Blood & Tears

Chapter 1 IT WAS WELL PAST midnight when the truck stopped at the gate of Sady’s house. Orsan got out of the seat next to the driver, walked around the side and opened the door for Sady, who let himself down, pulling the sides of his cloak together against the biting wind. “Thank you,” he said to the driver. “My pleasure, Proctor. Get some rest. I’ll be back here tomorrow morning, as usual.” Sady nodded. Thank the heavens for faithful staff. He walked through the gate, where Orsan exchanged a few words with the young guard Farius. Then across the path flanked by meticulously-clipped bushes, up the steps to the front door. The night was darker and even more quiet than normal. Low scudding clouds stopped any moonlight reaching the ground, and ever since the bell had rung, the people of the city kept indoors. For the first time in Sady’s memory, the famous street lights of Tiverius remained unlit. The only light in the hall was the lamp that Lana lit every day after dark and that normally burned all night. By its flickering light, Sady turned to Orsan. “Any word from my house guests?” Orsan shook his head and fixed him with an intense stare. “Sady, they can wait until morning. Get Lana to make you some soup and go to bed. I’ll be out at the gate if you need me.” He gave a customary bow and left. Sady couldn’t argue with Orsan’s reason. Soup sounded great. Bed even better, although he suspected that once he lay down, sleep would be the last thing that came to him. After the skirmishes in the refugee camp, he had gone back to his office to deal with the polite unhappiness of the senators, and with the much more rude complaints of the citizens, who told him bluntly that they did not want this southern menace in their city. Mercy, could these people just explain to him what they would have done with all those refugees? Turn the trains around and send the poor wretches back to their ravaged country? He took his cloak off in the hall, and with it, the stoic façade of strength. He let his shoulders sag and dragged his hands across his stubbled face. He didn’t think he’d ever been so tired in his life. But even here, in the comfort of his house, he still saw the people on the platform. He saw the stack of bodies. A tangle of arms and legs, coated in indescribable filth. He saw the wretched survivors with weeping sonorics wounds. He smelled the incredible stench. He saw the angry faces of the refugees in the camp. They only asked to have the bodies of their dead relatives returned to them to observe the proper rituals. They’d been robbed of all dignity, and clung onto what little they had left. But all those bodies would have to be burned to stop contamination. He didn’t look forward to dealing with the aftermath of this necessity. From what he understood, burning your dead amounted to sacrilege in the south; burying them was even worse. It made sense how the southerners left their dead for animals to eat, so that the people could eat the animals in turn. But you just couldn’t do a thing like that in Chevakia’s climate. Not to mention the uproar it would cause to the citizens of Tiverius. How could he possibly solve this? Bed, Sady, go to bed. But first, something to eat. He walked into the kitchen where a single light burned against the back wall. The benches were empty and clean. A bowl of fruit stood in the middle of the table. “Hello? Lana?” He expected to hear a voice from the pantry, I’m in here! Wait a moment. Do you want roccas or some soup? Now that he came to think of it, he was more than hungry. It could be the reason why he felt so ill. He couldn’t even remember his last meal. “Lana?” The pantry door was closed. The back door into the laundry was closed. The corridor to the servant quarter was dark. That was strange. Lana was always here. He couldn’t imagine that she had gone to bed; she never did before he was home. But then again, it was very late, and he had told her repeatedly to go to bed if he was late. He was just . . . disappointed that she seemed to have taken his advice on this night, when he needed to talk to someone calm and sane. He left the kitchen and knocked on the door to her private room. “Lana, I’m back.” She would want to know; she would worry if he stayed out too long. There was no reply. Neither was there a sign of life from anywhere else. The noise he made should have brought out Serran, because he was responsible for the grounds, or the young Merni, because she was a gossip, and would make sure that she didn’t miss anything. Where was everyone? Sady walked into the dark living room, feeling stupid. Here he was, the great leader of the country, and he was unnerved by being alone. Unnerved by feeling so strange in his own house. The living room window looked out onto the courtyard, where he could only see a stone bench lit by a lantern on the patio, a little island of light in the dark. There was a statue in the middle of the yard, of Eseldus han Chevonian, one of his great forefathers. Today, Eseldus was only a dark silhouette. The windows in the guest wing to the right hand side of the courtyard were dark. The surgeons must have already gone home. He was relieved about that; Sady had no desire to become more intimately acquainted with women’s business than absolutely necessary. He could still see the woman’s bruised and red-blotched abdomen. The thought made him shiver. He hoped she survived. He hoped the child survived. That would be one point of light in this misery. He’d never thought that this was the way his house would ever see a baby. He went back to the kitchen and scouted for some food, cringing at every noise he made. The clank of a plate on the stone bench, the rummaging in the cutlery, the rumble of pouring coal into the stove, the hiss of the flame under the kettle, it all sounded incredibly loud. He found some bread and a bit of goat’s cheese, which crumbled all over the bench when he cut it up into clumsy, too-thick slices. He sat down and ate, listening to the silence of the house. And the sounds of the day. The ringing of the bell. The yelling of the men in the camp. He didn’t understand their language, but he could feel the despair and anger in their words. It brought back many bad memories of his youth. Hundreds of people crammed into a cellar for days without food. The stink of too many bodies in a confined space. There had been that boy, a bit older than himself at the time, who projectile-vomited on those around him. Sady could still smell it. He could still see the mother’s embarrassment, her despair. Her son was seriously ill with sonorics, and yet her immediate concern was the irritation of the people around her. Sady could still hear her, and the boy’s muffled cries. And the ringing of the bell. He would never forget that. Today, the bell had rung again, after more than ten years of silence. Somewhere in his mind, he registered that the water was boiling and probably had been for a while. Now, where did Lana put the teapot? As he pushed up from the seat, there was an enormous crash at the back of the house, and the breaking of glass. He froze, heart thudding. What in all of mercy’s name was that? “Lana?” he called at the door. Surely, that crash would have woken the whole house up. But again, there was no reply. He ran into the living room, unlocked the cabinet in the corner and took out the powder gun. It was a solid and heavy thing given to him by Milleus back in the days when they used to go hunting. He hadn’t taken the weapon from its cabinet for a long time, but now the metal barrel lay cold against his arm. Comforting. Familiar. He pulled out a box of bullets, inserted two in the gun and slipped a handful into his pocket. Still, none of the staff had come to investigate. He made his way through the corridor to the back of the house. His footsteps echoed loud in the silence. His mind churned, trying to come up with innocent reasons for the breaking of glass. Maybe the family had been scared by a door they couldn’t figure how to open. He’d travelled in the southern land, and everything was so much more primitive there. He opened the door to the guest wing. All dark. No signs of movement. The lamp in the hall was out. “Hello?” His heart was pounding. The only reply was the soft keening of a whistling ground squirrel out in the garden, an unpleasant, creepy noise that made his skin crawl. The damn things were a menace, destroying plants and digging holes everywhere, dislodging tiles and cracking walls. He’d remind Farius to put out some baits. A fresh breeze stroked his skin, making the hairs on his arms stand on end. There should not be a breeze here. As quietly as he could, Sady walked into the living room, clutching the gun. In the washed-out light from the lamp in the courtyard, broken shards of glass glittered in the window frame. More glass lay on the ground. A chair lay upside-down on the carpet. Then . . . there was a human-looking shape on the floor, a few paces into the room. Booted feet of a man, face-down on the carpet, surrounded by a dark stain. Sady ran across the room, and crouched next to the prone form. The man was dressed in thin trousers and a jacket that could be white or some other light colour. He was wearing thin gloves. Sady grabbed him by the shoulder. The weight was heavy, with no sign of movement. He didn’t recognise the face. As Sady turned him over, a metal instrument fell out of a breast pocket. This had to be one of the surgeons. With a huge gash across his stomach where his bowels spilled out. The man’s open, staring eyes spoke for themselves. Nothing he could do for this man. Just inside the window was another body. Another man, on his side. Sady recognised the jacket in han Chevonian maroon with gold piping before he could make out the man’s face. Serran, the off-duty groundsman who should have been asleep in his room. He would not be going anywhere ever again. Rivulets of blood had run from deep gashes across his lower back and soaked his jacket and the carpet. Sady pushed him on his back to see that his chest had been cut to the bone. His eyes were glassy and open. Next to him, another unknown man in white shirt, arm ripped to shreds, the side of his tunic slashed open to reveal a dark mess of blood and intestines. Sady rose, feeling dizzy with the cloying scent of blood and death. Was anyone left alive in this room? Where were the southern woman and her family? One of the beds had been taken from the bedroom into the middle of this room, and stripped of blankets. It was covered only in a bottom sheet, neatly tucked-in as only nurses and soldiers could. Next to the bed stood a surgeon’s kit of instruments. Unused, as far as Sady could tell. There were towels and sheets. Clean. But someone had used the bed. There was a dark patch of something wet that wasn’t dark enough to be blood. And a wet patch on the floor with in the middle a glistening heap of . . . something that looked like a disorganised bunch of dark entrails. Sady’s stomach churned. On the floor, on the far side of the bed, was another body, this one a woman. Sady’s insides went cold as he recognised the bun on her head, the dress, and the apron, the sturdy shoes and the chubby arms and dimpled hands that had so often brought him tea. Mercy, Lana. “No,” he whispered. For a moment, his vision went black. No, Lana! He dropped to his knees, put the gun down and reached for her as if in a nightmare. Her shoulder felt limp and lifeless. Her face was a bloodied mess. He couldn’t even see her eyes for the blood. Half her cheek had been ripped off.