House of Chains

left the assassin… chilled.

An army in the making for Shadowthrone. An alarming prospect, to say the least.

He reached the ridge. And suddenly reined in.

An enormous stone gate surmounted the hill opposite, twin pillars spanned by an arch. Within it, a swirling grey wall. On this side of the gate, the grassy summit flowed with countless, sourceless shadows, as if they were somehow tumbling out from the portal, only to swarm like lost wraiths around its threshold.

‘Careful,’ a voice murmured beside Kalam.

He turned to see a tall, hooded and cloaked figure standing a few paces away, flanked by two Hounds. Cotillion, and his favoured two, Rood and Blind. The beasts sat on their scarred haunches, lurid eyes-seeing and unseeing-on the portal.

‘Why should I be careful?’ the assassin asked.

‘Oh, the shadows at the gate. They’ve lost their masters… but anyone will do.’

‘So this gate is sealed?’

The hooded head slowly turned. ‘Dear Kalam, is this a flight from our realm? How… ignoble.’

‘I said nothing to suggest-’

‘Then why does your shadow stretch so yearningly forward?’

Kalam glanced down at it, then scowled. ‘How should I know? Perhaps it considers its chances better in yonder mob.’

‘Chances?’

‘For excitement.’

‘Ah. Chafing, are you? I would never have guessed.’

‘Liar,’ Kalam said. ‘Minala has banished me. But you already know that, which is why you’ve come to find me.’

‘I am the Patron of Assassins,’ Cotillion said. ‘I do not mediate marital disputes.’

‘Depends on how fierce they get, doesn’t it?’

‘Are you ready to kill each other, then?’

‘No. I was only making a point.’

‘Which was?’

‘What are you doing here, Cotillion?’

The god was silent for a long moment. ‘I have often wondered,’ he finally said, ‘why it is that you, an assassin, offer no obeisance to your patron.’

Kalam’s brows rose. ‘Since when have you expected it? Hood take us, Cotillion, if it was fanatical worshippers you hungered for, you should never have looked to assassins. By our very natures, we’re antithetical to the notion of subservience-as if you weren’t already aware of that.’ His voice trailed off, and he turned to study the shadow- wreathed figure standing beside him. ‘Mind you, you stood at Kellanved’s side, through to the end. Dancer, it seems, knew both loyalty and servitude…’

‘Servitude?’ There was a hint of a smile in the tone.

‘Mere expedience? That seems difficult to countenance, given all that the two of you went through. Out with it, Cotillion, what is it you’re asking?’

‘Was I asking something?’

‘You want me to… serve you, as would a minion his god. Some probably disreputable mission. You need me for something, only you’ve never learned how to ask.’

Rood slowly rose from his haunches, then stretched, long and languorous. The massive head then swung round, lambent eyes settling on Kalam.

‘The Hounds are troubled,’ Cotillion murmured. ‘I can tell,’ the assassin replied drily.

‘I have certain tasks before me,’ the god continued, ‘that will consume much of my time for the near future. Whilst at the same time, certain other… activities… must be undertaken. It is one thing to find a loyal subject, but another entirely to find one conveniently positioned, as it were, to be of practical use-’

Kalam barked a laugh. ‘You went fishing for faithful servants and found your subjects wanting.’

‘We could argue interpretation all day,’ Cotillion drawled.

There was a detectable irony in the god’s voice that pleased Kalam. In spite of his wariness, he admitted that he actually liked Cotillion. Uncle Cotillion, as the child Panek called him. Certainly, between the Patron of Assassins and Shadowthrone, only the former seemed to possess any shred of self- examination-and thus was actually capable of being humbled. Even if the likelihood was in truth remote. ‘Agreed,’ Kalam replied. ‘Very well, Minala has no interest in seeing my pretty face for a time. Leaving me free, more or less-’

‘And without a roof over your head.’

‘Without a roof over my head, aye. Fortunately it never seems to rain in your realm.’

‘Ah,’ Cotillion murmured, ‘my realm.’

Kalam studied Rood. The beast had not relinquished its steady stare. The assassin was growing nervous under that unwavering attention. ‘Is your claim-yours and Shadowthrone’s-being contested?’

‘Difficult to answer,’ Cotillion murmured. ‘There have been… trembles. Agitation…’

‘As you said, the Hounds are troubled.’

‘They are indeed.’

‘You wish to know more of your potential enemy.’

‘We would.’

Kalam studied the gate, the swirling shadows at its threshold. ‘Where would you have me begin?’

‘A confluence to your own desires, I suspect.’

The assassin glanced at the god, then slowly nodded.

In the half-light of dusk, the seas grew calm, gulls wheeling in from the shoals to settle on the beach. Cutter had built a fire from driftwood, more from the need to be doing something than seeking warmth, for the Kanese coast was subtropical, the breeze sighing down off the verge faint and sultry. The Daru had collected water from the spring near the trail head and was now brewing tea. Overhead, the first stars of night flickered into life.

Apsalar’s question earlier that afternoon had gone unanswered. Cutter was not yet ready to return to Darujhistan, and he felt nothing of the calm he’d expected to follow the completion of their task. Rellock and Apsalar had, finally, returned to their home, only to find it a place haunted by death, a haunting that had slipped its fatal flavour into the old man’s soul, adding yet one more ghost to this forlorn strand. There was, now, nothing for them here.

Cutter’s own experience here in the Malazan Empire was, he well knew, twisted and incomplete. A single vicious night in Malaz City, followed by three tense days in Kan that closed with yet more assassinations. The empire was a foreign place, of course, and one could expect a certain degree of discord between it and what he was used to in Darujhistan, but if anything what he had seen of daily life in the cities suggested a stronger sense of lawfulness, of order and calm. Even so, it was the smaller details that jarred his sensibilities the most, that reinforced the fact that he was a stranger.

Feeling vulnerable was not a weakness he shared with Apsalar. She seemed possessed of absolute calm, an ease, no matter where she was-the confidence of the god who once possessed her had left something of a permanent imprint on her soul. Not just confidence. He thought once more of the night she had killed the man in Kan. Deadly skills, and the icy precision necessary when using them. And, he recalled with a shiver, many of the god’s own memories remained with her, reaching back to when the god had been a mortal man, had been Dancer. Among those, the night of the assassinations- when the woman who would become Empress had struck down the Emperor… and Dancer.

She had revealed that much, at least, a revelation devoid of feeling, of sentiment, delivered as casually as a comment about the weather. Memories of biting knives, of dust-covered blood rolling like pellets across a floor…

He removed the pot from the coals, threw a handful of herbs into the steaming water.

She had gone for a walk, westward along the white beach. Even as dusk settled, he had lost sight of her, and he had begun to wonder if she was ever coming back.

A log settled suddenly, flinging sparks. The sea had grown entirely dark, invisible; he could not even hear the