Remorselessly, Vanut continued, ‘Will any House here refuse to attend the battle?’
No one spoke.
‘Will all commit their Houseblades to the fight?’ Drethdenan asked, his placid eyes narrow and fixed on Vanut, as if he sought to read what hid behind the man’s benign expression. ‘And I would think, in this case, silence is no answer.’
Trevok asked, ‘Who will command House Purake – Mother Dark’s very own Houseblades?’
‘Does it matter?’ Vanut retorted. ‘It is tradition that each of us commands our own, yes? As for matters of disposition upon the field, well, the Valley of Tarns offers few opportunities for complicated tactics. No, such fighting as might come will be straightforward.’
‘Lord Anomander will command,’ said Hish Tulla.
‘With Mother Dark’s blessing?’ Manalle asked.
‘She blesses none of this.’
‘Nor the proposed marriage,’ added Hedeg Lesser in a growl.
‘Leave that issue to one side,’ Vanut Degalla said. ‘It has no influence on the battle itself – would you not agree, Hish Tulla? If Anomander commands, he will commit to the battle.’
‘Of course he will,’ said Hish Tulla, her lips strangely pale.
‘You sow confusion, Vanut,’ said Lady Aegis, her brow furrowed. ‘Only to seemingly sweep it all aside.’
Seating himself once more and reaching for his goblet of wine, Vanut sighed and said, ‘Many points of contention needed … airing.’
Sukul noted Lady Manalle’s sudden scowl, and a flash of undisguised hatred in the woman’s eyes as they remained fixed upon Vanut Degalla.
None here could call another friend.
And what they would so desperately defend and preserve is both base and crude. Their own positions, the hierarchy of private privilege. They wage their own perpetual war, here among their own kind, and would keep it so – unsullied by newcomers, with all their crass habits and blunt words.
It is no wonder Mother Dark blesses none of this.
She had forgotten the goblet in her hand, and only now did she drink, watching as most of those at the table did much the same, with similar eagerness. A decision has been reached. Not a consensus, merely the illusion of one. And this is how they play, these people. The hunting hound settled down at her feet, chin upon the floor.
I dream of magic in my own hands. I dream of scouring clean the entire world.
Vermin abounds, and oh, how I would love to see it crushed. Not a corner in which to hide, not a hole deep enough.
Draining her goblet, she leaned against the wall and let her eyes fall half closed, imagining conflagrations of some unknown, but eternally promising, future. While, at her feet, the savage hound slept.
* * *
‘I am going to my favourite room,’ said Sandalath Drukorlat, her eyes oddly bright in the gloom of the carriage. ‘In a tower, highest in the Citadel.’
Clutching the heavy baby in his arms and seated opposite its mother, Wreneck nodded and smiled. Broken people so often sounded no different from children, leading him to wonder what it was that had broken inside their heads. Rushing back into childhood was like trying to find something simple in the past, he supposed, but then, he was closer to such memories, and there was little back there that seemed simple to him.
‘I knew a man with only one arm,’ Sandalath continued. ‘He left me stones, in a secret place. He left me stones, and he left me a boy. But you knew that, Wreneck. He was named Orfantal, that boy. I pushed him out all wrapped up in a story I didn’t want anyone to know about. Much good that did me. It’s what women and men do, there in the high grasses.’
Sitting beside Wreneck, the keeper of records, Sorca, cleared her throat and reached for her pipe. ‘Memories best kept to yourself, I think, milady, given the present company.’ She pulled out a button of compacted rustleaf and crumbled and tamped it into the pipe’s blackened bowl.
Outside, the harsh breathing of Houseblades surrounded the rocking, pitching carriage as men and women leaned shoulders to the wheels, pushing it through the deep snow covering the muddy road. The warhorses fought against the ill-fitting yokes, and all the arguments from two nights past, when the oxen were butchered to feed everyone, now returned to Wreneck as he listened to Horse Master Setyl cajoling the affronted mounts with tears in his voice.
‘She called me a child when I birthed Orfantal,’ Sandalath said to Sorca. ‘A child to birth a child.’
‘Nonetheless.’ Sparks flashed, smoke bloomed, rose, and then streamed out between the shutters of the window.
‘Captain Ivis undressed me.’