Forge of Darkness

THIRTEEN

Kadaspala was not a believer in gods, but he knew that belief could create them. And once made, they bred in kind. He had seen places where discord thrived, where violence spun roots through soil and flesh both, and the only propitiation left to those who dwelt there was the spilling of yet more blood. These were venal gods, the vicious spawn of a stew of wretched emotions and desires. There was no master and no slave: god and mortal fed on each other, like lovers sharing a vile fetish.

He knew that there was power in emotion, and that it could spill out to soak the ground, to stain stone and twist wood; that it could poison children and so renew the malign cycle, generation upon generation. Such people made of their home a god’s lap, and they curled tight within its comforting, familiar confines.

Kadaspala wanted none of it, and yet he was never as immune as he would have liked: even the pronouncement that he stood outside such things was itself an illusion. He was not a believer in gods, but he had his own. They came to him in the simplest of all forms, eschewing even shape and, at times, substance itself. They came to him in a flood, with every moment — indeed, even in his sleep and the dream worlds that haunted it. They howled. They whispered. They caressed. Sometimes, they lied.

His gods were colours, but he knew them not. They bore heady emotions and before them, in moments of weakness or vulnerability, he would reel, or cry out, seeking to turn away. But their calls would bring him back, helpless, a soul on its knees. At times he could taste them, or feel their heat upon his skin. At times he could smell them, redolent with promise and quick to steal from his memories, and so claim those memories for their own. So abject had his worship become that he now saw himself in colours — the landscape of his mind, the surge and ebb of emotions, the meaningless cascades behind the lids of his eyes when shut against the outside world; he knew the blues, purples, greens and reds of his blood; he knew the flushed pink of his bones, with their carmine cores; he knew the sunset hues of his muscles, the silvered lakes and fungal mottling of his organs. He saw flowers in human skin and could smell their perfumes, or, at times, the musty readiness of desire — that yearn to touch and to feel.

The gods of colour came in lovemaking. They came in the violence of war and the butchering of animals, in the cutting down of wheat. They came in the moment of birth and in the wonder of childhood — was it not said that newborn babies saw naught but colours? They came in the muted tones of grief, in the convulsions of pain and injury and disease. They came in the fires of rage, the gelid grip of fear — and all that they touched they then stained, for all time.

There was but one place and one time when the gods of colour withdrew, vanished from the ken of mortals, and that place, that time, was death.

Kadaspala worshipped colour. It was the gift of light; and in its tones, heavy and light, faint and rich, was painted all of life.

When he thought of an insensate world, made of insensate things, he saw a world of death, a realm of incalculable loss, and that was a place to fear. Without eyes to see and without a mind to make order out of chaos, and so bring comprehension, such a world was where the gods went to die. Nothing witnessed, and so nothing renewed. Nothing seen, and so nothing found. Nothing outside, and so nothing inside.

It was midday. He rode through a forest, where on all sides the sun’s light fought its way down to the ground, touching faint here, bold there. Its gifts were brush-strokes of colour. He had a habit of subtly painting with the fingers of his right hand, making small caresses in the air — he needed no brush; he needed only his eyes and his mind and the imagination conjured in the space between them. He made shapes with deft twitches of those fingers, and then filled them with sweet colour — and each one was a prayer, an offering to his gods, proof of his love, his loyalty. If others saw the motions at the end of his right hand, they no doubt thought them twitches, some locked-in pattern of confused nerves. But the truth was, those fingers painted reality, and for all Kadaspala knew, they gave proof to all that he saw and all that existed to be seen.

He understood why death and stillness were bound together. In stillness the inside was silent. The living conversation was at an end. Fingers did not move, the world was not painted into life, and the eyes, staring unseen, had lost sight of the gods of colour. When looking upon the face of a dead person, when looking into those flat eyes, he could see the truth of his convictions.

It was midday. The sun fought its way down and the gods fluttered, dipped and filled patches of brilliance amidst gloom and shadow, and Kadaspala sat on his mule, noting in a distracted fashion the thin wisps of smoke curling round his mount’s knobby ankles, but most of his attention was upon the face, and the eyes, of the corpse laid out on the ground before him.

There had been three huts on this narrow trail. Now they were heaps of ash, muddy grey and dull white and smeared black. One of the huts had belonged to a daughter, old enough to fashion a home of her own, but if she had shared it with a husband his body was nowhere to be seen, while she was lying half out of what had probably been the doorway. The fire had eaten her lower body and swollen the rest, cooking it until the skin split and here the gods sat still, as if in shock, in slivers of lurid red and patches of peeled black. Her long hair had been thrown forward, over the top of her head. Parts of it had burned, curling into fragile white nests. The rest was motionless midnight, with hints of reflected blue, like rainbows on oil. She was, mercifully, lying face down. One rupture upon her back was different, larger, and where the others had burst outward this one pushed inward. A sword had done that.

The body directly before him, however, was that of a child. The blue of the eyes was now covered in a milky film, giving it its only depth, since all that was behind that veil was flat, like iron shields or silver coins, sealed and deprived of all promise. They were, he told himself yet again, eyes that no longer worked, and the loss of that was beyond comprehension.

He would paint this child’s face. He would paint it a thousand times. Ten thousand. He would offer the paintings as gifts to every man and every woman of the realm. And each time any one man or woman stirred awake the hearth gods of anger and hate, feeding the gaping mouth of violence and uttering pathetic lies about making things better, or right, or pure, or safe, he would give them yet another copy of this child’s face. He would spend a lifetime upon this one image, repeated in plaster on walls, on boards of sanded wood, in the threads of tapestry; glazed upon the sides of pots and carved on stones and from stone. He would make it one argument to defy every other god, every other venal emotion or dark, savage desire.

Kadaspala stared down at the child’s face. There was dirt on one cheek but otherwise the skin was clean and pure. Apart from the eyes, the only discordant detail was the angle between the head and the body, which denoted a snapped neck. And bruising upon one ankle, where the killer had gripped it when whipping the boy in the air — hard enough to separate the bones of the spine.

The gods of colour brushed lightly upon that face, in tender sorrow, in timorous disbelief. They brushed light as a mother’s tears.

The fingers of his right hand, folded over the saddle horn, made small motions, painting the boy’s face, filling the lines and planes with muted colour and shade, working round the judgement-less eyes, saving those for last. His fingers made the hair a dark smudge, because it was unimportant apart from the bits of twig, bark and leaf in it. His fingers worked, while his mind howled until the howling fell away and he heard his own calm voice.

‘Denier Child… so I call it. Yes, the likeness is undeniable — you knew him? Of course you did. You all know him. He’s what falls to the wayside in your triumphant march. Yes, I kneel now in the gutter, because the view is one of details — nothing else, just details. Do you like it?

‘ Do you like this?

‘ The gods of colour offer this without judgement. In return, it is for you to judge. This is the dialogue of our lives.

‘ Of course I speak only of craftsmanship. Would I challenge your choices, your beliefs, the way you live and the things you desire and the cost of those things? Are the lines sure? Are the colours true? What of those veils on the eyes — have you seen their likeness before? Judge only my skill, my feeble efforts in imbuing a dead thing with life using dead things — dead paints, dead brushes, dead surface, with naught but my fingers and my eyes living, together striving to capture truth.

‘ I choose to paint death, yes, and you ask why — in horror and revulsion, you ask why? I choose to paint death, my friend, because life is too hard to bear. But it’s just a face, dead paints on dead surface, and it tells nothing of how the neck snapped, or the wrongness of that angle with the body. It is, in truth, a failure.

‘ And each time I paint this boy, I fail.

‘ I fail when you turn away. I fail when you walk past. I fail when you shout at me about the beautiful things of the world, and why didn’t I paint those? I fail when you cease to care, and when you cease to care, we all fail. I fail, then, in order to welcome you to what we share.

‘ This face? This failure? It is recognition.’

There were other corpses. A man and a woman, their backs cut and stabbed as they sought to hold their bodies protectively over those children they could reach, not that it had helped, since those children had been dragged out and killed. A dog was stretched out, cut in half just above the hips, the hind limbs lying one way, the fore limbs and head the opposite way. Its eyes, too, were flat.

When travelling through the forest, Kadaspala was in the habit of leaving the main track, of finding these lesser paths that took him through small camps such as this one. He had shared meals with the quiet forest people, the Deniers, although they denied nothing of value that he could see. They lived in familiarity and in love, and wry percipience and wise humility, and they made art that took Kadaspala’s breath away.

The figurines, the masks, the beadwork — all lost in the burnt huts now.

Someone had carved a wavy line on the chest of the dead boy. It seemed that worship of the river god was a death sentence now.

He would not bury these dead. He would leave them lying where they were. Offered to the earth and the small scavengers that would take them away, bit by bit, until the fading of flesh and memory were one.

He painted with his fingers, setting in his mind where all the bodies were lying in relation to one another; and the huts and the dead dog, and how the sun’s light struggled through the smoke to make every detail scream.

Then, kicking his mule forward, he watched as the beast daintily stepped over the boy’s body, and for the briefest of moments hid every detail in shadow.

In the world of night promised by Mother Dark, so much would remain for ever unseen. He began to wonder if that would be a mercy. He began to wonder if this was the secret of her promised blessing to all her believers, her children. Darkness now and for evermore. So we can get on with things.

A score or more horses had taken the trail he was now on. The killers were moving westward. He might well meet them if they had camped to rest from their night of slaughter. They might well murder him, or just feed him.

Kadaspala did not care. He had ten thousand faces in his head, and they were all the same. The memory of Enesdia seemed far away now. If he was spared, he would ride for her, desperate with need. For the beauty he dared not paint, for the love he dared not confess. She was where the gods of colour gathered all the glory in their possession. She was where he would find the rebirth of his faith.

Every artist was haunted by lies. Every artist fought to find truths. Every artist failed. Some turned back, embracing those comforting lies. Others took their own lives in despair. Still others drank themselves into the barrow, or poisoned everyone who drew near enough to touch, to wound. Some simply gave up, and wasted away in obscurity. A few discovered their own mediocrity, and this was the cruellest discovery of all. None found their way to the truths.

If he lived a handful of breaths from this moment, or if he lived a hundred thousand years, he would fight — for something, a truth, that he could not even name. It was, perhaps, the god behind the gods of colour. The god that offered both creation and recognition, that set forth the laws of substance and comprehension, of outside and inside and the difference between the two.

He wanted to meet that god. He wanted a word or two with that god. He wanted, above all, to look into its eyes, and see in them the truth of madness.

With brush and desire, I will make a god.

Watch me.

But in this moment, as he rode through swords of light and shrouds of shadow, upon the trail of blind savagery, Kadaspala was himself like a man without eyes. The painted face was everywhere. His fingers could not stop painting it, in the air, like mystical conjurations, like evocations of unseen powers, like a warlock’s curse and a witch’s warding against evil. Fingers that could close wounds at a stroke, that could unravel the bound knots of time and make anew a world still thriving with possibilities — that could do all these things, yet tracked on in their small scribings, trapped by a face of death.

Because the god behind the gods was mad.

I shall paint the face of darkness. I shall ride the dead down the throat of that damned god. I, Kadaspala, now avow this: world, I am at war with you. Outside — you, outside, hear me! The inside shall be unleashed. Unleashed.

I shall paint the face of darkness. And give it a dead child’s eyes.

Because in darkness, we see nothing.

In darkness, behold, there is peace.

Narad’s fingers brushed the unfamiliar lines of his own face, the places that had twisted or sagged. Haral’s fists had done more than bruise and cut. They had broken nerves. He had looked upon his face reflected in a forest pool, and barely recognized it. The swelling was gone, bones mending as best they could, and most of the vision had returned to his left eye, but now he bore another man’s visage, thickened and pulled down, stretched and dented.

He had known Haral’s history. He had known that the bastard had lost his family in the wars, and that there was a cauldron of rage bubbling and popping somewhere inside the man. But for all that, Narad had been unable to stop himself, and finally — the day with that highborn runt — all of his verbal jabs and prods had pushed the caravan captain too far. It wasn’t hard to remember the look in Haral’s face, in the instant before he struck, the raw pleasure in the man’s eyes — as though a door had been thrown open and all the fists of his anger could now come flying out.

There was plenty of anger among the Tiste, swirling and on occasion rising up to drown sorrow, to overwhelm what was needed to just get along. Or maybe it was a force that existed in everyone, like a treasure hoard of every humiliation suffered in a lifetime of broken dreams and disappointments, a treasure hoard, a chest, with a flimsy lock.

Narad was an ugly man now, and he would think like an ugly man, but one still strong enough to keep sorrow’s head down, beneath the surface, and find satisfaction each and every time he drowned it. He wasn’t interested in a soft world any more, a world where tenderness and warmth were possible, rising like bright flowers from beds of skeletal lichen and sun-burnt moss. He needed to keep reminding himself of all of that.

He sat listening to the conversations in the camp around him, the words coming from those gathered round the fire, or outside the tents. Jests and complaints about the damp ground, the fire’s wayward but vengeful smoke. And he could hear, in rasping susurration, iron blades sliding on whetstones, as nicks were worked out and blunt edges honed sharp once again. Narad was among soldiers, true soldiers, and their work was hard and unpleasant, and he now counted himself one of them.

The troop awaited the return of their captain, Scara Bandaris, who along with a half-dozen soldiers had gone on to Kharkanas, to deliver the Jheleck hostages. Left behind by the caravan, still rib-cracked, still face-swollen, still half-blind, Narad had stumbled upon this troop and they had taken him in, cared for him, given him weapons and a horse, and now he rode with them.

The war against the Deniers had begun, here in this ancient forest. Narad had not known such a war was even threatening; he had never been impressed by the forest people. They were ignorant, most likely inbred, and meek as lambs. They weren’t much of an enemy, and it didn’t seem to be much of a war. The few huts they had come upon yesterday had been what Narad would have expected. One middle-aged man with a bad knee, a woman who called him husband, and the children they’d begotten. The girl who’d been hiding in the hut might have been pretty before the fire, but she was barely human after it, crawling out like she did. The killing had been straightforward. It had been professional. There had been no rapes, no torture. Every death delivered had been delivered quickly. Narad told himself that even necessity could be balanced with mercy.

The problem was: he was having trouble finding the necessity.

Corporal Bursa told him that he and his troop had cleaned out most of the Deniers in this section of forest — a day’s walk in any direction. He said it had been easy as there didn’t seem to be too many warriors among them, just the old and mothers and the young. Bursa reminded Narad of Haral, and already he had felt his instinctive response to a man bad at hiding hurts, but this time he kept quiet. He had learned his lesson and he wanted to stay with these men and women, these soldiers of the Legion. He wanted to be one of them.

He had drawn his sword in the Deniers’ camp, but none of the enemy had come within reach, and almost before he knew it the whole thing was over, and the others were firing the huts.

Where the girl had hidden was something of a mystery, but the smoke and flames had driven her out, eventually. Narad had been close by — well, the closest of any of them — and when she’d crawled out Bursa had ordered him to put the creature out of its misery.

He still remembered edging closer, fighting the gusts of heat. She was making no sound. Not once had she even screamed, although her agony must have been terrible. It was right to kill her, to end her torment. He told himself that again and again, as he worked ever closer — until he hunched over her, staring down at her scorched back. Pushing the sword into it had not been as hard as he thought it would be. The thing below him could as easily have been a sow’s carcass, roasted on a spit. Except for all the black hair.

There was no reason, then, that his killing her should be haunting him. But he was having trouble laughing and joking with the others. He was, in fact, having trouble meeting their eyes. Bursa had tried telling him that these forest folk weren’t even Tiste, but that was untrue. They were — the lame man they’d cut down could have been from Narad’s own family, or a cousin in a nearby village. He felt confused and the confusion wouldn’t go away. If he could get drunk it’d go away, for a time, but that wasn’t allowed in this troop. They drank beer because it was safer than the local water, but it was weak and there wasn’t that much of it and besides, these soldiers weren’t like that. Captain Scara Bandaris wouldn’t allow it; by all accounts, he was hard and ferociously disciplined, and he expected the same of his soldiers.

Yet these men and women worshipped the captain.

Narad was jealous of them all. He’d not even met the captain yet, and he wondered what he would see in this Scara Bandaris to make sense of this killing of Deniers, and this whole damned war. Narad had grown up on a farm lying just outside a small hamlet. He knew the reasons everyone gave when hunting vermin — the rats brought disease, the hares ate the crops and riddled the ground, and so all that slaughter was necessary. He knew that he should think of these Deniers in the same way, as an infestation and a threat to their way of life. Even rats minded their own business, but that didn’t save them; that didn’t stop them from being a problem; that didn’t keep the beaters and their dogs away.

He sat on a log outside the tent he had been given. Every now and then he would look down at his hands, and then quickly away again.

It wasn’t murder. It was mercy.

But he was an ugly man now and the world was just as ugly, and this face wasn’t his and if this face wasn’t his then neither were these hands, and yesterday was someone else’s crime. He wondered if that girl had been beautiful. He believed that she had. But beauty had no place in this new world. This world that Haral had delivered him into. This was Haral’s fault and one day he would kill that bastard.

He looked up, his eyes catching movement from the trail. A man had appeared, astride a mule.

Others took note, and Narad saw Bursa approach. The corporal caught Narad’s eye and a hand waved him an invitation. Narad straightened, feeling the weight of his sword at his hip, a weight he had always liked but never quite felt comfortable with, but it was there now and it wasn’t going away. He made his way over to Bursa’s side.

The stranger had not even paused upon finding the camp, and by his dress Narad could see that he was highborn, although his mount and the stained boxes strapped to it suggested otherwise.

Bursa, with Narad now on his left, positioned himself directly in the stranger’s path, forcing him to rein in.

It came to Narad suddenly that the trail this man had come from led straight back to the Deniers’ camp. His eyes narrowed on the stranger’s bland, utterly fearless expression.

‘You wander obscure paths, sir,’ said Bursa, hands on his hips.

‘You have no idea,’ the stranger replied. ‘Cleaned your blades yet? I see that you have and so must acknowledge your discipline. You wear the livery of Urusander’s Legion, but I suspect he knows not what you do in his name.’

The challenge of this left Bursa momentarily speechless, and then he laughed. ‘Sir, you are mistaken-’

‘Corporal, I have just ridden from Vatha Keep. I have been Lord Urusander’s guest for much of this past month. The only “mistake” here is your assumption of my ignorance. So I ask you, since when does Urusander’s Legion make war upon innocent men, women and children?’

‘You have, I fear, been somewhat out of touch,’ Bursa growled in reply, and Narad could see the anger bubbling up, a fizzling froth that this stranger seemed blind to, or indifferent.

Narad put his hand on the grip of his sword.

The stranger’s eyes flicked to him then away again, back to Bursa. ‘Out of touch? What you are touching I want nothing to do with, corporal. I am returning to my father’s estate. It is regrettable that you are in my way, but as I have no wish to share your company I will continue on.’

‘In a moment,’ Bursa said. ‘I am under orders to make note of travellers in this area-’

‘Whose orders? Not Lord Urusander’s. So I ask again, who gives orders to Urusander’s Legion in his name?’

Bursa’s face was reddening. In a tight voice he said, ‘My orders came by messenger from Captain Hunn Raal not three days past.’

‘Hunn Raal? You’re not of his company.’

‘No, we are soldiers under the command of Captain Scara Bandaris.’

‘And where is he?’

‘In Kharkanas. Sir, you ride in ignorance. An uprising is under way.’

‘I see that,’ the stranger replied.

Bursa’s lips thinned into a straight, bloodless line. Then he said, ‘Your name, please, if you wish to pass.’

‘I am Kadaspala, son of Lord Jaen of House Enes. I have been painting your commander’s portrait. Shall I tell you how much I see in a man’s face when studying it day after day after day? I see everything. No dissembling evades my eye. No malice, no matter how well hidden, can hide from me. I don’t doubt you are following Hunn Raal’s orders. The next time you see that smirking drunk, give him this message from me. It will not do to imagine that Lord Urusander is now little more than a mere figurehead, to be pushed this way and that. Manipulate Vatha Urusander and he will make you regret it. Now, we have the measure of each other. Let me pass. It’s getting late, and I ride in the company of ghosts. You’ll not wish us to linger.’

After a long moment, Bursa stepped to one side. Narad did the same, feeling his heart pounding in his chest.

As the artist edged past them, he turned to Narad and said, ‘I can see the man you once were.’

Narad stiffened, biting back his shame.

Kadaspala continued, ‘But all I can see is this. What was inside is now outside. I feel sorry for you, soldier. No one deserves to be that vulnerable.’

He then rode on, through the camp and the crowd of other soldiers — all of them silent and hooded, as if cowed by this unarmed boy of an artist. A few moments later, he disappeared into the far end of the clearing, where the trail picked up once more.

‘Shit,’ Bursa said.

Narad wanted to ask a question, but seeing the expression on Bursa’s face silenced him. The corporal had paled, looking to where the artist had gone, and in his eyes there was confusion and something like sick dread. ‘Captain told us to sit tight,’ he muttered. ‘But Hunn Raal’s whore said-’ He stopped then and glared across at Narad. ‘That’ll do, soldier. Back to your tent.’

‘Yes sir,’ Narad replied.

Moving quickly, eyes on the log lying in front of his tent, Narad reached up to brush the lines of his broken face, and for the first time, he felt fear at what his fingers found.

Drought had dried the field and the hoofs of horses had driven like mattocks into the soil, tearing up the grasses until nothing was left alive. Master-at-arms Ivis walked from it covered in gritty dust. His leathers were stained, his jerkin sodden under his arms and against his back. Behind him the brown clouds of dust were slow to settle over the clearing and the troop he’d been training had all retired to the trees, desperate for shade and a rest. There wasn’t much talk left in them: Ivis had driven that out. Some were crouched down, heads hanging. Others were sprawled on the grassy verge, forearms covering their eyes. Armour and half-emptied waterskins were scattered about like the aftermath of a battle, or a drunken night of revelry.

‘Take what’s left of that water and cool down your horses. Those animals need it more than any of you.’

At his words, the men and women stirred into motion. Ivis studied them a moment longer and then turned to where the warhorses stood beneath the trees. The only movement that came from them was the swishing of their tails against the swarming flies, and the occasional ripple of their sleek hides. The beasts looked strong, stripped down of all fat. As the Houseblades moved in among them, Ivis felt a spasm of sadness and looked away.

He didn’t know if animals dreamed. He didn’t know if they knew hope in their hearts, if they longed for things — like freedom. He didn’t know what looked out through their large, soft eyes. Most of all, he didn’t know what teaching them to kill did to them, to their spirits. Habits and deeds could stain a soul — he’d seen enough of that among his own kind. He’d seen broken children become broken men and broken women.

No doubt scholars and philosophers, puttering in their cosy rooms in Kharkanas, had devised elaborate definitions of all those intangible things that hovered like clouds of stirred-up dust above hard and battered ground — things nobody could really grasp or hold on to. Ideas about the soul, the hidden essence that knew itself, but knew itself incompletely, and so was doomed to ever question, to ever yearn. No doubt they had arguments and defences, built up into impressive structures that were more monuments to their own brilliance than stolid fortifications.

He remembered something his grandfather used to say. ‘ The man patrolling his prejudices never sleeps.’ As a boy, Ivis had not quite understood what Ivelis had meant by that. But he thought he understood now. No matter. The philosophers dug deep moats around their definitions of things like the soul; moats that no animal could breach, since animals spoke the wrong language and so could never argue their way across. Still, when Ivis looked into a horse’s eyes, or a dog’s, or a felled deer’s in the last moments when the beast shudders and blinks with eyes filled with pain and terror, he saw the refutation of every philosopher’s argument.

Life did more than flicker. It burned with fire. He knew it to be a fire for the simple reason that eventually it burned itself out. It ate up all the fuel it possessed, and dimmed and waned, and then was gone.

But were life and soul one and the same? Why the division at all?

Anyone could draw circles in the dust, but in the greater scheme of things, it made for a pathetic moat.

His Houseblades had pushed away their weariness and were attending to their mounts. Saddles were pulled off, brushes drawn. Hands stroked down the length of muscles, felt along tendons and brushed bones under stretched hide. The animals stood motionless: Ivis never knew if they but tolerated the attention, or were comforted by it. He’d seen mischief in animals, but none of them could smile. And always, their eyes were but wells of mystery.

Corporal Yalad moved up alongside him. ‘Sir, they wheeled with precision, didn’t they? Never seen anything so perfect.’

Ivis grunted. ‘You want compliments, corporal? Maybe even a kiss? Go find that maid you keep rocking up the wall back of the stables. I’m the wrong man to make you feel good, and if I wanted a conversation I’d find someone with more than half a brain.’

Yalad backed a step. ‘Apologies, sir.’

The captain knew that his foul mood was the subject of plenty of barracks talk. If no one knew the cause of it, all the better as far as Ivis was concerned. It just made them work harder trying to please him, or at least avoid a dressing down. If they knew, they’d think him mad.

There was something in the air, in this summer heat, that felt… wrong. As if malice had a smell, a stink, and even the hot winds blew through it and left it untouched, and the sun could not beat it down and all the ripening crops could not burn it away.

Days like this were making his skin crawl. He’d seen lone riders skirting the estate grounds, cutting fast and hard across Dracons land. He’d caught the faint smell of bad smoke, the kind of smoke that came from burnt clothes, burnt possessions, burnt hair and flesh — but never enough to be entirely certain, to even so much as sense a direction or possible source.

He had taken to watching sunsets, wandering out into the trees or drifting along the forest’s edge, and in the failing of light he found moments of frightening stillness, as if even in a held breath some breath was lost, the faintest exhalation, smelling of something wrong.

If all life possessed a soul, then perhaps it too was a burning fire, and just as life burned out when it had used itself up, so too did a soul. But maybe it took longer to wink out. Maybe it took for ever. But just as life could sicken, so too could a soul — sometimes one could tell, if there were eyes to look into, if there was an easy focus to that wrongness. When he walked through the dusk, along the forest’s dark line, he thought he could feel the land’s soul — a soul made up of countless smaller souls — and what he felt was something sickening.

Ivis turned to Corporal Yalad. ‘Round everyone up and head back. Walk the horses on to the track, then everyone dog-trot up to the gate. Shake out those muscles. Everyone cleans up before mess.’

‘Yes sir.’

‘I’ll be in later.’

‘Of course, sir.’

The forest, preserved by an edict from Lord Draconus, ran like a curled finger between hills, following the line of an ancient valley’s riverbed. Its tip, where it was thinnest, was at this field’s edge, where it stretched to almost touch Dracons Hold. If he walked northward, up the track of that finger, the forest thickened, and if one persisted in the simile, spread out to form the hand where the valley opened on to a floodplain. This was the forest’s ancient heart.

It had been years since Ivis last ventured there. Few people did, as Draconus had forbidden the harvesting of its wood or the hunting of whatever animals dwelt within it. Ivis had been instructed to patrol its edges on a regular basis, but at random intervals. Poaching was always a risk, but the punishment was death and that punishment could be carried out by the patrols, and this discouraged the petty hunters and wood cutters. But the real deterrent was the Lord’s own generosity. No one starved on his lands, and no one had to brave the winter without fuel. It was, to the captain’s mind, extraordinary what was possible when those people who could do something, did. He knew that not everyone appreciated it enough. Some poachers just liked poaching; they liked working outside the laws; they liked secrecy and deceit and that sense of making fools of their betters.

Ivis suspected that there weren’t many of those people left on the lands of Lord Draconus, or they were biding their time. The last hanging of a poacher had been three seasons past.

He walked through the forest. The few game trails he came across had been made by small animals. The larger game had been hunted into extinction long ago — long before the arrival of Draconus. There was a kind of deer, no higher than the captain’s knee, but they were nocturnal and so rarely seen. He’d heard the eerie cries of fox and had noted owl scat, but even these signs could not disguise the impoverishment of this remnant forest. His senses felt the absence all around him, like the pressure of silent, unrelieved guilt. He’d once enjoyed wandering these woods, but no longer.

The day’s light was fading. As if searching for something he knew he wouldn’t find, Ivis pushed on, deeper into the forest, where it spread out and occasional ancient trees still remained, their black bark sweating in the shadows. He saw slashes of red here and there, from trees that had toppled and split. The flesh of the blackwood was too much like muscle, like meat, to the captain’s eyes. It had always unnerved him.

He wondered at his own impulse, at this seemingly thoughtless push to continue onward. Was he fleeing what he knew was coming? There was nowhere he could run to. Besides, he had duties. His lord relied upon him, to train these Houseblades, to prepare them for the sudden loss of control that was civil war. Lord Draconus did not make use of spies. Dracons Hold was isolated. Unknown events swirled around them.

He found himself upon a trail, this one clear to a man’s height. The boles of the trees lining it looked misshapen. Ivis stopped. He studied one, peering through the gathering gloom. The trunk made a shape, as if hands had moulded the wood itself. It bulged outward. He made out a vaguely feminine form, but bloated. He saw something similar in the next tree, and upon others, all lining this trail. A chill crept through him.

He had not known that there were Deniers living in this forest; but then, never before had he walked into its ancient heart. He knew that he had nothing to fear from them, and that they would probably hide from him. It was likely that he had already been seen. But that sense of sickness would not leave him.

Mouth dry, he continued on.

The avenue of trees opened out on to a glade studded with wooden stakes, driven into the ground in a tight pattern, impenetrable and threatening. They stood high as his hips. In the centre of this spiral was a body, impaled through its back, through its arms and its legs. The tips thrusting up through the broken flesh glistened in the faint starlight.

It was a woman, stripped naked. She was lying horizontally above a score of shafts; her head level as if it too had been pierced by a stake. He did not know why she had not simply slid down.

There was no obvious path to her. A stables cat might wend its way through but no grown man could. Ivis edged closer — he could see no one else about. With one boot he kicked at the nearest stake. His foot rebounded from it, proof that it had been driven deep.

‘I am not for you,’ the woman said.

Cursing in disbelief, Ivis stepped back. He drew out his sword.

‘Iron and wood,’ she said. ‘But iron never has anything good to say to wood, does it? It delivers the shout of wounding, and then it promises fire. Before iron, wood can only surrender, and so it does, each time, every time.’

‘What sorcery is this?’ Ivis demanded. ‘You cannot remain alive.’

‘How big do you imagine the world, Tiste? Tell me, how vast is darkness? How far does light reach? How much will shadow swallow? Is it all that your imagination promised? Is it less than you hoped for, more than you feared? Where will you stand? When will you stand? List for me your enemies, Tiste, in the name of friendship.’

‘You are no friend of mine,’ he growled. He had seen her breath in her words, pluming up into the night, and he could just make out the spike buried in the base of her skull. If that stake was the same height as all the others, then its tip pressed against the bone of her forehead, driven straight through her brain. She could not be alive.

‘It is, I think,’ she said, ‘the other way round. But then, I did not invite you. You are the intruder here, Tiste. You are the unwelcome guest. But I am here and that cannot be denied, and so I am bound to answer your questions.’

He shook his head.

‘The others are done with me,’ she said.

‘What are you?’

‘I am you when you sleep. When your thoughts drift and time is lost. I am there in each blink of your eyes — so swift, so brief. In that blink is the faith that all will remain as it was before, and the fear that it won’t. I lie with you when you’re drunk, when you are senseless, and your flesh meets mine and I rut with you all unknown, and take from you one more sliver of your life, for ever gone. And so you awaken less than what you were, each time, every time. I am-’

‘Stop!’

She fell silent.

He saw runnels of blood flow down the shafts beneath her, saw the gleaming pool those runnels flowed into. But none of this could be real. ‘Tell me your name.’

‘The Tiste have no name for me.’

‘Are you a goddess of the forest?’

‘The forest knows no goddess. The trees are too busy singing. Even as they die, they sing. They have no time for gods in the face of all this death.’

‘Who did this to you?’

‘Did what?’

He slashed with his sword, hacked through a broad sweep of the stakes. Splinters flew. He kicked at the stubs, pushed them aside, and stepped into the maze.

‘What are you doing?’ she asked.

He did not reply. Some things could not be countenanced. No decent man or woman could withstand the brutality of this apparition. Ivis no longer believed his own eyes. He did not think this night was his own. He did not think he was still in the world he knew. Something had happened; something had stolen his soul, or guided it astray. He was lost.

His blade scythed through stakes. He drew closer to her.

‘Iron and wood,’ she said.

Limbs aching, sweat sheathing his face, he reached her side. He looked down at her face and met the woman’s eyes.

She was not Tiste. He did not know what she was. Her eyes were slits, tilted upward at the outer corners. Her skin was white with blood loss. The tip of the stake piercing her skull had pushed through her forehead just above the eyes, breaking the skin. She smiled.

Ivis stood, chest heaving from his frenzied attack on the forest of stakes. He bled from splinters driven into his hands and forearms. This woman should be dead, but she wasn’t. He knew that he could not move her.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he whispered.

‘There is nothing you can do,’ she said. ‘The forest is dying. The world comes to an end. All that you know will break apart. Fragments will spin away. There is no need to weep.’

‘Can you not — can you not stop it?’

‘No. Neither can you. Every world must die. The only question is: will it be you who wields the knife that slays it? I see an iron blade in your hand. I smell the smoke of woodfires upon your clothes. You are of the people of the forge, and you have beaten your world to death. I have no interest in saving you, even if I could.’

Suddenly he wanted to strike her. He wanted her to feel pain — his pain. And all at once he realized, with a shock, that he was not the first one to feel as he did. The anger collapsed inside him. ‘You tell me nothing I do not already know,’ he said, face twisting at the bitterness he heard in his own words.

‘This is my gift,’ she said, and smiled again.

‘And in receiving that gift, all we can do is hurt you.’

‘It is not me whom you hurt, Captain Ivis.’

‘Then you feel no pain?’

‘Only yours.’

He turned away then. A long walk awaited him, back to the keep; a walk from one world to another. It would take the rest of the night. He wanted to believe the best of people, even the Deniers. But what they had done appalled him. He could make no sense of the sorcery they had awakened, or what ghastly rites they had conducted in this secret place. He did not know how they had found her; if they had conjured her up out of the earth, or from the blood of sacrifices.

He reached the edge of the clearing, made his way up the avenue of deformed trees, feeling as if he was being spat out, flung back into a colourless, lifeless world. The forest was suddenly dull around him, and he thought, if he dared halt, if he dared pause and draw a breath, he would hear the trees singing. Singing as they died.

Malice sat with her sisters in the bolt-hole they had found under the kitchen. Directly overhead was the bakery, and the stone foundation of the huge oven formed the back wall of the tiny room. Where they crouched now, milled flour sifted down from the floorboards each time someone thumped past overhead, and in the low light from the small lantern set on a ledge, it seemed the air was filled with snow.

‘If only she wasn’t a hostage,’ Envy said. ‘I’d cut her face.’

‘Drop coals on it when she’s sleeping,’ Spite said.

‘Make her ugly,’ Malice added, enjoying the game even though they played it all the time, hiding in the secret rooms of the house, drawing close together like witches, or crows, while people walked above them all unknowing and stupid besides.

‘Poison would be perfect,’ Spite began but Envy shook her head and said, ‘Not poison. Malice is right. Make her ugly. Make her have to live with it for the rest of her life.’

Weeks past, they had hidden in the corner tower opposite the one Arathan used to hide in, and had watched the arrival of the new hostage. Envy had been furious when Malice had commented on how pretty the woman was, and this had begun things: the plans to ruin that beauty. So far, of course, nothing had been done — just words — since it was as Envy had said. Sandalath Drukorlat was a hostage and that meant she couldn’t be touched.

But it was still fun planning, and if accidents happened, well, they just happened, didn’t they?

‘She’s too old to be a hostage,’ Spite said. ‘She’s ancient. We were supposed to get a proper hostage, not her.’

‘A boy would have been best,’ said Envy. ‘Like Arathan, only younger. Someone we could hunt down and corner. Someone too weak to stop us doing anything we wanted to him.’

‘What would we do?’ Malice asked. She was the youngest and so she could ask the stupid questions without her sisters beating her up too badly, and sometimes they didn’t beat her up at all, or put things in her that hurt, and that was when she knew that her question had been a good one.

Spite snorted. ‘What do we do to you?’ she asked, and Malice could see the gleam of her smile and it was never good when Spite smiled. ‘We’d fill him up, that’s what, and keep doing it until he begged us.’

‘Begging never works,’ Malice said.

Envy laughed. ‘You idiot. Beg us for more. We could make him our slave. I want slaves.’

‘Slaves were done away with,’ Spite pointed out.

‘I’ll bring them back, when I grow up. I’ll make slaves of everyone and they’ll all have to serve me. I’ll rule an empire. I’d kill every pretty woman in it, or maybe just scar them for ever.’

‘It feels like we’ll never get older,’ Malice said, sighing.

She caught a silent look between her sisters, and then Envy shrugged and said, ‘Scrabal birds. Malice, you ever heard of scrabal birds?’

Malice shook her head.

‘They make small nests, but lay too many eggs,’ Envy explained. ‘All the chicks then hatch and at first it’s all right, but then they start growing.’

‘And the nest gets even smaller,’ said Spite, reaching out and walking her fingertips down Malice’s arm.

Envy was watching, her eyes bright. ‘So the biggest ones gang up on the little ones. They kill them and eat them, until the nest isn’t crowded any more.’

Spite’s walking fingers made their way back up the arm, edged closer to Malice’s neck.

‘I don’t like scrab birds,’ said Malice, shivering at the touch.

‘Scrabal,’ corrected Spite, still smiling.

‘Let’s talk about the hostage again,’ Malice suggested. ‘Making her ugly.’

‘You were too young to understand Father,’ said Spite, ‘when he talked to us about how we were going to grow up. Eight years, just like the Tiste, and nobody knows any different. We grow up like the rest of them. But just for those first eight years. Or nine.’

‘That’s because we’re not Tiste,’ said Envy in a whisper.

Spite nodded, her hand sliding round Malice’s throat. ‘We’re different.’

‘But Mother was-’

‘Mother?’ Spite snorted. ‘You know nothing about Mother. It’s a secret. Only me and Envy know, since you’re not old enough, not important enough.’

‘Father says it’s in our natures,’ Envy added.

‘What is?’ Malice asked.

‘Growing up… fast.’

‘Scary fast,’ Spite said, nodding.

‘Arathan-’

‘He’s different-’

‘No he isn’t, Spite,’ Envy said.

‘Yes he is!’

‘Well, half different, then. But you saw how he grew past us.’

‘After the ice.’

‘And that’s the secret, Spite. You have to nearly die first. That’s what I meant, before. That’s what I meant.’

Malice did not understand what they were talking about. She disliked the way Spite was holding her throat, but she dared not move. In case Spite decided to not let go. ‘We hate Sandalath Drukorlat,’ she said. ‘Who says hostages have to be special? Get her drunk and then cut her face, and use coals to pock her cheeks and forehead, and burn away her hair. Put a coal on one of her eyes. Burn it out!’

‘Do you want to grow up?’ Spite asked her.

Malice nodded.

‘Grow up fast?’ Envy pressed, leaning forward to stroke Malice’s hair. ‘Faster than us? Do you want to grow right past us, little one? If you did that, you could boss us around. You could make us lie with dogs and like it.’

Malice thought about the dog, the one that Ivis had to kill. She thought about what they did to Arathan when he was little, so little he couldn’t fight the dog off, not with the three of them holding him still. She wondered if he remembered all of that.

‘Don’t you want to make us lie with dogs?’ Spite asked her.

‘Jheleck,’ answered Malice. ‘Grown ones. And I’d make you like it, too, and beg for more.’

‘Of course you would,’ Envy murmured. ‘Unless we decide to grow right past you again, and make you littler than us all over again. Then we’d give you to the Jheleck.’

‘I wouldn’t let you!’

‘But there’s two of us,’ pointed out Spite, ‘and only one of you, Malice. Besides, we already make you like lots of things.’

But Malice only said that she did. The truth was, she hated everything they did to her. She wanted to kill them both. She wouldn’t be content with making them lie with dogs or Jheleck or old drooling men. When she grew up, she would murder her sisters. She would cut them into pieces. ‘Make me grow up fast,’ she said.

Spite’s smile broadened, and her hand tightened about Malice’s throat.

When she couldn’t breathe, she began struggling, trying to scratch Spite’s face, but Envy lunged close and grasped her wrists, pushing her arms down. Malice kicked, but Spite moved round and sat on her. And the hand kept squeezing, and it was terrifyingly strong.

Spite laughed, her eyes shining. ‘I dreamed this last night,’ she whispered. ‘I dreamed a murder far away. It was wonderful.’

Malice felt her eyes bulging, her face growing impossibly hot. Blackness closed in around her, swallowing everything.

Envy heard something break in Malice’s neck and tore Spite’s hands away. Their little sister’s head lolled back, as if to show them the deep imprint on her throat — the ribbons made by the fingers, the white knobs made by knuckles and the crescent cuts from nails digging in.

Neither said a word as they stared down at Malice.

Then Spite grunted. ‘It didn’t work,’ she said. ‘Not like with Arathan. It didn’t work at all, Envy.’

‘I’m not blind,’ Envy snapped. ‘You must have done it wrong.’

‘I did what you told me to!’

‘No — the choking was your idea, Spite! From your dream!’

‘Now,’ whispered Spite, ‘now I’ve done it twice. I’ve killed twice, both times the same way. I choked them to death.’

‘That’s what you get for going too far in your dreams,’ Envy said. ‘I told you to stay closer to home. You look through too many eyes.’

‘I didn’t just look,’ Spite said. ‘I made him like it.’

‘That’s your power then. Father said we had powers. He said we had aspects, that’s what he said.’

‘I know what he said. I was there.’

‘You make them like it. I make them want it.’ Envy looked down at Malice’s body. ‘I wonder what her aspect was.’

‘We’ll never know,’ said Spite. ‘And neither will she.’

‘You killed her, Spite.’

‘It was an accident. An experiment. It’s Father’s fault, for what he said.’

‘You killed Malice.’

‘An accident.’

‘Spite?’

‘What?’

‘What did it feel like?’

There was a niche under the foundations of the oven, where someone had pulled away a number of stones at the base as if to hide something, but nothing was there. It was just about big enough to fit Malice’s body, and once they pushed, sitting down and using their feet, and once a bone or two had snapped, they managed to get all of her inside. The stones that had been pulled away were the ones they always used to sit on. Now Spite and Envy pushed them back to at least block the niche.

‘Hilith is going to be a problem,’ Spite said. ‘She’ll want to know where Malice has gone.’

‘We’ll have to do what we said we’d do, then.’

‘Now?’

‘We don’t have any choice. It’s not just Hilith, is it? It’s Atran and Hidast and Ivis.’

Spite gasped. ‘What about the hostage?’

‘I don’t know. That’s a problem. We can’t stay here, anyway. Not for too long. Besides, look what Father’s done with Arathan. He took him away. For all we know, he’s killed him, cut open his throat and drunk all his blood. He’ll come back for us and do the same. Especially now.’

‘We should go to the temple, Envy. We should talk to him.’

‘No. He could reach through — you know he can!’

‘That’s not him,’ Spite said. ‘That’s only what he’s left behind. It wears his armour. It paces back and forth — we heard it!’

‘You can’t talk with that thing.’

‘How do you know? We’ve never tried.’

Envy’s eyes were wide. ‘Spite, if we let that thing out, we might never get it back inside. Let me think. Wait. Can you give it dreams?’

‘What?’

‘If I make it want something, can you make it like it?’

Spite hugged herself, as if suddenly chilled despite the oven’s dry heat. ‘Envy. This is Father’s power we’re talking about. Father’s.’

‘But he’s not here.’

‘He’ll know anyway.’

‘So what? You said we’re going to have to run no matter what.’

Spite sat back. She shot her sister a glare. ‘You said it would work, Envy. If she got close enough to death, the power would reach inside her and wake everything up.’

‘It’s awake in me.’

‘Me too. So, you had it the wrong way around.’

‘Maybe. You don’t look any more grown up.’

Spite shrugged. ‘I don’t need to. Maybe when I do, I’ll grow. Everything feels in reach. Do you know, I could take down all of Kurald Galain, if I wanted to.’

‘We might have to,’ said Envy, ‘to cover our trail.’

‘Daddy will know.’

‘Remember Ivis killing that rut-mad hunting dog? How he came up behind it and sliced through the tendons of its back legs, with one slash of his sword?’

‘Sure I remember. That dog howled and howled, until I thought the sky would crack.’

Envy nodded. ‘Father doesn’t scare me. We just need to give people a reason to be Ivis.’

‘Daddy’s the dog?’ Spite snorted. ‘Hardly. He’s got Mother Dark. No need to rut everything in sight, with her around.’

‘You don’t get my meaning, sister. You’re not subtle enough. You never were.’

‘Maybe you think that, but you don’t know anything about me.’

‘I know that you’re a murderer.’

‘Now, try saying it like you think it’s awful, Envy.’

‘You didn’t get my meaning, but what you said has given me an idea. But I need to work on it some more. First, though, there’s the people in the house to deal with.’

‘Tonight?’

Envy nodded. ‘It has to be, I think.’

Spite smiled knowingly. ‘You just want to know what it feels like.’

To that, Envy only shrugged.

A moment later and they were on their way, rushing down the hidden passages between the walls.

Accidents happened, and when accidents happened, the most important thing to do was cover them up, and fast — but not so fast as to make mistakes and so give it all away. Hiding the truth was Envy’s special talent — among many special talents, she reminded herself. Spite was good at the practical matters, the things that needed doing. But she needed guiding. She needed direction.

The night ahead was going to be glorious.

In the house of Draconus, there was war. Even in those rare moments when she was alone, when she no longer struggled on the battlements, Sandalath felt the title of hostage close about her, like clothes long outgrown, and their constriction was suffocating.

House-mistress Hilith stalked the corridors day and night. As far as Sandalath could tell, Hilith slept when demons slept, which was never. The hag cast a huge, devouring shadow upon this house, and even that shadow had claws. At night, Sandalath dreamed of death-struggles with the woman, all blood, spit and handfuls of hair. She dreamed of pushing knife blades deep into Hilith’s scrawny chest, hearing ribs pop, and seeing that horrid face stretched in a silent scream, the black tongue writhing like a salted leech. She woke from these dreams with a warm glow filling her being.

It was all ridiculous. Once Lord Draconus returned, Hilith’s empire would collapse in a heap of rubble and dust. In the meantime, Sandalath did her best to avoid the old woman, although certain daily rituals made contact inevitable. The worst of these were meals. Sandalath would sit at the end of the table opposite the unoccupied chair where Lord Draconus would have sat, had he been present. As hostage, she was head of the house, but only because the Lord’s three daughters were not yet of age. Sandalath rarely saw them. They lived like ghosts, or feral kittens. She had no idea what they did all day. For all that, however, she felt sorry for them, for the names Lord Draconus had given them.

It was the Lord’s practice to assemble most of his heads of staff for these repasts. When the household was intact, Ivis and Hilith would be joined by Gate Sergeant Raskan, Master of Horses Venth Direll, Armourer Setyl, Surgeon Atran and Keeper of Records Hidast. Among these notables only the surgeon was of any interest to Sandalath, although she’d yet to meet Raskan as he was riding with the Lord and his bastard son. Venth stank of the stables and often entered with horseshit under his boots and still wearing his stained leather apron. His hands were filthy and he rarely spoke, busy as he was shovelling food into his mouth. The few times he did say something, it was to complain to Captain Ivis about exhausted horses, listing the animals that went lame in accusing tones. Sandalath had heard from her maids that Venth slept in the stables. Setyl, the armourer, never spoke at all, for part of his tongue had been cut away by a sword thrust back in the wars. The scarring on his lower face was terrible to look at and he struggled to keep food in his mouth, and never met anyone’s eyes. The keeper of records, Hidast, was a small man with a sloping forehead and an oversized lower jaw, giving him a pronounced underbite. His obsession was with the household accounts, and the Lord’s vigorous expansion of Houseblades was a burden that he took personally, as if all of the Lord’s wealth in fact belonged to Hidast rather than Draconus. He looked on Captain Ivis with open hatred, but this was a siege he was losing. Most mealtimes Hidast complained of stomach pains, but every offer from the surgeon to treat his ailment was met with a rude shake of the head.

Atran was a clever woman, inclined to ignore Hilith while flirting with Ivis — to his obvious discomfort — and inviting Sandalath to join in the conspiracy of torturing the hapless master-at-arms. This had offered the only entertainment during these meals. In the captain’s absence, however, Atran seemed to sink into depression, taking to drinking to excess, in morose silence, and by the meal’s end she had trouble standing, much less walking.

Sandalath had mapped out these people and their places in the household. It was all too complicated and fraught and rather ridiculous. The boredom that assailed her was relentless. She did not know how things would change once Lord Draconus returned, but she knew that they would, and she longed for that day.

It was almost time for the evening meal. She sat alone in her room, waiting for her two maids to arrive. They were late and that was unusual but not unduly so. No doubt Hilith had found for them something that needed attention, and the timing was deliberate. Inconveniencing the hostage had become one of Hilith’s special pursuits.

The house was quiet. Rising, she went to the window that overlooked the courtyard. Captain Ivis had not yet returned. Supper promised to be dreadful, with the surgeon getting drunk and Hidast and Venth taking turns to slander the master-at-arms in his absence, subtly encouraged by Hilith, of course. Sandalath could almost see the gleam of approval and satisfaction in the hag’s eyes, as the knives clinked and scraped and the prongs jabbed into tender meat.

She hoped Ivis came back in time. His presence alone was like a fist thumping the table, silencing everyone but Atran. Sandalath was jealous of the surgeon’s ease in teasing the captain, making her lust almost playful in its obviousness, and she could well see the discomfort it caused in Ivis, which hinted that his eye was perhaps fixed elsewhere.

Sandalath considered herself pretty; she had seen soldiers follow her with their eyes when she walked the courtyard, and she remembered how gentle his hands had been outside the carriage, when the heat of the journey had proved too much. He’d told her that he had a daughter, but she knew now that this was untrue. He was only being solicitous. She imagined that she’d needed that at the time, and it was this generosity in him that she found so compelling.

But where were her maids? The bell was close to sounding. The first courses were even now being prepared in the kitchen and Sandalath was hungry. She would wait a short while longer and then, if neither Rilt nor Thool showed, why, she would go down to the meal dressed as she was, and do her best to ignore Hilith’s quiet triumph.

She continued looking down on the empty courtyard.

Oh, Ivis, where are you?

Hilith stepped out from her quarters and marched up the corridor. She saw dust where there should be no dust. Rilt was due for a whipping, on the backs of the thighs where it hurt the most and where the welts and bruises couldn’t be seen under the maid’s tunic. And Thool wasn’t fooling Hilith at all — the maid was meeting two or three Houseblades a night, behind the barracks, earning extra coin because she had ambitions of getting away from all this. But Hilith had found where Thool hid her earnings, and when there was enough to make it worthwhile she would steal that cache and say nothing. A little extra come the winter would suit her fine, and if that meant Thool spreading her legs ten times a night with tears in her eyes, well, a whore was what a whore did.

Turning on to the corridor that led to the stairs she saw Spite on the floor ahead of her, crying over a blood-smeared knee. Clumsy whorespawn, too bad it wasn’t her skull. Nasty creature, nasty nasty. ‘Oh dear,’ she crooned, smiling, ‘that’s a nasty scrape, isn’t it?’

Spite looked up, eyes filling with tears all over again.

This was new. Hilith had never before seen any of these wretched daughters of the Lord ever cry. They’d been left to run wild, too privileged for a caning although Hilith longed to do just that — beat the things into being proper and meek. Children should be like frightened rabbits, since only that taught them the ways of the world, and showed them how to live in it.

‘It hurts,’ whined Spite. ‘Mistress Hilith, it might be broken! Can you look?’

‘I’m about to eat — do you think I want filthy blood on my hands? Go find the surgeon, or a healer in the barracks — they’ll love having you in there.’

‘But mistress-’ Spite rose suddenly, blocking Hilith’s path.

Hilith snorted. ‘So much for broken-’ There was a sound behind her and she began turning. Something punched her back, pulled free and punched again. Pain filled Hilith’s chest. Feeling unaccountably weak, she reached out one hand to grip Spite’s shoulder, but the girl, laughing, twisted away.

Hilith fell to the floor. She didn’t understand. She could barely lift her arms and her face was against the polished wood, and there was grit and dust between the boards. Rilt needed a whipping. They all did.

Envy looked at the small knife in her hand, saw how the blood from the miserable old witch sat on the polished iron blade in beads, like water on oil. Then she glanced down at Hilith who was lying on her stomach, head to one side and the eye that Envy could see staring sightlessly.

‘Stop gawking,’ Spite hissed.

‘We need a bigger knife,’ said Envy. ‘This won’t do for the men.’

‘It did fine for Hidast!’

‘He wasn’t much of a man, but Venth is. So is Setyl. Ivis-’

‘Ivis is away,’ said Spite. ‘I sent him into a dream. I can do that now. It’s easy.’

They had been busy. Slaughter in the laundry room. Murder in the maids’ cells. Dead cook, dead scullions — the knife in her hand they had stolen months past and Envy had thought to find something better in the kitchen, but the ones in there were too big to wield. She wished she were stronger, but so far everything had worked, and as long as she could strike from behind, with Spite distracting the victim, being a murderer was easy.

‘The men will be trouble,’ she said again.

‘Stab them in the throat,’ Spite said. She dipped a finger into a pool of blood creeping out from Hilith’s body and smeared her knee again. ‘Atran’s next. Let’s go, before the supper bell sounds.’

She’d heard from Corporal Yalad that Ivis had wandered into the forest, and for Atran the night ahead had fallen through a hole, and somewhere down there was oblivion, luring her, tempting her to find it. She decided that she wouldn’t wait for that first goblet of wine at the start of the meal, and so went into the surgery where she poured out a healthy measure of raw alcohol into a clay cup. She added a little water and then a small spoonful of powdered neth berries. She drank down half of the concoction and then stood, tilting back until she was against a wall, waiting for the burning shock to pass. Moments later she felt the first effect of the berries.

A dab of the black powder on an unconscious man’s tongue could stand him upright in a heartbeat, but she had been using it for so long that her body simply expanded, smoothly, warmth filling her limbs. Drinking invited sleep but the powder kept her awake, wildly invigorated. Without the alcohol in her blood right now she knew that she would be trembling, nerves twitching, vision fluttering. She’d seen a man punch through a solid door when spiked on neth powder.

The oblivion awaiting her was a delicious kind, especially when she could walk straight into it. The fall from the neth berries was swift and savage, and she would not move for at least a day from wherever she happened to collapse, but neither would she dream. And that was the bargain and she was content with it.

Ivis was gone for the night. Whatever haunted him she could not touch, and though she made her love plain to see, he was simply uninterested in her, and it was that disinterest that so wounded Atran, straight down through her body like a spear pinning her soul to the ground. She knew he took women to his bed — if his tastes had been for other men, then she would have understood and it would not be so bad. But it was her that he had no feelings for.

She was not ugly. A little too thin, perhaps, and getting thinner as the neth berries devoured her reserves, but her face was even, not too lined, not too wan or sunken. She had green eyes that men professed to admire, and the sharpness which had once made the same men uneasy was long gone, drowned away and for ever done with. Sharpness wasn’t a gift when bluntness was what was desired.

Spite limped into the surgery. ‘Atran? I hurt my knee! Come quick — I can’t walk any farther!’

The surgeon blinked. ‘Rubbish,’ she pronounced without moving.

The girl frowned. ‘What?’

‘That’s arterial blood and it’s smeared, not spurting. Did the cook slaughter another pig? You’re a sick little wretch, you know that?’

Spite stared at her, and then slowly straightened. ‘Just fooling,’ she said.

‘Get out of my sight.’

The girl scowled. ‘Father won’t like it when I tell him how you talk to me.’

‘Your father doesn’t like you, so why would he give a fuck how I talk to you?’

‘We’re going to kill you,’ said Spite. Envy stepped out from behind her and Atran saw the bloody knife in her hand.

‘What have you fools done? Who did you hurt? Where’s Malice?’

Envy rushed her, knife upraised.

Atran’s hand was a flash, catching the girl’s wrist and snapping it clean. She then picked up the child by the throat and threw her across the room. Envy struck the cutting table, her back arching, folding around the table’s edge — a table that was bolted to the floor.

Shrieking, Spite flung herself forward.

A slap sent her sprawling. Atran turned to see Envy picking herself up from the floor, and that was impossible — the girl’s back should have broken, snapped like a twig. Instead, something dark and vile was bleeding out from the girl, from her limbs, her hands, from her dark eyes. The tendrils of this dread sorcery reached out, curling like talons. The broken wrist was visibly mending, flesh writhing under the red skin.

Spite scrabbled to her feet, and in her Atran saw similar power. ‘You’re nothing!’ the girl hissed. ‘A useless drunk bitch!’

Sorcery lashed out from both of them, the tendrils whipping, scything into Atran. At their touch flesh burst, blood sprayed hot as melted wax. Atran held up her hands, shielding her eyes, and then lunged at Envy. The neth powder was roaring in her body, fuelling a rage that swept away the agony. Her groping hands found Envy’s face, took hold like a raptor’s claws and lifted the girl from her feet. When she threw Envy this time, it was with all her strength. The girl hammered into a wall, the back of her head crunching wetly. The sorcery enveloping her winked out.

Spite’s attack continued, lancing into her back, rending flesh down to the bone. Gasping, Atran wheeled, staggered forward.

The girl suddenly bolted for the doorway, but Atran’s boot caught her in the midriff. Spite skidded and struck the door frame. Her face bulged as she fought for air. Atran advanced, caught a flailing arm, and spun the girl around, into the wall behind her. Bones shattered at the impact, and Spite fell to the floor in a disordered heap.

The pain of her wounds tore at Atran’s mind. Moaning, trembling uncontrollably, she reached up and fumbled along a shelf bearing battle medicines. She found a vial of rellit oil, pushed the stopper from the bottle and quickly drank down its contents. The pain vanished like a candle’s flame under a bucket of water. Her clothes were shredded and soaked in burnt blood — but that heat had cauterized the wounds even as they had been delivered. She had no idea what was left of her back, but she knew that it was bad. Still, that would have to wait.

From both girls, there was motion. Bones were knitting before Atran’s eyes.

She had little time. On a peg affixed to one end of the cutting table were her surgeon’s tools. Stumbling over to the leather satchel, she plucked it free and unfolded it on the table. Taking a tendon knife in one hand, she went over to Envy. Picked her up by one limp arm and dragged her over to the table. She lifted the girl’s body and flopped it down on to the tabletop then pinned the girl’s left hand against the wood and drove the knife into the palm with all her strength.

Envy’s body jolted and the eyes fluttered. Atran selected another knife and nailed Envy’s other hand to the table. Then she collected up Spite and flung her down at the table’s opposite end. Two more knives pinned her hands to the table like her sister’s.

A part of Atran, lodged cowering in one corner of her mind, watched and knew that she had snapped inside. Madness had spilled out to fill the room and still it boiled. Those wide eyes staring out from that dark corner looked on in horror and disbelief, even as she stalked over to collect a cloak, pulling it over lacerated shoulders.

The girls wouldn’t stay put for long. Whatever sorcery filled them was too powerful, too eager for freedom. She needed to save as many people as possible. Get them out of the house — and then burn the house down to the ground.

Her strides jerky, wobbly, she made for the doorway.

Malice stepped into it, holding above her head a block of masonry. She threw it as if it were a brick. The massive stone slammed into Atran’s chest, shattering ribs. She fell, hit the floor on her back as if thrown down, her head snapping and crunching hard. Light blinded her. She could not breathe and she felt heat filling her lungs and she knew that she was already dead, her lungs drowning in blood. The light faded suddenly and she looked up to see Malice, her throat swollen black and blue and green, dried blood at the corners of her mouth. She had collected the huge stone and was lifting it again.

The eyes that met Atran’s in the moment before the stone descended on her face were empty of life — a look the surgeon had seen a thousand times before. Impossib -

Atran’s skull squashed flat, with gore spurting out to the sides. Malice stared down at what she had done. On the cutting table, her sisters were thrashing, trying to pull their hands from the knives pinning them to the surface.

Malice turned to them. ‘I’m mad at you,’ she said. ‘You took the lantern with you. You took away the light and left me all alone!’

‘Never again,’ hissed Envy. ‘We promise, never again!’

‘Now be a good girl and help us!’ Spite begged.

Venth stumped into the dining room. Only Setyl had arrived before him and the armourer sat glumly at the table, which had not yet been set. The master of horses frowned. ‘The bell’s sounded, by the Abyss. I do not even smell cooking — where are the staff? Where is everyone?’

Setyl blinked up at him, and then shrugged.

‘Did you not think to look?’ Without waiting for a reply — which wouldn’t ever come in Setyl’s case, anyway — Venth made his way to the service door that led to the kitchen. Something wasn’t right. He’d been looking forward to this meal, once he’d learned that Ivis would not be attending. He was furious with the captain. The horses were being pushed too hard — the wretched animals weren’t smart enough to resist a tyrant, and Ivis was surely that.

You’d think a damned war was coming -

He pushed open the door. There were bodies lying on the tiled floor, and pools of blood. He stared for a moment longer, trying to make sense of what he was seeing, and then he spun round and rushed back to the dining room.

‘Setyl!’

The scarred man looked up.

‘Get the Houseblades. Get Corporal Yalad. Someone’s murdered the staff. And look — look at us — where’s everyone else? Abyss take me — where is the hostage? Go! The Houseblades! And make sure they’re armed.’

As Setyl rushed out, Venth crossed the chamber and plunged into a side passage, the one leading to the hostage’s quarters. His shock was giving way to dread. Nothing was more sacrosanct than the safety of a hostage of the House. If he found her dead, the Lord would never survive the consequences. Even Mother Dark would be unable to protect him. Things go slack when Ivis isn’t around. The damned fool, wandering off into the wood all night! And now…

He told himself that he knew nothing, since the alternative made him recoil inside. Someone, an assassin, must have found a way into the house. This was an attack upon Dracons — the Lord was away and horror was being visited upon his home. Cowards.

Passing the maids’ cells he paused, and then knocked upon the door of the nearest one. There was no reply. Somewhere else or dead. Venth continued on. He found that he had drawn his knife.

Shouts sounded from the front entrance. The Houseblades were inside. As he drew closer to the hostage’s door, he wondered if it wasn’t already too late. They’ve killed her.

Still five paces from the door, he saw the latch suddenly turn and the door was thrown open. The hostage stood in the threshold. ‘Venth? What has happened? I saw running, in the courtyard-’

‘Mistress, please go back inside your room,’ Venth said.

She noted the knife in his hand and stepped back and he saw fear in her eyes.

Venth shook his head. ‘Assassins, mistress. There has been slaughter in this house. Go back. I will guard this passage until a Houseblade arrives.’

‘Slaughter? Who? My maids?’

‘I don’t know about them, mistress, but I fear the worst. Only Setyl and me arrived in the dining hall — no one else. Not Atran, or Hidast or Hilith.’ He turned at the sound of someone running up the corridor. Heart suddenly pounding hard, he readied himself. He would give his life here, defending her. And he’d hurt the bastard But it was Corporal Yalad. The young officer was pale and he had drawn his sword. He pulled up when he saw Venth, and then Sandalath. ‘Good,’ he said with a shaky nod. ‘Both of you, with me-’

‘Corporal,’ said Venth, ‘would it not be better if the hostage remained in her-’

‘No, I want every survivor with me, in the dining room. I know — I could post guards, but to be honest, until we know the nature of our attacker, I’ll not split up my squads.’

‘Corporal, you have six hundred Houseblades at your disposal-’

‘The squads I know and trust, horse master. The rest are locking down the grounds.’

‘I don’t understand,’ said Sandalath.

‘Mistress,’ replied Yalad, ‘if we’re in time, then the assassins are still with us. But no matter what, to get into the house… it is quite possible that there are co-conspirators. Indeed, given the number of new recruits we’ve been taking on, the assassins could well come from among the Houseblades. I am even now determining if anyone cannot be accounted for. For now, however, I want all the survivors in one place, where I can keep them safe. So please, both of you follow me.’

Venth gestured Sandalath between himself and Yalad, and in this formation they quickly made their way towards the dining hall.

‘Why is this happening?’ Sandalath asked.

When Yalad did not reply, Venth cleared his throat and said, ‘The Lord has enemies in the court, mistress.’

‘But he’s not even here!’

‘No, mistress, he isn’t.’

‘If he had been,’ growled Yalad ahead of them, ‘we’d be looking down at the corpses of however many assassins got in here tonight. And dead or not, Draconus would get answers from them.’

Venth grunted. ‘He’s no warlock, corporal. I don’t know where those rumours came from, but I ain’t never seen anything to suggest he is — and I wager neither have you.’

‘He is the Consort,’ Yalad countered. ‘Or would you deny Mother Dark’s ascension, horse master?’

‘I would not,’ Venth replied.

‘I may not have seen anything,’ Yalad said, ‘but Captain Ivis has.’

‘I wish the captain was here,’ said Sandalath.

‘You’re not alone in that,’ Yalad said in a growl, and Venth could not tell if the young man had taken offence. There were times when this hostage displayed all the tact of a child.

The corporal looked in each of the maid cells, but his glance was brief and he was quick to close the doors behind him before moving on. ‘I don’t get this,’ Venth heard him mutter. And then he halted.

Venth almost collided with the young man. ‘What is it, corporal?’

‘His daughters — have you seen them? Anywhere?’

‘No, but then, I rarely do,’ Venth replied. And I’m grateful for that.

‘Stay here,’ Yalad said, and then he edged past them, returning to the last of the cell doors. He went inside, and when he reappeared there was blood on his hands. He moved to pass them but Venth blocked him, and the thing he did not want to contemplate was now burning like a wildfire in his mind.

He met Yalad’s eyes. ‘Well?’

‘Not now, Venth.’ The corporal roughly pushed past. ‘Let’s go.’

‘But what about those little girls?’ Sandalath demanded. ‘If they’re out there with an assassin on the loose, we need to find them!’

‘Yes, mistress,’ Yalad said without turning. ‘We need to find them.’

It was just past dawn when Ivis stepped on to the track wending its way up to the grounds. He was exhausted, and in his mind, haunting him, was the face of the goddess who had been impaled on the stakes in the clearing. He remembered her smile and the absence of pain in her eyes — as if wounds meant nothing. Yet each time he saw that face, taking form in his mind’s eye as if reassembled from pieces, he thought about cruelty, and all the other faces he had seen in his life then crowded his skull as if clamouring for attention.

He feared the attention of gods. They had the faces of children, but these were not kind children, and all that was revealed in them, why, he could see it mirrored among the many men and women he had known. The same venality. The same unashamed indifference.

Cruelty was the bridge between mortals and the gods, and both sides had a hand in building it, stone upon stone, face upon face.

We are — each and every one of us — artists. And this is our creation.

When he came within sight of the keep wall, he saw Houseblades swarming the grounds, and a moment later a half-dozen of them were rushing towards him. Looking like children, when something has gone wrong. The sun’s light was hard and strangely harsh, as if every colour was paint, and every hue and every shade held in it, somewhere, a hint of iron. Ivis paused, and then made his way across the moat bridge to meet his Houseblades.