challenge those three offered. No one could deny them the submission they demanded.
“Kill the girl who served me my wine,” Aeglyss said. “And all the rest of the servants. All of them.”
He looked up at Shraeve and she nodded.
“You’ve uttered not a word, Thane,” Aeglyss said to Kanin. “I’ve never known such silence from you. Have you nothing to say?”
“Nothing.” Kanin rose, horrified at the effort it took to turn away from Aeglyss, and at the yearning he felt to love the halfbreed and all that he offered. But his hatred provided the one, thin sheen of armour he needed to resist that call. He spared a lingering moment for a last look at Cannek lying dead on the floor, and walked out. An absurd, half-formed smile had been locked into the Inkallim’s lips by death.
Kanin waited outside, and the rest came soon after him, emerging blinking into the clear winter light. All were silent; some thoughtful, some shocked and shaken. In some faces he was sickened to see a sort of joy. This, he understood, was how it happened. There were some-many, perhaps-who found the horrors that Aeglyss embodied and offered not repellent but intoxicating. Once they caught their first scent of his corruption they wanted nothing more than to drink deep of it, to drown themselves in it.
When Goedellin appeared, Kanin stepped in front of the Lore Inkallim, forcing the old, bent man to stop.
“How many have to die, Goedellin? Before you will open your eyes to this madness?”
The Inner Servant rapped the heel of his walking stick on the ground but said nothing.
“My sister was the truest and most loyal follower of the creed, old man. Every beat of her heart was a promise of faith. Is she owed nothing for that lifetime of fidelity? Did it earn her no honour from the Lore?”
“Such matters are not straightforward, Thane,” Goedellin grumbled. He shuffled sideways, trying to pass.
Kanin blocked his path. “We had tutors when we were children,” he said quietly, insistently. “Tutors from your Inkall.”
“I know. Wain told me.”
“Did she tell you that my father wanted to send them away? After only a couple of seasons, he doubted his decision to bring them to Hakkan. She changed so quickly, you see. She devoured their teachings as if she had been starving until then, without ever knowing it. My father was disturbed by it.”
The Inner Servant of the Lore angled his head a little, looking up to meet Kanin’s gaze just for a moment.
“We knew nothing of it until one day the tutors were simply gone. Wain flew into such a rage.” Kanin smiled at the memory, at the thought of that distant childhood, but knew it would bring unbearable pain if he let it take too firm a hold. “She meant to have them back, and she did. A little girl, Goedellin, bending a whole castle, the household of a Thane, to her will. She sulked, and raged, and the tutors were recalled. That was what it meant to her.”
The Inkallim was shaking his bowed head, though what the gesture meant Kanin did not know.
“She should not have died,” Kanin whispered. “You know this is not as it should be. You know this is not fate.”
“What else is there, Thane?” Goedellin snapped. “What else is there?”
“Corruption! You think the warriors of the creed are fated to fawn over that monstrous little creature in there? You think this is what Tegric’s Hundred died for? For us to submit ourselves to the twisted delusions of that…?”
“Thane.”
Kanin turned. Shraeve was standing a few paces away in the doorway, watching him with those dead eyes. Her swords lay once more across her back, their hilts framing her face.
“Aeglyss would talk with you,” she said.
In the instant of Kanin’s distraction, Goedellin brushed unsteadily past him, hobbling after all the others.
“It’s not fate,” Kanin hissed after the old man. “It’s something else.”
He turned back to Shraeve, his lip curled in contempt. “Let your master talk to those who wish to hear.”
“You will wish to hear this, Thane.” She was unmoved by his bitter tone, as if what he felt or thought was of less consequence than the dance of a fly on a breeze. “It is for no one else but you. It concerns your sister.”
And she turned and walked away. Like a hunter who knew her quarry was safely taken, needing and deserving no more of her attention. Kanin followed, heavy-footed, back into the hall, unable to do anything else. He wondered, with little interest, if he might be going to his death.
Behind him he heard startled, pitiful yelps. They were killing Cannek’s hounds.
Aeglyss was alone in the hall, standing waiting for Kanin. Cannek’s corpse was gone, along with Hothyn and the other woodwights who must have carried it away. So easily do we vanish from the world, Kanin thought. Our every intention and hope disappears in a moment, and counts for nothing.
Shraeve, at his side, drew Kanin to a halt three swords’ lengths from Aeglyss. Feeling her touch, he turned to rebuke her, but the words died in his throat, smothered by the sound of Aeglyss’ voice.
“You hate me, Thane. Don’t trouble to deny it. I can taste your hatred of me, and that’s a flavour I know well. It’s been all around me through my whole life, the very air I breathe. There’s nothing more to you than your desire to see me dead. And I understand. I do.”
The halfbreed’s voice dripped with concern, with affection. A warm, comforting sense of sympathy enfolded Kanin, an almost physical sensation: a kind hand, taking him in its gentle grasp.
“Terrible things have happened,” Aeglyss whispered. “You know but a fragment of it. I promise you, though, I promise you: I loved your sister just as dearly as you did.”
The truth of that was an unquestionable certainty, insinuating itself into Kanin’s mind, entangling itself with the instinctive revulsion he felt at the thought. The bitter retorts that came boiling up towards his lips were snared and snuffed out.
“I can hardly tell any more what I remember, what I imagine, what memories I gather into me from the Shared,” Aeglyss rasped. “But I know I loved her, and she loved me. She loved me as none has before. Only my mother… my mothers. But I was not strong enough to save her. Oh, I longed to. You cannot know…”
A tear, at the corner of the na’kyrim’s grey eye. Kanin could see nothing else but that perfect bead of moisture, a gleam of torchlight reflected in its smooth surface. It ran free, and Kanin watched its descent, felt his own vast grief carried along with it and growing, bursting up, swelling to merge with the still greater sorrow that filled the hall like a turbid mist. He trembled, overcome by the sense that there was nothing in all the world save loss and impotence.
“Nothing is as I wanted it to be,” Aeglyss said thickly. “I never asked for all this death. Hers least of all. Don’t you understand? What has happened is… I didn’t choose this. Why can’t you see that? Give me your forgiveness, Thane. Give me her forgiveness.”
“Forgive?” Kanin murmured. His thoughts were softening, losing their shape.
“It was my weakness.” Aeglyss hung his head. “I could not sustain her love for me and still take hold of the Shadowhand. I would have done, if I could. Oh, nothing would have been sweeter. But I am too weak, too feeble; and I had to have the Shadowhand.” He looked suddenly at Shraeve, and then to Kanin, beseeching. “We had to have the Shadowhand, did we not? We needed him? I gave up so much-Wain, K’rina-but the sacrifice was necessary, wasn’t it?”
Kanin pitied the halfbreed in that moment, and could easily have reached out to him in comfort, offered the forgiveness and agreement that he craved. Yet nothing, no bewilderment of his mind, could wholly extinguish the murderous flame that persisted in the deepest, most fortified, refuge of his self. It flickered there still, and through all the fogs that beset him, its light remained a beacon he could follow.
“No path worth following is without sacrifice,” he heard Shraeve saying beside him.
“No,” whispered Aeglyss. “No. And she knew that. Wain knew that.” He looked up, and there was a new chill in the gaze he laid upon Kanin. “Others know it. Yet you do not, Thane. You are like ice, on which none of this can find purchase. There is something in you that resists me. Denies me.
“Why is it that you cannot share in this understanding? The Battle sees the shape of things, the Lore, and the White Owls. The Bloods fall in at my side, for they understand what it is I offer, what I can give to those who walk with me. All I ask for is loyalty. Trust. If those things had been there from the start-if you had offered them to me, Thane-none of this need have happened. Yet here we are. By choice or not, wondrous events begin to unfold, and I allow even those who have betrayed me to share in them. Why can you not be a part of this?”
