Venth gestured Sandalath between himself and Yalad, and in this formation they quickly made their way towards the dining hall.

‘Why is this happening?’ Sandalath asked.

When Yalad did not reply, Venth cleared his throat and said, ‘The Lord has enemies in the court, mistress.’

‘But he’s not even here!’

‘No, mistress, he isn’t.’

‘If he had been,’ growled Yalad ahead of them, ‘we’d be looking down at the corpses of however many assassins got in here tonight. And dead or not, Draconus would get answers from them.’

Venth grunted. ‘He’s no warlock, corporal. I don’t know where those rumours came from, but I ain’t never seen anything to suggest he is — and I wager neither have you.’

‘He is the Consort,’ Yalad countered. ‘Or would you deny Mother Dark’s ascension, horse master?’

‘I would not,’ Venth replied.

‘I may not have seen anything,’ Yalad said, ‘but Captain Ivis has.’

‘I wish the captain was here,’ said Sandalath.

‘You’re not alone in that,’ Yalad said in a growl, and Venth could not tell if the young man had taken offence. There were times when this hostage displayed all the tact of a child.

The corporal looked in each of the maid cells, but his glance was brief and he was quick to close the doors behind him before moving on. ‘I don’t get this,’ Venth heard him mutter. And then he halted.

Venth almost collided with the young man. ‘What is it, corporal?’

‘His daughters — have you seen them? Anywhere?’

‘No, but then, I rarely do,’ Venth replied. And I’m grateful for that.

‘Stay here,’ Yalad said, and then he edged past them, returning to the last of the cell doors. He went inside, and when he reappeared there was blood on his hands. He moved to pass them but Venth blocked him, and the thing he did not want to contemplate was now burning like a wildfire in his mind.

He met Yalad’s eyes. ‘Well?’

‘Not now, Venth.’ The corporal roughly pushed past. ‘Let’s go.’

‘But what about those little girls?’ Sandalath demanded. ‘If they’re out there with an assassin on the loose, we need to find them!’

‘Yes, mistress,’ Yalad said without turning. ‘We need to find them.’

It was just past dawn when Ivis stepped on to the track wending its way up to the grounds. He was exhausted, and in his mind, haunting him, was the face of the goddess who had been impaled on the stakes in the clearing. He remembered her smile and the absence of pain in her eyes — as if wounds meant nothing. Yet each time he saw that face, taking form in his mind’s eye as if reassembled from pieces, he thought about cruelty, and all the other faces he had seen in his life then crowded his skull as if clamouring for attention.

He feared the attention of gods. They had the faces of children, but these were not kind children, and all that was revealed in them, why, he could see it mirrored among the many men and women he had known. The same venality. The same unashamed indifference.

Cruelty was the bridge between mortals and the gods, and both sides had a hand in building it, stone upon stone, face upon face.

We are — each and every one of us — artists. And this is our creation.

When he came within sight of the keep wall, he saw Houseblades swarming the grounds, and a moment later a half-dozen of them were rushing towards him. Looking like children, when something has gone wrong. The sun’s light was hard and strangely harsh, as if every colour was paint, and every hue and every shade held in it, somewhere, a hint of iron. Ivis paused, and then made his way across the moat bridge to meet his Houseblades.

FOURTEEN

When he was young and still living with his family on the Durav estate, Cryl remembered one summer when a tree-fall blocked a stream in the wood of the grounds. Water backed up to form a pool, and then a pond. He recalled seeing the mound of an ant nest in the path of that rising water. Day after day he returned to it, watching one side of the nest slowly crumbling to the seep of water. Atop the mound the ants continued their usual frenetic activity, as if blind to what was coming. On the last day of his visit, he discovered only a sodden heap of mud and twigs where the nest had been, and in the black muck he saw eggs and drowned ants.

He thought of that nest now, inexplicably, as he stood staring at the smear of smoke above the forest to the east, watching it spread across the sky. The procession had drawn to a halt while Lord Jaen rode out with a dozen Houseblades to investigate, a venture from which they were yet to return. Cryl remained with the carriage, ostensibly in command of the remaining eight Houseblades, although there were no orders to give.