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Envy sighed. ‘That was the best night ever, wasn’t it? Maybe we should do it again.’
‘They know we’re here.’
‘No they don’t. They suspect, but that’s all.’
‘They know it, Envy.’
‘Maybe, since you ruined that hound’s brain, the one they brought in to sniff us out. It howled all night before they had to cut its throat. They can’t find us, and we’ve never been seen. They’re just guessing. It was you ruining that dog that got them suspicious.’
Spite laughed, but softly, making the sound a dry rattle. ‘The sorcery – it’s everywhere. You feel it, don’t you? All those wild energies, all within reach. You know,’ she rolled to face Envy, ‘we probably could do it again, like you said. Only not with knives this time, but with magic. Just kill them all, with fire and acid, with melting bones and rotting faces, and blood black as ink. Why, we could redecorate, in time for our father’s return – won’t he be surprised!’
Her voice had grown a little too loud, and the footsteps above them stopped suddenly.
The girls looked at each other in terror.
Something was up there, something demonic. A guardian, perhaps, conjured into being by Draconus.
After a moment, the steps resumed.
Envy reached out and dug her fingernails into Spite’s left cheek, hard enough to start tears in her sister’s eyes. She edged close and hissed, ‘Don’t ever do that again!’
Glaring, Spite clawed and gouged the back of Envy’s hand, until Envy let go.
They pushed away from each other, feet lashing out in savage kicks until beyond range. The effort left them breathless.
‘I want a bottle of wine,’ Envy said, after a time. ‘I want to get drunk, the way the new surgeon does. What is it with surgeons, anyway? Staring at walls for half a day. Hands shaking and all the rest. Clearly, dealing with sick people is bad for the health.’ She turned over on to her belly and began inscribing patterns with a fingernail in the rough stone beneath her. ‘Drunk, all my words slurring. Staggering around, pissing on the floor. Then, I’ll turn myself into a demon of fire, and anyone who comes near me will burn to ashes, even you. And if you run, I’ll track you down. I’ll make you kneel and beg for mercy.’
Spite scratched at a flea-bite under her tunic. ‘I’ll be a demon of ice. Your fires will wink out, making you useless. Then I’ll freeze you solid, and break pieces off whenever I get bored. And I won’t kill everybody here. I’ll make them my slaves, and make them do things to each other that they’d never do, but they’d have no choice.’
The pattern Envy had scratched into the stone was giving off a faint, amber glow. She cut a nail’s line across it and the light flickered and then died. ‘Ooh, I like that. The slaves thing, I mean. I want the maids – you can have the rest, but I want the new maids. They don’t believe any of the stories. They laugh and squeal and try to frighten each other. They’re all fat and soft. After I’m done with them, they’ll never laugh again.’
A faint blue penumbra now rose from Spite. ‘You can have them. I want the rest. Setyl and Venth and Ivis and Yalad. And especially Sandalath – oh, I want her more than any of the others. That’s how we do it, Envy. With magic. Ice and fire.’
Envy crawled close to her sister. ‘Let’s plan, then.’
Above them, the footsteps paused once more. An instant later the hot air filling the crawlspace seemed to flinch, as bitter cold poured down from between the tiles. Fiercer than winter’s breath, the air burned what it touched.
Whimpering, Envy scrabbled for the chute in the wall, Spite clambering behind her.
They did not know what hid in their father’s secret chamber. But they knew enough to fear it.
* * *
Master-at-arms Ivis walked out beyond the gate, drawing his cloak tighter about him as the north wind cut across the clearing. If he swung left, he would come to the killing ground, where it was impossible to not see the signs of the battle that had taken place there, only a season past. In his previous visits, wandering over the chewed-up ground with its spear-points darkening with rust, its stained shafts of splintered wood, its rotting cloth and leather straps curled like burned fingers, he could hear the echoes still. Faint shouts hanging in the dead air, weapons clashing, horse hoofs thundering and the cries of beast and Tiste.
Only a fool could feel nothing in such a place, no matter how ancient the actual battle. A fool whose spirit was deadened, or just plain dead. Brutal
ity was a stain upon the world, and it seeped deep into the earth. It tainted the air and made each breath lifeless and stale. It clung to time, entwined in the tatters and shreds trailing in its wake. Time … Standing in that place, Ivis believed he could almost see that ethereal, haunted figure, a lord of grisly progression. The strides devoured the ground, and yet the Lord of Time never left. Perhaps it too was made a prisoner, chained with shock. Or, just as likely, that wretched lord but wandered lost, blinded by something like sorrow. Upon a field of battle, no path led out. None that a mortal could see, at any rate.
It was behind him now, that tragic battle, and yet still he walked through its bitter cloud. In step with the lost Lord of Time. It is not only the dead who return as ghosts. Sometimes, the living make ghosts of their own, and leave them in places where they have been. Will I turn left here on this trail, then, to meet my own gaze, with but a span of ruined earth between us?
He had done it often enough. But not, he decided, today. Instead, he struck out straight ahead, towards the ragged fringe of the forest on the other side of the wagon track.
Into the realm of skewered goddesses. Sharpened stakes. The forest was now a place to be feared – when had that loss come upon Ivis and his kind? The first village? The first city? That first stretch of torn, cleared ground? There would have been a moment, a cusp, when the Tiste changed, when they left behind their sense of being prey, and in its place became the hunter. Forests were refuges for quarry. They offered camouflage, hidden trails and secret escape routes. Trees to climb, branches to venture out upon. They beguiled with ceaseless motion, or deep shadows. In a single flash, they could confound lines of sight. ‘Into the deep wood the prey flee, and into the deep wood we follow/and in the knowledge of our seeing, we make it shallow.’ Even in his youth, the poet Gallan had seen clearly enough. He had grown up in an age of trophies, of antlered skulls, fanged jaws, and dappled, tanned skins that mocked the pretence of the unseen.
We both saw the forests emptied, made shallow with our knowing. And yet, for all that, the slaughter could not defeat our abiding fear.
Fighting the chill, he strode into the forest, boots silent upon the thick, wet leaves.
