object snagging his foot.
And here, now, looming before him, pillars of stone. The surfaces, he saw, cavorted with carvings, unrecognizable sigils so intricate they spun and shifted before his eyes.
As he drew closer, silts gusted ahead, and Bruthen Trana saw a figure climbing into view. Armour green with verdigris and furred with slime. A closed helm covering its face. In one gauntleted hand was a Letherii sword.
And a voice spoke in the Tiste Edur’s head: ‘You have walked enough, Ghost.’
Bruthen Trana halted. ‘I am not a ghost in truth-’
‘You are, stranger. Your soul has been severed from now cold, now rotting flesh. You are no more than what stands here, before me. A ghost.’
Somehow, the realization did not surprise him. Hannan Mosag’s legacy of treachery made all alliances suspect. And he had, he realized, felt… severed. For a long time, yes. The Warlock King likely did not waste any time in cutting the throat of Bruthen Trana’s helpless body.
‘Then,’ he said, ‘what is left for me?’
‘One thing, Ghost. You are here to summon him. To send him back.’
‘But was not his soul severed as well?’
‘His flesh and bones are here, Ghost. And in this place, there is power. For here you will find the forgotten gods, the last hold’ ing of their names. Know this, Ghost, were we to seek to defy you, to refuse your summoning, we could. Even with what you carry.’
‘Will you then refuse me?’ Bruthen Trana asked, and if the answer was yes, then he would laugh. To have come all this way. To have sacrificed his life…
‘No. We understand the need. Better, perhaps, than you.’
The armoured warrior lifted his free hand. All but the fore
most of the metal-clad fingers folded. ‘Go there,’ it said, pointing towards a pillar. ‘The side with but one name. Draw forth that which you possess of his flesh and bone. Speak the name so written on the stone.’
Bruthen Trana walked slowly to the standing stone, went round to the side with the lone carving. And read thereon the name inscribed: ‘ “Brys Beddict, Saviour of the Empty Hold.” I summon you.’
The face of the stone, cleaned here, seeming almost fresh, all at once began to ripple, then bulge in places, the random shapes and movement coalescing to create a humanoid shape, pushing out from the stone. An arm came free, then shoulder, then head, face-eyes closed, features twisted as if in pain-upper torso. A leg. The second arm-Bruthen saw that two fingers were missing on that hand.
He frowned. Two?
As the currents streamed, Brys Beddict was driven out from the pillar. He fell forward onto his hands and knees, was almost swallowed in billowing silts.
The armoured warrior arrived, carrying a scabbarded sword, which he pushed point-first into the seabed beside the Letherii.
‘Take it, Saviour. Feel the currents-they are eager. Go, you have little time.’
Still on his hands and knees, head hanging, Brys Beddict reached out for the weapon. As soon as his hand closed about the scabbard a sudden rush of the current lifted the man from the seabed. He spun in a flurry of silts and then was gone.
Bruthen Trana stood, motionless. That current had rushed right through him, unimpeded. As it would through a ghost.
All at once he felt bereft. He’d not had a chance to say a word to Brys Beddict, to tell him what needed to be done. An Emperor, to cut down once more. An empire, to resurrect.
‘You are done here, Ghost.’
Bruthen Trana nodded.
‘Where will you go?’
‘There is a house. I lost it. I would find it again.’
‘Then you shall.’
‘Oh, Padderunt, look! It’s twitching!’
The old man squinted over at Selush through a fog of smoke. She was doing that a lot of late. Bushels of rustleaf ever since Tehol Beddict’s arrest. ‘You’ve dressed enough dead to know what the lungs of people who do too much of that look like, Mistress.’
‘Yes. No different from anyone else’s.’
‘Unless they got the rot, the cancer.’
‘Lungs with the rot all look the same and that is most certainly true. Now, did you hear what I said?’
‘It twitched,’ Padderunt replied, twisting in his chair to peer up at the bubbly glass jar on the shelf that contained a stubby little severed finger suspended in pink goo.
‘It’s about time, too. Go,to Rucket,’ Selush said between ferocious pulls on the mouthpiece, her substantial chest swelling as if it was about to burst. ‘And tell her.’
‘That it twitched.’
‘Yes!’
‘All right.’ He set down his cup. ‘Rustleaf tea, Mistress.’
‘I’d drown.’
‘Not inhaled. Drunk, in civil fashion.’
‘You’re still here, dear servant, and I don’t like that at all.’
He rose. ‘On my way, O enwreathed one.’
She had managed to push the corpse of Tanal Yathvanar to one side, and it now lay beside her as if cuddled in sleep, the bloated, blotched face next to her own.
There would be no-one coming for her. This room was forbidden to all but Tanal Yathvanar, and unless some disaster struck this compound in the next day or two, leading Karos Invictad to demand Tanal’s presence and so seek him out, Janath knew it would be too late for her.
Chained to the bed, legs spread wide, fluids leaking from her. She stared up at the ceiling, strangely comforted by the body lying at her side. Its stillness, the coolness of the skin, the flaccid lack of resistance from the flesh. She could feel the shrivelled thing that was his penis pressing against her right thigh. And the beast within her was pleased.
She needed water. She needed that above all else. A mouthful would be enough, would give her the strength to once again begin tugging at the chains, dragging the links against the wood, dreaming of the entire frame splintering beneath her-but it would take a strong man to do that, she knew, strong and healthy. Her dream was nothing more than that, but she held on to it as her sole amusement that would, she hoped, follow her into death. Yes, right up until the last moment.
It would be enough.
Tanal Yathvanar, her tormentor, was dead. But that would be no escape from her. She meant to resume her pursuit, her soul-sprung free of this flesh-demonic in its hunger, in the cruelty it wanted to inflict on whatever whimpering, cowering thing was left of Tanal Yathvanar.
A mouthful of water. That would be so sweet.
She could spit it into the staring face beside her.
Coins to the belligerent multitude brought a larger, more belligerent multitude. And, at last, trepidation awoke in Karos Invictad, the Invigilator of the Patriotists. He sent servants down into the hiddenmost crypts below, to drag up chest after chest. In the compound his agents were exhausted, now simply flinging handfuls of coins over the walls since the small sacks were long gone. And a pressure was building against those walls that, it now seemed, no amount of silver and gold could relieve.
He sat in his office, trying to comprehend that glaring truth. Of course, he told himself, there were simply too many in the mob. Not enough coins was the problem. They’d fought like jackals over the sacks, had they not?
He had done and was doing what the Emperor should have done. Emptied the treasury and buried the people in riches. That would have purchased peace, yes. An end to the riots. Everyone returning to their homes, businesses opening once more, food on the stalls and whores beckoning from windows and plenty of ale and wine to flow down throats-all the pleasures that purchased apathy and obedience. Yes, festivals and games and Drownings and that would have solved all of this. Along with a few quiet arrests and assassinations.
But he was running out of money. His money. Hard-won, a hoard amassed solely by his own genius. And they
