Deadhouse Gates

'No.'

The captain was silent a long time, then he sighed. 'You've somehow crossed blades with Minala. That's an unwelcome tension to our little family, wouldn't you say?'

Kalam said nothing.

After a moment, Keneb continued. 'Colonel Tras wanted a quiet, obedient wife, a wife to perch on his arm and make pretty sounds-'

'Not very observant, was he?'

'More like stubborn. Any horse can be broken, was his philosophy. And that's what he set about doing.'

'Was the colonel a subtle man?'

'Not even a clever one.'

'Yet Minala is both — what in Hood's name was she thinking?'

Keneb's eyes narrowed on the assassin's, as if he'd suddenly grasped something. Then he shrugged. 'She loves her sister.'

Kalam looked away with a humourless grin. 'Isn't the officer corps a wonderful life.'

Tras wasn't long for that backwater garrison post. He used his messengers to weave a broad net. He was maybe a week away from catching a new commission right at the heart of things.'

'Aren.'

'Aye.'

'You'd get the garrison command, then.'

'And ten more Imperials a month. Enough to hire good tutors for Kesen and Vaneb, instead of that wine- addled old toad with the fiddling hands attached to the garrison staff.'

'Minala doesn't look broken,' Kalam said.

'Oh, she's broken all right. Forced healing was the colonel's mainstay. It's one thing to beat a person senseless, then have to wait a month or more for her to mend before you can do it again. With a squad healer with gambling debts at your side, you can break bones before breakfast and have her ready for more come the next sunrise.'

'With you smartly saluting through it all-'

Keneb winced, glanced away. 'Can't object to what you don't know, Corporal. If I'd had as much as a suspicion …' He shook his head. 'Closed doors. It was Selv who found out, through a launderer we shared with the colonel's household. Blood on the sheets and all that. When she told me I went to call him out to the compound.' He grimaced. 'The rebellion interrupted me — I walked into an ambush well under way, and then my only concern was in keeping us all alive.'

'How did the good colonel die?'

'You've just come to a closed door, Corporal.'

Kalam smiled. 'That's all right. Times like these I can see through them well enough.'

'Then I needn't say any more.'

'Looking at Minala, none of this makes sense,' the assassin said.

'There's different kinds of strength, I guess. And defences. She used to be close with Selv, with the children. Now she wraps herself around them like armour, just as cold and just as hard. What she's having trouble with is you, Kalam. You've wrapped yourself in the same way but around her — and the rest of us.'

And she's feeling redundant? Maybe that's how it would look to Keneb. 'Her trouble with me is that she doesn't trust me, Captain.'

'Why in Hood's name not?'

Because I'm holding daggers unseen. And she knows it. Kalam shrugged. 'From what you've told me, I'd expect trust to be something she wouldn't easily grant to anyone, Captain.'

Keneb mused on this, then he sighed and rose. 'Well, enough of that. I've a shroud to stare up at and snores to count.'

Kalam watched the captain move away and settle down beside Selv. The assassin drew a deep, slow breath. I expect your death was a quick one, Colonel Tras. Be fickle, dear Hood, and spit the bastard back out. I'll kill him again, and Queen turn away, I'll not be quick.

On his belly, Fiddler wormed his way down the rock-tumbled slope, heedlessly scraping his knuckles as he held out his cocked crossbow before him. That bastard Servant's dissolving in a dozen stomachs by now. Either that or his head's riding a pike minus the ears now dangling from someone's hip.

All of Icarium's and Mappo's skills had been stretched to the limit with the simple effort of keeping everyone alive. The Whirlwind, for all its violence, was no longer an empty storm scouring a dead land. Servant's trail had led the group into a more focused mayhem.

Another lance flew out from the swirling ochre curtain to his left and landed with a clatter ten paces from where the sapper lay. Your goddess's wrath leaves you as blind as us, fool!

They were in hills crawling with Sha'ik's desert warriors. There was both coincidence and something else in this fell convergence. Convergence indeed. The followers seek the woman they're sworn to follow. Too bad that the other path happens to be here as well.

Distant screams rose above the wind's more guttural howl. ho, the hills are alive with beasts. Foul-tempered ones at that. Three times in the past hour Icarium had led them around a Soletaken or a D'ivers. There was some kind of mutually agreed avoidance going on — the shapeshifters wanted nothing to do with the Jhag. But Sha'ik's fanatics. . ah, now they're fair game. Lucky for us.

Still, the likelihood that Servant still lived seemed, to Fiddler's mind, very small indeed. He worried for Apsalar as well, and found himself-ironically — praying that a god's skills would prove equal to the task.

Two desert warriors wearing leather armour appeared ahead and below, scampering with panicked haste down towards the base of the gorge.

Fiddler hissed a curse. He was the group's flank on this side — if they got past him …

The sapper raised his crossbow.

Black cloaks swept over the two figures. They shrieked. The cloaks swarmed, crawled. Spiders, big enough to make out each one even at this distance. Fiddler's skin prickled. You should have brought brooms, friends.

He pushed himself up from the crevasse he had wedged himself into, angled right as he scrambled along the slope. And if I don't get back into Icarium's influence soon, I'll be wishing I had as well.

The screams of the desert warriors ceased, either with the distance the sapper put between him and them, or blissful release — he hoped the latter. Directly ahead rose the side of the ridge that had — thus far — marked Apsalar and her father's trail.

The wind tugged at him as he clambered his way to the top. Almost immediately he stumbled onto the spine and caught sight of the others, no more than ten paces ahead. The three were crouched over a motionless figure.

Fiddler went cold. Oh, Hood, make it a stranger...

It was. A young man, naked, his skin too pale to make him one of Sha'ik's desert tribesmen. His throat had been cut, the wound gaping down to the vertebra's flattened inner side. There was no blood.

As Fiddler slowly crouched down, Mappo looked over at the sapper. 'A Soletaken, we think,' he said.

'That's Apsalar's work,' Fiddler said. 'See how the head was pushed forward and down, chin tucked to anchor the blade — I've seen it before …'

'Then she's alive,' Crokus said.

'As I said,' Icarium rumbled. 'As is her father.'

So far so good. Fiddler straightened. 'There's no blood,' he said. 'Any idea how long ago he was killed?'

'No more than an hour,' Mappo said. 'As for the lack of blood …' He shrugged. 'The Whirlwind is a thirsty goddess.'

The sapper nodded. 'I think I'll stick closer from now on, if you don't mind — I don't think we'll have any more trouble from Sha'ik's warriors — call it a gut feeling.'

Mappo nodded. 'For the moment, we ourselves walk the Path of Hands.'