‘It’s melting, Cherrytart,’ he said.
‘Well you’re just getting smarter day by day, dearie. We knowed it was melting. We knowed that a long time coming. We knowed it sober and we knowed it drunk.’ She lifted her hamper. ‘Now, we looking at a late supper or are we looking at an early breakfast?’
‘Let’s stretch it out and make it both.’
‘Can’t make it both. One or the other and if we stretch it out it’ll be neither so make up your mind.’
‘What’s got you so touchy, love?’
‘It’s melting, dammit, and that means ants at the picnic’
‘We knew it was coming-’
‘So what? Ants is ants.’
They settled down onto the bank, waving at mosquitoes.
Ursto unstoppered the jug as Pinosel unwrapped the hamper. He reached for a tidbit and she slapped his hand away. He offered her the jug and she scowled, then accepted it. With her hands full, he snatched the tidbit then leaned back, content as he popped the morsel into his mouth.
Then gagged. ‘Errant’s ear, what is this?’
‘That was a clay ball, love. For the scribing. And now, we’re going to have to dig us up some more. Or, you are, since it was you who ate the one we had.’
‘Well, it wasn’t all bad, really. Here, give me that jug so’s I can wash it down.’
A pleasant evening, Ursto reflected somewhat blearily, to just sit and watch a pond melt.
At least until the giant demon trapped in the ice broke loose. At that disquieting thought, he shot his wife and sometime lover a glance, remembering the day long ago when they’d been sitting here, all peaceful and the like, and she’d been on at him to get married and he’d said-oh well, he’d said it and now here they were and that might’ve been the Errant’s nudge but he didn’t think so.
No matter what the Errant thought.
‘I seen that nostalgic look in your eyes, hubby-bubby. What say we have a baby?’
Ursto choked a second time, but on nothing so prosaic as a ball of clay.
The central compound of the Patriotists, the Lether Empire’s knotted core of fear and intimidation, was under siege. Periodically, mobs heaved against the walls, rocks and jugs of oil with burning rag wicks sailing over to crash down in the compound. Flames had taken the stables and four other outbuildings three nights past, and the terrible sound of screaming horses had filled the smoky air. It had been all the trapped Patriotists could do to keep the main block from catching fire.
Twice the main gate had been breached, and a dozen agents had died pushing the frenzied citizens back. Now an enormous barricade of rubble, charred beams and furniture blocked the passage. Through the stench and sooty puddles of the compound, figures walked, armoured as soldiers might be and awkward in the heavy gear. Few spoke, few met the eyes of others, in dread of seeing revealed the haunted, stunned disbelief that resided in their own souls.
The world did not work like this. The people could always be cowed, the ringleaders isolated and betrayed with a purse of coin or, failing that, quietly removed. But the agents could not set out into the streets to twist the dark deals. There were watchers, and gangs of thugs nearby who delighted in beating hapless agents to death, then flinging their heads back over the wall. And whatever operatives remained at large in the city had ceased all efforts at communicating-either had gone into hiding or were dead.
The vast network had been torn apart.
If it had been simple, Tanal Yathvanar knew, if it had been as easy as negotiating the release of prisoners according to the demands of the mob, then order could be restored. But those people beyond the compound wall were not friends and relatives of the scores of scholars, intellectuals and artists still locked up in the cells below. They didn’t care a whit about the prisoners and would be just as happy to see them all burn along with the main block. So there was no noble cause to all of this. It was, he now understood, nothing but bloodlust.
Is it any wonder we were needed? To control them. To control their baser instincts. Now look what has happened.
He stood near the front door, watching the pike-wielding agents patrolling the filthy compound. A number of times, in fact, they’d heard shouted demands for Tehol Beddict. The mob wanted him for themselves. They wanted to tear him to pieces. The Grand Drowning at dusk on the morrow was not enough to appease their savage need.
But there would be no releasing Tehol Beddict. Not as long as Karos Invictad remained in charge.
Yet, if we gave him up, they might all calm down and go away. And we could begin again. Yes. Were I in charge, they could have Tehol Beddict, with my blessing.
But not]anath. Oh no, she is mine. For ever now. He had been shocked to discover that she had few memories of her previous incarceration, but he had taken great pleasure in re-educating her. Ha, re-educating the teacher. I like that one. At least Karos Invictad had been generous there, giving her to him. And now she resided in a private cell, chained to a bed, and he made use of her day and night. Even when the crowds raged against the walls and agents were dying keeping them out, he would lie atop her and have his way. And she’d fast learned to say all the right things, how to beg for more, whispering her undying desire (no, he would not force her to speak of love, because that word was dead now between them. For ever dead) until those words of desire became real for her.
The attention. The end to loneliness. She had even cried out the last time, cried out his name as her back arched and her limbs thrashed against the manacles.
Cried out for him: Tanal Yathvanar, who even as a child had known he was destined for greatness-for was that not what they all told him, over and over again? Yes, he had found his perfect world, at last. And what had happened? The whole damned city had collapsed, threatening all he now possessed.
All because of Karos Invictad. Because he refused to hand over Tehol Beddict and spent all his waking time staring into a small wooden box at a two-headed insect that had-hah-outwitted him in its dim, obstinate stupidity. There is a truth hidden in that, isn’t there! I’m certain of it. Karos and his two-headed insect, going round and round and round and so it will go until it dies. And when it does, the great Invigilator will go mad.
But he now suspected he would not be able to wait for that. The mob was too hungry.
Beyond the walls there was quiet, for the moment, but something vast and thousand-headed was seething on the other side of Creeper Canal, and would soon cross over from Far Reaches and make its way down to North Tiers. He could hear its heavy susurration, a tide in the darkness pouring down streets, gushing into and out of alleys, spreading bloody and black into avenues and lanes. He could smell its hunger in the bitter smoke.
And it comes for us, and it will not wait. Not even for Karos Invictad, the Invigilator of the Patriotists, the wealthiest man in all the empire.
He allowed himself a soft laugh, then he turned about and entered the main block. Down the dusty corridor, walking unmindful over crusted streaks left behind when the wounded and dying had been dragged inside. The smell of stale sweat, spilled urine and faeces-as bad as the cells below-and yes, are we not prisoners now, too? With bare scraps for food and well water fouled with ashes and blood. Trapped here with a death sentence hanging round our necks with the weight of ten thousand docks, and nothing but deep water on all sides.
Another thought to amuse him; another thought to record in his private books.
Up the stairs now, his boots echoing on the cut limestone, and into the corridor leading to the Invigilator’s office, Karos Invictad’s sanctum. His own private cell. No guards in the passage-Karos no longer trusted them. In fact, he no longer trusted anyone. Except me. And that will prove his greatest error.
Reaching the door he pushed it open without knocking and stepped inside, then halted.
The room stank, and its source was sprawled in the chair opposite the Invigilator and his desk.
Tehol Beddict. Smeared in filth, cut and scabbed and bruised-Karos Invictad’s prohibition against such treatment was over, it seemed.
‘I have a guest,’ the Invigilator snapped. ‘You were not invited, Tanal Yathvanar. Furthermore, I did not hear you knock, yet another sign of your growing insolence.’
‘The mob will attack again,’ Tanal said, eyes flicking to Tehol. ‘Before dawn. I thought it best to inform you of our weakened defences. We have but fourteen agents remaining still able to defend us. This time, I fear, they will break through.’
‘Fame is murderous,’ Tehol Beddict said through split lips. ‘I hesitate in recommending it.’
