A grinding sound, then the door was pushed open.
The figure that climbed into view was no Letherii soldier. It was wearing plain leather armour that revealed, without question, that it was a woman, and on her face an enamel mask with a modest array of painted sigils. Two swords strapped across her back. One stride, then two. A glance to Fiddler on her right, then to Cuttle on her left. Pausing, brushing dirt from her armour, then setting out. Onto the killing field, and away.
Bathed in sweat, Fiddler settled back into a sitting position, the crossbow trembling in his hands.
Cuttle made a warding gesture, then sat down as well. ‘Hood’s breath was on my neck, Fid. Right there, right then. I know, she didn’t even reach for those weapons, didn’t even twitch…’
‘Aye,’ Fid answered, the word whispered like a blessing. A Hood-damned Seguleh. High ranked, too. We’d never have got our shots off-no way. Our heads would have rolled like a pair of oversized snowballs.
‘I looked away, Fid. I looked right down at the ground when she turned my way.’
‘Me too.’
‘And that’s why we’re still alive.’
‘Aye.’
Cuttle turned and peered down into the dark tunnel. ‘We don’t have to wait till tomorrow night after all.’
‘Go back to the others, Cuttle. Get Keneb to draw ‘em up. I’m heading in to check the other end. If it’s unguarded and quiet, well and good, If not…’
‘Aye, Fid.’
The sergeant dropped down into the tunnel.
He moved through the dark as fast as he could without making too much noise. The wall overhead was damned thick and he’d gone thirty paces before he saw the grey blur of the exit at the end of a sharp slope. Crossbow in hands, Fiddler edged forward.
He need not have worried.
The tunnel opened into a cramped blockhouse with no ceiling. One bench lined the wall to his right. Three bodies were sprawled on the dusty stone floor, bleeding out from vicious wounds. Should’ve averted your eyes, soldiers. Assuming she even gave them the time to decide either way-she’d wanted out, after all.
The door opposite him was ajar and Fiddler crept to it, looked out through the crack. A wide street, littered with rubbish.
They’d been listening to the riots half the night, and it was clear that mobs had swept through here, if not this night then other nights. The garrison blocks opposite were gutted, the windows soot-stained. Better and better.
He turned round and hastened back down the tunnel.
At the other end he found Cuttle, Faradan Sort and Fist Keneb, all standing a few paces in from the door.
Fiddler explained to them what he had found. Then said, ‘We got to go through right away, I think. Eight hundred marines to come through and that’ll take a while.’
Keneb nodded. ‘Captain Faradan Sort.’
‘Sir.’
‘Take four squads through and establish flanking positions. Send one squad straight across to the nearest barracks to see if they are indeed abandoned. If so, that will be our staging area. From there, I will lead the main body to the gate, seize and secure it. Captain, you and four squads will strike into the city, as far as you can go, causing trouble all the way-take extra munitions for that.’
‘Our destination?’
‘The palace.’
‘Aye, sir. Fiddler, collect Gesler and Hellian and Urb-you’re the first four-and take your squads through. At a damned run if you please.’
In the grey light of early dawn, four figures emerged from a smear of blurred light twenty paces from the dead Azath Tower behind the Old Palace. As the portal swirled shut behind them, they stood, looking round.
Hedge gave Quick Ben a light push to one side, somewhere between comradely affection and irritation. ‘Told you, it’s reunion time, wizard.’
‘Where in Hood’s name are we?’ Quick Ben demanded.
‘We’re in Letheras,’ Seren Pedac said. ‘Behind the Old Palace-but something’s wrong.’
Trull Sengar wrapped his arms about himself, his face drawn with the pain of freshly healed wounds, his eyes filled with a deeper distress.
Hedge felt some of his anticipation dim like a dying oil lamp as he studied the Tiste Edur. The poor bastard. A brother murdered in front of his eyes. Then, the awkward goodbye with Onrack-joy and sadness there in plenty, seeing his old friend and the woman at his side-a woman Onrack had loved for so long. So long? Damned near incomprehensible, that’s how long.
But now-Trull Sengar.’
The Tiste Edur slowly looked over.
Hedge shot Quick Ben a glance, then he said, ‘We’ve a mind to escort you and Seren. To her house.’
‘This city is assailed,’ Trull Sengar said. ‘My youngest brother-the Emperor-’
‘That can all wait,’ Hedge cut in. He paused, trying to figure out how to say what he meant, then said, ‘Your friend Onrack stole a woman’s heart, and it was all there.
In her eyes, I mean. The answer, that is. And if you’d look, just look, Trull Sengar, into the eyes of Seren Pedac, well-’
‘For Hood’s sake,’ Quick Ben sighed. ‘He means you and Seren need to get alone before anything else, and we’re going to make sure that happens. All right?’
The surprise on Seren Pedac’s face was almost comical.
But Trull Sengar then nodded.
Hedge regarded Quick Ben once again. ‘You recovered enough in case we walk into trouble?’
‘Something your sharpers can’t handle? Yes, probably. Maybe. Get a sharper in each hand, Hedge.’
‘Good enough… since you’re a damned idiot,’ Hedge replied. ‘Seren Pedac-you should know, I’m well envious of this Tiste Edur here, but anyway. Is your house far?’
‘No, it is not, Hedge of the Bridgeburners.’
‘Then let’s get out of this spooky place.’
Silts swirled up round his feet, spun higher, engulfing his shins, then whirled away like smoke on the current. Strange pockets of luminosity drifted past, morphing as if subjected to unseen pressures in this dark, unforgiving world.
Bruthen Trana, who had been sent to find a saviour, walked an endless plain, the silts thick and gritty. He stumbled against buried detritus, tripped on submerged roots. He crossed current-swept rises of hardened clay from which jutted polished bones of long-dead leviathans. He skirted the wreckage of sunken ships, the ribs of the hulls splayed out and cargo scattered about. And as he walked, he thought about his life and the vast array of choices he had made, others he had refused to make.
No wife, no single face to lift into his mind’s eye. He had been a warrior for what seemed all his life. Fighting alongside blood kin and comrades closer than any blood kin. He had seen them die or drift away. He had, he realized now, watched his entire people pulled apart. With the conquest, with the cold-blooded, anonymous nightmare that was Lether. As for the Letherii themselves, no, he did not hate them. More like pity and yes, compassion, for they were as trapped in the nightmare as anyone else. The rapacious desperation, the gnawing threat of falling, of drowning beneath the ever-rising, ever-onrushing torrent that was a culture that could never look back, could not even slow its headlong plunge into some gleaming future that-if it came at all-would ever only exist for but a privileged few.
This eternal seabed offered its own commentary, and it was one that threatened to drag him down into the silts, enervated beyond all hope of continuing, of even moving. Cold, crushing, this place was like history’s own weight-history not of a people or a civilization, but of the entire world.
Why was he still walking? What saviour could liberate him from all of this? He should have remained in Letheras. Free to launch an assault on Karos Invictad and his Patriotists, free to annihilate the man and his thugs. And then he could have turned to the Chancellor. Imagining his hands on Triban Gnol’s throat was most satisfying- for as long as the image lasted, which was never long enough. A bloom of silts up into his eyes, another hidden
