‘He is not the type who will play the whore to our pimp, Hanut.’
A frown of distaste. ‘Hardly a suitable analogy, Gorlas. You forget that you are the junior among us here.’
The one who happens to own the woman you both want in your beds. Don’t chide me about whores and pimps, when you know what you’ll pay for her. Such thoughts remained well hidden behind his momentarily chastened expression. ‘He’ll not play the game, then. He wants to attain the Council, and in return we shall be guaranteed his support when we make our move to shove aside the elder statesmen and their fossilized ways, and take the real power.’
Shardan grunted. ‘Seems a reasonable arrangement, Hanut. I’m tired, I need some sleep.’ And he doused the candle before him as he rose. ‘Hanut, I know a new place for breakfast.’ He smiled at Gorlas. ‘I am not being rude in not inviting you, friend. Rather, I imagine your wife will wish to greet you this morning, with a breakfast you can share. The Council does not meet until mid-afternoon, after all. Take your leisure, Gorlas, when you can.’
‘I will walk you both out,’ he replied, a smile fixed upon his face.
Most of the magic Lady Challice Vidikas was familiar with was of the useless sort. As a child she had heard tales of great and terrible sorcery, of course, and had she not seen for herself Moon’s Spawn? On the night when it sank so low its raw underside very nearly brushed the highest rooftops, and there had been dragons in the sky then, and a storm to the east that was said to have been fierce magic born of some demonic war out in the Gadrobi Hills, and then the confused madness behind Lady Simtal’s estate. But none of this had actually affected her directly. Her life had slipped through the world so far as most people’s did, rarely touched by anything beyond the occasional ministrations of a healer. All she had in her possession was a scattering of ensorcelled items intended to do little more than entrance and amuse.
One such object was before her now, on her dresser, a hemisphere of near-perfect glass in which floated a semblance of the moon, shining as bright as it would in the night sky. The details on its face were exact, at least from the time when the real moon’s visage had been visible, instead of blurred and uncertain as it was now.
A wedding gift, she recalled, although she’d forgotten from whom it had come. One of the less obnoxious guests, she suspected, someone with an eye to romance in the old-fashioned sense, perhaps. A dreamer, a genuine well-wisher. At night, if she desired darkness in the room, the half-globe needed covering, for its refulgent glow was bright enough to read by. Despite this inconvenience, Challice kept the gift, and indeed kept it close.
Was it because Gorlas despised it? Was it because, while it had once seemed to offer her a kind of promise, it had, over time, transformed into a symbol of something entirely different? A tiny moon, yes, shining ever so bright, yet there it remained, trapped with nowhere to go. Blazing its beacon like a cry for help, with an optimism that never waned, a hope that never died.
Now, when she looked upon the object, she found herself feeling claustrophobic, as if she was somehow sharing its fate. But she could not shine for ever, could she? No, her glow would fade, was fading even now. And so, although she possessed this symbol of what might be, her sense of it had grown into a kind of fascinated resentment, and even to look upon it, as she was doing now, was to feel its burning touch, searing her mind with a pain that was almost delicious.
All because it had begun feeding a desire, and perhaps this was a far more powerful sorcery than she had first imagined; indeed, an enchantment tottering on the edge of a curse. The burnished light breathed into her, filled her mind with strange thoughts and hungers growing ever more desperate for appeasement. She was being enticed into a darker world, a place of hedonistic indulgences, a place unmindful of the future and dismissive of the past.
It beckoned to her, promising the bliss of the ever-present moment, and it was to be found, she knew, somewhere out there.
She could hear her husband on the stairs, finally deigning to honour her with his company, although after a night’s worth of drinking and all the manly mutual raising of hackles, verbal strutting and preening, he would be unbearable. She had not slept well and was, truth be told, in no mood for him (but then, she realized, she had been in no mood for him for some time, now – shock!), so she swiftly rose and went to her private changing room. A journey out into the city would suit her restlessness. Yes, to walk without purpose and gaze upon the detritus of the night’s festivities, to be amused by the bleary eyes and unshaven faces and the last snarl of exhausted arguments.
And she would take her breakfast upon a terrace balcony in one of the more elegant restaurants, perhaps Kathada’s or the Oblong Pearl, permitting her a view of the square and Borthen Park where servants walked watchdogs and nannies pushed two-wheeled prams in which huddled a new generation of the privileged, tucked inside nests of fine cotton and silk.
There, with fresh fruits and a carafe of delicate white wine, and perhaps even a pipe bowl, she would observe all the life meandering below, sparing a thought (just once and then done with) for the dogs she didn’t want and the children she didn’t have and probably would never have, given Gorlas’s predilections. To think, for a time, in a musing way, of his parents and their dislike of her – convinced that she was barren, no doubt, but no woman ever got pregnant from that place, did she? – and of her own father, now a widower, with his sad eyes and the smile he struggled to fashion every time he looked upon her. To contemplate, yet again, the notion of pulling her father aside and warning him – about what? Well, her husband, for one, and Hanut Orr and Shardan Lim for that matter. Dreaming of a great triumvirate of tyranny and undoubtedly scheming to bring it about. But then, he would laugh, wouldn’t he? And say how the young Council members were all the same, blazing with ambition and conviction, and that their ascension was but a matter of time, as unstoppable as an ocean tide, and soon they would come to realize that and cease their endless plans of usurpation. Patience, he would tell her, is the last virtue learned. Yes, but often too late to be of any value, dear Father. Look at you, a lifetime spent with a woman you never liked, and now, free at last, you find yourself grey, a fresh stoop to your shoulders, and you sleep ten bells every night—
Such thoughts and others whilst she refreshed herself and began selecting her attire for the day. And in the bedroom beyond she heard Gorlas sit on the bed, no doubt unlacing his boots, knowing well that she was here in the tiny chamber and clearly not caring.
And what then would Darujhistan offer up to her this bright day? Well, she would see, wouldn’t she?
She turned from watching her students in the compound and, eyes alighting upon him, she scowled. ‘Oh, it’s you.’
‘This is the new crop, then? Apsalar’s sweet kiss, Stonny.’
Her scowl turned wry and she walked past him into the shade of the colonnade, where she sat down on the bench beside the archway, stretching out her legs. ‘I won’t deny it, Gruntle. But it’s something I’ve been noticing – the noble-born children are all arriving lazy, overweight and uninterested. Sword skill is something their fathers want for them, as obnoxious to them as lyre lessons or learning numbers. Most of them can’t even hold up the practice swords for longer than fifty heartbeats, and here it’s expected I can work them into something worth more than snot in eight months. Apsalar’s sweet kiss? Yes, I’ll accept that. It is theft, all right.’
‘And you’re doing well by it, I see.’
She ran one gloved hand along her right thigh. ‘The new leggings? Gorgeous, aren’t they?’
‘Stunning.’
‘Black velvet doesn’t work on any old legs, you know.’
‘Not mine, anyway.’
‘What do you want, Gruntle? I see the barbs have faded, at least. News was you were positively glowing when you came back.’
‘A disaster. I need a new line of work.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s the only thing you’re remotely good at. Oafs like you nee
d to be out there, chopping through the thick skulls of bandits and whatnot. Once you start staying put this city is doomed and it just so happens that I like living here, so the sooner you’re back out on the trails the better.’
‘I missed you too, Stonny.’
She snorted.
‘Bedek and Myrla are well, by the way.’
‘Stop right there.’
He sighed, rubbed at his face.
‘I mean it, Gruntle.’
‘Look, an occasional visit is all I’m asking—’
‘I send money.’
‘You do? That’s the first I’ve heard of that. Not a mention from Bedek and from how they’re doing, well, you can’t be sending much, or very often.’
She glared at him. ‘Snell meets me outside the door and the coins go right into his hands – I make sure, Gruntle. Anyway, how dare you? I made the adoption legal and so I don’t owe them anything, damn you.’
‘Snell. Well, that probably explains it. Next time try Myrla or Bedek, anyone but Snell.’
‘You’re saying the little shit is stealing it?’
‘Stonny, they’re barely scraping by, and, thinking on it, well, I know you well enough to know that, adoption or no, you won’t see them starve – any of them, especially not your son.’
‘Don’t call him that.’
‘Stonny—’
‘The spawn of rape – I can see his face, right there in Harllo’s own, looking up at me. I can see it clear, Gruntle.’ And she shook her head, refusing to meet his eyes, and her legs had drawn up, tightly clenched, and all the bravado was gone as she clasped her arms tight about herself, and Gruntle felt his heart breaking yet again and there was nothing he could do, nothing he could say to make it any better, only worse.
‘You’d better go,’ she said in a tight voice. ‘Come back when the world dies, Gruntle.’
‘I was thinking about the Trygalle Trade Guild.’
Her head snapped round. ‘Are you mad? Got a damned death wish?’
‘Maybe I do.’
‘Get out of my sight, then. Go on, run off and get yourself killed.’
‘Your students look ready to keel over,’ Gruntle observed. ‘Repeated lunges aren’t easy for anyone – I doubt any of them will be able to walk come the morrow.’
‘Never mind them. If you’re really thinking of signing on with the Trygalle, say it plain.’
‘I thought you might talk me out of it.’
‘Why would I bother? You got your life just like I got mine. We aren’t married. We aren’t even lovers—’
‘Had any success in that area, Stonny? Someone might—’
‘Stop this. Stop all of it. You’re like this every time you come back from a bad one. All full of pity and damn near dripping with sanctimony while you try and try to convince me.’
‘Convince you of what?’
‘Being human, but I’m done with that. Stonny Menackis died years ago. What you’re seeing now is a thief running a school teaching nothing to imps with piss in their veins. I’m just here to suck fools dry of their coin. I’m just here to lie to them about how their son or daughter is a champion duellist in the making.’
‘So you won’t be talking me out of signing with the Trygalle, then.’ Gruntle turned to the archway. ‘I see I do nothing good here. I’m sorry.’
But she reached out and grasped his forearm as he was about to leave. ‘Don’t,’ she said.
‘Don’t what?’
‘Take it from me, Gruntle, there’s nothing good in a death wish.’
‘Fine,’ he said, then left.
Well, he’d messed it all up again. Nothing new in that, alas. Should hunt down Snell, give him a shake or two. At the very least, scare the crap out of him. Get him to spill where he’s been burying his hoard. No wonder he likes sitting on the threshold. Keeping an eye out, I suppose.
Still, Gruntle kept coming back to all these unpleasant truths, the life he was busy wasting, the pointlessness of all the things he chose to care about – well, not entirely true. There was the boy, but then, the role of an occasional uncle could hardly be worth much, could it? What wisdom could he impart? Very little, if he looked back on the ruin of his life so far. Companions dead or lost, followers all rotting in the ground, the ash-heaps of past battles and decades spent risking his life to protect the possessions of someone else, someone who got rich without chancing anything worthwhile. Oh, Gruntle might charge for his services, he might even bleed his employers on occasion, and why not?
Which was why, come to think on it, the whole thing with the Trygalle Trade Guild was starting to make sense to him. A shareholder was just that, someone with a stake in the venture, profiting by their own efforts with no fat fool in the wings waiting with sweaty hands.
Was this a death wish? Hardly. Plenty of shareholders survived, and the smart ones made sure they got out before it was too late, got out with enough wealth to buy an estate, to retire into a life of blissful luxury. Oh, that was just for him, wasn’t it? Well, when you’re only good at one thing, then you stop doing it, what’s left but doing nothing?
With some snivelling acolyte of Treach scratching at his door every night. ‘The Tiger of Summer would roar, Chosen One. Yet here you lie indolent in silk bedding. What of battle? What of blood and the cries of the dying? What of chaos and the reek of spilled wastes, the curling up round mortal wounds in the slime and mud? What of the terrible strife from which you emerge feeling so impossibly alive?’
Yes, what of it? Let me lie here, rumbling this deep, satisfied purr. Until war finds me, and if it never does, well, that’s fine by me.
Bah, he was fooling nobody, especially not himself. He was no soldier, true enough, but it seemed mayhem found him none the less. The tiger’s curse, that even when it is minding its own business a mob of beady-eyed fools come chanting into the jungle, beating the ground. Was that true? Probably not, since there was no reason for hunting tigers, was there? He must have invented the scene, or caught a glimpse of Treach’s own dreaming. Then again, did not hunters beard beasts of all sorts in their dens and caves and burrows? After some fatuous excuse about perils to livestock or whatever, off the mob went, eager for blood.
Beard me, will you? Oh, please do – and all at once, he found his mood changed, mercurial and suddenly seething with rage.
He was walking along a street, close now to his abode, yet the passers-by had all lost their faces, had become nothing more than mobile pieces of meat, and he wanted to kill them all.
A glance down at his hands and he saw the black slashes of the tiger’s barbs deep as dusty jet, and he knew then that his eyes blazed, that his teeth were bared, the canines glistening, and he knew, too, why the amorphous shapes he passed were shrinking from his path. If only one would come close, he could lash out, open a throat and taste the salty chalk of blood on his tongue. Instead, the fools were rushing off, cringing in doorways or bolting down alleys.
Unimpressed, disappointed, he found himself at his door.
She didn’t understand, or maybe she did all too well. Either way, she’d been right in saying he did not belong in this city, or any other. They were all cages, and the trick he’d never learned was how to be at peace living in a cage.
In any case, peace was overrated – look at Stonny, after all. I take my share, my fortune, and I buy them a new life – a life with servants and such, a house with an enclosed garden where he can be carried out and sit in the sun. The children properly schooled; yes, some vicious tutor to take Snell by the throat and teach him some respect. Or if not respect, then healthy terror. And for Harllo, a chance at a future.
One should be all I need, and I can survive one, can’t I? It’s the least I can do for them. In the meantime, Stonny will take care of things – making sure the coin reaches Myrla.
Where did I see that damned carriage anyway?
He was at his door again, this time facing the street. Loaded with travel gear, with weapons and his fur-lined rain-cloak – th
e new one that smelled like sheep – and so it was clear that some time had passed, but the sort that was inconsequential, that did nothing but what needed doing, with no wasted thought. Nothing like hesitation, or the stolid weighing of possibilities, or the moaning back-and-forth that some might call wise deliberation.
Walking now, this too of little significance. Why, nothing had significance, until the moment when the claws are unsheathed, and the smell of blood gives bite to the air. And that moment waited somewhere ahead and he drew closer, step by step, because when a tiger decides it’s time to hunt, it is time to hunt.
Snell came up behind his quarry, delighted by his own skill at stealth, at stalking the creature who sat in the high grasses all unknowing, proving that Harllo wasn’t fit for the real world, the world where everything was a threat and needed taking care of lest it take care of you. It was the right kind of lesson for Snell to deliver, out here in the wilds.
He held in one hand a sack filled with the silver councils Aunt Stonny had brought, two linings of burlap and the neck well knotted so he could grip it tight. The sound the coins made when they struck the side of Harllo’s head was most satisfying, sending a shock of thrill through Snell. And the way that hateful head snapped to one side, the small body pitching to the ground, well, that was a sight he would cherish.
He kicked at the unconscious form for a while, but without the grunts and whimpers it wasn’t as much fun, so he left off. Then, collecting the hefty sack of dung, he set out for home. His mother would be pleased at the haul, and she’d plant a kiss on his forehead and he could bask for a time, and when someone wondered where Harllo had got to, why, he’d tell them he’d seen him down at the docks, talking with some sailor. When the boy didn’t come home tonight, Myrla might send for Gruntle to go down and check the waterfront, where he’d find out that two ships had sailed that day, or three, and was there a new cabin boy on one of them? Maybe so, maybe not, who paid attention to such things?
The Complete Malazan Book of the Fallen Page 726