Toll the Hounds
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.
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.
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?
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-