The House of Night and Chain

by David Annandale

  As I burned the house, I was braced for the reappearance of Eliana’s spectre. There was no room for the horror, though, in the firestorm. The time of purging had arrived. I was its agent.

  ‘The Emperor walks with me,’ I gasped.

  I fell to my knees in the entrance hall, coughing and choking, my eyes blind with streaming tears. I had to crawl the last few yards to the entrance, and the doors were shut against me. Malveil wanted me to die with it on its funeral pyre.

  The agony of the flames and the suffocation of the smoke felt like victory. That gave me the strength to crawl another yard, another foot, another inch closer to escape.

  I clawed up and grasped the handle of the door. With the last of my strength, I pulled. The door resisted, and then, perhaps because the fire had weakened the house enough, it gave way. I fell out into the night.

  Into silence.

  The eclipse was over. Luctus was high above, the baleful light of the full moon blotting out the stars. The wind had dropped to a whisper. On my hands and knees, I took in lungfuls of clean air.

  I could not smell smoke.

  Stifling a moan of despair, I turned around to gaze at the silent, untouched house.

  Malveil has not finished with you yet, Rivas had said. It would never be done. It would never tire of its game.

  ‘What do you want?’ I whispered. ‘Why did you not kill me with Kalvan? What more point can you wring from me?’

  The sound of a vehicle made me turn around again. It was my car. Belzhek had brought Katrin and Zander home.

  I stood up, wavering more than I would have liked.

  ‘Father?’ Zander asked. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Katrin. Where Zander was puzzled, she was accusatory.

  ‘I tripped,’ I said. I didn’t think either would believe the lie. It was enough for them to know that was all I was willing to say. ‘Why are you here?’ I asked, turning the interrogation around and letting some of my hopelessness emerge as anger. ‘Didn’t Cardinal Rivas speak to you?’

  Katrin refused to be put off. ‘Karoff is worried about you,’ she said. ‘I think he is right to be.’

  Zander stepped forward, playing peacemaker. He took my arm when I started to waver again. My left leg was ready to give out from exhaustion. If not for my bionic limb, I would have fallen again and been unable to stand at all.

  ‘Let’s go inside, father,’ he said. ‘It’s cold out here.’ He sounded as if he were speaking to an infirm old man.

  Perhaps he was.

  No. That’s what they want you to believe.

  Katrin suspended her interrogation for the moment. Belzhek drove off, and we went inside. There, I found the house completely untouched. There was no sign of the fire, not even the faintest trace of smoke. The halls were as brightly lit as they ever had been, though. I had a sudden mental image of myself running through the house, believing I was lighting fires when in fact I was simply lighting all the lanterns, sconce torches and lumen globes.

  The house was using a different tactic against me, a different blade to exact a different kind of pain. It wanted me to doubt myself again. It wanted me to think everything that had happened was a delusion. The illusion of tranquillity was so complete and my state of exhaustion so advanced, it would have been so easy to fall into that trap.

  You would have me question everything I have seen and heard since returning to Solus. You will fail.

  ‘Let’s go to the librarium,’ Zander said.

  I had to gather my strength, so I did not protest. I let the figure who claimed to be my son lead me to the chair where I had been reading Eliana’s journal. The book was still where I had dropped it. As I sat, I contrived to kick the volume with my heel while appearing not to notice that I had. I knocked the book under the chair. I wasn’t sure why I wanted to keep it secret. Some part of me felt protective of it even now. I also didn’t want the other two to have any idea of how much I knew about Malveil.

  ‘Didn’t you see Rivas?’ I asked, returning to the charge before Katrin had the chance to do so.

  ‘We did,’ she said. ‘He warned us to stay away from here. He didn’t say why.’

  ‘Affairs of the Imperium,’ I muttered. ‘You should have obeyed him. Why are you here now?’

  ‘What are you talking about, father?’ said Zander. ‘You sent for us.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just what he said.’ Katrin moved in front of me, pushing Zander back. ‘We received your message to return right away. What is really going on here? Why do you want to see us?’

  ‘Who gave you the message to come to me?’ I asked.

  ‘Cardinal Rivas,’ said Zander.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Less than half an hour ago,’ said Katrin.

  Impossible. Rivas had been dead in the tower by then. Based on how much time seemed to have elapsed since he and I had entered Malveil, he had probably been dead for hours. Either Malveil had sent his phantom to my children, as it had sent Veiss to me, or they were lying.

  Why would they lie?

  Because they aren’t real.

  They look real.

  So did Veiss after she was dead. So did Tervine.

  I was taking too long to answer. I felt their eyes on me.

  There’s nothing wrong with their gaze.

  That doesn’t mean anything. I felt the heat of the fire. Everything about that was real, except that it wasn’t. This could be another game of Malveil’s. Another misdirection. It shows me how to recognise the phantoms, and so prevents me from doing so when it really matters.

  ‘Karoff is very worried about you,’ said Katrin. ‘You sent all the serfs away?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My reasons are my own.’ If she was real, she wouldn’t believe the truth. If she was a spectre or an imposter, it wouldn’t matter what I told her.

  ‘Father, be reasonable,’ Zander pleaded.

  Katrin held up a hand, and Zander stopped. ‘It’s late,’ she said. ‘We’re all tired.’ That much was true. ‘There will be time in the morning to talk about this.’

  Zander nodded and left the librarium. Katrin stayed where she was. She wanted to talk to me alone, and Zander had understood.

  ‘Do you understand why Karoff is worried?’ she asked. ‘He remembers what happened after Leonel gave the same command.’

  ‘He obeyed Leonel, so he can obey me.’

  ‘He will.’ She crouched in front of me. ‘But I won’t. I will not abandon you.’

  Her face was as sternly impassive as ever. She spoke as she did in her lecture halls at the schola progenium. Every statement was an edict. Even so, this was this cold, careful person’s expression of love. I will not abandon you. As she had been abandoned. Her father obeyed duty, and evil destroyed her mother. Neither of us chose to abandon our children. Forces far more powerful than we were made that decision. Our lack of choice made no difference in the end. We had abandoned Zander and Katrin when they were young. They had each found their way to survive. He refused to take life seriously. She, the older sister who had had the responsibility for her younger brother, took everything seriously, and had sealed herself off behind an adamantine emotional shield. Safe behind it, she could never be hurt again.

  My return had made her think about lowering the shield. Now she was reaching out to me, vowing that she would not subject me to what had been, in her experience, the worst of things. I would not be abandoned.

  I wanted to take her in my arms and reassure the child that still lived, buried deep in the grown woman, that she would be safe, that I would not hurt her again. I wanted to tell my daughter that I loved her.

  My left hand twitched with the impulse to reach out.

  Exactly what Malveil wants me to do. This is all so very
well done. A very good trap, very convincing. And if this is not my daughter, what horror will she become? And what has she done, or what will she do, to your real one?

  That last thought made my teeth clench in anger. I said, ‘You have my thanks,’ and kept us at frozen distance.

  Katrin saw that it was useless to say anything else, and she left.

  I stayed in the librarium a while longer, giving my children time to fall asleep, then went up the stairs. I paced stealthily back and forth between the bedroom doors, wondering what I should do, trying to think how Malveil planned to hurt me next.

  Through the children. How else? What do I have left?

  Nothing. Eliana was gone. My closest friends were gone. If there was still a chance of defeating Montfor and returning honour to Solus, I couldn’t see what that was, and I didn’t care. I had ceded the battlefield. Another failure. Another defeat. Another shame.

  I wondered if Malveil’s influence had extended to Clostrum. The house had had an iron grip on the destinies of the Strocks for as long as we had inhabited it. Perhaps it had always controlled us. Perhaps even Devris had never had a choice in his actions, from birth fated to damn himself and all the generations that would follow. And then there was me, so far away, ignorant of any events on Solus. Yet I had been brought back, as surely and inevitably as if I had been chained to Malveil all along.

  Maybe the house had decided what would happen on Clostrum. Maybe it was that powerful.

  I could never defeat something so strong.

  I should flee. Before such invincible malevolence, flight seemed the single sane response.

  Flight to where? It will find me on Solus. If it reached for me on Clostrum…

  I could not surrender. I accepted that Montfor had defeated me because I no longer cared about that battle. It was irrelevant, a distraction, a lure Malveil had used as part of the web of torment it had constructed for me. Solus needed to be saved, and Veth Montfor had to be brought down. My duty had not ended, even if the events that created that duty had been manipulated by the house. But I did not care. The confrontation with Montfor would take place in a world on the other side of the fight with Malveil, and I could not imagine seeing that world.

  But I would fight. Malveil had not taken everything from me yet. Even if retreating into cowardice and flight had been a possibility, I had to fight to the last.

  There were still my children. Flight would not save them, either. And I would save them. That was all I had left.

  I kept going back and forth between the two doors. I did not know how to fight. I did not know whom to save. It was possible that if there was a woman and a man sleeping behind these doors, they were my children. But if they were not, if they were embodied lies, then the real Katrin and Zander were here somewhere. I had seen them. Malveil held them.

  I had to find them and save them. That was the atonement I had left. Death in that effort would at least be death with honour.

  They would also be the way Malveil would attack me. It had already threatened them. It would not stop there.

  And I could not strike first. I had to wait for the enemy to attack. Then I would fight back. One last time.

  This had to be the end, one way or another. If I lost, there would be nothing left of my soul to play with.

  Back and forth. Hesitating at the doors, thinking about knocking, of warning that danger was coming and that we must fight, then backing away in angry suspicion.

  Back and forth, the hours of the night endless, the darkness forever.

  And then, as I had known things must be, I heard the voices. Small voices, high voices. Children’s voices. The voices of a little boy crying out in fear and a little girl suddenly abandoned.

  ‘Father!’

  Chapter 20

  The children were calling from down the hall, in the other wing. I could just make them out. They were Katrin and Zander as I knew them, the children I had come home to protect. I called back to them, but they didn’t hear me. They were facing the other way, holding hands, walking towards the darkness at the far end of the hall.

  ‘Father! Father! Where are you?’

  ‘Katrin!’ I yelled. ‘Zander!’ I started to run to them. As soon as I began to move, the light dimmed. The lanterns on the walls faded to a dying-ember orange. The shadows at the other end were absolute. They reached out with long, taloned hands that stretched over the walls and ceiling, extinguishing the light, grasping for my children.

  I called again, but they did not hear me. They couldn’t, because the house had stirred to life again. It rumbled. It snarled. Stones spoke in hollow, grinding whispers. Rockcrete cracked like thunder. The doors in the hall shook with heavy blows, barely able to contain the things inside.

  ‘Stop!’ I shouted. ‘Look at me!’

  They didn’t. They still couldn’t hear me, but I could hear their every word. They pleaded for their father to answer.

  ‘Father, I said it was haunted!’ Katrin wailed.

  ‘It is! It is! It iiiiiis!’ Zander sobbed, clutching tightly to his big sister’s waist.

  The doors rumbled beside them. Katrin stopped beside one. ‘Father?’ She looked at the door fearfully. ‘He might be there,’ she said to Zander.

  ‘I don’t want to! I don’t want to!’

  I ran past the main staircase. I was in the same wing as the children now. I was moving so slowly, as though I were running underwater. ‘Do not open that door!’ I warned. ‘Katrin! Zander! Listen to me! I’m right here!’

  ‘Please, no,’ said Zander.

  ‘We have to,’ said Katrin, being brave, being the strong one, being the one who knew that if they could not see me in the corridors, then I must be behind a door. She reached for the handle.

  Throne, let it be locked.

  I was so close now, just a few yards from the children.

  The door flew open at Katrin’s touch. She peered into the doorway. ‘Father?’ she said.

  Zander looked up. ‘Is that him?’

  They screamed. My children screamed in high, desperate, howling terror.

  My hand was out for them. I was two steps away when something yanked them into the room with a snarl.

  The door slammed shut.

  ‘No!’ I roared. With all the force of my love for my family and my hatred for the house, I slammed my bionic shoulder against the wood and battered the door open. I stormed across the threshold.

  I found myself in the holding chamber in a medicae centre. It smelled of disinfectant generously but incompletely poured over the stink of death. The walls were a pale green. It was a big room with many cots, and many tiny shapes on them. It was not as loud a place as it should have been with all those children.

  Two people stood by a bed in the centre of the floor. They both wore beaked medicae masks that concealed their faces. One wore the uniform of an officer from the facility. The other wore a councillor’s robes.

  ‘What about this one?’ said the medicae officer.

  ‘What do you think?’ the councillor said contemptuously. Even muffled by the mask, I recognised the voice. It was not one I could ever forget. This was Veth Montfor.

  Zander lay on the cot, under a thin, grey blanket. Though he was only four, his face was withered like an old man’s. Blisters clustered at the corners of his mouth and under his nose. Coughs shook his entire body, and he choked up black phlegm. He breathed in with a wretched, struggling moan, his lungs giving a piercing whistle. After every awful breath, he coughed again.

  The officer looked at the small handful of vials he carried. ‘We might be able to save him.’

  Montfor shook her head. ‘He has no advocate. He is alone. This is the Emperor’s judgement. He was abandoned, and he is not strong enough to survive. Choices must be made.’

  ‘He is not alone,’ I said, striding up to the pair. ‘I am his father.
I speak for him.’

  ‘It is a hard logic,’ the officer said to Montfor.

  ‘That doesn’t make it wrong.’

  ‘No,’ he admitted.

  ‘Are you not listening? Give him the treatment immediately. I am Lord-Governor Strock, and I command you to save my son.’

  They walked away, leaving Zander to be another member of an anonymous choir of coughs and whistles.

  His little hands clawed at his chest. His head jerked back, his mouth wide open as he struggled for air. The whistle was tighter, more high-pitched. It sounded like his lungs were petrifying. His skin turned an angry red.

  I bent to pick him up. ‘It’s all right, Zander. I’m here. I’m here.’

  I couldn’t lift him. I couldn’t move him at all. Because I was not there.

  I had never been there. I had left, and then Eliana had left, and this was the cost.

  I wept. I prayed to the Emperor and called Zander’s name again and again. My son did not respond. He could not hear the absent ghost.

  He flailed more desperately. The red turned violet.

  ‘Help!’ I shouted to the void.

  The whistling stopped. Zander lay still. The colour slowly began to drain from his face, the red giving way to grey.

  Sobbing, I tried again to pick him up. This time, I could. Now that he could no longer feel any comfort, I could carry him. I howled in grief. He was light as air, yet I almost fell. The weight of the loss was too great. I weaved back and forth, shouting incoherently. I took my son and went after Montfor. I had to make her pay. There had to be retribution. There had to be justice somewhere in the galaxy.

  My vision blurry with tears, I staggered through the holding chamber and out the door.

  I was outside, holding my empty arms before me. Zander had disappeared. I was in a street outside the walls of a schola progenium. This was not in Valgaast. The schola looked more run-down. The rockcrete of its walls was cracked, unpatched. The building sat next to barracks of the Solus Nightmarch, and the road vibrated from the passage of heavy armour returning from training exercises. The gutters of the street were thick with rubbish, and the hab block facing the schola had collapsed or been demolished. Its ruins had been left to the elements, and a group of children were playing in them. One of them was Katrin. She was older than when I had left Solus. She and a boy about her age were facing off. Katrin was brandishing a brass rod she must have found in the ruins. They were about a dozen yards in from the edge of the road.