There’s a sad smile on his face, even as his heavy lips grind the words like stones. ‘You’re just like your father, y’know. You bring blood behind you.’
35
The red of binding and the silver of sending?
Developed theory for a simpler truth,
that of exerting an inexorable pull.
—Meditations on the Vanished Arts, lecture series
Shroudweaver remembers the sound of the hills.
Thell was built on the sound of granite and gravel, on the slow death of mountains.
He remembers a lot about Thell. More than he would like. It seems relatively innocuous on a map, a thick line of ink-stained grey to the north. Five small letters framed by Fallon’s blunt fingers.
He meets the old bull’s shadowed gaze. It’s a miracle he’s standing really, but then, Declan had never been one for listening to reality.
Weeks of recovery had stripped the fat from his frame. Days more of intensive attention by the physickers and drill sergeants had fed the muscle underneath.
Declan Fallon. Probably the only man to stare death in the eye and come out looking ten years younger.
On the surface, at least. Something is lingering in his old friend’s demeanour since the attack that’s hard to put his finger on. A nervousness; an uncertainty. Covered up with layers of bluster, but there, like a tremor in the bone.
Shroudweaver hasn’t seen him this way since the south burnt.
Still Fallon though. Still sharp. His reddened eyes catch Shroudweaver’s gaze and his broad, ugly moustache twitches. ‘Reminiscing, Shroud?’
Shroudweaver twists his lips, sips tea to wash down the unpleasant taste. ‘More than I’d like.’
Declan sits back, picks at his teeth. ‘You know, I wonder if everyone else tries to forget. I wonder iftheytry to forget.’ He glances out of the window, at a sky filtered with the shouts of workers, the ring of hot steel. ‘Thell before thegloriousrevolution. Thell before the Republic.’
Shroudweaver tightens his grip on the mug.
‘The Empire of the Dead.’ Fallon turns his eyes to the map, runs a calloused finger thoughtfully over its borders. ‘How many years was it, Shroud?’
‘Coming up on twenty.’
‘Twenty. Twenty long hard years. Remember when they were at the gates of Luss? Do you remember those things? Those painted, eyeless things?’
Shroudweaver chews his lips. ‘Hard to forget.’
Fallon laughs. ‘You understated fuck. I still have nightmares. Still,’ he grins. ‘Everything burns. Reassuring that.’
He grabs a bottle, slops it into a glass, drinks deep. ‘They’re not going to be pleased to see you back in Thell.’
Shroudweaver shakes his head. ‘Now,that’san understatement.’
Another belly laugh. ‘Well, you did turn their world upside down.’
Shroudweaver frowns. ‘I did worse than that.’
Fallon shrugs, winces as stitches stretch. ‘What else were we going to do, let the Emperor’s fucking revenants eat everything between the hills and the sea? You put them down. Sorry, you put theEmpiredown. The Republic owes you. And now look at them, all civilised.’ He coughs, spits. ‘It’s cute.’
Shroudweaver lets the air out his lungs. ‘I wonder if it was the right thing to do. I know the Republic and the Empire are tides apart. I know they’d skin me alive for even drawing a line between them, but, sometimes, the way they treat the dead now, I wonder if …’
Fallon smiles. ‘You gave them a new religion, Shroud. Who wouldn’t love that? One that doesn’t eat their children. Doesn’t press them into service to … whatever the Emperor believed in. It’s made them a lot more tolerable.’
