‘Tell me.’
Harllo stroked his friend’s brow. ‘In the city. . Bainisk, oh, in the city, there’s shops and everybody has all the money they need and you can buy whatever you want. There’s gold and silver, beautiful silver, and the people are happy to give it away to anyone they like. No one ever argues about anything — why should they? There’s no hunger, no hurts, no hurts of any kind, Bainisk. In the city every child has a mother and a father. . and the mother loves her son for ever and ever and the father doesn’t rape her. And you can just pick them for yourself. A beautiful mother, a strong, handsome father — they’d be so happy to take care of you — you’ll see, you’ll see.
‘They’d see how good you are. They’d see right through to your heart, and see it pure and golden, because all you ever wanted to do was to help out, because you were a burden to them and you didn’t want that, and maybe if you helped enough they’d love you, and want you to be with them, to live with them. And when it didn’t work, well, it just means you have to work harder. Do more, do everything.
‘Oh, Bainisk, the city. . there are mothers. .’
He stopped then, for Bainisk had stopped breathing. He was perfectly still, his whole broken-up body folded over the sharp rocks, his head so heavy in Harllo’s lap.
Leave them there, now.
The city, ah, the city. As dusk closes in, the blue fires awaken. Figures stand in a cemetery surrounded by squat Daru crypts, and they are silent as they watch the workers sealing the door once more. Starlings flit overhead.
Down at the harbour a woman steps lithely on to the dock and breathes deep the squalid air, and then sets out to find her sister.
Scorch and Leff stand nervously at the gate of an estate. They’re not talking much these nights. Within the compound, Torvald Nom paces. He is not sure if he should go home. The night has begun orange, heavy, and his nerves are a mess. Madrun and Lazan Door are throwing knuckles against a wall, while Studious Lock stands on a balcony, watching.
Challice Vidikas sits in her bedroom, holding a glass globe and staring at the trapped moon within its crystal clear sphere.
In a room above a bar Blend sits beside the motionless form of her lover, and weeps.
Below, Duiker slowly looks up as Fisher, cradling a lute, begins a song.
In the Phoenix Inn, an old, worn-out woman, head pounding, shambles to her small cubicle and sinks down on to the bed. There were loves in the world that never found voice. There were secrets never unveiled, and what would have been the point of that? She was no languid beauty. She was no genius wit. Courage failed her again and again, but not this time, as she drew sharp blades lengthways up her wrists, at precise angles, and watched as life flowed away. In Irilta’s mind, this last gesture was but a formality.
Passing through Two-Ox Gate, Bellam Nom sets out on the road. From a hovel among the lepers he hears someone softly sobbing. The wind has died, the smell of rotting flesh hangs thick and motionless. He hurries on, as the young are wont to do.
Much farther down the road, Cutter rides on a horse stolen from Coll’s stable. His chest is filled with ashes, his heart a cold stone buried deep.
He drew a breath, sometime earlier that day, filled with love.
And then released it, black with grief.
Both seem to be gone now, vanished within him, perhaps never to return. And yet, hovering there before his mind’s eye, he sees a woman.
Ghostly, wrapped in black, dark eyes fixed upon his own.
Not this path, my love.
He shakes his head at her words. Shakes his head.
Not my path, my love.
But he rides on.
I will give you my breath, my love. To hold.
Hold it for me, as I hold yours. Turn back.
Cutter shakes his head again. ‘You left me.’
No, I gave you a choice, and the choice remains. My love, I gave you a place to come to, when you are ready. Find me. Come find me.
‘This first.’
Take my breath. But not this one, not this one.
‘Too late, Apsalar. It was always too late.’
The soul knows no greater anguish than to take a breath that begins with love and ends with grief. But there are other anguishes, many others. They unfold as they will, and to dwell within them is to understand nothing.
Except, perhaps, this. In love, grief is a promise. As sure as Hood’s nod. There will be many gardens, but this last one to visit is so very still. Not meant for lovers. Not meant for dreamers. Meant only for a single figure, there in the dark, standing alone.
Taking a single breath.
CHAPTER TWENTY
In hollow grove and steeple chamber
The vine retreats and moss rolls inside
The void from whence it came
In shallow grave and cloven crypt
The bones shiver and shades flee
Into the spaces between breaths
In tilted tower and webslung doorway
Echoes still and whispers will die
Men in masks rap knuckles ’gainst walls
In dark cabinets and beneath bed slats
Puppets clack limbs and painted eyes widen
To the song pouring down from hills
And the soul starts in its cavern drum
Battered and blunted to infernal fright
This is the music of the beast
The clamour of the world at bay
Begun its mad savage charge
The hunt commences my friends
The Hounds are among us.
Fisher
Faces of stone, and not one would turn Nimander’s way. His grief was too cold for them, too strange. He had not shown enough shock, horror, dismay. He had taken the news of her death as would a commander hearing of the loss of a soldier, and only Aranatha — in the single, brief moment when she acknowledged anyone or anything — had but nodded in his direction, as if in grim approval.
Skintick’s features were tight with betrayal, once the stunned disbelief wore off, and the closeness he had always felt with Nimander now seemed to have suddenly widened into a chasm no bridge could span. Nenanda had gone so far as to half draw his sword, yet was torn as to who most deserved his blade’s bite: Clip or Nimander. Clip for his shrug, after showing them the crumbled edge of the cliff where she must have lost her footing. Or Nimander, who stood dry-eyed and said nothing. Desra, calculating, selfish Desra, was the first to weep.
Skintick expressed the desire to climb down into the crevasse, but this was a sentimental gesture he had drawn from his time among humans — the need to observe the dead, perhaps even to bury Kedeviss’s body beneath boulders — and his suggestion was met with silence. The Tiste Andii held no regard for corpses. There would be no return to Mother Dark, after all. The soul was flung away, to wander for ever lost.
They set out shortly thereafter, Clip in the lead, continuing on through the rough pass. Clouds swept down the flanks of the peaks, as if the mountains were shedding their mantles of white, and before long the air grew cold and damp, thin in their lungs, and all at once the clouds swallowed the world.
Stumbling on the slick, icy stone, Nimander trudged on in Clip’s wake — although the warrior was no longer even visible, there was only one possible path. He could feel judgement hardening upon his back, an ever thickening succession of layers, from Desra, from Nenanda, and most painfully from Skintick, and it seemed the burdens would never relent. He longed for Aranatha to speak up, to whisper the truth to them all, but she was silent as a ghost.
They were now all in grave danger. They needed to be warned, but Nimander could guess the consequences of such a revelation. Blood would spill, and he could not be certain that it would be Clip’s. Not now, not when Clip could unleash the wrath of a god — or whatever it was that possessed the warrior.