’ I said. I would ask him what he had been doing later.

  But when we arrived and I ran from the car to the entrance, Karoff was opening the door for me. He was perfectly dry. There was no way he could have made it here before us.

  ‘My lord?’ he asked when I stared at him.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I said, but my skin crawled. ‘Has Councillor Veiss been here long?’

  ‘She hasn’t been here at all, my lord.’

  ‘I see.’

  Worried, I went up to my tower to change into dry clothes. There were innocuous reasons for Veiss to be delayed. She might also have been caught by the widespread chaos caused by the collapse of the Cardinal Reinhardt Bridge. Given where she had gone, though, I conjured worst-case scenarios.

  So I breathed a vast sigh of relief when I descended to the ground floor and found her waiting for me in the librarium.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d arrived,’ I said. ‘I’m glad to see you.’

  She was damp from the storm, and one hand was rubbing her temple. She looked up at me. ‘Oh, Maeson,’ she said. ‘Yes. Yes. I wanted to see you.’

  ‘So you said.’ I sat down next to her. ‘Did you learn anything useful?’

  She blinked slowly. There was something wrong with her gaze. It was unfocused. She kept looking back and forth at me and then at nothing. ‘Learned,’ she said. ‘Oh yes.’ She winced.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked. ‘Did something happen?’

  Her jaw dropped open and her head jerked down and to the side. She flailed like a hooked fish. I lunged forward to catch her, and then stopped.

  There she was, sitting quietly, still looking confused, but that was all.

  I sat back. I closed my eyes, opened them. Nothing had changed.

  What’s wrong with me?

  ‘I came here,’ Veiss said.

  ‘Yes, you did.’

  ‘I have to warn you.’

  ‘About what?’

  She stood. ‘Warn you,’ she said again, and walked unsteadily out of the librarium.

  ‘Adrianna?’ I called after her, and followed. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Not now. Let me get some help for you. You’re not well.’

  She opened the door. The rain hammered with such ferocity that I couldn’t see the drive beyond the porch.

  ‘I must go.’ Clutching her head, she stepped out into the rain.

  I went after her, and a blast of wind hurled rain into my face, blinding me. I stumbled back into the cover of the entranceway, wiping the water from my eyes. I couldn’t see her. Then a long, vague shadow rumbled up to the porch. I assumed it was her car, though I didn’t know why it was just arriving. I heard the sound of a door opening, and Kalvan Rivas ran to the doorway.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Are you going to look after Adrianna?’

  ‘You know I will,’ he said. ‘Then I guess you’ve heard.’ His voice was foggy with grief.

  ‘Heard what?’

  ‘About Adrianna,’ he said, looking confused now. ‘They’ve just pulled her body from the river. She’s been murdered.’

  Chapter 12

  ‘When?’ I demanded, managing not to grab the doorway to support myself. ‘She was just killed now?’ In my confusion and shock, I was starting to babble.

  ‘No,’ said Rivas. ‘She was probably killed some hours ago. She’s only just been found.’

  ‘But that isn’t…’ I began, then stopped.

  But that isn’t possible. She was just here.

  Just like it wasn’t possible for Karoff to be in two places at once.

  It was suddenly hard to breathe.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Rivas asked.

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I would have to tell him.

  Not right now.

  He would be even more insistent that I leave Malveil immediately. I couldn’t. I would not.

  Veiss came to warn me. She was dead, and still she wanted to help.

  What was going on at Malveil was not an attack.

  But the slaughterhouse in Katrin’s room. The shrieking revels in Zander’s.

  That was a dream. It was.

  It would take more than that for me to abandon Eliana.

  She saved my life today.

  I decided, then and there, how I would interpret the vision at the bridge.

  There is no evil here.

  ‘Take me to Adrianna,’ I said to Rivas, and I went to get my coat.

  Rivas’ Ecclesiarchy vehicle was solemnly ornate. Mine had the family’s coat of arms and the lord-governor’s crest on the sides. It was a simple affair by comparison. Gold scrollwork lined the body of Rivas’ car. The Ecclesiarchal symbol on the roof seemed the size of a monument. The vehicle was not only visible but instantly recognisable from a great distance, announcing its holy mission to all who saw it. Rivas’ quiet sanctity imbued the luxury with sacredness. This was not ostentation. The glories of the artisanship on display were a tribute to the God-Emperor.

  ‘Are we going to Silling?’ I asked.

  The Oblivis ran by the edge of the Montfor estate on the southern edge of Valgaast.

  ‘What?’ said Rivas. ‘No. She was pulled from the Loath, not the Oblivis. Just a few miles from here.’

  Nothing made sense. I said nothing for the rest of the drive. For the moment, grief was standing at bay. I believed that Veiss was dead, but not at the emotional level. I had just spoken to her minutes ago. She had spoken to me. Her death was a thing reported, not real.

  Her visitation, though, that was real. I did not understand what was happening at Malveil, but I was growing more and more accepting of its reality. There were events that still had to be cordoned off as dreams. But I had not dreamt seeing Veiss. I would not denigrate that miracle.

  Miracles. That’s what these events are. They are blessings sent by the Emperor.

  The epiphany was so sudden and so obvious that I almost laughed with sudden joy. I kept still. This was not the moment. He would not understand. I thought he would, though, in time. A miracle would explain Eliana’s return to me. A miracle was not heretical.

  Why the miracle was occurring was another question. I might leave that to Rivas to sort out.

  Rivas’ driver took the road that ran along the northern edge of the industrial shell and the base of Malveil’s hill. Past the hill, the River Loath flowed down from the north, then turned east, marking the edge of Valgaast. Af
ter a few minutes, we reached a grey wasteland. The manufactoria here had been largely torn down, leaving an uneven landscape littered with mounds of tailings and rusting, disassembled machinery. Though the mines were closed, the ground was still saturated with toxins. The river ran black and brown. Grey sludge foamed against the banks.

  The militia had erected a large tarpaulin tent by the riverside. Their vehicles surrounded it. The Taurox of the Adeptus Arbites was there too. The sides of the tent flapped tautly in the wind. The sheeting rain rattled against the tarp.

  Rivas and I ran to the entrance. Stavaak was just inside with two of his troopers. He was in full uniform and armour, the visor of his helmet hiding his eyes, shock maul sheathed at his waist. He nodded solemnly. ‘Lord-governor,’ he said. ‘Cardinal. I grieve for you and for Solus. This is a great loss. We will all feel it.’

  At the other end of the tent was a medicae table. Militia officers were gathered around the shape that lay on its surface.

  ‘Is the investigation yours?’ I asked Stavaak, hoping that it was.

  He shook his head. ‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Not until I can determine a threat to the Imperium.’

  ‘But this is clearly linked to your investigation of Trefecht. This is retaliation for her arrest.’

  ‘We don’t know that,’ said Stavaak.

  ‘What else could it be?’

  He glanced towards the corpse. ‘I really don’t know.’

  I advanced towards the medicae table, Rivas at my side. The militia officers saw us and parted.

  I looked down on my friend.

  Now her death hit home. The memory of Veiss’ visit earlier faded before the reality of her corpse. I placed my palms on the edge of the table, my arms locking to hold me up. I forced myself to look at her head, though the wound there reopened injuries in my soul, tearing them deeper. The wound to her head was enormous. She was almost unrecognisable, with half her skull smashed. It looked like something had gone through the top of her head, crushing the right side of her skull and piercing down through her shoulder, as far as her ribcage. A few feathers remained from her headdress, matted in blood, stuck to the ruin of her skull.