"There must be something else you can do," she insisted.
"Livueta, please believe me; there isn't."
"I believed you when you told me she was safe and well," the woman said, looking down at the arm of the couch, where her long nails had started to pick at the precious thread. Her mouth was a tight line.
"You were ill," he sighed.
"What difference does that make?"
"You might have died!" he said. He went to the curtains and began straightening them. "Livueta; I couldn't have told you they had Darckle; the shock —»
"The shock for this poor, weak woman," Livueta said, shaking her head, still tearing at the threads on the couch arm. "I'd rather you spared me that insulting nonsense than spare me the truth about my own sister."
"I was only trying to do what was best," he told her, starting towards her, then stopping, retreating to the corner of the desk where she had sat.
"I'm sure," she said laconically. "The habit of taking responsibility comes with your exalted position, I suppose. I am expected to be grateful, no doubt."
"Livvy, please, must you — ?"
"Must I what?" She looked at him, eyes sparkling. "Must I make life difficult for you? Yes?"
"All I want," he said slowly, trying to control himself. "Is for you to try… and understand. We need to… to stick together, to support each other right now."
"You mean I have to support you even though you won't support Darckle," Livueta said.
"Dammit, Livvy!" he shouted. "I am doing my best! There isn't just her; there's a lot of other people I have to worry about. All my men; the civilians in the city; the whole damn country!" He went forward to her, knelt in front of the winged couch, put his hand on the same arm that her long-nailed hand picked at. "Livueta; please. I am doing all it is possible to do. Help me in this. Back me up. The other commanders want to attack; I'm all there is between Darckense and —»
"Maybe you should attack," she said suddenly. "Maybe that's the one thing he isn't expecting."
He shook his head. "He has her in the ship; we'd have to destroy that before we can take the city." He looked her in the eye. "Do you trust him not to kill her, even if she isn't killed in the attack?"
"Yes," Livueta said. "Yes, I do."
He held her gaze for a while, certain that she would recant or at least look away, but she just kept looking straight back at him. "Well," he said eventually, "I can't take that risk." He sighed, closing his eyes, resting his head against the arm of the couch. "There's so much… pressure on me." He tried to take her hand, but she pulled it away. "Livueta, don't you think I feel? Don't you think I care about what happens to Darckle? Do you think that I'm not still the brother you knew as well as the soldier they made me? Do you think that because I have an army to do my bidding, and ADCs and junior officers to obey every whim, I don't get lonely?"
She stood up suddenly, without touching him. "Yes," she said, looking down at him, while he looked at the threads of gold on the couch arm. "You are lonely, and I am lonely, and Darckense is lonely, and he is lonely, and everybody is lonely!"
She turned quickly, the long skirt briefly belling, and walked to the door and out. He heard the doors slam, and stayed where he was, kneeling in front of the abandoned couch like some rejected suitor. He pushed his smallest finger through a loop in the gold thread Livueta had teased from the couch arm, and pulled at it until it burst.
He got up slowly, walked to the window, slipped through the drapes and stood looking out at the grey dawn. Men and machines moved through the vague wisps of mist, grey skeins like nature's own gauzy camouflage nets.
He envied the men he could see. He was sure most of them envied him, in return; he was in control, he had the soft bed and did not have to tread through trench mud, or deliberately stub his toes against rocks to keep awake on guard duty… But he envied them, nevertheless, because they only had to do what they were told. And — he admitted to himself — he envied Elethiomel.
Would that he were more like him, he thought, all too often. To have that ruthless cunning, that extemporising guile; he wanted that.
He slunk back through the drapes, guilty at the thought. At the desk he turned the room lights off and sat back in the seat. His throne, he thought and, for the first time in days, laughed a little, because it was such an image of power and he felt so utterly powerless.
He heard a truck draw up outside the window, where it was not supposed to. He sat still, suddenly thinking; a massive bomb, just out there… and was suddenly terrified. He heard a sergeant barking, some talk, and then the truck moved a little way off, though he could still hear its engine.
After a while, he heard raised voices in the hall stair-well. There was something about the tone of the voices that chilled him. He tried to tell himself he was being foolish, and turned all the lights back on, but he could still hear them. Then there was something like a scream, cut-off abruptly. He shook. He unholstered his pistol, wishing he had something more lethal than this slim little dress-uniform gun. He went to the door. The voices sounded odd; some were raised, while some people were apparently trying to keep theirs quiet. He opened the door a crack, then went through; his ADC was at the far door, onto the stairs, looking down.
He put the pistol back in his holster. He walked out to join the ADC, and followed his gaze, down into the hall. He saw Livueta, staring wide-eyed back up at him; there were a few other soldiers, one of the other commanders. They stood round a small white chair. He frowned; Livueta looked upset.He went quickly down the steps; Livueta suddenly came bounding up to meet him, skirt hem flying. She pushed into him, both hands against his chest. He staggered back, amazed.
"No," she said. Her eyes were bright and staring; her face looked more pale than he'd ever seen before. "Go back," she said. Her voice sounded thick, like it was not her own.
"Livueta…" he said, annoyed, and pushed himself away from the wall, trying to glance round her at whatever was happening in the hall round the little white chair.
She pushed him again. "Go back," the thick, strange voice said.
He took her wrists in his hands, " Livueta," he said, voice low, eyes flicking to indicate the people standing beneath in the hall.
"Go back," the strange, terrifying voice said.
He pushed her away, annoyed at her, tried to go past her. She attempted to grab him from behind. "Back!" she gasped.
"Livueta, stop this!" he shook her off, embarrassed now. He clattered quickly down the steps before she could grab him again.
Still she threw herself down after him, clutched at his waist. "Go back!" she wailed.
He turned round. "Get off me! I want to see what's going on!" He was stronger than her; he tore her arms free, threw her down on the stairs. He went down, walked across the flagstones to where the silent group of men stood round the little white chair.
It was very small; it looked so delicate that an adult might have broken it. It was small and white, and as he took a couple of more paces forwards, as the rest of the people and the hall and the castle and the world and the universe disappeared into the darkness and the silence and he came closer and slowly closer to the chair, he saw that it had been made out of the bones of Darckense Zakalwe.
Femora formed the back legs, tibiae and some other bones the front. Arm bones made the seat frame; the ribs were the back. Beneath them was the pelvis; the pelvis that had been shattered years earlier, in the stone boat, its bone fragments rejoined; the darker material the surgeons had used quite visible too. Above the ribs, there was the collar bone, also broken and healed, memoir of a riding accident.