‘Until tonight?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Go home, Brys,’ Tehol said. ‘Seren Pedac stands at Hull’s back, and will continue to do so no matter how much she might disagree with whatever he seeks to do. She cannot help herself. Even genius has its flaws.’
Another grin. ‘Even with you, Tehol?’
‘Well, I was generalizing to put you at ease. I never include myself in my own generalizations. I am ever the exception to the rule.’
‘And how do you manage that?’
‘Well, I define the rules, of course. That’s my particular game, brother.’
‘By the Errant, I hate you sometimes, Tehol. Listen. Do not underestimate Gerun Eberict-’
‘I’ll take care of Gerun. Now, presumably you were followed here?’
‘I hadn’t thought of that. Yes, probably I was. Do you think our voices carried?’
‘Not through the wards Bugg raises every night before he goes to sleep.’
‘Bugg?’
Tehol clapped his brother on the shoulder and guided him towards the hatch. ‘He’s only mostly worthless. We ever seek out hidden talents, an exercise assuring endless amusement. For me, at least.’
‘Did he not embalm our parents? The name-’
‘That was Bugg. That’s where I first met him, and saw immediately his lack of potential. The entrance can be viewed in secret from one place and no other, Brys. Normally, you could make no approach without being detected. And then there’d be a chase, which is messy and likely to fail on your part. You will have to kill the man – Gerun’s, I suspect. And not in a duel. Outright execution, Brys. Are you up to it?’
‘Of course. But you said there was no approach that could not-’
‘Ah, well, I forgot to mention our tunnel.’
Brys paused at the hatch. ‘You have a tunnel.’
‘Keeping Bugg busy is an eternal chore.’
Still five paces from the shadowed section of the warehouse wall that offered the only hiding place with a clear line of sight to the doorway of Tehol’s house, Brys Beddict halted. His eyes were well adjusted, and he could see that no-one was there.
But he could smell blood. Metallic and thick.
Sword drawn, he approached.
No man could have survived such a loss. It was a black pool on the cobbles, reluctant to seep into the cracks between the set stones. A throat opened wide, the wound left to drain before the corpse had been dragged away. And the trail was plain, twin heel tracks alongside the warehouse wall, round a corner and out of sight.
The Finadd considered following it.
Then, upon seeing a single footprint, traced in dried dust on the dust, he changed his mind.
The footprint left by a child. Bared. As it dragged the dead man away.
Every city had its darkness, its denizens who prowled only at night in their own game of predator and prey. Brys knew it was not his world, nor did he wish to hunt down its secrets. These hours belonged to the white crow, and it was welcome to them.
He turned the other way, began his walk back to the palace.
His brother’s formidable mind had not been idle, it seemed. His indifference no more than a feint. Which made Tehol a very dangerous man.
The old palace, soon to be entirely abandoned in favour of the Eternal Domicile, sat on a sunken hill, the building proper a hundred paces in from the river’s seasonally uncertain banks. Sections of a high wall indicated that there had been an enclosure once, extending from the palace to the river, in which an assortment of structures had been effectively isolated from the rest of the city.
Not so much in a proprietary claim to ownership, for the structures in question predated even the founding First Empire. Perhaps, for those original builders, there had been a recognition, of sorts, of something verging on the sacred about these grounds, although, of course, not holy to the colonizers. Another possibility was that the first Letherii were possessors of a more complete arcane knowledge – secrets long since lost – that inspired them to do honour to the Jaghut dwellings and the single, oddly different tower in their midst.
The truth had crumbled along with the enclosure walls, and no answers could be found sifting the dust of crumbled mortar and flakes of exfoliated schist. The area, while no longer sealed, was by habit avoided. The land itself was worthless, by virtue of a royal proclamation six centuries old that prohibited demolition of the ancient structures, and subsequent resettlement. Every legal challenge or, indeed, enquiry regarding that proclamation was summarily dismissed without even so much as recourse to the courts.
All very well. Skilled practitioners of the tiles of the Holds well knew the significance of that squat, square, leaning tower with its rumpled, overgrown grounds. And indeed of the Jaghut dwellings, representative as they were of the Ice Hold. Many held that the Azath tower was the very first true structure of the Azath on this world.
From her new perspective, Shurq Elalle was less sceptical than she might have once been. The grounds surrounding the battered grey stone tower exerted an ominous pull on the dead thief. There were kin there, but not of blood. No, this was the family of the undead, of those unable or unwilling to surrender to oblivion. In the case of those interred in the lumpy, clay-shot earth around the tower, their graves were prisons. The Azath did not give up its children.
She sensed as well that there were living creatures buried there, most of them driven mad by centuries upon centuries snared in ancient roots that held them fast. Others remained ominously silent and motionless, as if awaiting eternity’s end.
The thief approached the forbidden grounds behind the palace. She could see the Azath tower, its third and uppermost storey edging above the curved walls of the Jaghut dwellings. Not one of the structures stood fully upright. All were tilted in some fashion, the subsurface clay squeezing out from beneath their immense weight or lenses of sand washed away by underground runoff. Vines had climbed the sides in chaotic webs, although those that had reached out to the Azath died there, withered against the foundation stones amidst yellowed grasses.
She did not need to see the blood trail in order to follow it. The smell was heavy in the sultry night air, invisible streaks riding the currents, and she pursued its wake until she came to the low, crooked wall surrounding the Azath tower.
Just beyond, at the base of a twisted tree, sat the child Kettle. Nine or ten years old… for ever. Naked, her pale skin smeared, her long hair clotted with coagulating blood. The corpse before her was already half under the earth, being dragged down into the darkness.
To feed the Azath? Or some ravenous denizen? Shurq had no idea. Nor did she care. The grounds swallowed bodies, and that was useful.
Kettle looked up, black eyes dully reflecting starlight. There were moulds that, if left unattended, could blind, and the film was thick over the girl’s dead eyes. She slowly rose and walked over.
‘Why won’t you be my mother?’
‘I’ve already told you, Kettle. I am no-one’s mother.’
‘I followed you tonight.’
‘You’re always following me,’ Shurq said.
‘Just after you left that roof, another man came to the house, soldier. And he was followed.’
‘And which of the two did you kill?’
‘Why, the one who followed, of course. I’m a good girl. I take care of you. Just as you take care of me-’
‘I take care of no-one, Kettle. You were dead long before I was. Living here in these grounds. I used to bring you bodies.’
‘Never enough.’
‘I don’t like killing. Only when I have no choice. Besides, I wasn’t the only one employing your services.’
‘Yes you were.’
Shurq stared at the girl for a long moment. ‘I was?’
‘Yes. And you wanted to know my story. Everyone else runs from me, just like they run from you now. Except
