Paran nodded.
The Claw hesitated, then leaned closer. 'I've been thinking, Captain. It's a hunch, mind you, but I think you're here to do some good. No, don't bother answering. Only, if you get into trouble, you get word to Toc the Younger, that's me. I'm in the Messenger Corps, outrider class, the Second. All right?'
Paran nodded again. 'Thank you,' he said, just as a loud crash sounded behind them, followed by a chorus of angry voices. Neither rider turned.
'What's that you said, Captain?'
Paran smiled. 'Better head off. Keep your cover – in case something happens to me. I'll find myself a guide, by the book.'
'Sure thing, Captain.' Toc the Younger waved, then swung his mount down a side-street. Moments later Paran lost sight of him. He drew a deep breath, then cast his gaze about, searching for a likely soldier.
Paran knew that his early years in the noble courts of his homeland had prepared him well for the kind of deception Adjunct Lorn demanded of him. In the past two years, however, he had begun to recognize more clearly what he was becoming. That brash, honest youth who had spoken with the Empress's Adjunct that day on the Itko Kanese coast now gnawed at him. He'd dropped right into Lorn's lap like a lump of unshaped clay. And she had proceeded to do what she did best.
What frightened Paran most, these days, was that he had grown used to being used. He'd been someone else so many times that he saw a thousand faces, heard a thousand voices, all at war with his own. When he thought of himself, of that young noble-born man with the overblown faith in honesty and integrity, the vision that came to him now was of something cold, hard and dark. It hid in the deepest shadows of his mind, and it watched. No contemplation, no judgement, just icy, clinical observation.
He didn't think that that young man would see the light of day again. He would just shrink further back, swallowed by darkness, then disappear, leaving no trace.
And Paran wondered if he even cared any more.
He marched into the barracks that had once housed Pale's Noble Guard. One old veteran lounged on a nearby cot, her rag-wrapped feet jutting over the end. The mattress had been stripped away and tossed into a corner; the woman lay on the flat boards, her hands behind her head.
Paran's gaze held on her briefly, then travelled down the ward. With the lone exception of the veteran marine, the place was empty. He returned his attention to her. 'Corporal, is it?'
The woman didn't move. 'Yeah, what?'
'I take it,' he said drily, 'that the chain of command has thoroughly disintegrated around here.'
Her eyes opened and managed a lazy sweep of the officer standing before her. 'Probably,' she said, then closed her eyes again. 'You looking for somebody or what?'
'I'm looking for the Ninth Squad, Corporal.'
'Why? They in trouble again?'
Paran smiled to himself. 'Are you the average Bridgeburner, Corporal?'
'All the average ones are dead,' she said.
'Who's your commander?' Paran asked.
'Antsy, but he's not here.'
'I can see that.' The captain waited, then sighed. 'Well, where is this Antsy?'
'Try Knobb's Inn, up the street. The last I seen of him he was losing his shirt to Hedge. Antsy's a card-player, right, only not a good one.' She began picking at a tooth at the back of her mouth.
Paran's brows rose. 'Your commander gambles with his men?'
'Antsy's a sergeant,' the woman explained. 'Our captain's dead. Anyway, Hedge is not in our squad.'
'Oh, and what squad is he with?'
The woman grinned, swallowing whatever her finger had dislodged. 'The Ninth.'
'What's your name, Corporal?'
'Picker, what's yours?'
'Captain Paran.'
Picker shot up into a sitting position, her eyes wide. 'Oh, you're the new captain who's yet to pull a sword, eh?'
Paran grinned. 'That's right.'
'You got any idea of the odds on you right now? It doesn't look good.'
'What do you mean?'
She smiled a broad smile. 'The way I pick it,' she said, leaning back down and closing her eyes again, 'the first blood you see on your hands is gonna be your own, Captain Paran. Go back to Quon Tali where it's safe. Go on, the Empress needs her feet licked.'
'They're clean enough,' Paran said. He was not sure how to deal with this situation. Part of him wanted to draw his sword and cut Picker in half. Another wanted to laugh, and that one had an edge of hysteria to it.
Behind him the outer door banged open and heavy footsteps sounded on the floorboards. Paran turned. A red-faced sergeant, his face dominated by an enormous handlebar moustache, stormed into the room. Ignoring Paran, he strode up beside Picker's cot and glowered down at her.
'Dammit, Picker, you told me Hedge was having a bad run, and now that bow-legged turd's cleaned me out!'
'Hedge is having a bad run,' Picker said. 'But yours is worse. You never asked me about that, did you? Antsy, meet Captain Paran, the Ninth's new officer.'
The sergeant swung around and stared. 'Hood's Breath,' he muttered, then faced Picker again.
'I'm looking for Whiskeyjack, Sergeant,' Paran said softly.
Something in the captain's tone brought Antsy around. He opened his mouth, then shut it when his eyes caught Paran's steady gaze. 'Some kid delivered a message. Whiskeyjack trooped out. A few of his people are at Knobb's.'
'Thank you, Sergeant.' Paran walked stiffly from the room.
Antsy let out a long breath and glanced at Picker.
'Two days,' she pronounced, 'then somebody does him. Old Rockface has already laid twenty to that.'
Antsy's expression tightened. 'Something tells me that'd be a damned shame.'
Paran entered Knobb's Inn and stopped just inside the doorway. The place was packed with soldiers, their voices a jumbled roar. Only a few showed on their uniforms the flame emblem of the Bridgeburners. The rest were 2nd Army.
At a large table beneath an overhanging walkway that fronted rooms on the first floor half a dozen Bridgeburners sat playing cards. A wide-shouldered man whose black hair was braided into a pony-tail and knotted with charms and fetishes sat with his back to the room, dealing out the cards with infinite patience. Even through the high-tide roar, Paran could hear the man's monotone counting. The others at the table deluged the dealer with curses, to little effect.
'Barghast,' Paran murmured, his gaze on the dealer. 'Only one in the Bridgeburners. That's the Ninth, then.' He took a deep breath, then plunged into the crowd.
By the time he arrived behind the Barghast his fine cloak was drenched with sour ale and bitter wine, and sweat cast a shine on his forehead. The Barghast, he saw, had just finished the deal and was setting down the deck in the table's centre, revealing as he did so the endless blue woad tattooing on his bared arm, the spiral patterns marred here and there by white scars.
'Is this the Ninth?' Paran asked loudly.
The man opposite the Barghast glanced up, his weathered face the same colour as his leather cap, then returned his attention to his cards. 'You Captain Paran?'
'I am. And you, soldier?'
'Hedge.' He nodded at the heavy man seated to his right. 'That's Mallet, the squad's healer. And the Barghast's name is Trotts, and it ain't because he likes jogging.' He jerked his head to his left. 'The rest don't matter – they're Second Army and lousy players to boot. Take a seat, Captain. Whiskeyjack and the rest been called out for the time being. Should be back soon.'
Paran found an empty chair and pulled it up between Mallet and Trotts.
Hedge growled, 'Hey, Trotts, you gonna call this game or what?'
Releasing a long breath, Paran turned to Mallet. 'Tell me, Healer, what's the average life expectancy for an officer in the Bridgeburners?'
A grunt escaped Hedge's lips. 'Before or after Moon's Spawn?'
Mallet's heavy brows rose slightly as he answered the captain. 'Maybe two campaigns. Depends on a lot of things. Balls ain't enough, but it helps. And tha
t means forgetting everything you learned and jumping into your sergeant's lap like a babe. You listen to him, you might make it.'
Hedge thumped the table. 'Wake up, Trotts! What are we playing here?'
The Barghast scowled. 'I'm thinking,' he rumbled.
Paran leaned back and unhitched his belt.
Trotts decided on a game, to the groans of Hedge, Mallet and the three 2nd Army soldiers, since it was the game Trotts always decided on.
Mallet spoke. 'Captain, you've been hearing things about the Bridgebumers, right?'
Paran nodded. 'Most officers are terrified of the Bridge-burners. Word is, the mortality rate's so high because half the captains end up with a dagger in their back.'
He paused, and was about to continue when he noticed the sudden silence. The game had stopped, and all eyes had fixed on him. Sweat broke out under Paran's clothing. 'And from what I've seen so far,' he pressed on, 'I'm likely to believe that rumour. But I'll tell you something – all of you – if I die with a knife in my back, it'd better be because I earned it. Otherwise, I will be severely disappointed.' He hitched his belt and rose. 'Tell the sergeant I'll be in the barracks. I'd like to speak with him before we're officially mustered.'
Hedge gave a slow nod. 'Will do, Captain.' The man hesitated. 'Uh, Captain? Care to sit in on the game?'
Paran shook his head. 'Thanks, no.' A grin tugged the corner of his mouth. 'Bad practice, an officer taking his enlisted men's money.'
'Now there's a challenge you'd better back up some time,' Hedge said, his eyes brightening.
'I'll think about it,' Paran replied, as he left the table. Pushing through the crowd, he felt a growing sense of something that caught him completely off-guard: insignificance. A lot of arrogance had been drilled into him, from his days as a boy among the nobility through to his time at the academy. That arrogance now cowered in some corner of his brain, shocked silent and numb.
He had known that well before he'd met the Adjunct: his path into and through the officer training corps of the Marine Academy had been an easy procession marked by winks and nods. But the Empire's wars were fought here, thousands of leagues away, and here, Paran realized, nobody cared one whit about court influences and mutually favourable deals. Those short-cuts swelled his chances of dying, and dying fast. If not for the Adjunct, he'd have been totally unprepared to take command.
Paran grimaced as he pushed open the tavern door and stepped out into the street. It was no wonder the old Emperor's armies had so easily devoured the feudal kingdoms in his path on the road to Empire. He was suddenly glad of the stains marring his uniform – he no longer looked out of place.
He strode into the alley leading to the barracks' side entrance. The way lay in shadow beneath high-walled buildings and the faded canopies that hung over sagging balconies. Pale was a dying city. He knew enough of its history to recognize the bleached tints of long-lost glory. True, it had commanded enough power to forge an alliance with Moon's Spawn, but the captain suspected that that had had more to do with the Moon's lord's sense of expedience than to any kind of mutual recognition of power. The local gentry made much of finery and pomp, but their props looked tired and worn. He wondered how alike he and his kind were with these droopy citizens—
A sound behind him, the faintest scuff, made him turn. A shadow-wrapped figure closed on him. Paran cried out, snatching at his sword. An icy wind washed over him as the figure moved in. The captain backpedalled, seeing the glint of blades in each hand. He twisted to one side, his sword half-way out of the scabbard. His attacker's left hand darted up. Paran jerked his head back, throwing his shoulder forward to block a blade that never arrived. Instead, the long dagger slid like fire into his chest. A second blade sank into his side even as blood gushed up inside to fill his mouth. Coughing and groaning, Paran reeled, careened off a wall, then slid down with one hand grasping futilely at the damp stones, his fingernails gouging tracks through the mould.
A blackness closed around his thoughts which seemed to involve only a deep, heartfelt regret. Faintly, a ringing sound came to his ears, as if something small and metallic was skittering across a hard surface. The sound remained, of something spinning, and the darkness encroached no further.
'Sloppy,' a man said in a thin voice. 'I am surprised.' The accent was familiar, pulling him to a childhood memory, his father dealing with Dal Honese traders.
The answer came from directly above Paran. 'Keeping an eye on me?' Another accent he recognized, Kanese, and the voice seemed to come from a girl, or a child, yet he knew it was the voice of his killer.
'Coincidence,' the other replied, then giggled. 'Someone – something, I should say – has entered our Warren. Uninvited. My Hounds hunt.'
'I don't believe in coincidences.'
Again came the giggle. 'Nor do I. Two years ago we began a game of our own. A simple settling of old scores. It seems we have stumbled into a wholly different game here in Pale.'
'Whose?'
'I shall have that answer soon enough.'
'Don't get distracted, Ammanas. Laseen remains our target, and the collapse of the Empire she rules but never earned.'
'I have, as always, supreme confidence in you, Cotillion.'
'I must be getting back,' the girl said, moving away.
'Of course. So this is the man Lorn sent to find you?'
'I believe so. This should draw her into the fray, in any case.'
'And this is desirable?'
The conversation faded as the two speakers walked away leaving, as the only sound in Paran's head, that whirring hum, as if a coin was spinning, endlessly spinning.
CHAPTER FOUR
They were of a kind, then
the histories writ large
in tattooed tracery
the tales a tracking
of old wounds
but something glowed hard
in their eyes – those
flame-gnawed arches,
that vanishing span,
they are their own past
each in turn destined
to fall in line
on the quiet wayside
beside the river
they refuse to name ...
The Bridgebumers (IV. i)
Toc the Younger (b.1141)
Tattersail glared at Whiskeyjack. 'Hairlock is insane,' she pronounced. 'That edge to him was always there, but he's chewed holes in his own Warrens and he's tasting Chaos. Worse yet, it's making him more powerful, more dangerous.'
They had gathered in Tattersail's quarters, which consisted of an outer room — where they now sat – and a bedroom with the rare luxury of a solid wood door. The past occupants had hastily stripped the place of anything valuable and portable, leaving behind only the larger pieces of furniture. Tattersail sat at the table, along with Whiskeyjack, Quick Ben and Kalam, and the sapper named Fiddler. The air in the room had grown hot, stifling.
'Of course he's insane,' Quick Ben replied, looking at his sergeant, whose face remained impassive. The wizard hastily added, 'But that's to be expected. Fener's tail, lady, he's got the body of a puppet! Of course that's twisted him.'
'How twisted?' Whiskeyjack asked his wizard. 'He's supposed to be watching our backs, isn't he?'
Kalam said, 'Quick's got him under control. Hairlock's backtracking, working through the maze – he'll find out who in the Empire wants us dead.'
'The danger,' Quick Ben added, rounding on Tattersail, 'is his being detected. He needs to slip through the Warrens the unconventional way – the regular paths are all trip-wired.'
Tattersail mulled over that point, then nodded. 'Tayschrenn would find him, or at least catch wind that someone's sniffing around. But Hairlock's using the power of Chaos, the paths that lie between Warrens, and that's unhealthy – not just for him, but for all of us.'
'Why all of us?' Whiskeyjack asked.
Quick Ben answered, 'It weakens the Warrens, frays the fabric, which in turns allows Hairlock to break into them at will... and o
ut again. But we have no choice. We have to give Hairlock his rope. For now.'
The sorceress sighed, massaging her brow. 'Tayschrenn's the one you're looking for. I've already told you—'
'That's not good enough,' Quick Ben cut in. 'How many agents is he using? What are the details of the plan – what the hell is the plan? Is all this on Laseen's orders, or is the High Mage eyeing the throne for himself? We need to know, dammit!'
'All right, all right,' Tattersail said. 'So Hairlock unravels the whole thing for you – then what? Do you intend to try to kill Tayschrenn and everyone else involved? Are you counting on my help in that?' She looked from one face to the next. Each revealed nothing. Anger flared and she rose. 'I know,' she said stiffly, 'that Tayschrenn probably murdered A'Karonys, Nightchill, and my cadre. He probably knew your tunnels would collapse around you, and he might well have decided that Dujek's Second was a threat that needed culling. But if you think I'm going to help you without knowing what you're planning, you're mistaken. There's more to all this than you're willing to tell me. If it was just your survival at stake, why don't you just desert? I doubt Dujek would chase you down. Unless, of course, Tayschrenn's suspicions about Onearm and the Second are grounded in truth – you've plans for a mutiny, proclaiming Dujek Emperor and marching off to Genabaris.' She paused, looking from one man to the next. 'Has Tayschrenn simply anticipated you, thereby fouling up your plans? Am I being pulled into a conspiracy? If I am, then I have to know its eventual goals. I have that right, don't I?'
Whiskeyjack grunted, then reached for the jug of wine standing on the table. He refilled everyone's cup.
Quick Ben let out a long breath, then rubbed the back of his neck. 'Tattersail,' he said quietly, 'we're not going to challenge Tayschrenn directly. That would be suicide. No, we'll cut away his support, carefully, with precision, then we arrange his ... fall from grace. Assuming the Empress is not involved. But we need to know more, we need those answers before we can decide our options. You don't have to get any more involved than you already are. In fact, it's safer that way. Hairlock wants you to protect his back, failing every other option. Chances are, that won't be necessary.' He looked up and gave her a strained smile. 'Leave Tayschrenn to me and Kalam.'