He had never thought himself evil, but now he wasn’t so sure. Vengeance seemed such a pure notion, a taking away from those who’d done the same. Evening things out, death for death, pain for pain, loss for loss.
Even Lord Anomander believed in vengeance.
But now … what kind of satisfaction would it bring? How was it that even grown-up men and women talked about vengeance, as if it had the power to fix things? But it doesn’t fix much, does it. Yes, the killers and rapists are dead, so they won’t ever do it again. There’s that, isn’t there. Pushing them off the cliff of life, down into the Abyss.
But they don’t go there. They go nowhere. They join every other ghost. They could as easily have died in their sleep, a thousand years old, surrounded by loved ones. It makes no difference, not to them.
But does it make a difference to me? This killing, this justice? I guess … once they’re dead, justice stops mattering to them. So it belongs to the living. It doesn’t belong to any waiting god, because the gods aren’t waiting for those souls. Worse yet, the gods in that realm are themselves dead, no different from anyone else.
Justice belongs to the living.
He imagined driving his spear into the bodies of the soldiers who’d hurt Jinia. Imagined their faces twisting in agony, their bowels spilling out, their boots kicking at the ground. He saw them looking up at him, at his face, at his eyes, with confusion, and all the questions they couldn’t ask. But he’d tell them why they were dying. He’d do that, because that was important if justice was to be served. ‘This is why you’re now dying. I did this, because of what you did.’
He found himself crossing the outer bridge, and then the second, inner one. No one barred his path. He strode under the arch of the open gateway, into the compound, where scores of Houseblades were mounting up, their horses steaming and the hot smell of dung heavy in the air. Even here, ghosts abounded, the dead come to watch, watch and wait. He slipped through the jostling chaos, reached the keep’s entrance, up the steps and then inside.
The ghost of a giant wolf was lying at the foot in the stairs beyond the vast hall, its eyes now fixing on Wreneck as he drew closer. Impulsively, Wreneck said, ‘Take me to Orfantal.’
The beast rose, began climbing the steps. Wreneck followed.
‘You’re one of his,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how I know that, but you are. You died a long time ago, but he brought you back, to keep watch on things. You’re dangerous, but not to the living.’ And now he realized that he had not seen any ghosts within the keep itself. ‘You drive them off. Orfantal sees them, too. He sees them and doesn’t like it.’
The boy was not the boy Wreneck remembered. The Citadel, with its massive walls and hallways, its rituals and worship, had changed Orfantal.
‘I think,’ he said now to Orfantal – as if the boy could hear through the ears of the ghost wolf – ‘you’re going to frighten your mother.’
* * *
Venes Turayd’s expression was wry and almost contemptuous as he regarded Pelk. She had entered the estate’s courtyard, pushing through the readying Houseblades and making for the building entrance when Venes, seeing her, had stepped into her path. Now he blocked her way, his knowing smile showing its edges. ‘Why, Weapon Mistress Pelk, all done folding bed sheets and sweeping out rooms?’
‘Move aside, milord,’ Pelk replied. ‘I must speak to Lady Hish Tulla.’
‘She’s too busy fretting. But if you have relevant news, I will hear it.’
‘Yes, I’m sure you will, but not from me.’ When she rested her gloved hand upon the pommel of her sword, his smile broadened.
‘My wolves surround you, mistress, but even in their absence, I do not fear your skill.’
She cocked her head. ‘What a foolish statement, milord. Any sword-wielder, no matter how talented, should know, and understand, fear. Without it, you are likely to get yourself killed, even by an enemy less skilled than you. I cannot think who trained you, sir, but clearly it wasn’t me.’
Their conversation had drawn a few of Turayd’s wolves closer. The chill air of the courtyard was rank with men’s sweat, and the Houseblades edged in to crowd her.
Sighing, Pelk said, ‘Call off your pups, milord. Playing at bullies demeans them, assuming such a thing is possible. If, on the other hand, each one is brave enough to face me alone, why, I invite it. I have folded enough bed linen, and swept enough corners, and my mood now inclines to killing. And so, do oblige me by holding your ground, sir. If I am to hang for spilling noble blood, I will delight in making you the first to fall.’
There was a commotion behind her, and a moment later someone voiced a shout of pain and staggered to one side. Gripp Galas now moved up beside Pelk, his shortsword drawn and its tip bloody. ‘Apologies, milord,’ he said to Venes Turayd. ‘Hard to draw in this press, and yet I was of a mind to check the edge of the blade, the battle being nigh and all. Now, sir, my wife is within? Excellent.’ Hooking an arm around Pelk, he moved forward, forcing Venes to step aside. ‘But please,’ Gripp added as they made for the door, ‘do maintain your vigil, since we do not wish to be disturbed.’
They entered the building, where Gripp paused to sheathe the sword. ‘Pelk,’ he said in a low voice as the door closed behind them, ‘my wife’s uncle is an unpleasant man, but murdering him on the steps of the estate would have been unwise.’
She bared her teeth. ‘Gripp Galas, I have lost all faith in wisdom. As for my reasons, best you not know them all.’ She paused, and seemed to shiver, as if deliberately shrugging off her bloodlust. ‘One day I will indeed kill him, sir. Best you know that now, and be certain to not stand in my way.’
Gripp’s gaze narrowed on her for a moment, and then he said, ‘His thugs would have cut you down.’
‘Too late to make a difference.’
‘Captain Kellaras would disagree.’
Pelk frowned. ‘I keep forgetting.’
‘You forget your love?’
‘No. I forget that someone else – anyone else – cares about me.’
He studied her for a long moment, and then took her arm again. ‘Let us find your lady, shall we?’
Hish Tulla was in the large room adjoining the master bedroom, attended by servants helping her don her armour. Upon seeing Gripp and Pelk enter, the brooding storm-clouds of her visage suddenly cleared and she let out a heavy sigh. ‘I had begun to wonder,’ she said.
Gripp Galas spoke even as Pelk drew breath to begin her report. ‘Beloved, we are forbidden the field.’
‘What?’
‘Lord Anomander forbids us this battle. It seems your uncle will lead your Houseblades after all.’
‘I will defy him—’
‘And so wound him.’
‘He wounds us!’
Gripp Galas nodded. ‘Yes. He does. He took offence at my return – more than even I expected. I am driven away, an unwanted cur.’ He paused, and then suddenly smiled. ‘There is a certain freedom to this.’
Hish Tulla’s eyes held on her husband for a moment longer, and then shifted to Pelk. ‘My husband’s loyalty lies slain, before the battle’s even begun. What have you to say to me?’
‘I nearly killed your uncle, milady. Prevented only by your husband’s intercession.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Lord Anomander has taken command of the Draconus Houseblades. Lastly, by signal flags above the Citadel, the Hust Legion even now makes for the Valley of Tarns. It is time to assemble and ride from the city.’
‘Lord Anomander takes command? Not Silchas Ruin?’
Pelk shrugged. ‘If he has not already announced it, he will, milady. The First Son of Darkness will defy Mother Dark.’
At that Gripp Galas turned, shock written deep in the lines of his face.
Pelk continued. ‘If Lord Anomander refuses you both, it is because he wants you to live. No, he needs you to live. There will be sorcery. The slaughter awaiting us may be absolute.’
‘What of our honour?’ demande
d Hish Tulla.
Pelk scowled. ‘In this new war of magic, milady, honour cannot exist. Respect dies with the distance, the very remoteness of murder. Battle becomes a chore, but one swiftly concluded, and only the ravens will dance.’ She set her hand again upon the pommel of her weapon. ‘All my skill, all that I gave my life to teaching – my very vow to see my students survive – is now meaningless. If death can strike without discrimination, then truly we are fallen. I see a future in which spirit dies, and if this day is to be my last, I will not regret it too much.’ She glanced at Gripp Galas. ‘I expect Kellaras to join me in the dust of death, so think not to chide me again, Gripp Galas.’
Neither Gripp nor Hish Tulla had anything to say to that.
Pelk nodded. ‘Now, by your leave, I will return to your uncle, and inform him of his command.’
‘See that they fight,’ Hish Tulla said, but her tone was empty, hollowed out. ‘You are his second in command. Make certain that he understands that.’
‘I will, milady, and should he betray, I will cut him down in the instant.’
‘I doubt,’ said Hish Tulla as she gestured her servants closer again – this time to begin removing her armour – ‘Venes Turayd holds any delusions about your resolve, Pelk.’ She turned her head to her husband. ‘What say you, beloved? Shall we ride to my western keep?’
Gripp frowned at her. ‘You will surrender all responsibility?’
‘He loves us too dearly, does he not? We shall depart, bearing the cuts of our freedom.’ She shrugged. ‘Our trail will be obvious enough, by the blood we drip. Pelk, keep Rancept close.’
‘Of course, milady, if such a thing is possible—’
‘I said keep him close, Pelk. There is sorcery in that man, far older than anything Hunn Raal might use.’
‘Rancept?’
‘He is Shake, Pelk. A Denier, if you must use the term. But more than that, he once dwelt among the Dog-Runners. He is the child of a different mother. Hold him to your side, Pelk, for I would see you again.’
Pelk bowed.
Hish Tulla said to her husband, ‘You did as Kellaras asked. You returned Lord Anomander to his senses. He commands you no longer.’
‘Yes, beloved.’
‘Never again.’
He nodded.
Pelk departed the chamber, feeling strangely elated, almost content. Whatever came of this day, love would survive. She understood Lord Anomander, and the offence he had taken at Gripp’s return. In this one instance, honour had lost the battle, and simple decency would prevail.
She approached the outer door, eager to both delight and irritate Venes Turayd. Then they would set out for the Valley of Tarns, leading the Houseblades of House Tulla, and she would ride behind Venes and, at her side, old bent Rancept, his breaths as harsh as those of the horse he straddled.
Kellaras would live or he would die. No different from Pelk herself. And you, Ivis, you old fool. Find your new love if you can when all this is done. We’re past every regret, and the past has lost all its claws, all its teeth, and can hurt us no more.
Now, time had come to face the dying day. She kicked open the door.
TWENTY-FIVE
ALTHOUGH IT LEFT HIM WITH CONFUSED EMOTIONS TUGGING him this way and that, the idea pursued Orfantal, and L. no matter where his mind raced, the idea swept up around him the instant he paused. Children should be able to choose their own mothers. Of course such a thing was impossible. And yet, was it not even worse that mothers could not choose their children? He knew enough about being unwanted and unwelcome. He knew even more about being a disappointment.
The mother he sought, could he so choose, would have the strength to look him in the eye, and to see and not fear who he was. There would be a reserve about her, a kind of selfishness, perhaps, that in itself would give him enough room to grow into his own world, making his own choices about how to live.
Gripp Galas would have laughed at the notion. The child, he would say, needs guidance. The child, he would insist, was not ready to understand the world, not ready to make a place in it. And these things were probably true, but a balance was needed nonetheless. Until his arrival in the Citadel, Orfantal had been smothered beneath his mother’s needs. He had been weighted down with the fears and dreads of his grandmother. Of his father there was only absence, a vast realm of ignorance in which Orfantal could raise heroes standing beneath bold standards, and that suited him well enough.
Heroic death appealed to him like nothing else, when he imagined his future life, when at last he clawed free of his mother and her shrinking world.
He’d sensed his mother’s arrival. His powers had grown, and now the city and its outskirts trembled as if sheathed in his own skin. The black river, with its crisp shelves of ice along the banks, felt like his own heartline, rich with the tireless flow of blood, too swift to freeze solid, too fierce to be turned aside. He felt his mother and her uncertain steps. He shivered to the sudden presence of the First Son of Darkness, whose spirit was like a mailed fist; and the stranger beside him, in the moments before retreating back into the forest – that man held in his heart all the resolve of a wounded world, of nature steeling itself against a storm of its own making.
Orfantal was still a child, and yet in the space given to him, since his arrival at the Citadel, he had soaked in the dubious wisdom of ancient stone walls, of floors laid out in ritual, of magicks swirling down every passage, murmuring the memories of old gods. He had prodded awake sleeping spirits, and each one had given him new words, new thoughts, new ways of seeing. But, for all that, his mind remained as it had always been, quick to absorb all the new things given him, and as quick to find itself wandering lost in confusion, knowing he was not yet able to understand it all. Knowing that such gifts, these blessings of stone and old gods, were meant for someone older, wiser – someone who understood enough to be afraid.
He saw the boy Wreneck, his old friend who’d stopped being his friend, rushing into the keep. It was startling to find that Wreneck could see the wolf ghost he’d left there, near the Terondai, and Orfantal was not yet sure if he was pleased by that, or alarmed.
Wreneck looked much older than Orfantal remembered, scarred and sure-eyed, like a warrior or a hunter. He carried a spear, and no one he passed in the corridors challenged him. Orfantal did not know if he should be frightened as Wreneck followed the ghost ever deeper into the Citadel, and ever closer to where he now hid.
But all these details were shoved to the wayside upon the return of Emral Lanear, the mother he would have chosen for himself. He longed to curl up in her lap again, not just in spirit, but with his own body, its solid limbs and the weight of his head resting on her breast.
Everywhere there was the talk of war, of the battle to come. Everywhere in the Citadel, and in the city beyond, there was a miasma of fear and uncertainty. People were in motion, restless and at times scurrying, as if their labours could reshape the future. And how their hands worked! He watched pots being scrubbed, stacked and dried, and then hung on hooks in neat rows. He watched clothes being folded, floors being swept, cords of wood perfectly stacked. Axe-edges honed, blades polished. Everywhere his mind looked, he saw a frenzy of order taking hold of men and women.
Panic was the enemy, the mundane necessities of living a ritual of control, and as control was torn away – out beyond the walls, out beyond the city itself, those busy hands at the ends of those arms – they all retreated to what was in reach. That and nothing more.
And this is us. This is the Tiste.
And, the ghosts tell me, this is how a civilization falls.
He would curl into her lap, as she sat in her chair, tendrils of smoke rising about them. In a chamber well guarded by his ghostly wolves. Children only ever had one place of retreat.
My real mother is skin over wounds. She hurts everywhere inside, and she wants to bring it to me. She has a new child, a thing of sorcery, a thing of terrible power. I see the Eleint in the baby’s eyes, the father’s ancien
t power.
If Mother keeps her close, that toddling thing, she will poison it. She will make a monster.
Wreneck was coming closer. He would reach this room in only a few moments. Orfantal blinked, withdrawing his vision, his multitude of strange senses that quested everywhere like unseen draughts. He glanced down at Ribs, watched the dog dreaming in a cascade of twitches. Easier to make the beast sleep than to see it ever fleeing.
If he had the words, he would tell Emral Lanear so many things. If he had the words, he would say this: Mother Emral Lanear, I feel your clouded mind, and all the guilt you refuse to think about. I feel your grief at beauty lost, there in the mirror. And I would tell you otherwise, how your beauty is something no mirror could capture.
Mother of Darkness cannot be seen, so you stand in her stead. Her true representative. Even you do not understand that. Just like the goddess, you are the mother of us all. And that space surrounding you, that vast space, it is your gift of freedom. To your children.
But it seems we’ve made it a place for killing.
But no such words came to him, except in the echo of someone else’s voice. There were times – and he heard this in a whisper – when the poet took liberties, to sweep aside the confusion in service of clarity. To make things plain.
Some indulgences must be borne. For others, patience was wearing thin.
The door opened. Wreneck stepped warily into the chamber. ‘Orfantal?’
Orfantal uncurled from Lanear’s chair. ‘She’s back,’ he said. ‘She’s coming here, I think.’
‘What? Who?’
‘The High Priestess. Hello, Wreneck.’
‘I’ve come to warn you.’
‘Yes, my mother. And her new child.’
‘Korlat. She’s named Korlat.’
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