House of Chains

SHE HAD WORMED HER WAY ALONGSIDE THE CAREFULLY STACKED CUT stones, to the edge of the trench-knowing her mother would be furious at seeing how she had ruined her new clothes-and finally came within sight of her sister.

Tavore had claimed her brother’s bone and antler toy soldiers, and in the rubble of the torn-up estate wall, where repairs had been undertaken by the grounds workers, she had arranged a miniature battle.

Only later would Felisin learn that her nine-year-old sister had been, in fact, recreating a set battle, culled from historical accounts of a century-old clash between a Royal Untan army and the rebelling House of K’azz D’Avore. A battle that had seen the annihilation of the renegade noble family’s forces and the subjugation of the D’Avore household. And that, taking on the role of Duke Kenussen D’Avore, she was working through every possible sequence of tactics towards achieving a victory. Trapped by a series of unfortunate circumstances in a steep-sided valley, and hopelessly outnumbered, the unanimous consensus among military scholars was that such victory was impossible.

Felisin never learned if her sister had succeeded where Kenussen D’Avore-reputedly a military genius-had failed. Her spying had become a habit, her fascination with the hard, remote Tavore an obsession. It seemed, to Felisin, that her sister had never been a child, had never known a playful moment. She had stepped into their brother’s shadow and sought only to remain there, and when Ganoes had been sent off for schooling, Tavore underwent a subtle transformation. No longer in Ganoes’s shadow, it was as if she had become his shadow, severed and haunting.

None of these thoughts were present in Felisin’s mind all those years ago. The obsession with Tavore existed, but its sources were formless, as only a child’s could be.

The stigma of meaning ever comes later, like a brushing away of dust to reveal shapes in stone.

At the very edge of the ruined city on its south side, the land fell away quickly in what had once been elastic slumps of silty clay, fanning out onto the old bed of the harbour. Centuries of blistering sun had hardened these sweeps, transforming them into broad, solid ramps.

Sha’ik stood at the head of the largest of these ancient fans born of a dying sea millennia past, trying to see the flat basin before her as a place of battle. Four thousand paces away, opposite, rose the saw-toothed remnants of coral islands, over which roared the Whirlwind. That sorcerous storm had stripped from those islands the formidable mantle of sand that had once covered them. What remained offered little in the way of a secure ridge on which to assemble and prepare legions. Footing would be treacherous, formations impossible. The islands swept in a vast arc across the south approach. To the east was an escarpment, a fault-line that saw the land falling sharply away eighty or more arm-lengths onto a salt flat-what had once been the inland sea’s deepest bed. The fault was a slash that widened in its southwestward reach, just the other side of the reef islands, forming the seemingly endless basin that was Raraku’s southlands. To the west lay dunes, the sand deep and soft, wind-sculpted and rife with sink-pits.

She would assemble her forces on this very edge, positioned to hold the seven major ramps. Mathok’s horse archers on the wings, Korbolo Dom’s new heavy infantry-the elite core of his Dogslayers-at the head of each of the ramps. Mounted lancers and horse warriors held back as screens for when the Malazans reeled back from the steep approaches and the order was given to advance.

Or so Korbolo Dom had explained-she was not entirely sure of the sequence. But it seemed that the Napan sought an initial defensive stance, despite their superior numbers. He was eager to prove his heavy infantry and shock troops against the Malazan equivalent. Since Tavore was marching to meet them, it was expedient to extend the invitation to its bitter close on these ramps. The advantage was entirely with the Army of the Apocalypse.

Tavore was, once again, Duke Kenussen D’Avore in Ibilar Gorge.

Sha’ik drew her sheep-hide cloak about her, suddenly chilled despite the heat. She glanced over to where Mathok and the dozen bodyguards waited, discreetly distanced yet close enough to reach her side within two or three heartbeats. She had no idea why the taciturn warchief so feared that she might be assassinated, but there was no danger in humouring the warrior. With Toblakai gone and Leoman somewhere to the south, Mathok had assumed the role of protector of her person. Well enough, although she did not think it likely that Tavore would attempt to send killers-the Whirlwind Goddess could not be breached undetected. Even a Hand of the Claw could not pass unnoticed through her multi-layered barriers, no matter what warren they sought to employ.

Because the barrier itself defines a warren. The warren that lies like an unseen skin over the Holy Desert. This usurped fragment is a fragment no longer, but whole unto itself. And its power grows. Until one day, soon, it will demand its own place in the Deck of Dragons. As with the House of Chains. A new House, of the Whirlwind.

Fed by the spilled blood of a slain army.

And when she kneels before me… what then? Dear sister, broken and bowed, smeared in dust and far darker streaks, her legions a ruin behind her, feast for the capemoths and vultures-shall I then remove my warhelm? Reveal to her, at that moment, my face?

We have taken this war. Away from the rebels, away from the Empress and the Malazan Empire. Away, even, from the Whirlwind Goddess herself. We have supplanted, you and I, Tavore, Dryjhna and the Book of the Apocalypse-for our own, private apocalypse. The family’s own blood, and nothing more. And the world, then, Tavore-when I show myself to you and see the recognition in your eyes-the world, your world, will shift beneath you.

And at that moment, dear sister, you will understand. What has happened. What I have done. And why I have done it.

And then? She did not know. A simple execution was too easy indeed, a cheat. Punishment belonged to the living, after all. The sentence was to survive, staggering beneath the chains of knowledge. A sentence not just of living, but of living with; that was the only answer to… everything.

She heard boots crunching on potsherds behind her and turned. No welcoming smile for this one-not this time. ‘L’oric. I am delighted you deigned to acknowledge my request-you seemed to have grown out of the habit of late.’ Oh, how he hides from me, the secrets now stalking him, see how he will not meet my gaze-I sense struggles within him. Things he would tell me. Yet he will say nothing. With all the goddess’s powers at my behest, and still I cannot trap this elusive man, cannot force from him his truths. This alone warns me-he is not as he seems. Not simply a mortal man…

‘I have been unwell, Chosen One. Even this short journey from the camp has left me exhausted.’

‘I grieve for your sacrifice, L’oric. And so I shall come to my point without further delay. Heboric has barred his place of residence-he has neither emerged nor will he permit visitors, and it has been weeks.’

There was nothing false in his wince. ‘Barred to us all, mistress.’

She cocked her head. ‘Yet, you were the last to speak with him. At length, the two of you in his tent.’

‘I was? That was the last time?’

Not the reaction she had anticipated. Very well, then whatever secret he possesses has nothing to do with Ghost Hands. ‘It was. Was he distressed during your conversation?’

‘Mistress, Heboric has long been distressed.’

‘Why?’

His eyes flicked momentarily to hers, wider than usual, then away again. ‘He… grieves for your sacrifice, Chosen One.’

She blinked. ‘L’oric, I had no idea my sarcasm could so wound you.’

‘Unlike you,’ he replied gravely, ‘I was not being facetious, mistress. Heboric grieves-’

‘For my sacrifices. Well, that is odd indeed, since he did not think much of me before my… rebirth. Which particular loss does he mark?’

‘I could not say-you will have to ask him that, I’m afraid.’

‘Your friendship had not progressed to the point of an exchange of confessions, then.’

He said nothing to that. Well, no, he couldn’t. For that would acknowledge he has something to confess.