Sorca coughed. ‘Excuse me?’
Wreneck glanced down at the babe’s face, snuggled so sweetly in her blanket of fur. So little time had passed, so rare the occasions that her mother offered a tit to appease her hunger, and yet Korlat had gained twice her birth-weight – or so Surgeon Prok had claimed. She was sleeping now, as she often did, her round face black as ink, her hair already thick and long.
‘It was so hot,’ Sandalath continued. ‘His hands upon me … so gentle …’
‘Milady, I implore you, some other subject.’
‘There was nothing to be done for it. That needs to be understood by everyone concerned. The room is safe, the only safe place in the world, up the stairs – slap slap slap go the bare feet! Up and up to the black
door and the brass latch, and then inside! Slip the lock, run to the window! Down and down the eyes fall, to all the people below, to the bridge and that black black black water!’
In his arms, Korlat stirred fitfully, and then settled once more.
‘Lord Anomander was braver then,’ Sandalath then said, in a harsher voice.
Sorca grunted. ‘Sorcery can unman the best of them, milady. Was it not the Azathanai who held out a staying hand? You wrongly impugn the First Son.’
‘Up into the tower, we’ll be safe there, where the flames can’t reach us.’
Korlat opened her eyes, looked up into Wreneck’s own, and he felt a heat come to his face. Those eyes, so large, so dark, so knowing, left him shaken, as they always did. ‘Milady, she’s awake. Won’t you take her?’
Sandalath’s gaze flattened. ‘She’s not ready yet.’
‘Milady?’
‘To take sword in hand. To swear to protect him. My son, my only son. I bind her, with chains that can never be broken. Never.’
The fury in her stare made Wreneck look away. Sorca tapped her pipe against the door’s wooden frame to loosen what was left in the bowl, then started producing clouds that a wayward gust through the shutters sent over Wreneck.
His head spun, and as Korlat’s eyes slipped behind veils of smoke, he saw her suddenly smile.
* * *
The household staff and the company of Draconean Houseblades made for a desultory and decrepit escort to the Son of Darkness and his Azathanai companion as they slowly worked their way southward on the road to Kharkanas. Captain Ivis struggled against a sense of shame, as if the private matters of him and his kin had been suddenly and cruelly dragged into the light. The lone carriage and its occupants, trailed by two salvaged wagons loaded down with feed and camp gear, had to his eyes the bearing of a refugee train. Horses fought in their traces, the Houseblades cursed and stumbled as they pushed the conveyances through the heavy snow and now mud, and voices spoke – when they spoke at all – with harsh words, bitter and belligerent.
Amidst these foul moods, Ivis found his own plummeting as they trudged on into the deepening gloom. The fire’s embrace lingered like a heat beneath the skin, appallingly seductive, frightening in its intensity. She was an Azathanai, said Caladan Brood. His kin, a sister and mother to the Dog-Runners. Olar Ethil by name. What has she done to me?
Looking ahead on the road, he squinted at the backs of Lord Anomander and his huge companion. They were speaking, but in tones too low to drift back to the captain. Milord, we are awash in strangers, and these rising waters are cold. Civil war proves an invitation and we are now infected by the venal wants of outsiders. They take to us with contempt, ruining whatever cause we hold to, only to then impose themselves and their own. Until their flavour pervades. Until our every desire tastes awry, spoiled in the heat.
I would spit you out, Olar Ethil. And you, Caladan Brood. I would march into the past and bar the arrival of T’riss and her poisoned gifts. None of you are welcome. And all you gods of the forest, of the stream and the rock, the tree and the sky, begone from us!
I’ll not see us point fingers elsewhere for the crimes we commit here. And yet, it shall come to pass. I am certain of it. The face of blame is never our own.
‘Captain.’
He glanced over to find Gate Sergeant Yalad now at his side, a figure draped in a scorched cloak, a face still singed from past flames. ‘What?’
The young man flinched slightly, then looked away. ‘Sir. Do – do you think they’re dead?’
Ivis said nothing.
Clearing his throat, Yalad continued, ‘The Houseblades fear … retribution.’
‘They’ll not return,’ Ivis snapped. ‘And even if they did, it was Caladan Brood who attacked them, not you, not me. Even there, what choice did any of us have? They would have seen us all dead.’ But even as he spoke, he thought of his own secret desire from months past – to see the Hold burned down, with both daughters trapped within.
Abyss take me, she must have touched my soul long before that night. Her fire, lit beneath my notice, where it smouldered on, feeding the worst in me.
Have we all been manipulated? This entire civil war? Perhaps indeed the blame lies elsewhere.