The House of Night and Chain

by David Annandale

  Then I remembered what year this was, and how old I was. I brought myself up short.

  This is unhealthy. Stop indulging in these thoughts. Be careful of where they might lead.

  Everything led to failure, I thought. I spiralled down into the recrimination of failure again. The rest of that night, I tried not to wonder too much if Katrin and Zander were who they said they were, but the weed of suspicion refused to be uprooted.

  ‘You look tired,’ Zander said to me in the dining hall the next morning. All three of us were there this time.

  ‘I am tired,’ I admitted. That was half a lie. My arms and head felt so heavy with exhaustion that I could barely move them.

  ‘Don’t let the gossip rob you of sleep,’ Katrin said. ‘It is not worth the cost.’

  ‘What gossip?’ I asked.

  ‘There are whispers in the town that you killed Councillor Veiss, or that you had her killed.’

  ‘Montfor,’ I muttered. ‘This is her doing. She as much as told me this was what she would do.’ Only that wasn’t entirely true, if I was honest. Montfor had not threatened to frame me. She had directly accused me of the murder. She could not seriously believe that I had done it. Especially since it was obvious that she had orchestrated the murder.

  Unless she’s mad. Perhaps she genuinely does not know what she has done.

  ‘Then it’s time.’ It took me a moment to realise I had spoken aloud.

  ‘Time for what?’ Katrin asked sharply.

  She would no more agree to killing Montfor than Rivas and Stavaak had. Zander just looked confused and worried, but I could guess where he would stand, also. They would not support me. There was no unity in this house.

  If they were really my children, there would be.

  Stop it. Stop it. Stop it.

  ‘Time for what?’ Katrin asked again.

  ‘Time something was done,’ I snapped. ‘And Throne, I wish I knew what that was.’

  I marched out of the hall before she could question me further. The last thing I had said was true, though. I didn’t know how to counter Montfor. The idea that I should want Veiss dead should have appeared ridiculous to anyone capable of conscious thought. Montfor had the power to make truth and reason irrelevant. I could see how it would work. I could see what Veiss had been trying to tell me. Too many people were under Montfor’s thumb. If she said something was real, they would echo and re-echo her until even those who were not her thralls believed it. If Montfor said I had two heads, then that, too, would become the truth.

  I wondered if the militia also would accept Montfor’s perverse truth. If enough of them were in her pocket, they would. Still, deposing me through arrest would not be easy, not with the Adeptus Arbites watching. Such a move could attract the wrong kind of off-world attention for Montfor. She might not be able, or wish, to get me that way. Nor would she have to. The more successful her rumour campaign, the more difficult my work would become.

  I couldn’t see any way to fight back except through direct means. That was how I had fought every battle until now. My patience with everything else was badly frayed.

  As she drove me to the Council Hall for the day’s session, Belzhek said, ‘For what it’s worth, my lord, the people behind these rumours should be punished.’

  ‘Senior Councillor Montfor is behind them,’ I said. ‘But I suspect you guessed that.’

  ‘I did, my lord. I hope you will silence her soon. The Montfors should not be permitted to blacken the Strock name like that.’

  I grunted softly, surprised by revelation. There was the answer to the mystery of the Strock governors’ obscurity. The Montfors had been at war with us ever since we had taken power from them. Their revenge had been to deny us a legacy. They whispered infamy against the memory of every Lord-Governor Strock. They wove a tapestry of lies, used their influence to have it declared reality, and then they smothered our good name beneath it.

  ‘Silencing her would be my fondest wish, Belzhek,’ I said. ‘My heart’s desire. But in this matter, I cannot act as my heart would have me do.’

  Belzhek was quiet for a few moments. When she spoke again, I sensed that she was choosing her words very carefully. ‘My lord, you are far from alone in your enmity towards the Montfors.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it.’

  ‘Despite their power, they do not control every aspect of…’ She paused. ‘Of the shadows on Solus. Do you understand what I mean by that?’

  ‘I think so. Do go on.’

  ‘There are some acquaintances of my acquaintances who are able and willing to undertake delicate tasks.’

  ‘And how wide is the range of their work?’

  ‘Very. I hope you don’t mind my mentioning this, my lord.’

  ‘I don’t. In fact, I appreciate it very much.’

  I looked out of the window, musing. The vehicle nosed slowly through the crowded streets of Valgaast as we made our way towards the city centre. The day was frigid. It had begun to snow.

  In spite of how much I wanted to see Montfor dead, Rivas’ warning came back to me. I reminded myself that my duty was the restoration of Solus’ honour, not pursuing a family vendetta. Ordering an assassination, even if it were successful, would be a betrayal of that duty.

  ‘What I would most want to ask,’ I said, ‘I cannot.’ Yet here was an opportunity for direct action, one I should not forego. There might be another way to come at Montfor. ‘Is one of these acquaintances of acquaintances proficient at gaining access to difficult locations?’

  ‘Yes. I know of one who is very skilled in precisely that field.’

  ‘I would like to meet this person.’

  ‘Is that wise, my lord? Perhaps I should act as intermediary.’

  ‘No,’ I said. I was conscious of the risk of making myself known to a third party, but I needed to be inside Silling myself. A thief would not know what to look for, because I didn’t. I was sure I would know it when I saw it, though. ‘Arrange a meeting,’ I said. ‘I will be there in person.’

  Silling was not isolated from the rest of the city in the same way that Malveil was. Yet, with its defences, it might as well have been.

  Many of the councillors had their great houses just south of the city centre. The home of the Montfors, though, was much further south. Their fortress, and that was surely what it was, stood amidst Valgaast’s most squalid sector. This was where the disgraced, the criminal and the unwanted found their homes. The hab blocks were foul and cramped. Some had been gutted by fire, but their hollow shells provided comfortless shelter from the winds and rains to the most desperate of Valgaast’s citizens.

  I still had my laspistol and sword, and I brought my pistol with me that night. I had no intention of using it in Silling, but I might have need of its persuasive power in the streets outside.

  The grounds of the house were surrounded by a wall a good fifteen feet high. Its gates were an impenetrable iron barrier, and heavily guarded. From the street, the house was invisible.

  I met the thief a block away, in the entryway of one of the burned-out hab blocks. The wind keened through the empty windows and echoed piercingly in the doorway.

  The thief was an old man. He called himself Tervine. His face was cross-hatched with deep lines. He moved with a fluid grace belying his age, and his eyes were sharp. He greeted me with a nod and a grin. There was no bowing to my status. He simply took me on as an equal partner of the shadows.

  I felt strangely flattered.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Silling. There’s a cap for the career. That’s a target I’ve been thinking about for a long time.’

  ‘Why haven’t you broken in before?’

  ‘Needed an incentive to take the risk. Too chancy to do it on my own hook, hoping to find what I can find. That’s no good.’ He shook his head. ‘A poor reason to stir up the Montfors.’

 
‘I’m told you have no great love for them.’

  He snorted. ‘Greedy hypocrites. They want everything for themselves. Those they can’t control, they punish with the militia. That’s not a fair game.’

  I sensed there was more than a matter of principle at stake. There was anger behind that smile. ‘I think you have a personal debt to settle with the Montfors.’

  He hesitated, then shrugged. ‘As well we know what’s what,’ he said. ‘I had a family once. I tried to play by the Montfors’ rules. Their tithe got too big. We were hungry. I tried to keep back a little more on the side.’

  ‘You were punished.’

  ‘My family was punished. They weren’t part of what I did. There was a fire. Just an accident of fate.’

  ‘I’ve had one of those too.’

  ‘Right. So we understand each other. Good.’

  We set out. The snow had turned back to sleet, and the street was covered in inches of dirt-blackened slush. The gate was on the north side of the wall, and Tervine took me to the west. We were alone on the street there. The buildings on the other side of the road were deserted rubble. There was no lighting. The only illumination came from the waxing crescent of Luctus glowering through the clouds. We had to move carefully through the amber-tinged gloom. The wall was a featureless black mass beside us.

  Tervine stopped at a point three-quarters of the way towards the south-west corner. He checked that we were alone, then unshouldered the case he was carrying.

  ‘Have to be sharp about this,’ he said. ‘There’s a gap in the patrols, but it won’t last forever.’

  ‘Careless of the Montfors to have one last this long.’

  ‘Are your grounds guarded?’

  ‘Not particularly. There isn’t a need.’

  ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘No one breaks into Malveil.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Don’t know, exactly. Never heard of it being tried, is all. With Silling, it’s clear why no one has tried. Who wants to go to war with the Montfors?’

  ‘I do.’

  Tervine chuckled. ‘There you go. Takes a lord-governor to do it.’ From his case he removed what I took to be a firearm. It looked like a crossbow with a very large magazine. He took aim up the wall and pulled the trigger. Twin bolts shot out, each pulling a monofilament lanyard. From the magazine came thin strips of flexible plasteel. The bolts struck home, and a nearly invisible ladder hung before us.

  Tervine scrambled up. ‘Hold the steps, not the filament,’ he warned.

  I did as he said. I preferred to keep all my fingers.

  Tervine’s aim had been true in the dimness. He had hit very close to the top of the wall. When we reached the top, he pulled the ladder up and dropped it over the other side. We climbed down into the darkness of the grounds.

  Silling rose before us. It was a grand manor house that embraced an iron tower at its centre, jutting more than fifty feet into the night sky.

  Tervine paused to reload his ladder gun. ‘Been here before?’ he asked.

  ‘Never. You?’

  ‘No.’ He nodded at the facade. ‘Not a subtle bunch, are they?’

  They were not. The house’s front was a riot of gold-plated sculpture. It glowed in the light that blazed from the ground-floor windows. A colossal aquila stood proudly over the main entrance, its wings so broad they extended almost half the length of Silling.

  There were statues scattered about the grounds, and they were in keeping with the sculptures on the house. Even in the night, I could see they were all portraits of exemplars of faith. This was faith where ostentation mattered more than religion. The Montfors had managed to make a vice out of piety. There was something obscene about the detail of the martyrs’ suffering, or the godlike heroism of the saints. All were rich in gold and embedded jewels.

  ‘You called them hypocrites,’ I said as we started walking again. ‘You were profoundly right.’

  ‘I can see it’s going to be a pleasure working with you, lord-governor.’

  He led me towards the south-west corner of the house. There was less light coming from inside at this end.

  ‘So,’ he whispered, ‘now that we’re here, where would you like to go?’

  ‘Wherever they might keep their secrets.’

  I knew Tervine was grinning at me in the dark again. I could feel it. ‘Big house,’ he said. ‘Lots of places to look.’

  He was right to be amused. It would be one thing to come here with robbery in mind. A thief could remain flexible, grabbing whatever valuables came easily to hand. I was looking for something that was simultaneously much more specific and much more vague.

  And yet, I said, ‘I know exactly where we should start.’ A single glance at Silling was all I had needed.

  We would be heading for the tower. It was a thin spire. The staircase inside would have to be a tight spiral, unless there was a vertiginous ladder to climb instead. The spike of its peak could only hold a single room, whose windows looked out on all sides. When the room was occupied and lit, I imagined that the windows would be dull, baleful eyes staring covetously at all of Valgaast.

  ‘Can you get us in there?’ I asked.

  ‘I can. It will be the dizzy way in.’

  ‘I thought it might be.’

  As we drew closer to the house, we heard a scream from inside. I started. Tervine laid a hand on my arm to keep me still.

  ‘We can’t ignore that,’ I whispered.

  ‘It isn’t what you think.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The victim is being paid.’

  ‘To do what?’

  ‘To be a victim.’ Tervine must have felt my stare. He tugged my arm.

  I pulled free and crept back towards one of the lighted windows.

  ‘Selling their services does not mean they are agreeing to be tortured,’ I said.

  ‘These ones do. Councillor Montfor and her family pay very, very well. I know. I’ve seen the wounds and I’ve tried to get the injured to work against the Montfors. They won’t. They’re clever, the Montfors. They know exactly how far they can go. Especially when it comes to going too far.’

  I reached the window. I stayed back, looking in at an angle. There was so much light in the room that I was invisible to anyone there. And they were too occupied to look outside. I could only see a bit of what was going on, but that was more than enough. I saw a heaving tableau of contorting, entwining bodies. I saw the tools and the iron frames that twisted flesh and produced the screams. I saw Montfor, rampant, the centre and presiding power of the twisted carnival. Her face turned towards the window for a moment, and I saw the awful coldness in her eyes, the perfect control in the midst of abandon.

  Tervine was right. Those were the eyes of someone who knew, down to the smallest nuance of sensation, exactly how far to go, and no further.

  Tervine pulled at me again. Grimacing in revulsion, I turned away from the window and followed him. Trying to intervene for Montfor’s slaves of the night would be worse than useless. Her corruption and debauchery were as finely tuned as her political acumen.

  Tervine stopped at the base of the mansion’s wall. The windows above us were dark. There was plenty of noise coming from elsewhere in the house, deeper inside and muffled by the walls. It reminded me of the dark revels I had heard coming from inside Zander’s room, though there were differences. The nature of those differences was hard to define. There was something ordered in what I heard. It was cruelty with a system and with purpose, utterly devoid of chaos.

  Tervine fired the ladder gun again, launching much longer filaments this time, giving us the means to get all the way to the roof of the main structure. It had a steep slope, and we had to move carefully to keep our footing as we crept towards the base of the spire.

  ‘What’s the range of that gun of yours?’ I whispered.
/>   ‘Not as great as we would like this night,’ he said. He opened his case again and reloaded the magazine. ‘What we just climbed is about as long as I can make a single ladder, and I only have the material for two more.’

  ‘That isn’t going to get us to the top.’

  ‘Not at a stroke, no. I did say this was going to be the dizzy way. We can turn around.’

  ‘No, we can’t.’

  ‘Good. You go ahead of me this time.’

  He fired again, and we climbed again, getting about a third of the way up the side of the tower. A few rungs down from the top of the ladder, he hooked an arm through the rungs, held himself firmly in position and fired once more. The bolts shrieked past me, struck home, and the end of the new ladder dangled just within reach of the top of the one I held.

  Impressed by Tervine’s aim, I moved on. He stopped once he had hold of the new ladder and, dangling precariously, pulled up the first. Claws on the gun hooked the filaments, and he turned a mechanism, spooling the ladder back into the device.

  I watched the procedure, trying not to think about how things were going to be for our descent. I made myself look away when the ground began to spin.

  We climbed, and Tervine repeated the procedure. The awkwardness of the task did not seem to bother him. His movements were confident, the thief sure that he was not going to fall to his death. I was less certain.

  We kept climbing. I focused on the immediate task of moving from one rung to the next. My left arm ached with strain, and though the prosthetic grip of my right was firm, the lack of feeling kept making me doubt if I had truly gripped the rung. At last, we reached the edge of the window. The ledge was just large enough for the two of us to haul ourselves up and crouch in the pointed arch of the recess.

  The window was clear glasteel. Tervine took a small plasma cutter out of his case and set to work. It was a slow process. The wind was strong this high up, and though it was blowing from the north and we were sheltered from its full fury, gusts kept reaching around the spire and trying to pry us loose from our perch. I gripped the edges of the sill, the fingers of my left hand growing numb. Impassive, Tervine worked away, cutting an outline that would be just big enough for us to squeeze through one at a time.