“None,” said Kanin. He insisted that his meals and his rest were undisturbed these days. Barring immediate need, not even his Shield were permitted to attend him. He and his thoughts occupied a world that every day seemed more distant from that inhabited by others; the two domains, he found, did not mix well.
Cannek nodded, satisfied. “There’s a council called at Hommen. The Battle, the Lore, some of the Captains from the Bloods. Aeglyss is coming down from Kan Avor.”
Kanin grimaced in surprise. “I’d not heard.”
“You were not invited, Thane. You’re thought to have… what’s the phrase? Retired from the fray, I suppose. You’ve shown no great interest in the broad course of events. And it’s Shraeve who is calling us together; she-or the halfbreed, I suppose we should say-is no great admirer of your talents. Or your preoccupations.”
“You’re going?” Kanin asked.
“I, and one or two of my fellows.”
“You’ll kill him?” said Kanin. The excitement he felt was not an elevating sentiment; there was nothing bright or warming about it.
“The opportunity may arise. It seems likely.” Cannek shrugged. “What the outcome will be, I cannot say. That’s for forces greater than you or I to determine.”
“How will you do it?” Kanin asked.
“Oh, best not to enquire too deeply into such things for now. We must preserve your innocence in these matters as far as we can, don’t you think? Half the point of this is to protect you, and your Blood, from the consequences of what is happening. Comfort yourself with the thought that our reach was long enough to put an end to a Thane in his own feasting hall. Aeglyss is a good deal nearer at hand than Lheanor ever was.”
There was a dull thump from outside one of the shuttered windows. Cannek’s eyes were drawn by the sound. His hand went to one of his knives, and had it halfway out of its sheath before Kanin could even draw breath.
“Snow,” the Thane said. “It falls from the roof.”
“Of course.” Cannek relaxed a trifle, though his hand remained on the knife.
Kanin pushed back the bench on which he sat from the table, and rose. He began to stride back and forth. A rare vigour, such as he seldom felt now except when in battle, had taken hold of him.
“It’s as well you came to tell me. I could not have waited much longer, whatever promises you dangled before me. It’s eating me from the inside out. What must be done, must be done.”
“Patience is a virtue often rewarded by fate, Thane. Your restraint has been commendable, I’m sure. Still, I told you the Hunt would take this burden from you, and so we will, if fortune permits us. The Hunt does not make empty promises.”
“Does it not?” growled Kanin. He could think of more than one occasion when the Hunt Inkall had failed in its avowed intent-not least when the children of Kennet nan Lannis-Haig had slipped through its grasp in the Car Criagar-but now was not the time to pick fights with the one ally he had against Aeglyss. And there was as clear a sign as there could be of how misshapen everything had become: that he should look to the ranks of the Hunt for allies.
He sat heavily on a three-legged stool close by the fire. His limbs would not rest, though, and he was back on his feet in a moment.
“Does Goedellin concur in this?” he demanded. “Does the Lore give its backing?”
Cannek sighed expressively. “The Lore deals in fine judgements. The intricacies of the creed, teasing out the complexities of any case or cause: these are things we can leave to Goedellin. You and I, we can deal in more… direct explorations of fate’s intent.”
“No, then,” said Kanin. “The Lore will not take your side. Our side.”
“The Lore-or Goedellin, who is the Lore here and now-reserves its judgement,” said Cannek, spreading his arms. “Let us leave it at that.”
“Can’t he see?” cried Kanin in exasperation. “Is he so slack-eyed he can’t see an enemy when one stands before him?”
“It is possible to see too much, sometimes.” Cannek said. “Too many possibilities, too many potential explanations. Success easily overturns old rules, old ways of thinking. Such are the victories we have gained, it is no surprise that some-many-see the glimmer of still greater, perhaps even final, glories on the horizon. For such a prize, they are willing to keep the most surprising company.
“But in any case, I do not think of Aeglyss as my enemy, Thane. I will try to kill him, but not out of malice. I simply mistrust the notion that he is fated to play so central a role in our affairs. I mistrust the notion that a halfbreed, and one whose adherence to the creed is at best questionable, should be the one to usher in the final triumph of our faith. Others find those notions more plausible than I. There is error, somewhere. My only intent is to remove any uncertainty over whose it is. Fate already knows the answer. Soon, we will too.”
And that is where our ways must part, thought Kanin. The vengeful, unambiguous passion that burned in him was something Cannek would never share. The Inkallim still framed everything in terms of the faith, of fate. Once Kanin might have thought in the same patterns, but such habits had flaked away from his mind like dead skin, day by day.
The door creaked open, caught by the cold wind. A flurry of snowflakes tumbled in and Kanin saw, sitting outside, one of Cannek’s great dark, jowly hounds. As if sensing an invitation, the beast rose and took a couple of heavy paces towards the light and warmth. Cannek rose and went to the door, giving an animal hiss. The dog sank back onto its haunches as the Inkallim closed it out.
“I will come to Hommen,” Kanin said.
“Indeed,” said Cannek, going to stand by the fire, taking its heat into his back. “Even uninvited, your presence could hardly be challenged. You are a Thane, after all.”
“I want to see him die.”
“I assumed you would.”
“We’ll leave in the morning.”
“You do as you wish. I will be travelling through the night.” The Inkallim scooped his knives up from the table and began strapping them back onto his arms. “It would be best if we did not arrive together. Our intimacies must remain secret, Thane, like any pair of illicit lovers.”
Kanin grimaced. “It’s not love we cultivate.”
V
A host of crows came raucously in under the clouds, like black fish shoaling in the shallow sky. They jostled and tumbled and rolled their way down into the naked trees on the edge of town, where they roosted. Orisian watched their tumultuous descent through the dusk, and in their voices heard the sound of Highfast, where he had watched their like playing violent games with the mountain wind. Highfast, of which neither Yvane nor Eshenna would willingly speak now, fearful of its meaning, of what they had felt happening there.
Only the vaguest of rumours had reached Ive regarding that remote stronghold’s fate, but Orisian had access to other truths, ones he thought more reliable than the wild stories of terrified villagers. He believed what Yvane had told him before she fell into grim reticence on the subject: na’kyrim minds snuffed out like crushed candle flames, a torrent of death and destruction running through the Shared. Aeglyss. Aeglyss, the question to which he could find no answer. Perhaps there was none to be had, but he could not bring himself to stop looking.
Torcaill and a handful of his warriors walked at Orisian’s back. They had been shadowing him for much of the day, disturbed by the violence visited upon Ive’s sentries in the night, and upon the Haig messengers. Every raised voice, every figure moving in an alley or doorway, seemed a possible threat. A formless dread, an anticipation of imminent catastrophe, was in the air.
When they reached the house where Eshenna and Yvane sheltered, Orisian defied Torcaill’s protests and left his escort on the street. It was not only that he found the poorly concealed unease of the warriors when in the company of na’kyrim distracting; there was also a deeper-rooted instinct to keep some portion of whatever incomplete and vague truths might emerge here hidden. There was too much in K’rina’s plight, and in the things Yvane and Eshenna spoke of, that could point the way to despair.
Yvane and Eshenna were seated by the crackling fire. They had flatbreads spread on slates and propped up
