House of Chains

Cotillion sighed. ‘He’s not a bad man, you know. Loyal to the empire. You have sorely abused his equanimity.’

‘He was about to interfere. Unpredictably. I assumed you wished the path clear.’

‘Initially, yes. But I foresee a certain usefulness to his presence, once matters fully… unfold. Be sure to awaken him some time tomorrow night, if he has not already done so on his own.’

‘Very well, since you insist. Although I am already deeply fond of my newfound peace and solitude.’

Cotillion seemed to study her a moment, then the god said, ‘I will leave you then, since I have other tasks to attend to this night.’

Lostara reached into the pouch and tossed a small object towards him.

He caught it in one hand and peered down to study it.

‘I assumed that was yours,’ she said.

‘No, but I know to whom it belongs. And am pleased. May I keep it?’

She shrugged. ‘It matters not to me.’

‘Nor should it, Lostara Yil.’

She heard a dry amusement in those words, and concluded that she had made a mistake in letting him keep the object; that, indeed, it did matter to her, though for the present she knew not how. She shrugged again. Too late now, I suppose. ‘You said you were leaving?’

She sensed him bridling, then in a swirl of shadows he vanished.

Lostara lay back on the stony ground and contentedly closed her eyes.

The night breeze was surprisingly warm. Apsalar stood before the small window overlooking the gully. Neither Mogora nor Iskaral Pust frequented these heights much, except when necessity forced them to undertake an excursion in search of food, and so her only company was a half-dozen elderly bhok’arala, grey-whiskered and grunting and snorting as they stiffly moved about on the chamber’s littered floor. The scattering of bones suggested that this top level of the tower was where the small creatures came to die.

As the bhok’arala shuffled back and forth behind her, she stared out onto the wastes. The sand and outcrops of limestone were silver in the starlight. On the rough tower walls surrounding the window rhizan were landing with faint slaps, done with their feeding, and now, claws whispering, they began crawling into cracks to hide from the coming day.

Crokus slept somewhere below, whilst resident husband and wife stalked each other down the unlit corridors and in the musty chambers of the monastery. She had never felt so alone, nor, she realized, so comfortable with that solitude. Changes had come to her. Hardened layers sheathing her soul had softened, found new shape in response to unseen pressures from within.

Strangest of all, she had come, over time, to despise her competence, her deadly skills. They had been imposed upon her, forced into her bones and muscles. They had imprisoned her in blinding, gelid armour. And so, despite the god’s absence, she still felt as if she was two women, not one.

Leading her to wonder with which woman Crokus had fallen in love.

But no, there was no mystery there. He had assumed the guise of a killer, hadn’t he? The young wide-eyed thief from Darujhistan had fashioned of himself a dire reflection-not of Apsalar the fisher-girl, but of Apsalar the assassin, the cold murderer. In the belief that likeness would forge the deepest bond of all. Perhaps that would have succeeded, had she liked her profession, had she not found it sordid and reprehensible. Had it not felt like chains wrapped tight about her soul.

She was not comforted by company within her prison. His love was for the wrong woman, the wrong Apsalar. And hers was for Crokus, not Cutter. And so they were together, yet apart, intimate yet strangers, and it seemed there was nothing they could do about it.

The assassin within her preferred solitude, and the fisher-girl had, from an entirely different path, come into a similar comfort. The former could not afford to love. The latter knew she had never been loved. Like Crokus, she stood in a killer’s shadow.

There was no point in railing against that. The fisher-girl had no life-skills of a breadth and stature to challenge the assassin’s implacable will. Probably, Crokus had similarly succumbed to Cutter.

She sensed a presence close by her side, and murmured, ‘Would that you had taken all with you when you departed.’

‘You’d rather I left you bereft?’

‘Bereft, Cotillion? No. Innocent.’

‘Innocence is only a virtue, lass, when it is temporary. You must pass from it to look back and recognize its unsullied purity. To remain innocent is to twist beneath invisible and unfathomable forces all your life, until one day you realize that you no longer recognize yourself, and it comes to you that innocence was a curse that had shackled you, stunted you, defeated your every expression of living.’

She smiled in the darkness. ‘But, Cotillion, it is knowledge that makes one aware of his or her own chains.’

‘Knowledge only makes the eyes see what was there all along, Apsalar. You are in possession of formidable skills. They gift you with power, a truth there is little point in denying. You cannot unmake yourself.’

‘But I can cease walking this singular path.’

‘You can,’ he acknowledged after a moment. ‘You can choose others, but even the privilege of choice was won by virtue of what you were-’

‘What you were.’

‘Nor can that be changed. I walked in your bones, your flesh, Apsalar. The fisher-girl who became a woman-we stood in each other’s shadow.’

‘And did you enjoy that, Cotillion?’

‘Not particularly. It was difficult to remain mindful of my purpose. We were in worthy company for most of that time-Whiskeyjack, Mallet, Fiddler, Kalam… a squad that, given the choice, would have welcomed you. But I prevented them from doing so. Necessary, but not fair to you or them.’ He sighed, then continued, ‘I could speak endlessly of regrets, lass, but I see dawn stealing the darkness, and I must have your decision.’

‘My decision? Regarding what?’

‘Cutter.’

She studied the desert, found herself blinking back tears. ‘I would take him from you, Cotillion. I would prevent you doing to him what you did to me.’

‘He is that important to you?’

‘He is. Not to the assassin within me, but to the fisher-girl… whom he does not love.’

‘Doesn’t he?’

‘He loves the assassin, and so chooses to be like her.’

‘I understand now the struggle within you.’

‘Indeed? Then you must understand why I will not let you have him.’

‘But you are wrong, Apsalar. Cutter does not love the assassin within you. It attracts him, no doubt, because power does that… to us all. And you possess power, and that implicitly includes the option of not using it. All very enticing, alluring. He is drawn to emulate what he sees as your hard-won freedom. But his love? Resurrect our shared memories, lass. Of Darujhistan, of our first brush with the thief, Crokus. He saw that we had committed murder, and knew that discovery made his life forfeit in our eyes. Did he love you then? No, that came later, in the hills east of the city-when I no longer possessed you.’

‘Love changes with time-’

‘Aye, it does, but not like a capemoth flitting from corpse to corpse on a battlefield.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Very well, a poor choice of analogy. Love changes, aye, in the manner of growing to encompass as much of its subject as possible. Virtues, flaws, limitations, everything-love will fondle them all, with child-like fascination.’

She had drawn her arms tight about herself with his words. ‘There are two women within me-’

‘Two? There are multitudes, lass, and Cutter loves them all.’

‘I don’t want him to die!’

‘Is that your decision?’

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The sky was lightening, transforming into a vast, empty space above a dead, battered landscape. She saw birds climb the winds into its expanse.