His gaze slowly descended to the pit's floor. It was crowded with rusted, corroded mechanisms, all alike though strewn about. Each was the size of a trader's wagon, and indeed huge spoked iron wheels were visible.
Kalam studied them a long time, then he swung about and returned to the others, uncocking the crossbow as he did so.
'Well?'
The assassin shrugged, pulling himself back into the saddle. 'Old ruins at the bottom. Odd ones — the only time I've seen anything like them was in Darujhistan, within the temple that housed Icarium's Circle of Seasons, which was said to measure the passage of time.'
Keneb grunted.
Kalam glanced at the man. 'Something, Captain?'
'A rumour, nothing more. Months old.'
'What rumour?'
'Oh, that Icarium was seen.' The man suddenly frowned. 'What do you know of the Deck of Dragons, Corporal?'
'Enough to stay away from it.'
Keneb nodded. 'We had a Seer pass through around that time — some of my squads chipped in for a reading, ended up getting their money back since the Seer couldn't take the field past the first card — the Seer wasn't surprised, I recall. Said that'd been the case for weeks, and not just for him, but for every other reader as well.'
Alas, that wasn't my luck the last time I saw a Deck. 'Which card?'
'One of the Unaligned I think it was. Which are those?'
'Orb, Throne, Sceptre, Obelisk-'
'Obelisk! That's the one. The Seer claimed it was Icarium's doing, that he'd been seen with his Trell companion in Pan'potsun.'
'Does any of this matter?' Minala demanded.
Obelisk. . past, present, future. Time, and time has no allies … 'Probably not,' the assassin replied.
They rode on, skirting the pit at a safe distance. More dust trails crossed their route, with only a few suggesting the passage of a human. Athough it was hard to be certain, they seemed to be heading in the opposite direction to the one Kalam had chosen. If indeed we're travelling south, then the Soletaken and D'ivers are all travelling north. That might be reassuring, except that if there're more shapeshifters on the way, we'll run right into them.
A thousand paces later, they came to a sunken road. Like the mechanisms in the pit, it was six arm-spans down. While dust filled the air above the cobbles, making them blurry, the steeply banked sides had not slumped. Kalam dismounted, tied a long, thin rope to his stallion's saddlehorn, then, gripping the rope's other end, began making his way down. To his surprise he did not sink into the bank. His boots crunched. The slope had been solidified somehow. Nor was it too steep for the horses.
The assassin glanced up at the others. 'This can lead us in the direction we've been travelling along, more or less. I suggest we take it — we'll make much better time.'
'Going nowhere faster,' Minala said.
Kalam grinned.
When everyone had led their mounts down, the captain spoke. 'Why not camp here for a while? We're not visible and the air's a bit cleaner.'
'And cooler,' Selv added, her arms around her all too quiet children.
'All right,' the assassin agreed.
The bladders of water for the horses were getting ominously light — the animals could last a few days on feed alone, Kalam knew, though they would suffer terribly. We're running out of time. As he unsaddled, fed and watered the horses, Minala and Keneb laid out the bedrolls, then assembled the meagre supplies that would make up their own meal. The preparations were conducted in silence.
'Can't say I'm encouraged by this place,' Keneb said as they ate.
Kalam grunted, appreciating the gradual emergence of the captain's sense of humour. 'Could do with a good sweeping,' he agreed.
'Aye. Mind you, I've seen bonfires get out of control before …'
Minala took a last sip of water, set the bladder down. 'I'm done,' she announced, rising. 'You two can discuss the weather in peace.'
They watched her. stride to her bedroll. Selv repacked the remaining food, then led her children away as well.
'It's my watch,' Kalam reminded the captain.
'I'm not tired-'
The assassin barked a laugh.
'All right, I'm tired. We all are. Thing is, this dust has us all snoring so loud we'd drown out stags in heat. I end up just lying there, staring up at what should be sky but looks more like a shroud. Throat on fire, lungs aching like they were full of sludge, eyes drier than a forgotten luckstone. We won't get any decent sleep until we've cleared this place out of our bodies-'
'We have to get out of here first.'
Keneb nodded. He glanced over to where the snores had already begun and lowered his voice. 'Any predictions on when that will be, Corporal?'
'No.'
The captain was silent a long time, then he sighed. 'You've somehow crossed blades with Minala. That's an unwelcome tension to our little family, wouldn't you say?'
Kalam said nothing.
After a moment, Keneb continued. 'Colonel Tras wanted a quiet, obedient wife, a wife to perch on his arm and make pretty sounds-'
'Not very observant, was he?'
'More like stubborn. Any horse can be broken, was his philosophy. And that's what he set about doing.'
'Was the colonel a subtle man?'
'Not even a clever one.'
'Yet Minala is both — what in Hood's name was she thinking?'
Keneb's eyes narrowed on the assassin's, as if he'd suddenly grasped something. Then he shrugged. 'She loves her sister.'
Kalam looked away with a humourless grin. 'Isn't the officer corps a wonderful life.'
Tras wasn't long for that backwater garrison post. He used his messengers to weave a broad net. He was maybe a week away from catching a new commission right at the heart of things.'
'Aren.'
'Aye.'
'You'd get the garrison command, then.'
'And ten more Imperials a month. Enough to hire good tutors for Kesen and Vaneb, instead of that wine-addled old toad with the fiddling hands attached to the garrison staff.'
'Minala doesn't look broken,' Kalam said.
'Oh, she's broken all right. Forced healing was the colonel's mainstay. It's one thing to beat a person senseless, then have to wait a month or more for her to mend before you can do it again. With a squad healer with gambling debts at your side, you can break bones before breakfast and have her ready for more come the next sunrise.'
'With you smartly saluting through it all-'
Keneb winced, glanced away. 'Can't object to what you don't know, Corporal. If I'd had as much as a suspicion …' He shook his head. 'Closed doors. It was Selv who found out, through a launderer we shared with the colonel's household. Blood on the sheets and all that. When she told me I went to call him out to the compound.' He grimaced. 'The rebellion interrupted me — I walked into an ambush well under way, and then my only concern was in keeping us all alive.'
'How did the good colonel die?'