Toll the Hounds (The Malazan Book of the Fallen 8)

She set down the next card. High House Shadow, The Rope, Patron of Assassins. Well, that was not too surprising, given the latest rumours. Yet she sensed the relationship was more complicated than it at first appeared-yes, the Guild was active, was snarled in something far bloodier than they had anticipated. Too bad for them. Still, The Rope never played one game. There were others, beneath the surface. The obvious was nothing more than a veil.

The third card clattered on to the tabletop, and she found her hand would not rest, flinging out the next card and yet another. Three tightly bound, then. Three cards, forming their own woven nest. Obelisk, Soldier of Death, and Crown. These needed a frame. She set down the sixth card and grunted. Knight of Darkness-a faint rumble of wooden wheels, a chorus of moans drifting like smoke from the sword in the Knight’s hands.

Thus, The Rope on one side, the Knight on the other. She saw that her hands were trembling. Three more cards quickly followed-another nest. King of High House Death, King in Chains, and Dessembrae, Lord of Tragedy. Knight of Darkness as the inside frame. She set down the other end and gasped. The card she wished she had never made. The Tyrant.

Closing the field. The spiral was done. City and Tyrant at beginning and end.

Tiserra had not expected anything like this. She was not seeking prophecy – her had been centered on her husband and whatever web he had found him-self trapped in-no, not prophecy, nothing on such a grand scale as this…

I see the end of Darujhistan. Spirits save us, I see my city’s end. This, Torvald, is your nest.

‘Oh, husband,’ she murmured, ‘you are in trouble indeed…’

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She set down the next card. High House Shadow, The Rope, Patron of Assassins. Well, that was not too surprising, given the latest rumours. Yet she sensed the relationship was more complicated than it at first appeared-yes, the Guild was active, was snarled in something far bloodier than they had anticipated. Too bad for them. Still, The Rope never played one game. There were others, beneath the surface. The obvious was nothing more than a veil.

The third card clattered on to the tabletop, and she found her hand would not rest, flinging out the next card and yet another. Three tightly bound, then. Three cards, forming their own woven nest. Obelisk, Soldier of Death, and Crown. These needed a frame. She set down the sixth card and grunted. Knight of Darkness-a faint rumble of wooden wheels, a chorus of moans drifting like smoke from the sword in the Knight’s hands.

Thus, The Rope on one side, the Knight on the other. She saw that her hands were trembling. Three more cards quickly followed-another nest. King of High House Death, King in Chains, and Dessembrae, Lord of Tragedy. Knight of Darkness as the inside frame. She set down the other end and gasped. The card she wished she had never made. The Tyrant.

Closing the field. The spiral was done. City and Tyrant at beginning and end.

Tiserra had not expected anything like this. She was not seeking prophecy – her had been centered on her husband and whatever web he had found him-self trapped in-no, not prophecy, nothing on such a grand scale as this…

I see the end of Darujhistan. Spirits save us, I see my city’s end. This, Torvald, is your nest.

‘Oh, husband,’ she murmured, ‘you are in trouble indeed…’

Her eyes strayed once more to The Rope. Is that you, Cotillion? Or has Vorcan returned? It’s not just the Guild-the Guild means nothing here. No, there are faces behind that veil. There are terrible deaths coming. Terrible deaths. Abruptly, she swept up the cards, as if by that gesture alone she could defy what was coming, could fling apart the strands and so free the world to find a new future. As if things could be so easy. As if choices were indeed free.

Outside, a cart clunked past, its battered wheels crackling and stepping on the uneven cobbles. The hoofs of the ox pulling it beat slow as a dirge, and there came to her the rattle of a heavy chain, slapping leather and wood.

She wrapped the deck once more and returned it to its hiding place. And then went to another, this one made by her husband-perhaps indeed he’d thought to keep it a secret from her, but such things were impossible. She knew the creak of every floorboard, after all, and had found his private pit only days after he’d dug it.

Within, items folded within blue silk-the silk of the Blue Moranth. Tor’s loot-she wondered again how he’d come by it. Even now, as she knelt above the cache, she could feel the sorcery roiling up thick as a stench, reeking of watery decay-the Warren of Ruse, no less, but then, perhaps not. This, I think, is Elder. This magic, it comes from Mael.

But then, what connection would the Blue Moranth have with the Elder God?

She reached down and edged back the silk. A pair of sealskin gloves, glistening as if they had just come up from the depths of some ice-laden sea. Beneath them, a water-etched throwing axe, in a style she had never seen before-not Moranth, for certain. A sea-raider’s weapon, the inset patterns on the blue iron swirling like a host of whirlpools. The handle was an ivory tusk of some sort, appallingly over-sized for any beast she could imagine. Carefully tucked in to either side of the weapon were cloth-wrapped grenados, thirteen in all, one of which was-she had discovered-empty of whatever chemical incendiary was trapped inside the others. An odd habit of the Moranth, but it had allowed her a chance to examine more closely the extraordinary skill involved in manufacturing such perfect porcelain globes, without risk of blowing herself and her entire home to pieces. True, she had heard that most Moranth munitions were made of clay, but not these ones, for some reason. Lacquered with a thick, mostly transparent gloss that was nevertheless faintly cerulean, these grenados were-to her eye-works of art, which made the destruction implicit in their proper use strike her as almost criminal.

Now, dear husband, why do you have these? Were they given to you, or did you-as is more likely-steal them?

If she confronted him, she knew, he would tell her the truth. But that was not something she would do. Successful marriages took as sacrosanct the possession of secrets. When so much was shared, certain other things must ever be held back. Small secrets, to be sure, but precious ones none the less.

Tiserra wondered if her husband foresaw a futurel need for such items. Or was this just another instance of his natural inclination to hoard, a quirk both charm-