Paul Kemp: The Hammer and the Blade

"I know that, too! But remember that it was you who birthed them, you who brought mindmages into our house. They needn't even use the Language of Creation! Their thoughts are weapons!"

His mother sneered, her rotted teeth like old tombstones. She looked at him from under hooded eyes. "A woman's thoughts are always weapons. And all men are monsters in their hearts."

He snarled and steered her roughly down the hallway. "Leave me, Mother. I have plans to make if I'm to save our lives."

Rusilla lay on her side, staring at Merelda's back across the gap of fur-covered wood floor that separated their beds. Her head felt muzzy, thick, her thoughts ponderous. The throbbing beat of her heart seemed intent on pushing her eyes out of her face. Merelda rolled over to face her.

Your nose, Merelda projected, the thought sweet with concern.

Rusilla dabbed her nose and the knuckle came away bloody. It's nothing.

"It's not nothing," Merelda said aloud, sitting up in bed.

The eunuch grunted and shifted on his feet, tense at Merelda's tone.

"Are we not allowed to speak except in the presence of my brother, eater?" Merelda snapped.

The eunuch — the memory eater — grinned stupidly. His breathing sounded heavy, wet. The consciousness of the actual eunuch continued his screams, mental wails bouncing against the walls of Rusilla's mental barricades.

Speak only through our thoughts, Rusilla projected, though the effort intensified her headache. I don't want him to hear.

Merelda glared at the eunuch, her eyes narrowed with anger. The firelight cast her delicate features in shadow. With her pale skin, long neck, and short dark hair, she somehow made Rusilla think of a swan.

I have learned something from Rakon, Rusilla projected.

You read him? Merelda's mental tone held admiration.

She'd done more than read him. She'd copied memories from his mind, held them even now in her own. And she'd pushed, too, inserting thoughts into her brother's head.

As best I could. And I learned…

She had difficulty forming the thought, it seemed so implausible.

The Pact is endangered. Vik-Thyss is dead.

"What?" Merelda said, sitting up in bed and shedding her blankets in a cloud of linen.

The eater grumbled and Merelda sat back, her brown eyes never leaving Rusilla's face.

How? Merelda projected, her excitement palpable. What does this mean for us? Are we to be freed? Rakon did not Rusilla shook her head. Rakon hopes to honor the Pact another way. He plans to find another son of House Thyss.

She spared her sister any of the details she'd learned.

The faintly hopeful tingle that flavored Merelda's thoughts melted before renewed fear, frustration, and anger.

Perhaps he won't do so in time? The Thin Veil is close. Merelda's eyes flashed to the ceiling, as if she could see Hell's dot in night's vault.

Even if he doesn't, he would still hold us, Rusilla said. If the house survives, the Veil will thin again in another five, and another five after that. He will try again then. He will never release us, Merelda. Not unless he breaks us first.

And Rakon would never break them. Never.

Then what do we do? Merelda said. I can't be like Mother, Rose. I can't.

Thinking of their mother turned Rusilla's thoughts black.

"It's only a few nights each year," Mother had once said to Rusilla, as she'd winced with remembered pain. "It's not awful. We must do our duty, dear, we Norristru women. If not, the house will die."

"I don't care about the line or the house," Rusilla had said.

The words had triggered something in her mother, dredged up some emotion or memory best left in the dark mud at the bottom of her soul. Rusilla had seen it coming, had tried to run, but too late.

Mother had shrieked, a wail of rage, and beaten Rusilla unconscious. She vaguely remembered Mother weeping throughout. It was after that when Rusilla's mind magic had first manifested.

We won't be like Mother, Rusilla projected. Don't worry.

The words felt like fiction, like something she'd tell Rakon, or stick in his mind for her own amusement.

She'd learned many things sifting through Rakon's thoughts. And she'd taken what she'd learned and manipulated his ideas, amplified his proclivities, but she'd had to act fast, and she hadn't thought it all the way through before Rakon had sensed her intrusion and forced her out. She dared speak her hopes aloud.

I think Rakon will soon take us from the house.

Merelda sounded shocked. What? Why? How do you know? He's never taken us from the house.

I just know, Rusilla projected. Be calm.

Merelda shifted on the bed. You pushed something into his mind, didn't you? Didn't you? How did you do it? His defenses… She shook her head. Reading is one thing, but to push…

The situation was unique. He was preoccupied with thoughts of the Pact. He is very frightened.

Good, Merelda said, and pounded a fist into a pillow. He'll drug us. Before we leave the house, he'll drug us insensate. He must.

I know. But we'll fight through it.

How? And even if we do, then what? How can we escape drugged?

Rusilla answered honestly. I'm not sure yet.

Merelda's legs shifted under the covers, as if she were already readying them to run. He's always planning, Rose. Plotting. How do we escape him?

Rusilla smiled, looked over at the chess game, the toppled white king. She'd never lost a game of chess to Rakon, though they had not played in many years. We plot, too. That's how. It's late, Mere. You should rest. We'll talk more tomorrow.

Long after Merelda fell into a fitful sleep, Rusilla lay awake in her bed staring up at the ceiling, planning, plotting. In time she quietly rose and went to her chessboard. There, she played a game against herself, formulating her thoughts the while. By the time black had cornered white, she had developed her plan.

"Check," she whispered.

The memory eater grunted, shifted on his feet, causing the wood floor to creak. Rusilla eyed him sidelong. He looked upon her without seeing her, his vacant eyes staring, his mouth half-open in a distant smile. Bracing herself, she opened her mind to the fragment of the actual eunuch that still remained within the shell.

The screams, rage-filled and terrible, hit her in an onslaught of emotion, a sleet of hate and terror and madness. She winced but did not otherwise move. Blood trickled from her nose. The eater defied her magic, but the fragment of the eunuch that still existed provided her a door into the mind, a reserve unoccupied by the eater's alien intellect. Her magic wrapped her consciousness around the eunuch's screams and followed them back into the dually inhabited mind. She perceived there the vast, empty spaces left in the wake of the eater's repasts. Into those, she pushed some of her own thoughts and memories, together with the memories she'd taken from Rakon, shoved them in deep, hoping they would avoid the eater's attention long enough for her plan to unfold.

When it was done, she pulled out and once more walled off the eunuch's screams. She dabbed her nose of blood, her heart racing, her head aching, and returned to bed.

The pieces were in place. There was nothing more for her to do except play them.

The Warrens. The bunghole of Dur Follin.

Nix could remember the street torches in the Warrens being lit only once, years earlier when the Lord Mayor came through with his entourage of sycophants and guards to view the Heap.

Now the rusty burn cages of the lamps sat askew atop weathered, tilted posts, empty of fuel, untended, surrendered to poverty like everything else in the Warrens. Linkboys dared the narrow alleys and dilapidated shacks no more often than did the watch, and the Warrens saw a watchman about as often as it saw an honest man, which was to say almost never. The only non-residents who regularly braved the alleys were rubbish men on their way to or from the Heap, and dung collectors with their wagons of shite. Other than that, only predators, victims, and hopelessness populated the Warrens.