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‘Will you have an answer for them?’
‘Glyph, the same answer. Always the same answer.’
‘Yedan, you have become a war-master in your own right.’
But Narad shook his head. ‘No, I have not. But the one who speaks through me, Glyph … ah, that one. Cold, a soul unloved. There are some for whom doubt does not weaken, for whom uncertainty only strengthens resolve. I said “cold”, did I not? The wrong word. Indeed, there is no word for that man
. In my dreams, I become him. In my dreams, he dwells within me.’
‘We lost no one,’ Glyph said.
Narad closed his eyes. ‘Not true.’
‘Yedan?’
‘Before this battle, we lost everyone.’
After a long moment, Glyph suddenly sobbed. Quickly turning away, he stumbled off.
Left in his wake, Lahanis glared at Narad. ‘This is how you celebrate our victory?’
‘When there is nothing to celebrate, Lahanis, then my answer must be yes, this is how we are to celebrate our victories.’
She snarled and then swung about, marching off to re-join her Butchers.
Narad stared after her. The loss of children was a terrible thing.
TWENTY
THE WINDS BATTERED AT THE STONE WALLS OF TULLA KEEP, sweeping round the turreted cones of the tower roofs that had been raised to fend off the winter, scouring free of snow the walkways, the crenellations and the black pocks of the murder holes in the outer walls and gatehouse. The granite, grey as ice, was cold enough to burn skin.
The keep surmounted a crag of stone, but the jagged outcrops of the surrounding ridge rose higher still, like the stubs of rotted teeth, and there the snow huddled in pockets, ice forming rivers in the cracks and fissures. Sukul Ankhadu so disliked this season, with the cold laying siege to the keep and the wagonloads of firewood dwindling as the months dragged on. More than half the rooms and an entire wing of the main building had been abandoned to the chill, and this did nothing to insulate the remaining rooms where braziers burned continuously, or hearths blazed night and day.
Under the disapproving regard of Castellan Rancept, she had taken to drinking more wine than usual, ill befitting a girl not yet into womanhood, and wandering about wrapped in a fur robe the trailing edge of which had once been white.
Restlessness was a dark force in the soul, riding currents of longing for what could not be found, much less recognized. Rooms shrank, corridors narrowed, and the light from lanterns and oil lamps seemed to withdraw, abandoning the world to shadows and gloom.
She stood now, alone, in an unused fitting room crowded with chests and winter gear stored here on behalf of the keep’s guests, of which there were many, with more arriving each day. The floor’s thin planks of wood beneath her moccasins were covered by a worn rug, and both warmth and voices from the chamber below drifted up to her.
Lady Hish Tulla’s return had been less than delightful. A woman torn from her new husband made for fierce moods and a displeased outlook, and already Sukul longed for the days when she and Rancept had been virtually alone amidst servants, grooms and maids, while the Houseblades kept to their barracks gambling with bones or playing Kef Tanar.
But even Sukul could agree that a meeting of the highborn bloods was long overdue. Her own interest in the matter was increasingly losing its intriguing and delightful irrelevance – that sense of its being a game, a curious realm of machination and ambition – and luring her into the world of adults, where she could dwell beneath notice, unremarked upon and thereby made invisible.
The voices rising from beneath her belonged to a trio of guests. Sukul had met Lord Vanut Degalla and his odious wife Syl Lebanas once before, at some event in the Citadel, although her memory of the details was vague – she had been very young then, too wide-eyed to comprehend much beyond a few names and the faces to which they belonged. Her sister Sharenas had expressed disdain for the pair, although Sukul could not quite recall why. The third guest sharing the small chamber below was Lady Aegis, of House Haran, an outlying estate inclined to isolation. Tall, attractive in a regal fashion, somewhat diminished by the obvious efforts she made to maintain that regal air, Aegis had already set herself in opposition to Hish Tulla, for reasons Sukul did not yet understand.
Moving quietly, she seated herself on a chest, drawing her fur robe closer about her shoulders, and listened.
Syl Lebanas was speaking. ‘The fault lies with Anomander,’ she said yet again. ‘I think we can all agree on that. It falls to the comportment of Mother Dark’s champion to affect the proper unity among the highborn. After all, the face of our enemy is hardly obscure—’
‘Oh, enough of that, Syl,’ cut in Aegis, her clipped manner of speaking hinting, as always, at impatience and contempt. ‘Insist upon simplicity as it seems you must, if only to find false comfort in your mastery of the situation. The truth of this matter … far more complicated. Allegiances uncertain. Loyalties suspect. What looms before us is nothing short of a fundamental reordering of power in the realm. As such … promises to be vicious.’
‘Against which,’ Vanut Degalla murmured, ‘even you must acknowledge, Aegis, Lord Anomander has failed and continues to fail in placating. Blood will be spilled in the Citadel itself before this is done.’
‘Let the two priestesses set talons to each other,’ Aegis retorted. ‘All this talk of Father Light and Mother Dark. Since when did matters of religion demand … unveiling of daggers, much less swords? Before this pogrom – before the atrocity … unmitigated slaughter of innocents – we Tiste dwelt well enough in a plurality of faiths.’
Degalla snorted. ‘My dear Aegis, and how many Deniers crowded your distant holdings? Scant few, I should think. No, the worm of disaffection was set among us the day Draconus elevated our queen into a goddess. While even you, wife, would see Anomander the instigator of our present disorder. He is not.’
‘Even so,’ Syl insisted, ‘he has indeed failed in meeting the challenge.’
