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.”
Fiddler wiped the rain from his eyes and squinted into the east. “Not much to tell you, Sarge,” he said gruffly. “Just feelings. That sorceress, for one.”
“Tattersail?”
“Yeah.” Metal clinked as the sapper unstrapped his sword belt. “Hate this damned thing,” he muttered.
Whiskeyjack watched as the man tossed the belt and scabbarded shortsword to the rooftop's pebbled surface behind them. “Just don't forget it like you did last time,” the sergeant said, hiding a grin.
Fiddler winced. “Make one mistake and nobody lets you forget it.”
Whiskeyjack made no reply, though his shoulders shook with laughter.
“Hood's Bones,” Fiddler went on, “I ain't no fighter. Not like that, anyway. Was born in an alley in Malaz City, learned the stone-cutting trade breaking into barrows up on the plain behind Mock's Hold.” He glanced up at his sergeant. “You used to be a stone-cutter, too. just like me. Only I'm no fast learner in soldiering like you was. It was the ranks or the mines for me-sometimes I think I went and made the wrong choice.”
Whiskeyjack's amusement died as a pang followed Fiddler's words.
Learn what? he wondered. How to kill people? How to send them off to die in some foreign land? “What's your feeling on Tattersail?” the sergeant asked curtly.
“Scared,” the sapper responded. “She's got some old demons riding her, is my guess, and they're closing in.”
Whiskeyjack grunted. “It's rare you'll find a mage with a pleasant past,” he said. “Story goes she wasn't recruited, she was on the run. Then she messed up with her first posting.”
“It's bad timing her going all soft on us now.”
“She's lost her cadre. She's been betrayed. Without the Empire, what's she got to hold on to?” What has any of us got?
“It's like she's ready to cry, right on the edge, every single minute. I'm thinking she's lost her backbone, Sarge. If Tayschrenn puts her under his thumb, she's liable to squeal.”
“I think you've underestimated the sorceress, Fiddler,” Whiskeyjack said. “She's a survivor-and loyal. It's not common news, but she's been offered the title of High Mage more than once and she won't accept. It doesn't show, but a head-to-head between her and Tayschrenn would be a close thing. She's a Master of her Warren, and you don't acquire that with a weak spine.”
