He need not have worried.
The tunnel opened into a cramped blockhouse with no ceiling. One bench lined the wall to his right. Three bodies were sprawled on the dusty stone floor, bleeding out from vicious wounds. Should’ve averted your eyes, soldiers. Assuming she even gave them the time to decide either way – she’d wanted out, after all.
The door opposite him was ajar and Fiddler crept to it, looked out through the crack. A wide street, littered with rubbish.
They’d been listening to the riots half the night, and it was clear that mobs had swept through here, if not this night then other nights. The garrison blocks opposite were gutted, the windows soot-stained. Better and better.
He turned round and hastened back down the tunnel.
At the other end he found Cuttle, Faradan Sort and Fist Keneb, all standing a few paces in from the door.
Fiddler explained to them what he had found. Then said, ‘We got to go through right away, I think. Eight hundred marines to come through and that’ll take a while.’
Keneb nodded. ‘Captain Faradan Sort.’
‘Sir.’
‘Take four squads through and establish flanking positions. Send one squad straight across to the nearest barracks to see if they are indeed abandoned. If so, that will be our staging area. From there, I will lead the main body to the gate, seize and secure it. Captain, you and four squads will strike into the city, as far as you can go, causing trouble all the way – take extra munitions for that.’
‘Our destination?’
‘The palace.’
‘Aye, sir. Fiddler, collect Gesler and Hellian and Urb – you’re the first four – and take your squads through. At a damned run if you please.’
In the grey light of early dawn, four figures emerged from a smear of blurred light twenty paces from the dead Azath Tower behind the Old Palace. As the portal swirled shut behind them, they stood, looking round.
Hedge gave Quick Ben a light push to one side, somewhere between comradely affection and irritation. ‘Told you, it’s reunion time, wizard.’
‘Where in Hood’s name are we?’ Quick Ben demanded.
‘We’re in Letheras,’ Seren Pedac said. ‘Behind the Old Palace – but something’s wrong.’
Trull Sengar wrapped his arms about himself, his face drawn with the pain of freshly healed wounds, his eyes filled with a deeper distress.
Hedge felt some of his anticipation dim like a dying oil lamp as he studied the Tiste Edur. The poor bastard. A brother murdered in front of his eyes. Then, the awkward goodbye with Onrack – joy and sadness there in plenty, seeing his old friend and the woman at his side – a woman Onrack had loved for so long. So long? Damned near incomprehensible, that’s how long.
But now – ‘Trull Sengar.’
The Tiste Edur slowly looked over.
Hedge shot Quick Ben a glance, then he said, ‘We’ve a mind to escort you and Seren. To her house.’
‘This city is assailed,’ Trull Sengar said. ‘My youngest brother – the Emperor—’
‘That can all wait,’ Hedge cut in. He paused, trying to figure out how to say what he meant, then said, ‘Your friend Onrack stole a woman’s heart, and it was all there. In her eyes, I mean. The answer, that is. And if you’d look, just look, Trull Sengar, into the eyes of Seren Pedac, well—’
‘For Hood’s sake,’ Quick Ben sighed. ‘He means you and Seren need to get alone before anything else, and we’re going to make sure that happens. All right?’
The surprise on Seren Pedac’s face was almost comical.
But Trull Sengar then nodded.
Hedge regarded Quick Ben once again. ‘You recovered enough in case we walk into trouble?’
‘Something your sharpers can’t handle? Yes, probably. Maybe. Get a sharper in each hand, Hedge.’
‘Good enough . . . since you’re a damned idiot,’ Hedge replied. ‘Seren Pedac – you should know, I’m well envious of this Tiste Edur here, but anyway. Is your house far?’
‘No, it is not, Hedge of the Bridgeburners.’
‘Then let’s get out of this spooky place.’
Silts swirled up round his feet, spun higher, engulfing his shins, then whirled away like smoke on the current. Strange pockets of luminosity drifted past, morphing as if subjected to unseen pressures in this dark, unforgiving world.
Bruthen Trana, who had been sent to find a saviour, walked an endless plain, the silts thick and gritty. He stumbled against buried detritus, tripped on submerged roots. He crossed current-swept rises of hardened clay from which jutted polished bones of long-dead leviathans. He skirted the wreckage of sunken ships, the ribs of the hulls splayed out and cargo scattered about. And as he walked, he thought about his life and the vast array of choices he had made, others he had refused to make.
No wife, no single face to lift into his mind’s eye. He had been a warrior for what seemed all his life. Fighting alongside blood kin and comrades closer than any blood kin. He had seen them die or drift away. He had, he realized now, watched his entire people pulled apart. With the conquest, with the cold-blooded, anonymous nightmare that was Lether. As for the Letherii themselves, no, he did not hate them. More like pity and yes, compassion, for they were as trapped in the nightmare as anyone else. The rapacious desperation, the gnawing threat of falling, of drowning beneath the ever-rising, ever-onrushing torrent that was a culture that could never look back, could not even slow its headlong plunge into some gleaming future that – if it came at all – would ever only exist for but a privileged few.
This eternal seabed offered its own commentary, and it was one that threatened to drag him down into the silts, enervated beyond all hope of continuing, of even moving. Cold, crushing, this place was like history’s own weight – history not of a people or a civilization, but of the entire world.
Why was he still walking? What saviour could liberate him from all of this? He should have remained in Letheras. Free to launch an assault on Karos Invictad and his Patriotists, free to annihilate the man and his thugs. And then he could have turned to the Chancellor. Imagining his hands on Triban Gnol’s throat was most satisfying – for as long as the image lasted, which was never long enough. A bloom of silts up into his eyes, another hidden object snagging his foot.
And here, now, looming before him, pillars of stone. The surfaces, he saw, cavorted with carvings, unrecognizable sigils so intricate they spun and shifted before his eyes.
As he drew closer, silts gusted ahead, and Bruthen Trana saw a figure climbing into view. Armour green with verdigris and furred with slime. A closed helm covering its face. In one gauntleted hand was a Letherii sword.
And a voice spoke in the Tiste Edur’s head: ‘You have walked enough, Ghost.’
Bruthen Trana halted. ‘I am not a ghost in truth—’
‘You are, stranger. Your soul has been severed from now cold, now rotting flesh. You are no more than what stands here, before me. A ghost.’
Somehow, the realization did not surprise him. Hannan Mosag’s legacy of treachery made all alliances suspect. And he had, he realized, felt . . . severed. For a long time, yes. The Warlock King likely did not waste any time in cutting the throat of Bruthen Trana’s helpless body.
‘Then,’ he said, ‘what is left for me?’
‘One thing, Ghost. You are here to summon him. To send him back.’
‘But was not his soul severed as well?’
‘His flesh and bones are here, Ghost. And in this place, there is power. For here you will find the forgotten gods, the last holding of their names. Know this, Ghost, were we to seek to defy you, to refuse your summoning, we could. Even with what you carry.’
‘Will you then refuse me?’ Bruthen Trana asked, and if the answer was yes, then he would laugh. To have come all this way. To have sacrificed his life . . .
‘No. We understand the need. Better, perhaps, than you.’ The armoured warrior lifted his free hand. All but the foremost of the metal-clad fingers folded. ‘Go there,’ it said, pointing towar
ds a pillar. ‘The side with but one name. Draw forth that which you possess of his flesh and bone. Speak the name so written on the stone.’
Bruthen Trana walked slowly to the standing stone, went round to the side with the lone carving. And read thereon the name inscribed: ‘ “Brys Beddict, Saviour of the Empty Hold.” I summon you.’
The face of the stone, cleaned here, seeming almost fresh, all at once began to ripple, then bulge in places, the random shapes and movement coalescing to create a humanoid shape, pushing out from the stone. An arm came free, then shoulder, then head, face – eyes closed, features twisted as if in pain – upper torso. A leg. The second arm – Bruthen saw that two fingers were missing on that hand.
He frowned. Two?
As the currents streamed, Brys Beddict was driven out from the pillar. He fell forward onto his hands and knees, was almost swallowed in billowing silts.
The armoured warrior arrived, carrying a scabbarded sword, which he pushed point-first into the seabed beside the Letherii.
‘Take it, Saviour. Feel the currents – they are eager. Go, you have little time.’
Still on his hands and knees, head hanging, Brys Beddict reached out for the weapon. As soon as his hand closed about the scabbard a sudden rush of the current lifted the man from the seabed. He spun in a flurry of silts and then was gone.
Bruthen Trana stood, motionless. That current had rushed right through him, unimpeded. As it would through a ghost.
All at once he felt bereft. He’d not had a chance to say a word to Brys Beddict, to tell him what needed to be done. An Emperor, to cut down once more. An empire, to resurrect.
‘You are done here, Ghost.’
Bruthen Trana nodded.
‘Where will you go?’
‘There is a house. I lost it. I would find it again.’
‘Then you shall.’
‘Oh, Padderunt, look! It’s twitching!’
The old man squinted over at Selush through a fog of smoke. She was doing that a lot of late. Bushels of rustleaf ever since Tehol Beddict’s arrest. ‘You’ve dressed enough dead to know what the lungs of people who do too much of that look like, Mistress.’
‘Yes. No different from anyone else’s.’
‘Unless they got the rot, the cancer.’
‘Lungs with the rot all look the same and that is most certainly true. Now, did you hear what I said?’
‘It twitched,’ Padderunt replied, twisting in his chair to peer up at the bubbly glass jar on the shelf that contained a stubby little severed finger suspended in pink goo.
‘It’s about time, too. Go to Rucket,’ Selush said between ferocious pulls on the mouthpiece, her substantial chest swelling as if it was about to burst. ‘And tell her.’
‘That it twitched.’
‘Yes!’
‘All right.’ He set down his cup. ‘Rustleaf tea, Mistress.’
‘I’d drown.’
‘Not inhaled. Drunk, in civil fashion.’
‘You’re still here, dear servant, and I don’t like that at all.’
He rose. ‘On my way, O enwreathed one.’
She had managed to push the corpse of Tanal Yathvanar to one side, and it now lay beside her as if cuddled in sleep, the bloated, blotched face next to her own.
There would be no-one coming for her. This room was forbidden to all but Tanal Yathvanar, and unless some disaster struck this compound in the next day or two, leading Karos Invictad to demand Tanal’s presence and so seek him out, Janath knew it would be too late for her.
Chained to the bed, legs spread wide, fluids leaking from her. She stared up at the ceiling, strangely comforted by the body lying at her side. Its stillness, the coolness of the skin, the flaccid lack of resistance from the flesh. She could feel the shrivelled thing that was his penis pressing against her right thigh. And the beast within her was pleased.
She needed water. She needed that above all else. A mouthful would be enough, would give her the strength to once again begin tugging at the chains, dragging the links against the wood, dreaming of the entire frame splintering beneath her – but it would take a strong man to do that, she knew, strong and healthy. Her dream was nothing more than that, but she held on to it as her sole amusement that would, she hoped, follow her into death. Yes, right up until the last moment.
It would be enough.
Tanal Yathvanar, her tormentor, was dead. But that would be no escape from her. She meant to resume her pursuit, her soul – sprung free of this flesh – demonic in its hunger, in the cruelty it wanted to inflict on whatever whimpering, cowering thing was left of Tanal Yathvanar.
A mouthful of water. That would be so sweet.
She could spit it into the staring face beside her.
Coins to the belligerent multitude brought a larger, more belligerent multitude. And, at last, trepidation awoke in Karos Invictad, the Invigilator of the Patriotists. He sent servants down into the hiddenmost crypts below, to drag up chest after chest. In the compound his agents were exhausted, now simply flinging handfuls of coins over the walls since the small sacks were long gone. And a pressure was building against those walls that, it now seemed, no amount of silver and gold could relieve.
He sat in his office, trying to comprehend that glaring truth. Of course, he told himself, there were simply too many in the mob. Not enough coins was the problem. They’d fought like jackals over the sacks, had they not?
He had done and was doing what the Emperor should have done. Emptied the treasury and buried the people in riches. That would have purchased peace, yes. An end to the riots. Everyone returning to their homes, businesses opening once more, food on the stalls and whores beckoning from windows and plenty of ale and wine to flow down throats – all the pleasures that purchased apathy and obedience. Yes, festivals and games and Drownings and that would have solved all of this. Along with a few quiet arrests and assassinations.
But he was running out of money. His money. Hard-won, a hoard amassed solely by his own genius. And they were taking it all.
Well, he would start all over again. Stealing it back from the pathetic bastards. Easy enough for one such as Karos Invictad.
Tanal Yathvanar had disappeared, likely hiding with his prisoner, and he could rot in her arms for all that the Invigilator cared. Oh, the man schemed to overthrow him, Karos knew. Pathetic, simplistic schemes. But they would come to naught, because the next time Karos saw the man, he would kill him. A knife through the eye. Quick, precise, most satisfying.
He could hear the shouts for Tehol Beddict, somewhat less fierce now – and that was, oddly enough, vaguely disturbing. Did they no longer want to tear him to pieces? Was he indeed hearing cries for the man’s release?
Desperate knocking on his office door.
‘Enter.’
An agent appeared, his face white. ‘Sir, the main block—’
‘Are we breached?’
‘No—’
‘Then go away – wait, check on Tehol Beddict. Make sure he’s regained consciousness. I want him able to walk when we march to the Drownings.’
The man stared at him for a long moment, then he said, ‘Yes sir.’
‘Is that all?’
‘No, the main block—’ He gestured out into the corridor.
‘What is it, you damned fool?’
‘It’s filling with rats, sir!’
Rats?
‘They’re coming from over the walls – we throw coins and rats come back. Thousands!’
‘That guild no longer exists!’
The shriek echoed like a woman’s scream.
The agent blinked, and all at once his tone changed, steadied. ‘The mob, sir, they’re calling for Tehol Beddict’s release – can you not hear it? They’re calling him a hero, a revolutionary—’
Karos Invictad slammed his sceptre down on his desk and rose. ‘Is this what my gold paid for?’
Feather Witch sensed the rebirth of Brys Beddict. She stopped plucking at the strips of skin hanging fr
om her toes, drawing a deep breath as she felt him rushing closer, ever closer. So fast!
Crooning under her breath, she closed her eyes and conjured in her mind that severed finger. That fool the Errant had a lot to learn, still. About his formidable High Priestess. The finger still belonged to her, still held drops of her blood from when she had pushed it up inside her. Month after month, like a waterlogged stick in a stream, soaking her up.
Brys Beddict belonged to her, and she would use him well.
The death that was a non-death, for Rhulad Sengar, the insane Emperor. The murder of Hannan Mosag. And the Chancellor. And everyone else she didn’t like.
And then . . . the handsome young man kneeling before her as she sat on her raised temple throne – in the new temple that would be built, sanctified to the Errant – kneeling, yes, while she spread her legs and invited him in. To kiss the place where his finger had been. To drive his tongue deep.
The future was so very bright, so very—
Feather Witch’s eyes snapped open. Disbelieving.
As she felt Brys Beddict being pulled away, pulled out of her grasp. By some other force.
Pulled away!
She screamed, lurching forward on the dais, hands plunging into the floodwater – as if to reach down into the current and grasp hold of him once more – but it was deeper than she’d remembered. Unbalanced, she plunged face-first into the water. Involuntarily drew in a lungful of the cold, biting fluid.
Eyes staring into the darkness, as she thrashed about, her lungs contracting again and again, new lungfuls of water, one after another.
Deep – where was up?
A knee scraped the stone floor and she sought to bring her legs under her, but they were numb, heavy as logs – they would not work. One hand then, onto the floor, pushing upward – but not high enough to break the surface. The other hand, then, trying to guide her knees together – but one would drift out as soon as she left it seeking the other.
The darkness outside her eyes flooded in. Into her mind.
And, with blessed relief, she ceased struggling.
She would dream now. She could feel the sweet lure of that dream – almost within reach – and all the pain in her chest was gone – she could breathe this, she could. In and out, in and out, and then she no longer had to do even that. She could grow still, sinking down onto the slimy floor.