Grimly paused and sighed. His joy in storytelling dimmed. “Why are the young such fools? We see the bright path before us and romp down it.”
“You were neither a fool nor a cynic,” Torisen said. “Then or now. In Kothifir, you were a novelty. He used you to work his way back into favor.”
“Of course I know that now. Then, they laughed at me.” The old hurt whined in his voice. He coughed and shook his head, but the past still had him by the throat. “All of those years learning how to compose in Rendish, waiting to perform, and they laughed. So I began to clown and to drink in order to stand myself. ‘The Wildman of the Woods,’ they called me. That was who Rose Iron-thorn tackled that night in the plaza: a drunken buffoon.”
“Still, if you hadn’t told me that the Gnasher was performing above for Krothen in the Rose Tower, we wouldn’t have been in time to save him.”
And if the Gnasher hadn’t served Kruin before that, Torisen thought, he would never have gotten the idea that immortality lay through killing off all of one’s heirs. In that case, he wouldn’t be searching for Yce, his daughter, now.
“Ah well,” said Grimly, giving himself a shake. “I’ve told my tale. Your turn, old friend.”
“What d’you want to hear?”
The wolver looked at him askance, perhaps sensing that he was relaxed enough to part with some of his long-held secrets.
“Answer a question or two, then. How did you escape from Urakarn as a boy?”
Torisen considered his cup of steaming wine, now nearly empty. Burr rose without a word and refilled it. They were waiting for him to speak. Well, why not?
“You know the basic story,” he said, and took a sip. Burr had chosen a heady vintage for someone more accustomed to hard cider. It laced his veins with warmth and plucked at the knots of his reticence.
“That you, Harn, Burr, Rowan, and Rose Iron-thorn fled into the Wastes, found a stone boat, and sailed it across the dry salt sea, yes,” said the wolver. “That’s all plain enough. But how did you get free of Urakarn in the first place?”
“That I can’t tell you. I was chained in a room of changing sizes and then I wasn’t. Chained, that is. They had fitted my hands with white-hot wire gloves and the burns had become infected, y’see. My mind was none too clear. Perhaps I slipped off the cuffs myself. Perhaps someone freed me.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know.” Torisen frowned. He thought he remembered the touch of cool hands on his own burning ones. Wake. Live, a voice had whispered in his ear and warm lips had brushed against his cold brow. Whose, if not a fever-born dream?
“If you can’t answer that riddle,” said Grimly, “then here’s another. I saw you just after you rejoined the Southern Host, and thought that you were a ghost. Genjar had reported the slaughter of the entire vanguard. But there you stood and told me off for still being a drunken lout, which I was. You said you were going to see Genjar. The next thing anyone heard, he was dead. What happened?”
Danger, Torisen’s instinct told him. Here was a secret, deep and dark. If Caldane ever heard it . . . but these were his friends. Whom else could he tell?
“As you say, I went to see him in the Caineron barracks . . .”
And as he spoke, memory carried him back.
No one had seen him enter or climb the stair. He seemed to pass through their midst like the ghost that Grimly had believed him to be. He felt like one, hollow and still echoing with the sand’s endless whisper. But his hands throbbed with infection. They had told him to go to the infirmary. Instead he had come here.
“You don’t see me,” he kept muttering. “You don’t see me.” And they didn’t.
Here was Genjar’s third-story suite, with voices coming from the farthest room. The door stood open. Tori stopped within its shadow. The bedchamber beyond was awash in morning light and billows of unrolled silk. Sea, sky, and earth might have roiled there, so various were the glowing, jeweled colors. Genjar stood before a mirror, holding up a length of pale lavender.
“What do you think?” he asked.
“Nice, but it clashes with your eyes.”
The second languid voice was as smooth as samite drawn lightly over steel, unexpected yet familiar.
Genjar made a petulant sound, dropped the silk, and picked up a wine glass. His hand was none too steady and his eyes were bloodshot, matching none of the treasures on which he trod.
“Are you sure you don’t want some?” he asked. “A good vintage, this.”
“I thank you, no.”
Genjar’s guest lounged in one of his ornate chairs, long, black-booted legs stretched out before him, crossed at the ankles, elegant fingers steepled under a dark, sardonic face.
“Then to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” asked Caldane’s heir, stumbling a bit over the formal phrase.
“As you know,” said Caldane’s war-leader, Sheth Sharp-tongue, “I am newly come from the Riverland. On my arrival, of course I heard about your . . . er . . . exploits in the Wastes before Urakarn.”
“Then you know how outnumbered we were. I did well to bring back as much of the Host as I did.”
“Still,” murmured the other, “not since the White Hills have we suffered such a needless defeat.”
“Our paymasters ordered me to go!”
“And so you did, well enough pleased to do so by all accounts. Did no one advise you that your first duty lay in talking the Kothifirans out of such a reckless course, based on so little evidence?”
The Caineron make an impatient gesture, spilling wine. “The Host was eager enough, at least those with any spirit.”
“You mean the young bloods. What of the senior randon?”
Genjar snorted. “That pack of old women.”
“My dear boy,” said Sheth with a flickering smile. “Never underestimate old women. And then there are your losses. One in five dead, or so I hear, not to mention the entire vanguard . . .”
“They went too far ahead, too eager to steal my glory! How was I to know that they were in trouble?”
Tori remembered how their eyes had locked across that bloody cauldron.
Yes, here we are. Remember us?
“Scouts could have informed you, as they would have of the Karnids’ strength.”
“They told me nothing!”
“Because you didn’t wait for their reports. Harn Grip-hard has apprised me of that much at least. Due to a crack on the skull, he remembers little else, which is probably just as well. Ah, you didn’t know: he and three others have rejoined the Host. Many more were taken alive at Urakarn, but only they escaped. More lives lost. More bones unclaimed.”
Genjar’s flushed face mottled mauve and white. “What else did they tell you? Liars and cowards, the lot of them. I saved the Host! Can you hold me accountable for those too weak to fight their way out?”
“Yes.” The war-leader rose with leonine grace, and Genjar retreated a step from him. “I bring you a gift.” He laid a white-hilted knife on the table. The Commandant of the Southern Host stared at it, then gave a shaky laugh.
“My father would never send me such a message.”
“Nor did he. This comes from the randon under your command, alive and dead.”
“Them! They failed me, d’you hear? Why, they couldn’t even defeat a band of desert savages. Take back your precious gift!”
But Sheth made no move to reclaim the ritual suicide knife. “Then keep it,” he said lightly, “as a memento of honor. Good day to you.”
A step outside the door, he encountered Tori. For a moment he looked down at the boy, then nodded to him and left.
In a rage, Genjar stumbled across his bedchamber, kicking at drifts of silk as they caught at his feet. He poured more wine, sloshing it over his hand, drained the glass, and threw it at the wall.