«What did I do?» the first man demanded, hurt.
The second soldier stiffened. «Hush, someone coming up the street.»
The guard waited tensely, hands on their weapons. A figure crossed from the opposite side and stepped into the torchlight.
«Halt,» the second guard growled. «Advance slowly, and you'd better have business here.»
The man took a step closer. «Kalam, Bridgeburners, the Ninth,» he said quietly.
The marines remained wary, but the Bridgeburner kept his distance, his dark face glistening in the rain. «What's your business here?» the second guard asked.
Kalam grunted and glanced back down the street. «We didn't expect to be coming back. As for our business, well, it's better that Tayschrenn don't know about it. You with me, soldier?»
The marine grinned and spat a second time into the gutter. «Kalam-you'd be Whiskeyjack's corporal.» There was a new tone of respect in his voice. «Whatever you want you've got.»
«Damned right,» the other soldier growled. «I was at Nathilog, sir. You want us blinded by the rain for the next hour or so, you just say the word.»
«We're bringing in a body,» Kalam said. «But this never happened on your shift.»
«Hood's Gate, no,» the second marine said. «Peaceful as the Seventh Dawn.»
From down the street came the sounds of a number of men approaching. Kalam waved them forward, then slipped inside as the first guard unlocked the gate. «What do you figure they're up to?» he asked, after Kalam had disappeared.
The other shrugged. «Hope it'll stick something hard and sharp up Tayschrenn, Hood take the treacherous murderer. And, knowing them Bridgeburners, that's exactly what they'll do.» He fell silent as the group arrived. Two men carried a third man between them. The second soldier's eyes widened as he saw the rank of the unconscious man, and the blood staining the front of his baldric. «Oponn's luck,» he hissed to the Bridgeburner nearest him, a man wearing a tarnished leather cap.
«The pull not the push,» he added.
The Bridgeburner threw him a sharp look. «You see a woman come after us you get out of her way, you hear me?»
«A woman? Who?»
«She's in the Ninth, and she might be thirsty for blood,» the man replied, as he and his comrade dragged the captain through the gate.
«Forget security,» he said, over his shoulder. «Just stay alive if you can.»
The two marines stared at each other after the men had passed. After a moment the first soldier reached to close the gate. The other man stopped him.
«Leave it open,» he muttered. «Let's find some shadows, close but not too close.»
«Hell of a night,» the first marine said.
«You got a thing about stating the obvious, haven't you?» the other said, as he moved away from the gate.
The first man shrugged helplessly, then hurried to follow.
Tattersail stared long and hard at the card centred on the field she had laid down. She had chosen a spiral pattern, working her way through the entire Deck of Dragons and arriving with a final card, which could mark either an apex or an epiphany depending on how it placed itself.
The spiral had become a pit, a tunnel downward, and at its root, seeming distant and shadow-hazed, waited the image of a Hound. She sensed an immediacy to this reading. High House Shadow had become involved, a challenge to Oponn's command of the game. Her eyes were drawn to the first card she had placed, at the spiral's very beginning. The Mason of High House Death held a minor position among the overall rankings, but now the figure etched on the wood seemed to have risen to an eminent placing. Brother to the Soldier of the same House, the Mason's image was that of a lean, greying man clothed in faded leathers.
His massive, vein-roped hands held stone-cutting tools and around him rose roughly dressed menhirs. Tattersail found she could make out faint glyphs on the stones, a language unfamiliar to her but reminiscent of Seven Cities» script. In the House of Death the Mason was the builder of barrows, the placer of stones, a promise of death not to one or a few but to many. The language on the menhirs delivered a message not intended for her: the Mason had carved those words for himself, and time had worn the edges-even the man himself appeared starkly weathered, his face latticed with cracks, his silvered beard thin and tangled. The role had been assumed by a man who'd once worked in stone, but no longer.
The sorceress was having difficulty understanding this field. The patterns she saw startled her: it was as if a whole new game had begun, with players stepping on to the scene at every turn. Midway through the spiral was High House Dark's Knight, its placement counterpoint to both the beginning and the end. As with the last time the Deck had unveiled this draconian figure, something hovered in the inky sky behind the Knight, as elusive as ever, at times seeming like a dark stain on her own eyes.
The Knight's sword reached a black, smoky streak towards the Hound at the spiral's apex, and in this instance she knew its meaning. The future held a clash between the Knight and High House Shadow. The thought both frightened Tattersail and left her feeling relieved-it would be a confrontation. There would be no alliance between the Houses. It was a rare thing to see such a clear and direct link between two Houses: the potential for devastation left her cold with worry. Blood spilled on such a high level of power cast aftershocks down through the world.
Inevitably, people would be hurt. And this thought brought her round back to the Mason of High House Death. Tattersail's heart thudded heavy in her chest. She blinked sweat from her eyes and managed a few deep breaths.
«Blood,» she murmured, «ever flows downward.» The Mason's shaping a barrow-after all, he is Death's servant-and he will touch me directly.
That barrow: is it mine? Do I back out? Abandon the Bridgeburners to their fate, flee from Tayschrenn, from the Empire?
An ancient memory flooded her thoughts, which she had repressed for almost two centuries. The image shook her. Once again she walked the muddy streets of the village where she had been born, a child bearing the Talent, a child who had seen the horsemen of war sweeping down into their sheltered lives. A child who had run away from the knowledge, telling no one, and the night came, a night of screams and death.
Guilt rose within her, its spectre visage hauntingly familiar. After all these years its face still held the power to shatter her world, making hollow those things she needed solid, rattling her illusion of security with a shame almost two hundred years old.
The image sank once again into its viscid pool, but it left her changed.
There would be no running away this time. Her eyes returned one last time to the Hound. The beast's eyes seemed to burn with yellow fire, boring into her as if seeking to brand her soul.
She stiffened in her chair as a cold presence washed over her from behind. Slowly, Tattersail. turned.
«Sorry for not giving you warning,» Quick Ben said, emerging from the swirling cloud of his Warren. It held a strange, spicy scent. «Company's coming,» he said, seeming distracted. «I've called Hairlock. He comes by Warren.»
Tattersail shivered as a wave of premonition brushed her spine. She faced the Deck again and began to collect the cards.
«The situation's just become a lot more complicated,» the wizard said behind her.
The sorceress paused, giving herself a small, tight smile. «Really?» she murmured.
The wind flung rain against Whiskeyjack's face. Faintly through the dark night the fourth bell clanged. The sergeant pulled his raincape tighter and wearily shifted his stance. The view from the rooftop of the palace's east turret was mostly obscured by sheets of rain. «You've been chewing on something for days,» he said, to the man beside him. «Let's hear it soldier.»