VII

In the night, those uncomfortable beneath Kanin’s yoke had come for him, seething out of Glasbridge’s alleys and ruins. It was not the Lannis folk who rose, but the motley bands of Black Road looters and idlers and thieves that had occupied the town before his arrival. Titles and past allegiances meant nothing, it seemed, in this newly savage world; scores had come, half of them armed with nothing more than staffs or kitchen knives, to test this Thane’s determination. They had not found him wanting. While the mob battered at the iron-stiffened door of the Guard House and smashed in the shutters on its windows, Kanin himself had led his Shield and twenty other warriors out over the wall of the little yard in which Glasbridge’s Guard had once drilled. They had fallen on the rear of the baying throng, so suddenly and unexpectedly that the slaughter had been trivially easy. The killing brought Kanin less relief, less respite from his tortured preoccupations, than such deeds once had. It was purposeless beyond the preservation of his own life, and he set little store by that measure of purpose. In the wake of it, though, standing with the dead and the crippled strewn about him, with groans and whimpers populating the darkness, he had rediscovered some little of the cleansing cold fire. One of his own Shield, a tall man, black-bearded, had cornered some ragged Gyre villager in the doorway of one of the shacks opposite the Guard House. As Kanin watched impassively, the shieldman’s shoulders shook, his sword sank to hang loosely at his side. The man he should have been killing was immobile for a moment, bewildered, and then fled into the night. Kanin seized the shieldman’s shoulder and spun him about. There were tears on the man’s face, and the sight of them roused all of Kanin’s ire. “What are you doing?” he shouted. “I cannot, sire.” The words were tremulous. The man’s brow furrowed. The sword fell from his limp hand. “Cannot?” Kanin snarled. All of the others were watching now. There was nothing else, in that silent, dark street, save Thane and shieldman. “It’s all wrong. We’re fighting our own. I don’t understand why…” Kanin cut him down, and the man fell without a sound, his legs folding beneath him. Another blow, as he lay there staring blankly up, finished him. Kanin stalked back towards the Guard House, pushing through the ranks of his warriors. He glimpsed in Igris’ face as he passed the subtle flinch of repressed doubt and distaste. He turned on the threshold. “Any who doubt me, who lack the courage to stand by their Thane, their Blood, come to me with a sword in your hand, and test your fate against mine. I don’t fear it. I’ll gladly face anyone. But if you’ve not the spine to do that, you’ll fight and you’ll die for me as your oaths demand. I will bring down those now ruling in Kan Avor or I will die in the trying. So will you.” Now, watching oily black smoke boil its way into the morning sky from the corpse fires, Kanin still felt the echo of that anger shivering through him. There were none left he could rely on, or trust. Not even his Shield. None who saw what seemed so obvious to him. If he did not move soon, he would be betrayed, abandoned. “We passed carts carrying the sick to Kan Avor, Thane,” Goedellin said behind him. “Did you?” Kanin muttered without interest. He turned reluctantly away from the window. He was wasting his time even talking to the Lore Inkallim, he suspected. Eska, who had brought the man hobbling into Glasbridge that morning, had implied as much in her curt report of what she had seen in Kan Avor. “The men who guarded them told us you had sent them.” “What of it? I do as I see fit. The creed has ever enjoined us to do so. Well, it seems fit to me to send sickness unto sickness. Fever breeds fever, my nursemaid always said. Let it fill Kan Avor, I say. Let the halfbreed find his streets filled with the stench of the dying.” “Is it true that you have given arms to Lannis men? That you are training and drilling them to fight alongside your own warriors?” Kanin ignored that. Once, his upbringing, his faith, might have required him to submit to the judgement of this learned man, so wise in the ways of the creed. Now he was entirely, coldly uninterested in the opinions of the Lore. He was a man without any allegiance, any duty, save to his own determined intent. He was entirely alone, and that very solitude rendered him impervious to all judgements save those of his own heart. Goedellin shook his bowed head. “But there must be unity, Thane. The faithful must be —” “The faithful must be cured of the madness that has come upon them,” Kanin said flatly. “I know corruption when I smell its stink, even if your nose is failing you. It’s not glory that we’re all rising towards, but chaos. Subjugation to the will of that mad halfbreed. We’re becoming beasts, and he is the beating heart of our affliction. Our ruin.” “Is it truly the curing of the faithful you seek, or merely vengeance for your sister’s death?” Kanin could easily have struck him then. It would cost him nothing to kill this revered man, nothing that he had not already sacrificed at least. Only the fact that he heard not accusation but weariness in Goedellin’s voice stayed his hand. “They thought in Kan Avor that you had sent the Hunt to kill him,” the Lore Inkallim said. “Did they. And did you ask Eska? You had time enough, didn’t you, to get to the truth of it, between there and here?” Goedellin frowned. “She was—is—unwilling to speak with me,” he muttered. “Ha! Then you’ve come to dig out my secrets, old man? Are you running errands for the halfbreed now?” He might have expected some indignation in response, but Goedellin seemed a man lost, too adrift on the currents of his own confusion to rise to such provocation. He merely shook his head, chewed his dark lips. “I went to Kan Avor in the hope of fostering unity, Thane. There is much that needs mending.” “I agree. And I know how to mend it.” “No, no.” Goedellin was unsettled. He clasped his hands, interlacing his fingers, then parted them again. “The faith, the faith. It must be of a single mind in times such as this. We stand upon the brink of —” “What, then?” Kanin interrupted. “Would you have me make common cause with Shraeve and the halfbreed? Surrender myself to the same madness as everyone else? I won’t do it.” The Lore Inkallim shook his head despondently. Kanin narrowed his eyes. Understanding blossomed within him. “You don’t know, do you, old man? You doubt. You suspect I’m right…” “I don’t know,” Goedellin conceded. Softly, like a defeated, shamed child. “I don’t know. I had thought it might become clearer to me. But I see things, I feel things, so… unnatural. It is…” “Foul,” Kanin encouraged him. “Wrong. It is against all reason for one such as Aeglyss to be the answer to the creed’s hopes.” “Reason?” Goedellin murmured. “Reason has never been a cornerstone of the creed, Thane. Fate does not submit itself to reason.” Kanin groaned in exasperation. “Seek guidance, then, from your First, if you’re too fearful to make your own decisions.” he sneered. “If you’ve not the courage for it, send messengers to Kan Dredar, telling them how things have gone awry. Hope that Theor and the rest will render the judgement you’re incapable of.” Still there was no reaction from Goedellin. No anger, no resentment, no bruised self-importance. Kanin had never seen one of the Lore so enfeebled by uncertainty. “My messages go unanswered,” Goedellin said miserably. “I do not even know if they have reached the Sanctuary.” Kanin did not conceal his contempt. “I’ll waste no more time on you. Look at yourself, Inkallim. Where’s all the strength, the discipline of the Lore now? You’re supposed to be the ones who guard the people against error. What use are you, when one halfbreed can steal everything away from under your very nose? The Battle, the people, the creed itself.” The Thane pulled open the door. “Try your visionary dreams for answers, Goedellin. If your reason isn’t enough, or your masters in Kan Dredar, try your secret roots and herbs. I’ll find you a bed, if you want one, and you can reside here as long as you wish, but spare me any more of your fumblings, your flailings.” Goedellin grunted. “Perhaps. Seerstem’s brought no clarity yet; quite the opposite. But perhaps. I hope for understanding.” “You hope in vain,” said Kanin scornfully. “Your dreams won’t bring you anything, because you don’t even know the right questions to ask. This stopped being about the creed, about fate, a long time ago, but still you think there’s some truth to be teased out of it. There isn’t. This is about blood now, Inkallim, and who is willing to spend and spill the most of it. This is about who is fierce enough, determined enough, to come out of the fighting pit alive.” He left Goedellin sitting there alone, a sad and shrunken figure hunched down in a chair. A man left puzzled and bereft by a world that had twisted itself into a shape he could no longer comprehend.