space within her, where her conscience should be. He would see it plain, and then into her eyes would come the horror of exposure – moments before her neck snapped.
Mother Dark would wait for Phaed's soul, then, for its shrieking delivery, the malign birth of just execution, of choices that were not choices at all. Why? Because nothing else can be done. Not for one such as her.
And Rake would accept the blood on his hands. He would accept that terrible burden as but one more amidst countless others he carried across a hundred thousand years. Childslayer. A child of one's own blood.
The courage of one with power. And that was Nimander's very own yawning emptiness in the heart of his soul. We may be his children, his grandchildren, we may be of his blood, but we are each incomplete. Phaed and her wicked moral void. Nenanda and his unreasoning rage. Aranatha with her foolish hopes. Kedeviss who screams herself awake every morning. Skintick for whom all of existence is a joke. Desra who would spread her legs for any man if it could boost her up one more rung on the ladder towards whatever great glory she imagines she deserves. And Nimander, who imagines himself the leader of this fell family of would-be heroes, who will seek out the ends of the earth in his hunt for . . . for courage, for conviction, for a reason to do, to feel anything.
Oh, for Nimander, then, an empty street in the dead of night. With the denizens lost in their fitful, pathetic sleep – as if oblivion offered any escape, any escape at all. For Nimander, these interminable moments in which he could contemplate actually making a decision, actually stepping between an innocent elder Tiste Andii and Nimander's own murderous little sister. To say No, Phaed. You will not have this. No more. You shall be a secret no longer. You shall be known.
If he could do that. If he could but do that.
He heard a sound. Spinning, the whisper of fine chain cutting a path through the air – close, so close that Nimander spun round – but there was no-one. He was alone. Spinning, twirling, a hiss – then a sudden snap, two distinct, soft clicks as of two tiny objects held out at each end of that fine chain – yes, this sound, the prophecy – Mother fend, is this the prophecy?
Silence now, yet the air felt febrile on all sides, and his breath was coming in harsh gasps. 'He carries the gates, Nimander, so it is said. Is this not a worthy cause? For us? To search the realms, to find, not our grandsire, but the one who carries the gates?
'Our way home. To Mother Dark, to her deepest embrace – oh, Nimander, my love, let us—'
'Stop it,' he croaked. 'Please. Stop.'
She was dead. On the Floating Isle. Cut down by a Tiste Edur who'd thought nothing of it. Nothing. She was dead.
And she had been his courage. And now there was nothing left.
The prophecy? Not for one such as Nimander.
Dream naught of glory. She too is dead.
She was everything. And she is dead.
A cool wind sighed, plucking away that tension – a tension he now knew he but imagined. A moment of weakness. Something skittering on a nearby roof.
These things did not come to those who were incomplete. He should have known better.
Three soft chimes sounded in the night, announcing yet another shift of personnel out in the advance pickets.
Mostly silent, soldiers rose, dark shapes edging out from their positions, quickly replaced by those who had come to guard in their stead. Weapons rustled, clasps and buckles clicked, leather armour making small animal sounds. Figures moved back and forth on the plain. Somewhere in the darkness beyond, on the other side of that rise, out in the sweeps of high grasses and in the distant ravines, the enemy hid.
The soldiers knew that Bivatt had believed the battle was imminent. Redmask and his Awl were fast approaching. Blood would be spilled in the late afternoon on the day now gone. Oh, as the Letherii soldiers along the advance pickets well knew, the savages had indeed arrived. And the Atri-Preda had arrayed her mages to greet them. Foul sorceries had crackled and spat, blackening whole swaths of grassland until ash thickened the air.
Yet the enemy would not close, the damned Awl would not even show their faces. Even as they moved, just beyond line of sight, to