‘What for?’ the young woman asked. She stood close and yet still in shadow. The lone lantern cast little light from its shortened wick. He could smell rosewater on her breath.
‘I am old. Since I lost my leg, ah, I beg you, do not mock me, but I am able to do… nothing.’
‘Then why accept me as your reward?’
‘Please, I would sit at least.’
She gestured to the cot. He kept his gaze averted from her as he made his way over to it. ‘I am no fool,’ he said. ‘Your mother knows you as her rival and would see you used, damaged even. Broken and dissolute. You must find a way to win free of her.’
Her breathing was soft, and he thought he could feel the heat from her body — but that was unlikely. ‘I am not at risk of dissolution, tutor Sagander, and against me my mother can only fail. Because she is old and I am young.’
‘Yet she delights in casting you into the arms of men, some of whom might be cruel, even violent.’
‘None dare, and this will not change. I am not my mother, tutor, and nothing that I give of myself I value overmuch. I can out-wait her.’
Trembling, he looked up and met her eyes. They were clear, but not languid. They held sympathy, but not empathy. This, he realized, was a woman who had learned how to protect herself. ‘If you ever need my help, Sheltatha Lore,’ he said, ‘I am yours.’
She smiled. ‘Be careful with such promises, tutor. Now, if you are incapable of making love, will passing a night in the arms of a woman please you?’
‘ This one to finish her! She’s a beauty, Waft, and she’s all yours! ’ The soldier’s voice laughed the words in Narad’s head. He measured his paces by them as the company moved through the smoke-filled forest. He sat hunched beneath them when the Legion camped for the night, his back to the cookfires, his hands reaching up again and again to probe the bulges and indents of his face. They echoed in the darkness when all had bedded down on damp ground and insects whined close to draw blood from whatever was exposed. In his dreams he felt her again, in his arms, her skin impossibly soft and still warm — he knew the truth of that no matter what they told him — and how she had yielded to his awkwardness and so made of herself a welcome embrace.
She had been past all hurting by then. He told himself this again and again, as if by incantation he could silence that soldier’s laughing voice, as if he could impose a balance between cruelty and mercy. But even this haunted him, since he could not be sure which was which. Was there pity and mercy in that soldier’s gleeful invitation, and cruelty in Narad’s answering it? Had he not sought to be tender, to show a gentle touch when taking her? Had he not thrown his body over hers to shield her from their laughter and their raw jests, their eager eyes?
What had they fed on that day, in that hall, when looking upon what they had done to that poor bride? Not once had he felt a part of it; not once did he imagine himself truly belonging to this company of killers. He asked himself how he had come to be among them, sword in hand, padding out from the night into a horror-filled dawn.
There had been a boy once, not ugly, not filled with venom or fear. A boy who had walked into town with his small paw nestled inside someone else’s hand, and that boy had known warmth and impossible freedom — with all the sands ahead smooth and clean. Perhaps, suckling on the tales of war, he had filled his head with dreams of battle and heroism; but even then, his place in every scene had been unquestioned in its righteousness. Evil belonged to the imagined enemies, for whom viciousness was sweet nectar sipped with wrongful pleasure, and all vengeance awaited those enemies by the toy sword he held.
In the world of that not-ugly boy, he was the saviour of maidens.
Anguish filled Narad at the thought of the boy he had once been, and at the thought of the crooked path he now saw crossing blood-splashed sands behind him.
There was slaughter in the forest. There was the smoke of fire and burnt-out glades and blackened patches, and endless ash drifting in the air. He had lost all sense of direction and now followed his comrades blindly, and for all their bluster it still felt like flight. Sergeant Radas, who led his squad with her ever flat eyes and bitter expression, had told them that they were trekking north, and that their destination was a stretch of land on the other side of the river from House Dracons, where they would at last rendezvous with Captain Scara Bandaris.
Captain Infayen had led her company eastward the day after the attack, apparently seeking to link up with Urusander himself, who it was said intended to march on Kharkanas.
In truth, Narad could not care less. He was a soldier in an unwanted war, faceless to his commanders but necessary for their ambitions; and all the tumult filling his skull — these careening thoughts so riddled with horror — were as nothing to them. In this company, each man and each woman surrendered too much of themselves, melding into a faceless mass where life and death was measured in numbers.
It was one thing to learn to see the enemy as less than Tiste, as abominations in fact; but the truth was, Narad realized, every commander could not but view every soldier in that way, no matter the colour or cut of their uniforms. Without that severing of empathy, no sane person could send anyone into battle, could wager the lives of others. When he thought of what was surrendered in the coming of war, he thought of that not-ugly boy and the warm hand he held suddenly torn away. He thought of soft and yielding flesh beneath his weight slowly growing cold and lifeless.
Who could return from such things? Who could walk back across the sands, smoothing his own wake, and every other sign of atrocity, to then reach out and take the hand of a child, a son, a daughter?
He walked with his ugliness for all to see, and perhaps this relieved the others since they imagined that they could hide the ugliness they had inside. Instead, he was their banner, their standard, and if they haunted him, then surely he must haunt them as well — behind their laughter, behind their mockery. It was difficult to imagine otherwise.
They loped through another burnt-out cluster of huts, stepping round blackened corpses. None of these dead Deniers had ever held hands, or dreamed of heroic deeds. None had slept in a mother’s arms, or felt the caress of a lover and shivered in the realization that fortune favoured them by each precious touch. None had whispered promises, to others or to themselves. None had ever broken them. None had ever wept over a child’s future, or caught the morning song of a bird hidden in the trees, or felt cool water sliding smooth down their throat. None had prayed for a better world.
Narad spat the bitterness from his mouth.
Just ahead, Corporal Bursa glanced back. ‘That dead kiss again, Waft?’
The others in the squad laughed.
Every crime committed was a betrayal of some sort. The first barrier breached was one of propriety, and this could not occur without the dismissal of respect and all those things that courtesy comprised. It took a hardening of the soul and a chilling of the eyes to do away with respect. The second barrier, he realized, was all the easier to overcome after the fall of the first. It was marked by the sanctity of the flesh, and when flesh meant nothing then harming it was no difficult task.
People could measure crimes by the levels of betrayal achieved. And from that, they could create laws and devise punishments. All of this, he understood, belonged to everyone. It was society’s way of working, and it had a way of melding faces into one, for the good of all. It had nothing to do with what he needed the most — what every criminal needed — and that was the opportunity for redemption.
Where would he not go to find redemption? What would he not sacrifice? And in the end, for all that he did to repair what could not be repaired, what greater torment could he feel?
I am not like the others here. I am filled with regret when they are not. For them, no redemption should be offered. Take their lives in return for what they did.
But I yearn to make it all right again. I dream of doing something, something to unravel what happened, and what I did. I whispered to her. I begged her, and she answered with her last breath. Was there a word in it? I don’t know. I will never know.
There was a man who loved her, who sought to marry her. But I was the last man in her arms. Ugly Narad, shuddering like an animal. I know you hunt me, sir, whoever you are. I know that you dream of finding me and taking my life.
But you’ll not find me. I’ll do that much for you, sir, because I tell you, taking my life will offer you no release, no peace.
