“No.”
“You want the whole city given over to riot and mayhem?”
“I want you to do as I bid, and to enjoy the fruits of your efforts. I will give you fifty times the payment you’ve received for any other service you’ve done me.”
“Now I know you are jesting.”
“Not at all. And not in this, either: if you refuse me, you corpulent slug, I’ll have you dug out of this burrow and burned alive on one of Ash Pit’s famous fires. The world is changing, Torquentine. Those who don’t change with it will pay a heavy price for their intransigence.”
After Mordyn Jerain had departed, Torquentine lay in such deep thoughtfulness, for so long, that the candles guttered around him. They failed, one by one, and his chamber eased its way into gloom. At length he stirred and summoned his doorkeeper. She came, Rot-faced, and knelt at his side.
“Magrayn, we are in an unenviable position,” he said distractedly, with none of the humour or affection that usually coloured his dealings with his disfigured attendant. “I am required by the Shadowhand to court disaster, and to wage war upon enemies I do not want. He offers me absurd riches if I agree, and threatens, if I refuse, to instead wage war upon me.”
“You could kill him,” Magrayn suggested promptly. Her tendency towards a practical way of thinking was one of the things he treasured about her.
“Perhaps, though that would be an undertaking no more palatable. To kill a Chancellor? Insanely ambitious.”
“Then we must find a way to satisfy him with the least risk possible.”
“There might be ways. Might.” Torquentine shook his heavy head, wishing the tangle of his thoughts might be so easily unwound. “But there’s a foul taste to all this, Magrayn. We’re already in the midst of war, and he seems intent on starting another one inside our own house. He invites chaos in Dargannan-Haig, vengeful fury amongst the Crafts. I don’t see the sense in any of it. There’s nothing to be gained by it.”
“The Shadowhand can unearth gain where others see only dirt,” Magrayn said, brushing a flake of forgotten food from Torquentine’s fat cheek.
“Indeed. What if his gain wears the same cloak as our loss, though?” He sighed. “We’ve little choice but to play the Shadowhand’s game for now. Make such arrangements as would be needed to move a man, in total secrecy, from here to Hoke. A blind man. Put some eyes on every warehouse used by the Goldsmiths, the Gemsmiths and the Furriers. We need to know every nook and cranny of whatever nocturnal routine the guards keep. And find someone in the Palace of Red Stone who can tell us what’s happening in there.”
“We’ve tried that before, without success. The Chancellor’s household is… tightly controlled.”
“Try again, harder. We shied away from too much risk in our previous attempts; now, we may bear a little more of it, I think. Desperate times, my dear. Also, examine all our plans for making a hasty departure from this burrow, as the Shadowhand saw fit to call it. Make sure they remain both sound and secret. And bring the best killers we know to Vaymouth-those who can be here within, say, three or four days. I want them close at hand. When troubles gather, it’s best to have troublesome friends within reach.”
“I will see to it all.”
“Excellent. Perhaps you could send me down some of those little apple tarts too? All this worry is terribly unsettling for my stomach. It needs some comforting, I think.”
Joy and despair contended for mastery of Tara Jerain’s heart. Her beloved husband was restored to her, and she longed to rejoice in that simple fact. So fearful had she been during those long days when no one could tell her where he was, or even whether he still lived, that she had felt like some fragile vessel of the thinnest glass: a single clumsy word, a single barb of spite, might have broken her. The nights had been the worst, contorted by the agony of ignorance, haunted by the fear of the coming dawn and the possibility that it might bring with it some ashen-faced messenger bearing the worst possible news.
And now that terrible shadow was lifted. But another had fallen, for the husband returned to her was not the one who had left her. Their lovemaking on the night of his return, which during his absence had been an imagined island of hope amidst despair, had instead been perfunctory: a thing of habit or necessity rather than love. Nothing in the days since had shown that to be an aberration. Something in him had changed. Something had gone, and with the recognition of its departure Tara found joy losing its ever more tenuous grip upon her spirits.
Mordyn was bent over a table, his shoulders lit by the candles that burned all around. The swan feather of his quill shivered as it scraped across parchment. There was no other sound. He was utterly engrossed in his work.
Tara watched from the doorway. This was a familiar sight. Many times she had seen her husband at work in just this way, in just this warm light. Yet all was not as it had once, so comfortingly, been. The hunch of his shoulders was narrower, tenser, than it used to be. His hand darted to and from the inkwell with angry impatience. Even the sound was different: harsher, cruder, as if quill and parchment warred. He had always had the lightest and most precise of hands. She felt an aching sense of bereavement as she noted each one of these tiny differences. Yet how could she be bereaved, when the object of all her affections was here before her, alive?
She walked forward, her slippers soundless on the floor. Mordyn was too absorbed in his labours to notice her approach. When she set her hands gently on his shoulders, in the way she had done countless times before, he started and gave a half-strangled grunt of alarm. He glanced up at her even as he covered over what he had been writing with blank sheets of parchment. Perhaps he thought Tara would not notice this petty act of concealment, but she did. He had never done such a thing before, never shown the slightest sign of distrust or secrecy. What pained her still more, though, was the way he shrugged off her hands with an irritated shake of his shoulders. With that single loveless gesture, he wounded her to the quick. Tara was startled to find her eyes moistening, a premonition of tears. This man bore the face and form of her husband, but she no longer recognised what lay beneath that surface.
“What happened?” she asked, standing limp and empty behind him.
He must have heard the hurt in her voice, for he twisted about in the chair to look up at her, and though his gaze was at first unsympathetic, it softened.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“You cannot have told me everything that happened to you. There must be more, to have changed you so much. If you won’t tell me, how am I to understand? How am I to ease whatever troubles you if you shut me out?”
“No, no.” The affection in his voice rang hollow to Tara. She did not believe it, and did not know what to do with the horror, the crippling fear, that disbelief engendered. She loved this man with all her heart, and had never doubted his equal love for her. Yet now… now, she felt terribly alone.
“It’s nothing,” Mordyn went on. “I am troubled only by the amount that must be done, now that I have returned. There are so many demands upon my time, my thought. I’m sorry. I do not mean to cause you alarm, or concern.”
“You’re so thin, so pale. You must be sick.” She could hope for that, in this horribly changed world; she could hope that her precious husband was sick, for it might explain, more gently and comprehensibly than any other explanation, why he had become a stranger to her. But he shook his head.
“I am well. Any pallor is only the mark of my travels, my tribulations. You will see: soon enough, I will have some fat back on these bones, some colour back in my cheeks. Do not worry.”
And he turned away from her again, bent back towards his writing table. That dismissal allowed anger to rise briefly through Tara’s confusion and sorrow.
“What are you writing?” she asked sharply.
“Tedious matters. Nothing of consequence.”