*

Light had come into the hall in Kan Avor as fully as it ever would on this grey day. Eska could feel stiffness and ache spreading in her legs. Others, their muscles less honed than hers, had long ago sunk to the floor, sitting cross-legged on the wet boards or leaning against walls or pillars. Eska glanced out of the window. Snow was billowing through the quiet streets outside, spilling over and through the shattered ruins of this once-great city. The cold air set her face burning, chilling the beads of sweat that still studded her brow. Her heart had slowed now, returning to its normal leisurely pace, but the memory of the hammer beat it had raced to was there in the cage of her chest. They had been moments out of time, those, a waking dream that felt endless from within its embrace. A dream of exultant, elevatory violence and joy. It had come without any warning, plucking her away from this hall, this city, and bearing her up out of the dull confines of her own head. She had been blind and deaf, riding the fury of others, feeling the wind of countless lives howling away into nothingness, knowing what it was to be at once herself and thousands, an overpowering sense of omnipotence and inevitable triumph. In that timeless span, she had been part of something vast, glorious, and unstoppable. Plunging back into the hall, looking out from behind her own eyes and becoming aware once more of the hundreds of separate, silent figures crowded in there with her, had been disorientating. She had felt a cavernous loss in the pit of her stomach. Some of those present were undone by their parting from such glories, and fell wailing to the floor. One began to claw frantically at the rough stone of one of the columns, as if trying to climb back to the heights from which he, and all of them, had been so abruptly torn. He tore his fingertips to bloody shreds before he calmed, and slipped down, unconscious. Eska knew only one thing: a great victory had been won for the creed. The enemies of the faith had been consumed by a fearful storm. And she had been there, within that storm. Beyond that, nothing was clear to her. Was she in error to resist this delicious madness? Could this halfbreed, now slumped and shrunken and still, insensate upon his bench, truly be the incarnation of the Kall, come to destroy the world and release it from its long suffering? Kanin oc Horin-Gyre meant to bring Aeglyss down, but she doubted now whether that was anything more than a lone sailor proposing war upon the storm, the sky itself. A pair of Battle Inkallim were approaching her through the crowd, one coming from the doors, the other from behind the stone bench where Aeglyss was still slumped, insensible and dormant. They came slowly, drifting almost casually between the close-pressed bodies. She should have sensed their movement long before. In her distraction she had missed what the rawest of trainees would have seen at once. It seemed unlikely that the ravens meant to kill her here and now, but if they did it would be futile to fight them. Spear and crossbow had been left secreted amongst the ruins outside, for none save Battle Inkallim or White Owls were permitted to bring weapons into the halfbreed’s presence. She visualised the drop from the window behind her to the empty street below. The leap would almost certainly break her ankles or legs, but she readied herself for it. Cautious habit had placed her here, within reach of that last, desperate recourse, when she first entered the hall. It would be her only chance if blades were bared. Her eyes and those of the closest Inkallim met as he edged to within a long arm’s reach of her. Neither blinked, neither betrayed any sign of emotion or concern. “Shraeve would speak with you when this is done,” the man said. Quite without nuance or threat. “She requests that you remain behind when all the rest leave here.” Eska thought for a moment, maintaining her steady gaze. “I am required elsewhere,” she said, matching the man’s relaxed manner with her own. “It will not take long,” he said, and turned his back on her as the second of the ravens settled in on the other side of her. The conversation was, she concluded, at an end. Aeglyss grunted then, and every head turned towards him. An expectant murmur suffused the hall. Those who had been sitting or lying on the floor rose to their feet. “It’s done, it’s done,” the na’kyrim breathed, pushing himself up from the bench with one hand. His voice still set the hairs on Eska’s arms and neck on end, but it was a hollow sound now, and rough-edged. She narrowed her eyes and saw, as he came, bent-kneed, to his feet, how his supporting arm trembled, how his head stayed low as if his neck no longer had the strength to lift it. How a single drop of dark red blood fell from his nose. “Now you see…” he stammered, and then his whole form was shaking. More blood was flicked from his nose and mouth. His shoulders quivered, their bones visible through his thin gown. He took a single tortured step forward and his legs suddenly twisted. He fell and thrashed about, beating arms and legs against the floor. Waves of nausea pulsed through Eska; beats of pain throbbed in her temples. She winced and felt her breath congeal in her chest. Groans and moans escaped a hundred throats. Many swayed on their feet, grabbing at those next to them to keep themselves upright. “Clear the hall!” Shraeve cried as she knelt beside Aeglyss, trying ineffectually to restrain his flailing limbs. The doors were thrown open and Inkallim and Kyrinin drove the throng out with fists and spears and threats. The people wept as they left, and wailed. Some fell to their hands and knees, vomiting, and were beaten and kicked until they roused themselves to struggle out. Eska made to follow the flow, but one of the Inkallim at her side held out an arm to bar her way. “Wait,” he said. “You may still be required.” She disliked his tone. Though she might grudgingly accede to the right of the Lore to issue instructions to the Hunt, there was no tradition of submission to the will of the Battle. More than that, her head was spinning, her vision blurring at the edges beneath the onslaught of whatever strange sickness of the mind was pouring from the na’kyrim. She longed to escape from this choking, stinking chamber. But she was unarmed and hardly capable of forcing the issue, so she remained. As the last of the onlookers were herded out, Shraeve finally mastered Aeglyss’ convulsion. She held the na’kyrim down, pinning his arms. Aeglyss was panting, shallow breaths rushing in and out of him. His eyes were closed. Goedellin came shuffling out of the shadows at the rear of the hall, the end of his twisted stick rapping on the wooden floor. He had been hidden until now from Eska’s sight. She was surprised, and troubled, to find him here. “What ails him?” the old Lore Inkallim asked Shraeve. “I do not know,” she said as she stood up. The two of them stared down at the halfbreed. He was entirely unmoving now save for the fluttering of his chest. He looked like a strangely animated corpse. The White Owls edged nearer to him. Shraeve’s ravens drifted closer from all parts of the hall. The gaunt, senseless na’kyrim exerted a grim fascination upon them. Blood was flowing, Eska saw, from his wrists. The sleeves of his gown were soaked with it. “I don’t understand,” said hook-backed Goedellin, almost plaintive to Eska’s ear. She curled her lip in momentary contempt at the man’s feebleness. What use was the Lore if it could offer no guidance in times such as these? It was no wonder the Battle had made itself master when the eldest Inkall so meekly lapsed into confusion and uncertainty. “No,” muttered Shraeve. “That does not surprise me.” She was staring at Eska even as she curtly dismissed Goedellin from her attention. Eska nodded slowly and slightly in acknowledgement of Shraeve’s gaze, and the Banner-captain of the Battle advanced towards her. “You came here from Glasbridge, we think,” Shraeve said. The hilts of the two swords sheathed across her back rocked as she gave her shoulders a loosening shrug. Eska took comfort in the thought that even this formidable raven felt the tension, perhaps even the pain, the halfbreed spilled out from himself. She made no reply to Shraeve’s question, though. She would offer nothing willingly to Cannek’s killer. “And presumably you mean to return there,” Shraeve continued, “since if killing Aeglyss was your plan, you would likely have made the attempt before now.” “He would be dead,” Eska confirmed. “Perhaps not.” “It is difficult to defeat an assassin who places no value upon their own life.” “Difficult,” said Shraeve with the thinnest of smiles, “but not impossible.” Eska could see in her cold eyes that she meant Cannek, and despised that faint flicker of satisfaction she detected in the other woman. Cannek had willingly submitted himself to the judgement of fate. It ill became anyone to permit themselves more than transitory pleasure or regret at his death. Shraeve, it seemed, was less mindful than she should be of the creed’s warnings against the corrosive effects of pride. “The Inner Servant —” Shraeve gestured towards black-lipped Goedellin without taking her eyes from Eska “—wishes to travel to Glasbridge. I invite you to escort him. It would be for the best. Your presence here causes unwelcome disquiet.” “Can I not come, as so many do, merely to witness for myself this man you claim as such a boon to the creed?” Eska could not help but play out in her imagination a deadly dance with Shraeve. She could picture those swords sweeping free of their scabbards, could see how her own spear—if she had it—might dart beneath or between them to pierce Shraeve’s carapace of black leather. There could be no certainty of how such a dance would end. Eska was sure of only one thing: it would be brief. The first faltering, however slight, would resolve it. “There are many who fear the Hunt’s vision has become clouded,” Shraeve said. “That you have lost sight of what is important.” “And that is?” “That we—all of us—are rising to our final glory. That we have mastered two Bloods already, and today—even now—our armies hunt the fleeing host of a third. This is what Tegric and his hundred died for.” Shraeve’s voice rose as she spoke, acquiring a joyous vigour. “It is what the Fisherwoman herself died for, and all the thousands since then. This is the time that all those deaths have made possible. If you deny it, you deny them. Make them meaningless.” “It sounds like a matter the Lore is better placed to judge than the Battle,” Eska said placidly. Her head was clearing now. Her nausea had subsided, leaving only a sour twist in her stomach. Goedellin looked up at the mention of the Lore. His stained lips were pressed tight in a miserable pinch. “There is time yet for…” Shraeve began, but then Aeglyss was rolling onto his stomach with a thick gurgling splutter. The White Owls and Inkallim who had gathered around him started back. Aeglyss crawled on all fours. His hands flexed against the planking of the floor like frail white spiders. The open sores where his fingernails had once been split and leaked noisome fluid. His scabrous head bobbed up and down. Blood dripped from his face, hair fell from his scalp. “Help me, Shraeve,” he sobbed. “Help me. Save me. I am lost.” His gown hung limp from the bones of hip and shoulder and ribcage. “Am I safe yet? Am I safe? I can’t tell; can’t tell anything any more. I don’t know.” Eska saw unguarded confusion and distaste flutter for a moment on the faces of a few: several of the wood-wights, one or two of the Inkallim. There are flaws here still, she thought. There is room for doubt in some hearts, when the madness is not fully upon them. “It’s killing me,” Aeglyss groaned. “Tearing me apart. It’s too much, too much for my body, my bones. Oh, what have they done to me?” He crawled, jerking, across the floor like some demented child made of sticks and string. Shraeve went to him and knelt at his side. She shot a wildly hostile glare in Eska’s direction. “Go,” she hissed. “Take Goedellin with you. Take him to that pathetic Thane of yours.” Goedellin hobbled towards the door without further urging. He glanced uneasily, again and again, at the twitching na’kyrim as he went. Eska followed him without looking back. She heard Aeglyss muttering as she went. “It’s not enough. This’ll eat me away unless I can see into the heart of it, see all of it. I need to go deeper. I need to go further.” Shraeve’s whispered reply was too soft for Eska to hear. But Aeglyss shouted, and she could hear him still as she descended the stairway that carried her and Goedellin out into the derelict city. “No,” the halfbreed cried. “I need more. I need to be more. It’s tearing me apart, unless I master it. I need to be made afresh. Again! Again!”