Two estate guards, after a busy night, burst into a brothel, only to find nobody there. Love will have to wait, and is anyone really surprised at their ill luck?
At the threshold of a modest home and workshop, Tiserra stands facing the two loves of her life. And, for the briefest of moments, her imagination runs wild. She then recovers herself and, in a light tone, asks, ‘Breakfast?’
Torvald is momentarily startled.
Rallick just smiles.
There is a round man, circumference unending, stepping ever so daintily through rubble on his way back to the Phoenix Inn. It will not do to be a stranger to sorrow, if only to cast sharp the bright wonder of sweeter things. And so, even as he mourns in his own fashion (with cupcakes), so too he sighs wistfully. Love is a city, yes indeed, a precious city, where a thousand thousand paths wend through shadow and light, through air stale and air redolent with blossoms, nose-wrinkling perfume and nose-wrinkling dung, and there is gold dust in the sewage and rebirth in the shedding of tears.
And at last, we come to a small child, walking into a duelling school, passing through gilded streams of sunlight, and he halts ten paces from a woman sitting on a bench, and he says something then, something without sound.
A moment later two imps trundle into view and stop in their tracks, staring at Harllo, and then they squeal and rush towards him.
The woman looks up.
She is silent for a long time, watching Mew and Hinty clutching the boy. And then a sob escapes her and she makes as if to turn away-
But Harllo will have none of that. ‘No! I’ve come home. That’s what this is, it’s me coming home!’
She cannot meet his eyes, but she is weeping none the less. She waves a hand. ‘You don’t understand, Harllo. That time, that time-I have no good memories of that time. Nothing good came of it, nothing.’
‘That’s not true!’ he shouts, close to tears. ‘That’s not true. There was me.’
Now, as Scillara now knew, some doors you cannot hold back. Bold as truth, some doors get kicked in.
Stonny did not know how she would manage this. But she would. She would. And now she met her son’s eyes, in a way that she had never before permitted herself to do. And that pretty much did it.
And what was said by Harllo, in silence, as he stood there, in the moments be-fore he was discovered? Why, it was this:
Xx
Rage and tell me then
Not every tale is a gift
When anguish gives the knife
One more twist
And blood is thinned by tears
Cry out the injustice
Not every tale is a gift
In a world harsh with strife
Leaving us bereft
Deeds paling through the years
And I will meet your eye
Neither flinching nor shy
As I fold death inside life
And face you down
With a host of mortal fears
And I will say then
Every tale is a gift
And the scars borne by us both
Are easily missed
In the distance between us
– Bard’s Curse, Fisher Kel That
Nimander stood on the roof of the keep, leaning with his arms onthe battlement’s cold stone, and watched the distant figure of Spinnock Durav as he crossed the old killing ground. A fateful, fretful meeting awaited that warrior, and Nimander was worried, for it was by Nimander’s own command that Spinnock now went to find the woman he loved. Skintick arrived to stand at his side.
‘It’s madness,’ said Nimander. ‘It should be Durav on the throne. Or Korlat.’
‘It’s your lack of confidence we find so charming,’ Skintick replied. ‘Is that supposed to be amusing?’
‘Well, it amuses me, Nimander, I settle for that, most times. Listen, it’s simple and it’s complicated. His blood courses strong within you, stronger than you realize. And like it or not, people will follow you. Listen to you. Spinnock Durav was a good example, I’d venture. He took your command like a body blow, and then he set out to follow it. Not a word of complaint-your irritated impatience stung him.’
‘Precisely my point. It was none of my business in the first place. I had no right to be irritated or impatient.’
‘You were both because you cared, and you barely know the man. You may not know it, but you made friends in that throne room, right then and right there. Korlat’s eyes shone. And the High Priestess actually
Nimander wasn’t ready to contemplate such notions. ‘How fares Nenanda?’
‘Recovering, as thin-skinned as ever.’
‘And Clip?’
Skintick shrugged. ‘I wish I could say
‘I wish you could as well.’
‘He’s furious. Feels cheated, personally slighted. He’ll be trouble, I fear, an eternal thorn in your side.’
Nimander sighed. ‘They probably felt the same at the Andara, which was why they sent him to find us.’
‘On a wave of cheering fanfare, no doubt.’
Nimander turned. ‘Skin, I truly do not know if I can do this.’
‘Unlike Anomander Rake, you are not alone, Nimander. The burden no longer rests upon one person. She is with us now.’
‘She could have left us Aranatha.’
‘Aranatha was not Aranatha for some time-perhaps you don’t remember when she was younger. Nimander, our sister was a simpleton. Barely a child in her mind, no matter that she grew into a woman.’
‘I always saw it as… innocence.’
‘There again, your generosity of spirit.’
‘My inability to discriminate, you mean.’
They were silent for a time. Nimander glanced up at the spire. ‘There was a dragon up there.’
‘Silanah. Er, very close to Anomander Rake, I’m told.’
‘I wonder where she went?’
‘You could always awaken T’iam’s blood within you, and find out, Nimander.’
‘Ah, no thank you.’
Spinnock Durav had moved out past Night and had reached the razed stretch that had been a squalid encampment, where a monastery was now under con-struction, although for the moment a military tent was the temple wherein dwelt Salind, the High Priestess of the Redeemer.
Would she accept him?
