Toll the Hounds

at the night.

Has found a lover.

A lover.

‘I dreamt I was pregnant.’

Torvald paused inside the door and hesitated just a little too long before say-ing, ‘Why, that’s great!’

Tiserra shot him a quizzical look from where she stood at the table bearing her latest throw of pottery. ‘It is?’

‘Absolutely, darling. You can go through all the misery of that without its be-ing real. I can imagine your sigh of relief when you awoke and realized it was nothing but a dream.’

‘Well, I certainly imagined yours, my love.’

He walked in and slumped down into a chair, stretching out his legs. ‘Some-thing strange is going on,’ he said.

‘It was just a passing madness,’ she said. ‘No need for you to fret, Tor.’

‘I mean at the estate.’ He rubbed at his face. ‘The castellan spends all his time mixing up concoctions for diseases nobody has, and even if they did, his cures are liable to kill them first. The two compound guards do nothing but toss bones and that’s hardly something you’d think renegade Seguleh would do, is it? And if that’s not weird enough, Scorch and Leff are actually taking their responsibilities seriously.’

At that she snorted.

‘No, really,’ Torvald insisted. ‘And I think I know why. They can smell it, Tiss. The strangeness. The Mistress went to the Council and claimed her place and there wasn’t a whisper of complaint-or so I heard from Coll-and you’d think there’d be visitors now from various power blocs in the Council, everyone trying to buy her alliance. But… nothing. No one. Does that make sense?’

Tiserra was studying her husband. ‘Ignore it, Tor. All of it. Your task is simple-keep it that way.’.

He glanced up at her. ‘I would, believe me. Except that all my instincts are on fire-as if some damned white-hot dagger is hovering at my back. And not just me, but Scorch and Leff, too.’ He rose, began pacing.

‘I haven’t begun supper yet,’ Tisera said, ‘It’ll be awhile-why don’t you go to The Phoenix Inn for a tankard or two? Say hello to Kruppe if you see him.’

‘What? Oh. Good idea.’

She watched him leave, waited for a few dozen heartbeats to ensure that he’d found no reason to change his mind, and then went to one of the small trapdoors hidden in the floor, sprang the release and reached in to draw out her Deck of Dragons. She sat at the table and carefully removed the deerskin cover.

This was something she did rarely these days. She was sensitive enough to know that powerful forces were gathering in Darujhistan, making any field she attempted fraught with risk. Yet Tiserra, for all her advice to Torvald to simply ignore matters, well knew that her husband’s instincts were too sharp to be summarily dismissed.

‘Renegade Seguleh,’ she muttered, then shook her head and collected up the Deck. Her version was Barukan, with a few cards of her own added, including one for The City-in this case, Darujhistan-and another-but no, she would not think of that one. Not unless she had to.

A tremor of fear rushed through her. The wooden cards felt cold in her hands. She decided on a spiral field and was not at all surprised when she set the centre card down and saw that it was The City, a silhouetted, familiar skyline at dusk, with the glow of blue fires rising up from below, each one like a submerged star. She studied it for a time, until those fires seemed to swim before her eyes, until the dusk the card portrayed began to flow into the world around her, one bleeding into the other, back and forth until the moment was fixed, time pinned down as if by a knife stabbed into the table. She was not seeking the future-prophecy was far too dangerous with all the converging powers-but the present. This very instant, each strand’s point of attachment in the vast web that now spanned Darujhistan.

She set down the next card. High House Shadow, The Rope, Patron of Assassins. Well, that was not too surprising, given the latest rumours. Yet she sensed the relationship was more complicated than it at first appeared-yes, the Guild was active, was snarled in something far bloodier than they had anticipated. Too bad for them. Still, The Rope never played one game. There were others, beneath the surface. The obvious was nothing more than a veil.

The third card clattered on to the tabletop, and she found her hand would not rest, flinging out the next card and yet another. Three tightly bound, then. Three cards, forming their own woven nest. Obelisk, Soldier of Death, and Crown. These needed a frame. She set down the sixth card and grunted. Knight of Darkness-a faint rumble of wooden wheels, a chorus of moans drifting like smoke from the sword in the Knight’s hands.

Thus, The Rope on one side, the Knight on the other. She saw that her hands were trembling. Three more cards quickly followed-another nest. King of High House Death, King in Chains, and Dessembrae, Lord of Tragedy. Knight of Darkness as the inside frame. She set down the other end and gasped. The card she wished she had never made. The Tyrant.

Closing the field. The spiral was done. City and Tyrant at beginning and end.

Tiserra had not expected anything like this. She was not seeking prophecy – her had been centered on her husband and whatever web he had found him-self trapped in-no, not prophecy, nothing on such a grand scale as this…

I see the end of Darujhistan. Spirits save us, I see my city’s end. This, Torvald, is your nest.

‘Oh, husband,’ she murmured, ‘you are in trouble indeed…’

Her eyes strayed once more to The Rope. Is that you, Cotillion? Or has Vorcan returned? It’s not just the Guild-the Guild means nothing here. No, there are faces behind that veil. There are terrible deaths coming. Terrible deaths. Abruptly, she swept up the cards, as if by that gesture alone she could defy what was coming, could fling apart the strands and so free the world to find a new future. As if things could be so easy. As if choices were indeed free.

Outside, a cart clunked past, its battered wheels crackling and stepping on the uneven cobbles. The hoofs of the ox pulling it beat slow as a dirge, and there came to her the rattle of a heavy chain, slapping leather and wood.

She wrapped the deck once more and returned it to its hiding place. And then went to another, this one made by her husband-perhaps indeed he’d thought to keep it a secret from her, but such things were impossible. She knew the creak of every floorboard, after all, and had found his private pit only days after he’d dug it.

Within, items folded within blue silk-the silk of the Blue Moranth. Tor’s loot-she wondered again how he’d come by it. Even now, as she knelt above the cache, she could feel the sorcery roiling up thick as a stench, reeking of watery decay-the Warren of Ruse, no less, but then, perhaps not. This, I think, is Elder. This magic, it comes from Mael.

But then, what connection would the Blue Moranth have with the Elder God?

She reached down and edged back the silk. A pair of sealskin gloves, glistening as if they had just come up from the depths of some ice-laden sea. Beneath them, a water-etched throwing axe, in a style she had never seen before-not Moranth, for certain. A sea-raider’s weapon, the inset patterns on the blue iron swirling like a host of whirlpools. The handle was an ivory tusk of some sort, appallingly over-sized for any beast she could imagine. Carefully tucked in to either side of the weapon were cloth-wrapped grenados, thirteen in all, one of which was-she had discovered-empty of whatever chemical incendiary was trapped inside the others. An odd habit of the Moranth, but it had allowed her a chance to examine more closely the extraordinary skill involved in manufacturing such perfect porcelain globes, without risk of blowing herself and her entire home to pieces. True, she had heard that most Moranth munitions were made of clay, but not these ones, for some reason. Lacquered with a thick, mostly transparent gloss that was nevertheless faintly cerulean, these grenados were-to her eye-works of art, which made the destruction implicit in their proper use strike her as almost criminal.

Now, dear husband, why do you have these? Were they given to you, or did you-as is more likely- steal them?

If she confronted him, she knew, he would tell her the truth. But that was not something she would do. Successful marriages took as sacrosanct the possession of secrets. When so much was shared, certain other things must ever be held back. Small secrets, to be sure, but precious ones none the less.

Tiserra wondered if her husband foresaw a futurel need for such items. Or was this just another instance of his natural inclination to hoard, a quirk both charm-