Deadhouse Gates

'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?'

'You've just come to a closed door, Corporal.'

Kalam smiled. 'That's all right. Times like these I can see through them well enough.'

'Then I needn't say any more.'

'Looking at Minala, none of this makes sense,' the assassin said.

'There's different kinds of strength, I guess. And defences. She used to be close with Selv, with the children. Now she wraps herself around them like armour, just as cold and just as hard. What she's having trouble with is you, Kalam. You've wrapped yourself in the same way but around her – and the rest of us.'

And she's feeling redundant? Maybe that's how it would look to Keneb. 'Her trouble with me is that she doesn't trust me, Captain.'

'Why in Hood's name not?'

Because I'm holding daggers unseen. And she knows it. Kalam shrugged. 'From what you've told me, I'd expect trust to be something she wouldn't easily grant to anyone, Captain.'