Toll the Hounds полностью

Well, he did his part anyway, feeding his coins into the temple’s cup and all that, and may her prayers guide her true into motherhood’s blissful heaven. She collapsed on to the bed, groaning, while he backed off, knelt on the cold wooden floor and reached under the bed, knuckles skinning against a large, low longbox. Groping, he found one handle and dragged it out.

She moaned. ‘Oh, don’t start counting again, darling. Please. You ruin everything when you do that!’

‘Not counting, woman. Stealing. Stay where you are. Eyes closed. Don’t move.’

‘It just sounds silly now, you know that.’

‘Shut up, or I’ll do you again.’

‘Ah! What was that elixir again?’

He prised open the lock with the tip of the dagger. Inside, conveniently stored in burlap sacks tagged with precise amounts, a fortune of gems, jewels and high councils. He quickly collected the loot.

‘You are counting!’

‘I warned you.’ He climbed back on to the bed. Looked down and saw that promises weren’t quite enough. Gods below, if you only were. ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘I need more elixir. In the office. Don’t move.’

‘I won’t. I promise.’

He hurried out, crept across the outer room and paused at the doors to the corridor to press his ear against the panel.

Softly, the slither-click of bamboo knitting needles.

Torvald slid the dagger into its scabbard, reversed grip, opened the door, looked down at the top of the guard’s hairy head, and swung hard. The pommel crunched. The man sagged in his chair, then folded into a heap at the foot of the chair.

The cat was waiting by the library door.

Uncle One, Uncle Two, Father None. Aunt One, Aunt Two, Mother None.

Present and on duty, Uncle One, Aunt One and Cousins One, Two, Three. Cousin One edging closer, almost close enough for another hard, sharp jab with an elbow as One made to collect another onion from the heap on the table. But he knew One’s games, had a year’s list of bruises to prove it, and so, just as accidentally, he took a half-step away, keeping on his face a beaming smile as Aunt One cooed her delight at this sudden bounty, and Uncle One sat opposite, ready to deliver his wink as soon as he glanced over — which he wouldn’t do yet because timing, as Uncle Two always told him, was everything. Besides, he needed to be aware of Cousin One especially now that the first plan had been thwarted.

One, whose name was Snell, would have to work harder in his head, work that cunning which seemed to come from nowhere and wasn’t part of the dull stupidity that was One’s actual brain, so maybe it was demons after all, clattering and chittering all their cruel ideas. Snell wouldn’t let this rest, he knew. No, he’d remember and start planning. And the hurt would be all the worse for that.

But right now he didn’t care, not about Cousin One, not about anything that might come later tonight or tomorrow. He’d brought food home, after all, an armload of food, delivering his treasure to joyous cries of relief.

And the man whose name he’d been given, the man long dead who was neither Uncle One nor Uncle Two but had been Uncle Three and not, of course, Father One, well, that man would be proud that the boy with his name was doing what was needed to keep the family together.

Collecting his own onion, the child named Harllo made his way to a safe corner of the single room, and, moments before taking a bite, glanced up to meet Uncle One’s eyes, to catch the wink and then nod in answer.

Just like Uncle Two always said, timing was how a man measured the world, and his place in it. Timing wasn’t a maybe world, it was a world of yes and no, this, not that. Now, not later. Timing belonged to all the beasts of nature that hunted other creatures. It belonged to the tiger and its fixed, watching eyes. It belonged, too, to the prey, when the hunter became hunted, like with Cousin One, each moment a contest, a battle, a duel. But Harllo was learning the tiger’s way, thanks to Uncle Two, whose very skin could change into that of a tiger, when anger awakened cold and deadly. Who had a tiger’s eyes and was the bravest, wisest man in all of Darujhistan.

And the only one, apart from young Harllo himself, who knew the truth of Aunt Two, who wasn’t Aunt Two at all, but Mother One. Even if she wouldn’t admit it, wouldn’t ever say it, and wouldn’t have hardly nothing to do with her only child, her son of Rape. Once, Harllo had thought that Rape was his father’s name, but now he knew it was a thing people did to other people, as mean as an elbow in the ribs, maybe meaner. And that was why Mother One stayed Aunt Two, and why on those rare occasions she visited she wouldn’t meet Harllo’s eyes no matter how he tried, and why she wouldn’t say anything about nothing except with a voice that was all anger.