‘That promotion was honorary only. I’m retired.’
The captain pulled off her helmet and the padded leather hood beneath. She was fair, startlingly so, her long white-blonde hair tightly braided. For the life of him Rillish could not place her background. Few on Quon were so pale, and there was something in her voice, the accent unusual.
‘That retirement was voluntary. Under terms of service you are still in reserve. The Empire, sir, did not let you go.’
‘That fat toad on the throne…’ Talia hissed beneath her breath.
Rillish raised a hand for quiet. ‘I’m sorry, Captain, but there must be some misunderstanding. Firm agreements were made in the terms of my service and retirement. I am finished with the Empire.’
The captain gave a judicious nod. ‘That may be true, sir. But, as I say, the Empire may not be finished with you.’
Talia’s hand found his, hot and sweaty. He squeezed. ‘There is nothing, Captain, that could induce me to return.’
‘Nothing?’ The captain peered about the yard, the modest garden plot, the fields, the paddock of horses, before finally returning to him. ‘Perhaps there is somewhere we can talk, sir?’
Rillish shrugged. ‘Well, we can go for a walk if you wish.’ He released Talia’s hand. ‘But I believe you’ve come a long way to no profit. You may water the mounts, of course, and perhaps we can find something for your troop.’
‘You are kind, sir.’ She turned to the detachment. ‘Stand down. See to the horses.’
Dismounted, the woman was as tall as Rillish, and far older than he’d thought, perhaps close to his own fifty. The lines around the eyes and mouth gave her age away. ‘And you are?’
She saluted. ‘Peleshar is my full name, but I go by Peles. At your service, Fist.’
Rillish let the rank reference pass. ‘Peleshar… an unusual name
…’
She nodded. ‘I am from south Genabackis.’
Rillish was surprised and impressed. ‘You served in One-Arm’s host?’
‘No, sir. I saw action in the Free City campaigns. Then I served in the liaison contingent to the Moranth.’
Even more impressive. A record of service that should warrant a rank far higher than captain. And the Free City campaigns — those went far back indeed. He managed to stop himself from being so gauche as to ask just how far back, and invited the captain to accompany him.
‘I’ll see what we can pull together for the troopers,’ Talia said, her gaze hard on the captain.
Peles bowed. ‘My thanks.’
They stopped at the paddock. Suspicious of the stranger, the horses snorted and edged away. The captain studied them with admiration. ‘Fine mounts. They are Wickan?’
Watching the horses as well, Rillish smiled his affection. ‘Yes. You are in the cavalry?’
A laugh. ‘Fanderay, no. I have had little exposure to horses. My people are not riders. We have other… specialties. I am a commander of marines.’
Rillish nodded, brushed drying bark from the still-green wood of the fence. ‘So, Captain. Why are you here?’
‘I am only the messenger, of course. I was asked to deliver this.’ She held out a slim, tightly bound scroll. ‘I am told it is from Emperor Mallick’s own hand.’
Rillish regarded it without moving. For a moment he feared it was poisoned. Then he mocked himself, thinking, why would the man bother when he could just dispatch his Claw assassins to kill them in their sleep? He took the scroll, broke the seal, and read.
It was a long time before he lowered the short note.
Captain Peles had not moved nor spoken the whole time. She had merely watched the horses, her surprisingly thick forearms resting on the paddock fence. Patient, this one. We might get along at that. Rillish returned the scroll. ‘Very well, Captain. I accept. As he knew I would, no doubt.’
‘Yes, Fist. So I was told.’
Rillish turned to face the yard where his wife and the servants were sharing out bread and cold meats. ‘Now the hard part, Captain.’
She nodded, clearing her throat. ‘I’ll ready my men and women.’
Before he even got close enough to speak, she knew. Her face stiffened and she turned away to enter the house without a word. Rillish followed, but she was gone, fled to some back room. He went to the storeroom where his gear lay rolled in leather. He dug about for his blades, his father’s old Untan two-edged longswords. He found them under the shelves, wrapped in oiled rags. When he straightened she was in the doorway. Tears glistened on her cheeks.
‘What did he offer?’
‘Everything.’
She gestured savagely to the surroundings, the house, the yard. ‘You have everything you need here — don’t you?’
‘Yes.’
She wiped the tears from her face. ‘Isn’t it enough?’
‘Yes.’ He closed to hold her but she backed away. ‘This is all I need, Talia. But he offered to give it all back — everything. How could I refuse?’
Her mouth tightened to a slit and she spat, ‘We don’t want it.’
He lowered his gaze, pulled one blade a short way from its scabbard, then shoved it home. When he looked up she was gone.
Captain Peles had halted her detachment a short way down the dirt road. With the help of his foreman, Rillish saddled his favourite mount, then led it out into the yard. Here Halgin waited with his nanny. When the toddler saw him he broke free to run. Rillish knelt to hold his shoulders. The lad peered up, his gaze as blue and open as the sky. Rillish kissed his forehead. He could hardly find his voice. ‘I’m going away for a time, son. What I’m doing, I’m doing for you, and for little Nil or Nether to come. I want you to know that I love you more than I could ever say. Goodbye for now.’
He straightened but Halgin grabbed his leg and would not let go. In the end the nanny came to pull the howling lad away. Mounting, Rillish searched for Talia but didn’t see her anywhere. That hurt, but he teased the reins to start down the road.
When he reached the detachment, Captain Peles raised her chin to motion back behind him and he turned. She stood there. The captain signed for her detachment to move on.
He watched her. For the longest time they remained unmoving, studying one another over the stretch of dusty dirt road between, she motionless beside the unfinished gate to their little yard hemmed in by the house and paddock. Such a small allotment, hardly enough to get by, let alone prosper. He thought of his family’s many estates in Unta. The largest, hard by the Gris border, a man could not cross in a full day’s riding. All that had been his before the Insurrection, before his choice to side against the Empress’s edicts on the Wickan pogrom had stripped him of it. Now the Emperor offered it all back for his return to active duty — and just where, he believed he knew. And he’d accepted. Not for himself of course, but for Halgin. It would be his legacy now. He hoped his son would have better luck of it than he or his father before him.
He raised a hand in farewell and she answered, slowly. He lowered his arm and turned away.
In the end Kiska had no idea why she agreed to Agayla’s request that she accompany her up-island for a walk among the windswept hills. Perhaps it was the daytime sight of the Deadhouse: if anything even more foreboding in the full glare of the sun and even more unsettling to her senses now than she remembered from her youth.
Could this tomb-like dilapidated hulk really be of the Azath? A mysterious network of dwellings, caves or houses, call them what you would — structures, of some sort — that some claimed pervade creation? All she knew of them was what she had overheard speculated about in Tayschrenn’s presence, and that precious little. In fact, she remembered scholars who had approached Tayschrenn for his knowledge of them and their outrage at his opinion that the Azath were not a matter for human investigation. ‘They are waning,’ she heard him say once. ‘We should let them go in peace.’
She rested a hand on the low wall of piled fieldstones surrounding the house’s grounds and thought of
