Kellaras waved the gratitude away. ‘Besides, I could tell you my master’s likely response should he hear of your lord’s assertions.’
‘Oh, and what would he say?’
‘I imagine he would nod most thoughtfully, and then say: “There is much to be said for a return to childhood.”’
After a moment, Galar smiled, and this time there was no sadness to be found in it.
Kellaras drank his fair share of ale and offered up easy company that did much to ease the turmoil in Galar Baras’s soul, and when at last the captain rose, slurring his words of departure, and made his way unsteadily from the chamber, Galar was left alone once more, helpless to fend off the pain caused by the sight of Toras Redone.
The room was quieter now; the candles little more than stumps, as weary servants cleared plates and tankards, with only a few tables still occupied. She still held command of one of those tables, although her compatriots were drifting off where they slumped in their chairs, and when she at last rose, wavering for but a moment, and made her way over to Galar, only then did he realize that he had been waiting for her. And that she had known it.
‘How fares your courage, Galar Baras?’ Alcohol had rounded her words in a way he well recalled.
He watched as she took the chair Kellaras had been sitting in earlier. Stretching her legs out, the mud-caked boots edging towards his own leg upon the right, she folded her hands on her lap and regarded him with red-shot eyes.
‘You have come from the south?’ he asked.
‘Where else? Patrolling the Forulkan border.’
‘Any trouble?’
She shook her head. ‘Quiet. Not like the old days. But then, nothing is, is it?’
‘We must all move on, yes.’
‘Oh, people do that, don’t they. Consider my husband — could he have gone any further away than he has? Glimmer Fate, seasonal forts, a handful of the lost and broken to command. This would be true service to the realm; you’d have to say that, wouldn’t you?’
He studied her. ‘It is a great responsibility.’
Abruptly she laughed, broke his gaze to look away. Her right hand drummed a rattle of taps on the tabletop and then fell still once more. ‘We all skirt the borderlands, as if to test our limits.’
‘Not all of us,’ he replied.
She glanced at him, then away again. ‘You are a pariah in the Citadel. They think you arrogant and dismissive, but that’s not you, Galar. It never was.’
‘It seems I have little in common with the Citadel’s denizens.’
‘We chose you for that very reason.’
He considered that, and then sighed.
She leaned forward. ‘It wasn’t punishment, Galar. It was never that.’
But it was, and he knew it.
‘You could at least take a priestess to your bed, you know. Leave the celibates staring at walls in their monasteries; that’s not the way for people like us. We’re soldiers and we have the appetites to match.’
‘And are you well fed these days, Toras?’
As usual, his barb had no effect upon her. ‘Well enough,’ she replied, leaning back once more. ‘You probably would not understand this, but it is my very certainty that my husband has remained true that drives me to do as I do.’
‘You are right — I do not understand that at all.’
‘I am not his equal. I had no hope of becoming that, not from the very start. I walked the trench at his side, always. That’s not an easy thing to live with, not day after day.’
‘There was no trench, Toras. None saw you as his lesser — you command the Hust Legion, for Abyss’ sake.’
‘This has nothing to do with military rank, or achievements.’
‘Then what?’
But she shook her head. ‘I have missed you, Galar.’
All of this without once meeting his gaze. He had no idea if others were watching, or even striving to listen in on this conversation. He did not think it likely. Servants had brought rushes into the room to set out upon the floor. Someone was singing drunkenly, forgetting lines, and laughter echoed. Woodsmoke hung heavy, stinging his eyes. He shrugged. ‘What is to be done, then?’
She rose, slapped him on the shoulder. ‘Go to your room. It’s late.’
‘And you?’
Smiling, she wheeled away. ‘That’s the thing about courage, isn’t it?’
He watched her return to her original seat, watched her pour full the tankard in front of her, and he knew that he would not spend this night alone. As he stood and made his way out of the chamber, he thought of his quarters in the Citadel, and the narrow bed he would not share with any priestesses; and then he thought of Calat Hustain, lying on a cot in some northern fort. Two men dwelling in solitude, because it was in their nature to choose it: to remain alone in the absence of love.
And the woman these two men shared, why, she understood nothing.
Over the past three days, Kadaspala had been spared the company of Hunn Raal and Osserc. He’d not even seen them ride out, and Urusander had made no mention of where they had gone, or to what purpose. This was satisfying, as it left him to work on the portrait without suffering the assault of ignorant commentary, unsolicited advice, or inane conversations at the evening meal. Unshackled from the expectations of his cadre, Urusander was a different man, and their arguments over a host of subjects had proved mildly entertaining, almost enlivening, so much so that Kadaspala had begun looking forward to the meals they took at day’s end.
Still, the situation galled him. Work left him impatient, irritated and dissatisfied. At each sitting’s conclusion he fought to keep from slumping in exhaustion, instead applying himself with diligence to the cleaning of his brushes, his mind tracking the lines of the charcoal studies he referred to again and again when gauging the image on the board — he did not have to actually look at the vellum sheets, so fiercely were they burned into his mind’s eye. Urusander’s face haunted him, as did each subject he painted, but this time it felt different.
There was political intent to all works of art, but this one was too brazen, too bold, as far as he was concerned, and so he found his hand and eye fighting that overt crudity, with a shifting of tones, a deepening of certain lines, with a symbolic language only he understood.
Painting is war. Art is war.
His colleagues would recoil in horror at such notions. But then, they were mostly fools. Only Gallan would understand. Only Gallan would nod and perhaps even smile. There were so many ways to wage a battle. Weapons of beauty, weapons of discord. Fields of engagement across a landscape, or in the folds of a hanging curtain. Lines of resistance, knots of ambush, the assault of colour, the retreat of perspective. So many ways to fight, and yet every victory felt like surrender — he had no power over a stranger’s eyes, after all, and if art could lay siege to a stranger’s soul, it was a blind advance against unseen walls.
This portrait of Urusander — which he now sat facing, as the last of the night’s candles flickered and wavered — bore all of Kadaspala’s wounds, yet who might see that? No one, not even Gallan. One learns to hide the damage taken, and an eye pleased is an eye seduced.
And Urusander was well pleased indeed.
He was done. He would leave with the dawn. I have painted a man worthy of being her husband. They will see his strength, his resolute integrity, because these lie on the surface. They will not see the underside of such things — the cruelty beneath strength, the cold pride behind that stern resolution. The blade of judgement grasped firm in integrity’s hand.
They will see in his stance his soldier’s discipline, and the burdens assumed without complaint. Yet see nothing of withered empathy or unreasonable expectation.
In the tones they will find warmth with but a hint of the underlying metal, and in so seeing they will
