Steven Erikson - Forge of Darkness

She hoped Ivis came back in time. His presence alone was like a fist thumping the table, silencing everyone but Atran. Sandalath was jealous of the surgeon’s ease in teasing the captain, making her lust almost playful in its obviousness, and she could well see the discomfort it caused in Ivis, which hinted that his eye was perhaps fixed elsewhere.

Sandalath considered herself pretty; she had seen soldiers follow her with their eyes when she walked the courtyard, and she remembered how gentle his hands had been outside the carriage, when the heat of the journey had proved too much. He’d told her that he had a daughter, but she knew now that this was untrue. He was only being solicitous. She imagined that she’d needed that at the time, and it was this generosity in him that she found so compelling.

But where were her maids? The bell was close to sounding. The first courses were even now being prepared in the kitchen and Sandalath was hungry. She would wait a short while longer and then, if neither Rilt nor Thool showed, why, she would go down to the meal dressed as she was, and do her best to ignore Hilith’s quiet triumph.

She continued looking down on the empty courtyard.

Oh, Ivis, where are you?

Hilith stepped out from her quarters and marched up the corridor. She saw dust where there should be no dust. Rilt was due for a whipping, on the backs of the thighs where it hurt the most and where the welts and bruises couldn’t be seen under the maid’s tunic. And Thool wasn’t fooling Hilith at all — the maid was meeting two or three Houseblades a night, behind the barracks, earning extra coin because she had ambitions of getting away from all this. But Hilith had found where Thool hid her earnings, and when there was enough to make it worthwhile she would steal that cache and say nothing. A little extra come the winter would suit her fine, and if that meant Thool spreading her legs ten times a night with tears in her eyes, well, a whore was what a whore did.

Turning on to the corridor that led to the stairs she saw Spite on the floor ahead of her, crying over a blood-smeared knee. Clumsy whorespawn, too bad it wasn’t her skull. Nasty creature, nasty nasty. ‘Oh dear,’ she crooned, smiling, ‘that’s a nasty scrape, isn’t it?’

Spite looked up, eyes filling with tears all over again.

This was new. Hilith had never before seen any of these wretched daughters of the Lord ever cry. They’d been left to run wild, too privileged for a caning although Hilith longed to do just that — beat the things into being proper and meek. Children should be like frightened rabbits, since only that taught them the ways of the world, and showed them how to live in it.

‘It hurts,’ whined Spite. ‘Mistress Hilith, it might be broken! Can you look?’

‘I’m about to eat — do you think I want filthy blood on my hands? Go find the surgeon, or a healer in the barracks — they’ll love having you in there.’

‘But mistress-’ Spite rose suddenly, blocking Hilith’s path.

Hilith snorted. ‘So much for broken-’ There was a sound behind her and she began turning. Something punched her back, pulled free and punched again. Pain filled Hilith’s chest. Feeling unaccountably weak, she reached out one hand to grip Spite’s shoulder, but the girl, laughing, twisted away.

Hilith fell to the floor. She didn’t understand. She could barely lift her arms and her face was against the polished wood, and there was grit and dust between the boards. Rilt needed a whipping. They all did.

Envy looked at the small knife in her hand, saw how the blood from the miserable old witch sat on the polished iron blade in beads, like water on oil. Then she glanced down at Hilith who was lying on her stomach, head to one side and the eye that Envy could see staring sightlessly.

‘Stop gawking,’ Spite hissed.

‘We need a bigger knife,’ said Envy. ‘This won’t do for the men.’

‘It did fine for Hidast!’

‘He wasn’t much of a man, but Venth is. So is Setyl. Ivis-’

‘Ivis is away,’ said Spite. ‘I sent him into a dream. I can do that now. It’s easy.’

They had been busy. Slaughter in the laundry room. Murder in the maids’ cells. Dead cook, dead scullions — the knife in her hand they had stolen months past and Envy had thought to find something better in the kitchen, but the ones in there were too big to wield. She wished she were stronger, but so far everything had worked, and as long as she could strike from behind, with Spite distracting the victim, being a murderer was easy.

‘The men will be trouble,’ she said again.

‘Stab them in the throat,’ Spite said. She dipped a finger into a pool of blood creeping out from Hilith’s body and smeared her knee again. ‘Atran’s next. Let’s go, before the supper bell sounds.’

She’d heard from Corporal Yalad that Ivis had wandered into the forest, and for Atran the night ahead had fallen through a hole, and somewhere down there was oblivion, luring her, tempting her to find it. She decided that she wouldn’t wait for that first goblet of wine at the start of the meal, and so went into the surgery where she poured out a healthy measure of raw alcohol into a clay cup. She added a little water and then a small spoonful of powdered neth berries. She drank down half of the concoction and then stood, tilting back until she was against a wall, waiting for the burning shock to pass. Moments later she felt the first effect of the berries.

A dab of the black powder on an unconscious man’s tongue could stand him upright in a heartbeat, but she had been using it for so long that her body simply expanded, smoothly, warmth filling her limbs. Drinking invited sleep but the powder kept her awake, wildly invigorated. Without the alcohol in her blood right now she knew that she would be trembling, nerves twitching, vision fluttering. She’d seen a man punch through a solid door when spiked on neth powder.

The oblivion awaiting her was a delicious kind, especially when she could walk straight into it. The fall from the neth berries was swift and savage, and she would not move for at least a day from wherever she happened to collapse, but neither would she dream. And that was the bargain and she was content with it.

Ivis was gone for the night. Whatever haunted him she could not touch, and though she made her love plain to see, he was simply uninterested in her, and it was that disinterest that so wounded Atran, straight down through her body like a spear pinning her soul to the ground. She knew he took women to his bed — if his tastes had been for other men, then she would have understood and it would not be so bad. But it was her that he had no feelings for.

She was not ugly. A little too thin, perhaps, and getting thinner as the neth berries devoured her reserves, but her face was even, not too lined, not too wan or sunken. She had green eyes that men professed to admire, and the sharpness which had once made the same men uneasy was long gone, drowned away and for ever done with. Sharpness wasn’t a gift when bluntness was what was desired.

Spite limped into the surgery. ‘Atran? I hurt my knee! Come quick — I can’t walk any farther!’

The surgeon blinked. ‘Rubbish,’ she pronounced without moving.

The girl frowned. ‘What?’

‘That’s arterial blood and it’s smeared, not spurting. Did the cook slaughter another pig? You’re a sick little wretch, you know that?’

Spite stared at her, and then slowly straightened. ‘Just fooling,’ she said.

‘Get out of my sight.’

The girl scowled. ‘Father won’t like it when I tell him how you talk to me.’

‘Your father doesn’t like you, so why would he give a fuck how I talk to you?’

‘We’re going to kill you,’ said Spite. Envy stepped out from behind her and Atran saw the bloody knife in her hand.