Reaper's Gale

  ‘The trails are most cleverly obscured, good Druz,’ said Rautos. ‘Quite simply, we are at war with a genius.’

  From the far end of the table, Horul Rinnesict snorted, then said, ‘Why not just mint more coins and take the pressure off?’

  ‘We could,’ Rautos replied, ‘although it would not be easy. There is a fixed yield from the Imperial Mines and it is, of necessity, modest. And, unfortunately, rather inflexible. Beyond that concern, you might ask yourself: what would I do then, were I this saboteur? A sudden influx of new coin? If you sought to create chaos in the economy, what would you do?’

  ‘Release my hoard,’ Barrakta Ilk said in a growl, ‘setting off runaway inflation. We’d be drowning in worthless coin.’

  Rautos Hivanar nodded. ‘It is my belief that our saboteur cannot hide much longer. He or she will need to become overt. The key will lie in observing which enterprise is the first to topple, for it is there that his or her trail will become readily discernible.’

  ‘At which point,’ said Barrakta, ‘the Patriotists will pounce.’

  ‘Ah, this leads me into the second subject. There has, I understand, been news from Drene – no, I have no specifics as yet, but it seems to have triggered something very much like panic among the Patriotists. Last night, here in Letheras, a number of unprecedented arrests occurred—’

  Uster laughed. ‘What could be unprecedented about the Patriotists arresting people?’

  ‘Well, foremost among them was the First Concubine.’

  Silence around the table.

  Rautos Hivanar cleared his throat, working hard to keep the fury from his voice. ‘It seems Karos Invictad acted in haste, which, as I am sure you all know, is quite unlike him. As a result, things went awry. There was a clash, both inside and outside the Eternal Domicile, between the Patriotists and the Tiste Edur.’

  ‘That damned fool!’ bellowed Barrakta, one fist pounding on the tabletop.

  ‘The First Concubine is, I understand, dead. As are a number of guards – primarily those in the Patriotist compound, and at least two bodyguards to the Chancellor.’

  ‘Has that damned snake turned suicidal as well?’

  ‘It almost seems so, Barrakta,’ Rautos conceded. ‘All very troubling – especially Karos Invictad’s reluctance to be forthcoming on what exactly happened. The only hint I possess of just how extreme events were last night is a rumour that Karos was beaten, nearly to death. I cannot confirm that rumour, since he was seeing no-one, and besides, no doubt healers visited in the aftermath.’

  ‘Rautos,’ murmured Druz, ‘do we need to distance ourselves from the Patriotists?’

  ‘It is worth considering,’ Rautos replied. ‘You might wish to begin preparations in that regard. In the meantime, however, we need the Patriotists, but I admit to worry that they may prove lacking come the day we most need their services.’

  ‘Hire our own,’ Barrakta said.

  ‘I have done so.’

  Sharp nods answered this quiet statement.

  Uster Taran cleared his throat. ‘My apologies, Rautos. You proceed on matters with your usual assurance. I regret my doubt.’

  ‘As ever,’ Rautos said, reaching once more for the cloth and wiping his hands, ‘I welcome discourse. Indeed, even challenge. Lest I grow careless. Now, we need to assess the health of our own holdings, to give us all a better indication of our resilience . . .’

  As the meeting continued, Rautos wiped at his hands again and again. A corpse had snagged on one of the mooring poles opposite the estate’s landing this morning. Bloated and rotting, crawling with crayfish and seething with eels.

  An occasional occurrence, but one that each time struck him with greater force, especially in the last few years. This morning it had been particularly bad, and though he had approached no closer than the uppermost tier in his yard, still it was as if some residue had reached him, making his hands oddly sticky – a residue that he seemed unable to remove, no matter how hard he tried.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The One God strode out – a puppet trailing severed strings – from the conflagration. Another city destroyed, another people cut down in their tens of thousands. Who among us, witnessing his emergence, could not but conclude that madness had taken him? For all the power of creation he possessed, he delivered naught but death and destruction. Stealer of Life, Slayer and Reaper, in his eyes where moments earlier there had been the blaze of unreasoning rage, now there was calm. He knew nothing. He could not resolve the blood on his own hands. He begged us for answers, but we could say nothing.

  We could weep. We could laugh.

  We chose laughter.

  Creed of the Mockers

  Cabal

  Let’s play a game, the wind whispered. Then it laughed in the soft hiss of dust and sand.

  Hedge sat, listening, the crumbly stone block beneath him eroded into a saddle shape, comforting enough, all things considered. It might have been an altar once, fallen through some hole in the sky – Hood knew, enough strange objects had tumbled down from the low, impenetrable clouds during his long, meandering journey across this dire world. Some of them far too close for comfort.

  Yes, probably an altar. The depression wherein resided his behind felt too even, too symmetrical to be natural. But he did not worry about blasphemy – this was, after all, where the dead went. And the dead included, on occasion, gods.

  The wind told him as much. It had been his companion for so long, now, he had grown accustomed to its easy revelations, its quiet rasp of secrets and its caressing embrace. When he stumbled onto a scatter of enormous bones, hinting at some unhuman, monstrous god of long ago, the wind – as it slipped down among those bones, seeped between jutting ribs and slithered through orbitals and into the hollow caves of skulls – moaned that god’s once-holy name. Names. It seemed they had so many, their utterances now and for ever more trapped in the wind’s domain. Voiced in the swirl of dust, nothing but echoes now.

  Let’s play a game.

  There is no gate – oh, you’ve seen it, I well know.

  But it is a lie. It is what your mind builds, stone by stone.

  For your kind love borders. Thresholds, divisions, delineations. To enter a place you believe you must leave another. But look around and you can see. There is no gate, my friend.

  I show you this. Again and again. The day you comprehend, the day wisdom comes to you, you will join me. The flesh that encompasses you is your final conceit. Abandon it, my love. You once scattered yourself and you will do so again. When wisdom arrives. Has wisdom arrived yet?

  The wind’s efforts at seduction, its invitations to his accepting some kind of wilful dissolution, were getting irritating. Grunting, he pushed himself upright.

  On the slope to his left, a hundred or more paces away, sprawled the skeleton of a dragon. Something had shattered its ribcage, puncturing blows driving shards and fragments inward – fatally so, he could see even from this distance. The bones looked strange, sheathed one and all in something like black, smoky glass. Glass that webbed down to the ground, then ran in frozen streams through furrows on the slope. As if the beast’s melting flesh had somehow vitrified.

  He had seen the same on the two other dragon remains he had come across.

  He stood, luxuriating in his conceit – in the dull pain in his lower back, the vague earache from the insistent wind, and the dryness at the back of his throat that forced him to repeatedly clear it. Which he did, before saying, ‘All the wonders and miseries of a body, wind, that is what you have forgotten. What you long for. You want me to join you? Ha, it’s the other way round.’

  You will never win this game, my love—

  ‘Then why play it?’

  He set off at an angle up the hillside. On the summit, he could see more stone rubble, the remnants of a temple that had dropped through a hole in the earth, plucked from mortal eyes in a conflagration of dust and thunder. Like cutting the feet out from under a god. Like obliterating a faith with a singl
e slash of the knife. A hole in the earth, then, the temple’s pieces tumbling through the Abyss, the ethered layers of realm after realm, until they ran out of worlds to plunge through.

  Knock knock, right on Hood’s head.

  Your irreverence will deliver unto you profoundest regret, beloved.

  ‘My profoundest regret, wind, is that it never rains here. No crashing descent of water – to drown your every word.’

  Your mood is foul today. This is not like you. We have played so many games together, you and I.

  ‘Your breath is getting cold.’

  Because you are walking the wrong way!

  ‘Ah. Thank you, wind.’

  A sudden bitter gust buffeted him, evincing its displeasure. Grit stung his eyes, and he laughed. ‘Hood’s secret revealed, at last. Scurry on back to him, wind, you have lost this game.’

  You fool. Ponder this question: among the fallen, among the dead, will you find more soldiers – more fighters than nonfighters? Will you find more men than women? More gods than mortals? More fools than the wise? Among the Fallen, my friend, does the echo of marching armies drown all else? Or the moans of the diseased, the cries of the starving?

  ‘I expect, in the end,’ he said after a moment, ‘it all evens out.’

  You are wrong. I must answer you, even though it will break your heart. I must.

  ‘There is no need,’ he replied. ‘I already know.’

  Do you? whispered the wind.

  ‘You want me to falter. In despair. I know your tricks, wind. And I know, too, that you are probably all that remains of some ancient, long-forgotten god. Hood knows, maybe you are all of them, their every voice a tangled mess, pushing dust and sand and little else. You want me to fall to my knees before you. In abject worship, because maybe then some trickle of power will come to you. Enough to make your escape.’ He grunted a laugh. ‘But this is for you to ponder, wind. Among all the fallen, why do you haunt me?’

  Why not? You boldly assert bone and flesh. You would spit in Hood’s face – you would spit in mine if you could think of a way to dodge my spitting it right back.

  ‘Aye, I would at that. Which is my point. You chose wrongly, wind. Because I am a soldier.’

  Let’s play a game.

  ‘Let’s not.’

  Among the Fallen, who—

  ‘The answer is children, wind. More children than anyone else.’

  Then where is your despair?

  ‘You understand nothing,’ he said, pausing to spit. ‘For a man or a woman to reach adulthood, they must first kill the child within them.’

  You are a most vicious man, soldier.

  ‘You still understand nothing. I have just confessed my despair, wind. You win the game. You win every game. But I will march on, into your icy breath, because that’s what soldiers do.’

  Odd, it does not feel as if I have won.

  On a flat stretch of cold but not yet frozen mud, he came upon tracks. Broad, flattened and bony feet, one set, heading in the same direction. Someone . . . seeking perhaps what he sought. Water pooled in the deep prints, motionless and reflecting the pewter sky.

  He crouched down, studying the deep impressions. ‘Be useful, wind. Tell me who walks ahead of me.’

  Silent. One who does not play.

  ‘Is that the best you can do?’

  Undead.

  He squinted down at the tracks, noting the wide, slightly misaligned gait, the faint streaks left by dangling tufts of hide, skins, whatever. ‘T’lan Imass?’

  Broken.

  ‘Two, maybe three leagues ahead of me.’

  More. Water crawls slowly here.

  ‘I smell snow and ice.’

  My breath betrays all that I devour. Turn back to a sweeter kiss, beloved.

  ‘You mean the reek of fly-swarmed swamp I’ve endured for the past two months?’ He straightened, adjusted his heavy pack.

  You are cruel. At least the one ahead says nothing. Thinks nothing. Feels nothing.

  ‘T’lan Imass for certain, then.’

  Broken.

  ‘Yes, I understood you the first time.’

  What will you do?

  ‘If need be, I will give you a gift, wind.’

  A gift? Oh, what is it?

  ‘A new game – you have to guess.’

  I will think and think and—

  ‘Hood’s breath – oh – oh! Forget I just said that!’

  —and think and think . . .

  They rode hard, westward at first, paralleling the great river for most of two days, before reaching the feeder track that angled northerly towards Almas, a modest town distinguished only by its garrison and stables, where Atri-Preda Yan Tovis, Varat Taun and their Letherii company could rest, resupply and requisition fresh mounts.

  Varat Taun knew flight when he saw it, when he found himself part of it. Away from Letheras, where, a day before their departure, the palace and barracks seemed caught in a rising storm of tension, the smell of blood heady in the air, a thousand rumours cavorting in all directions but none of them possessing much substance, beyond news relating the casting out of two families, the widows and children of two men who had been the Chancellor’s bodyguards, and who were clearly no longer among the living.

  Had someone tried to assassinate Triban Gnol? He’d wondered that out loud early in this journey and his commander had simply grunted, as if nothing in the notion surprised or even alarmed her. Of course she knew more than she was letting on, but Twilight had never been free with her words.

  Nor am I, it turns out. The horrors of what I witnessed in that cavern – no, nothing I can say could possibly convey the . . . the sheer extremity of the truth. So best leave it. The ones who will witness will not live long past the experience. What then will remain of the empire?

  And is this not why we are running away?

  A foreigner rode with them. A Mocker, Yan Tovis had said, whatever that meant. A monk of some sort. With the painted face of a cavorting mummer – what mad religion is that? Varat Taun could not recall the strange little man saying a word – perhaps he was mute, perhaps his tongue had been cut out. Cultists did terrible things to themselves. The journey across the seas and oceans of the world had provided a seemingly endless pageantry of bizarre cultures and customs. No amount of self-mutilation in misguided service to some god would surprise Varat Taun. The Mocker had been among the challengers, but the absurdity of this was now obvious – after the first day of riding he had been exhausted, reeling in the saddle. He was, evidently, a healer.

  Who healed me. Who guided me out from the terror and confusion. I have spoken my gratitude, but he just nodded. Did he witness the visions in my mind? Is he now struck mute, his very sanity under siege? In any case, he was no challenger to the Emperor, and that was why he now rode beside Yan Tovis, although what value she placed in this Mocker escaped the lieutenant.

  Perhaps it’s no different from how she views me. I ride in this company in an act of mercy. Soon to be sent to a posting in my home city. To be with my wife and my child. Twilight is not thinking as an Atri-Preda – not even her duty as a soldier was enough to compel her to report what she had learned to her superiors.

  But this is not the first time, is it? Why should I be surprised? She surrendered Fent Reach to the Edur, didn’t she? No battle, they just opened the gates.

  ‘Clearly, she loves the Edur so much she can go with them, to take command of the Letherii forces in the fleets.’ So went the argument, dry and mocking.

  The truth may be that Yan Tovis is a coward.

  Varat Taun did not like that thought, even as it now hounded him. He reminded himself of the battles, the skirmishes, both on water and ashore, where there had been nothing – not a single moment – when he had been given cause to doubt her courage.

  Yet here, now, she was fleeing Letheras with her elite company.

  Because I confirmed that Gral’s claims. Besides, would I willingly stand beside Icarium again? No, not at his side, not in
the same city, preferably not on the same damned continent. Does that make me a coward as well?

  There had been a child, in that cavern, a strange thing, more imp than human. And it had managed what no-one else could – taking down Icarium, stealing away his rage and all the power that came with it. Varat Taun did not think there would be another such intervention. The defenders of the First Throne had possessed allies. The Emperor in Gold could not but refuse the same. There would be no-one there to stop Icarium. No-one but Rhulad himself, which was of course possible.

  It is our lack of faith in our Emperor that has set us on this road.

  But what if neither one will fall? What if Icarium finds himself killing Rhulad again and again? Ten times, fifty, a hundred – ten thousand? An endless succession of battles, obliterating all else. Could we not see the end of the world?

  Icarium cannot yield. Rhulad will not. They will share that inevitability. And they will share the madness that comes of it.

  Bluerose would not be far enough away. No place will.

  He had left behind the one man who understood what was coming better than anyone else. The barbarian. Who wore a heavy hood to hide his features when among strangers. Who spat on his hands to smooth back his hair. Who greeted each and every dawn with a litany of curses against all who had wronged him. Yet, now, I see him in my mind as if looking upon a brother.

  He and I alone survived. Together, we brought Icarium out.

  His thoughts had brought him to this moment, this conflation of revelations, and he felt his heart grow cold in his chest. Varat Taun pushed his horse to a greater pace, until he came up alongside his commander. ‘Atri-Preda.’

  She looked across at him.

  ‘I must go back,’ he said.

  ‘To warn them?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘What of your family, Varat Taun?’

  He glanced away. ‘I have realized something. Nowhere is far enough.’

  ‘I see. Then, would you not wish to be at her side?’

  ‘Knowing I cannot save them . . .’ Varat shook his head. ‘The Gral and I – together – I don’t know, perhaps we can do something – if we’re there.’