'An antique,' she said in awe. 'Looks almost like a relic.'
Jeryd stood back, arms folded, feeling pleased with himself. 'Should keep you busy for a few days trying to work out what it is.'
'It's really wonderful.' She kissed him on the cheek, a gesture that could have meant anything, so he tried not to interpret it with wishful thinking.
'Now, shall we?' Jeryd indicated the nearby bistro.
*
After a deep initial awkwardness, the night went better than he could have imagined. He actually listened to her for the first time in years. Her main focus these days turned out to be ancient architectures – particularly newly discovered remains of the Azimuth Empire, undergoing restoration work here and there. She told him at length of the ancient Azimuth civilization: the great causeways now strewn under a hillside, the skeletal palaces submerged under marshes. Whilst she had been consorting with the archaeologists, bones of ancient creatures had been found, great mastodon ribcages unearthed near the coast, mammoth quidlo squids, human remains several armspans in length, even unknown beasts with three skulls. She gradually painted for Jeryd a vivid history of the Boreal Archipelago. Why had he never found her so fascinating before?
Gestures came and went, light touches to the wrist, a smile after meaningful words, catching each other's eyes through the flame of the candle, every nuance so much more powerful, so much more lingering than before, as if the very fact of being apart had made them realize just how much they filled a gap in each other's life.
Inevitably they got round to the breakdown of their marriage, whereupon Jeryd confessed to being a poor husband. She then gave him a list of demands, should they give it another go.
They were not unreasonable, he admitted, all to do with time, attention, details. Even he could manage that. He stopped short of pleading with her, was merely happy to be with her once again. And she responded positively to that, he hoped.
*
Later that evening, he walked her home to her temporary residence – a room on Gata du Seggr, the other side of the Gata Sentimental, where you found a lot of old soldiers living in retirement. She whispered to him that it would not be right to spend the night together, so at the door he merely pressed his lips to her hand, then turned away into the darkness.
*
On his way home he couldn't help but notice that he was being followed by someone with heavy footsteps, but there was no incident. Once inside the door, seeing with clarity how much of a mess his house was, Jeryd decided to have a quick tidy up. Afterwards he sat naked on his bed by the burning wood stove, with his head in his hands, his tail motionless, his expensive new robe folded neatly on a chair in the corner. There was an ache in his chest as he reviewed the evening in his mind. Things seemed to have gone well, but he didn't want to get his hopes up. Becoming over-optimistic could lead to very worst kind of disappointment.
It was interesting how Tuya had changed the way he looked at his marriage, at his entire life. She had been amazingly succinct in pointing out his errors, had been the only one ever to locate a direct channel to the things that were essential in his world. Without Marysa there would still be so much… emptiness. Emptiness which he had previously tried to fill with so much work, in some vague attempt to avoid thinking about how bad things had become.
He reclined back on the bed, began to drift off to sleep.
*
He was woken by footsteps, heels clipping the cobbles beneath his window. His heart missed a beat as the front door opened, then closed. He twisted round in his bed, rubbed his eyes, peering at the clock. He realized he had been asleep for only half a bell. Footsteps up the stairs, footsteps to his bedroom door. With one eye he watched it open, pretending he was still asleep.
A figure approached his bed, paused.
'Some inquisitor you are,' Marysa chuckled. 'What if I was a thief?'
Everything I have is yours anyway, he wanted to say, but didn't. She kicked off her shoes, slid her dress down, eased herself onto the bed. They kissed, and he was gentle with her, and as they made love she would bite his chest gently, and arc her back like a bow.
Tonight, and for as long as I'm alive, he promised himself, it will be all about her.
*
Outside Jeryd's house, Aide Tryst was leaning against the wall watching the glint of the moon on the slick cobbles. He had sifted through the backstreets to get here, mannered and methodical in his stealth, sliding by the tenebrous traffic of Villjamur, past all the hustlers and the slick magic and weird hybrid beasts that filled the hour with a night-noir exoticness.
And now Marysa's gentle groans came down to him occasionally above the noise of the breeze.
In his hand he held up the heart of a pig. Blood dripped along his arm under his sleeve as he silently incanted an Ovinists' mantra, the words forming in a hushed murmur on his lips.
I curse that man, he thought. Because he won't promote me to the position I deserve, yet instead of solving Brother Ghuda's death he's wasting his time with that wife of his.
Yet all the time he pretends to be my friend.
In his semi-trance, Tryst's thoughts drifted, took control of things again. How had he got to be here, outside this house, in the middle of the night, so full of rage and jealousy?
As he reflected, memories came back to him, the ones of his youth, back when the summers seemed endless. The cottage just south of the city where his parents lived. His father, that colossal bearded man, a priest of Bohr, and an alcoholic, who abused both Tryst and his mother. His mother herself, small and fragile and beautiful, so undeserving of the hell his father brought home with him. Tryst loved her, wanted to protect her with every instinct of his being.
But to his father she meant nothing, because Bohr had become everything, a god Tryst could never see, and perhaps that was the reason why Tryst had become an Ovinist.
Because he excelled at his lessons, it was his mother who fought for him to stay at school as long as possible, even as his father's drinking habits and bouts of violence worsened. She invested in him a sense of motivation, of freedom to get on in life, not to be held back by conditions. Perhaps some of her own fears laced her words. When she died of some mysterious illness, it destroyed his optimism. Strangely, it broke his father too, and Tryst didn't expect that. So now that it turned out Tryst couldn't expect any more promotions in the Inquisition, he thought back to those days constantly, relived those moments of helplessness again and again.
His mother had told him he was so clever he could achieve anything, and now Jeryd was stopping Tryst from achieving.
Tryst slid an ornamental dagger from his sleeve. He cut a slice of the pig's heart, then took a bite to show his devotion to his new god – the one that had helped process his bad memories.
But he still could not do much about the problem of Jeryd.
Seething, he walked home, contemplating ways to hurt the investigator.
FIFTEEN
Verain pulled up the hood of her fuligin cape to escape the cold wind that channelled through the passageways of Villjamur as if it was chasing her, haunting her like a relentless ghost.
As she continued on her way, old men leered at her from hidden doorways, called out to her with degrading suggestions. Some were so drunk they were falling against the walls, yet even then they were requesting sexual favours. She had half a mind to use a relic to castrate them – at least that ought to cut short their fantasies. She merely flashed a short sword by their faces as she passed, but their voices continued to pursue her long after she had gone. Otherwise there were only the cats infesting the alleyways, but she actually appreciated their company.
She felt so isolated now. She was going to betray her lover.
For that's how Dartun would see it, there was no hiding from the truth. He would scarcely care if she left him
