‘Rubbish. You can fold iron into a blade as well as any weaponsmith.’
‘Seen plenty of ‘em, have you?’
‘With a life as long as mine has been, I’ve seen too much of everything. Now, our young miserable charges are probably down in the hold again. Will you get them or will I?’
‘Is it truly time to leave?’
‘I think the Adjunct is already off.’
‘You go. They still make my skin crawl.’
She rose. ‘You lack sympathy, which is characteristic of self-obsession. These Tiste Andii are young, Withal. Abandoned first by Anomander Rake. Then by Andarist. Brothers and sisters fallen in pointless battle. Too many losses-they are caught in the fragility of the world, in the despair it delivers to their souls.’
‘Privilege of the young, to wallow in world-weary cynicism.’
‘Unlike your deep thoughts.’
‘Completely unlike my deep thoughts, Sand.’
‘You think they have not earned that privilege?’
He could sense her growing ire. She was, after all, no less Tiste Andii than they were. Some things needed steering around. Volcanic island. Floating mountain of ice. Sea of fire. And Sandahth Drukorlat’s list of sensitivities. ‘I suppose they have,’ he replied carefully. ‘But since when was cynicism a virtue? Besides, it gets damned tiring.’
‘No argument there,’ she said in a deadly tone, then turned and marched out.
‘Brooding’s different,’ he muttered to the empty chair across from him. ‘Could be any subject, for one thing. A subject not at all cynical. Like the meddling of the gods-no, all right, not like that one. Smithing, yes. Horseshoes. Nothing cynical about horseshoes… I don’t think. Sure. Keeping horses comfortable. So they can gallop into battle and die horribly.’ He fell silent. Scowling.
Phaed’s flat, heart-shaped face was the colour of smudged slate, a hue unfortunate in its lifelessness. Her eyes were flat, except when filled with venom, which they were now as they rested on Sandalath Drukorlat’s back as the older woman spoke to the others.
Nimander Golit could see the young woman he called his sister from the corner of his eye, and he wondered yet again at the source of Phaed’s unquenchable malice, which had been there, as far as he could recall, from her very earliest days. Empathy did not exist within her, and in its absence something cold now thrived, promising a kind of brutal glee at every victory, real or imagined, obvious or subtle.
There was nothing easy in this young, beautiful woman. It began with the very first impression a stranger had upon seeing her, a kind of natural glamour that could take one’s breath away. The perfection of art, the wordless language of the romantic.
This initial moment was short-lived. It usually died following the first polite query, which Phaed invariably met with cold silence. A silence that transformed that wordless language, dispelling all notions of romance, and filling the vast, prolonged absence of decorum with bald contempt.
Spite was reserved for those who saw her truly, and it was in these instances that Nimander felt a chill of premonition, for he knew that Phaed was capable of murder. Woe to the sharp observer who saw, unflinchingly, through to her soul-to that trembling knot of darkness veined with unimaginable fears-then chose to disguise nothing of that awareness.
Nimander had long since learned to affect a kind of innocence when with Phaed, quick with a relaxed smile which seemed to put her at ease. It was at these moments, alas, when she was wont to confide her cruel sentiments, whispering elaborate schemes of vengeance against a host of slights.
Sandalath Drukorlat was nothing if not perceptive, which was hardly surprising. She had lived centuries upon centuries. She had seen all manner of creatures, from the honourable to the demonic. It had not taken her long to decide towards which end of the spectrum Phaed belonged. She had answered cold regard with her own; the contempt flung her way was like pebbles thrown at a warrior’s shield, raising not even a scratch. And, most cutting riposte of all, she had displayed amusement at Phaed’s mute histrionics, even unto overt mockery. These, then, were the deep wounds suppurating in Phaed’s soul, delivered by the woman who now stood as a surrogate mother to them all.
And now, Nimander knew, heart-faced Phaed was planning matricide.
He admitted to his own doldrums-long periods of flat indifference-as if none of this was in fact worth thinking about. He had his private host of demons, after all, none of which seemed inclined to simply fade away. Unperturbed by the occasional neglect, they played on in their dark games, and the modest hoard of wealth that made up Nimander’s life went back and forth, until the scales spun without surcease. Clashing discord and chaos to mark the triumphant cries, the hissed curses, the careless scattering of coin. He often felt numbed, deafened.
It may have been that these were the traits of the Tiste Andii. Introverts devoid of introspection. Darkness in the blood. Chimerae, even unto ourselves. He’d wanted to care about the throne they had been defending, the one that Andarist died for, and he had led his charges into that savage battle without hesitation. Perhaps, even, with true eagerness.
Rush to death. The longer one lives, the less valued is that life. Why is that?
But that would be introspection, wouldn’t it? Too trying a task, pursuing such questions. Easier to simply follow the commands of others. Another trait of his kind, this comfort in following? Yet who stood among the Tiste Andii as symbols of respect and awe? Not young warriors like Nimander Golit. Not wicked Phaed and her vile ambitions.
Anomander Rake, who walked away. Andarist, his brother, who did not. Silchas Ruin-ah, such a family! Clearly unique among the brood of the Mother. They lived larger, then, in great drama. Lives tense and humming like bowstrings, the ferocity of truth in their every word, the hard, cruel exchanges that drove them apart when nothing else would. Not even Mother Dark’s turning away. Their early lives were poems of epic grandeur. And we? We are nothing. Softened, blunted, confused into obscurity. We have lost our simplicity, lost its purity. We are the Dark without mystery.
Sandalath Drukorlat-who had lived in those ancient times and must grieve in her soul for the fallen Tiste Andii-now turned about and with a gesture beckoned the motley survivors of Drift Avalii to follow. Onto the deck-‘you have hair, Nimander, the colour of starlight’-to look upon this squalid harbour town that would be their home for the next little eternity, to use Phaed’s hissing words.
‘It used to be a prison, this island. Full of rapists and murderers.’ A sudden look into his eyes, as if seeking something, then she gave him a fleeting smile that was little more than a showing of teeth and said, A good place for murder.’
Words that, millennia past, could have triggered a civil war or worse, the fury of Mother Dark herself. Words, then, that barely stirred the calm repose of Nimander’s indifference.
‘You have hair, Nimander, the colour of-’ But the past was dead. Drift Avalii. Our very own prison isle, where we learned about dying.
And the terrible price of following.
Where we learned that love does not belong in this world.
Chapter Fourteen
I took the stone bowl in both hands and poured out my time onto the ground drowning hapless insects feeding the weeds until the sun stood looking down and stole the stain.
Seeing in the vessel’s cup a thousand cracks I looked back the way I came and saw a trail green with memories lost whoever made this bowl was a fool but the greater he who carried it.
The pitched sweep of ice had gone through successive thaws and freezes until its surface was pocked and
