The Crippled God

in time, a few generations soaking our blood into the land. But there won’t be any time. Not enough for that.’

‘If that is your answer-’

‘No it ain’t. I’m working on it, sir. It’s called thinking things through. A cause, then. Can’t be some Tiste Andii queen or her damned throne, or even her damned city. Can’t be Yan Tovis, even though she brought ’em all through and so saved their lives. Memories die like beached fish and soon enough just the smell will do t’drive ’em away. Can’t be you neither.’

‘Captain,’ said Yedan Derryg, ‘if the enemy destroy us, they will march down the Road of Gallan. Unobstructed, they will breach the gate to your own world, and they will lay waste to every human civilization, until nothing remains but ash. And then they will slay the gods themselves. Your gods.’

‘If they’re that nasty, how can we hope to hold ’em here?’

Yedan nodded at the Lightfall. ‘Because, Captain, there is only one way through. This stretch of beach. A thousand paces wide. Only here is the wall scarred and thin from past wounds. Only here can they hope to break the barrier. We bar this door, Captain, and we save your world.’

‘And just how long are we supposed to hold ’em back?’

He ruminated for a moment, and then he said, ‘As long as needed, Captain.’

She rubbed at the back of her neck, squinted at Yedan for a time, and then looked away. ‘How can you do that, sir?’

‘Do what?’

‘Stand there, so close, just watching them — can’t you see their faces? Can’t you feel their hatred? What they want to do to you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Yet there you stand.’

‘They serve to remind me, Captain.’

‘Of what?’

‘Of why I exist.’

She hissed between her teeth. ‘You just sent a chill right through me.’

‘I asked about a worthy cause.’

‘Yeah, saving the world. That might work.’

He shot her a look. ‘Might?’

‘True, you’d think saving your world is a good enough reason for doing anything and everything, wouldn’t you?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘People being what people are … we’ll see.’

‘You lack faith, Captain.’

‘What I lack is proof to the contrary, sir. I ain’t seen it yet, in all my years. What do you think makes criminals in the first place?’

‘Stupidity and greed.’

‘Besides those? I’ll tell you. It’s looking around, real carefully. It’s seeing what’s really there, and who wins every time, and it’s deciding that despair tastes like shit. It’s deciding to do whatever it takes to sneak through, to win what you can for yourself. It’s also condemning your fellow humans to whatever misery finds them — even if that misery is by your own hand. To hurt another human being is to announce your hatred of humanity — but mostly your thinking is about hating back what already hates you. A thief steals telling herself she’s evening out crooked scales. That’s how we sleep at night, y’see.’

‘A fine speech, Captain.’

‘Tried making it short as I could, sir.’

‘So indeed you are without faith.’

‘I have faith that what’s worst in humanity isn’t hard to find — it’s all around us, sour as a leaking bladder, day after day. It’s the stink we all get used to. As for what’s best … maybe, but I wouldn’t push all my stacks of coin into the centre of the table on that bet.’ She paused and then said, ‘Thinking on it, there’s one thing you could do to buy their souls.’

‘And that is?’

‘Empty out the palace treasury and bury it ten paces up the beach. And make a show of it. Maybe even announce that it’s, you know, the Sword’s Gold. To be divided up at day’s end.’

‘And would they fight to save the soldier beside them? I doubt it.’

‘Hmm, good point. Then announce a fixed amount — and whatever is unclaimed on account of the soldier being dead goes back into the treasury.’

‘Well, Captain, you could petition the Queen of Darkness.’

‘Oh, I can do better. Sister Brevity’s the treasurer now.’

‘You are a cynical woman, Captain Pithy.’

‘In case saving the world don’t work, that’s all. Make getting rich the reward and they’ll eat their own children before backing a single step.’

‘And which of the two causes would you more readily give your life for, Captain?’

‘Neither, sir.’

His brows lifted.

She spat again. ‘I was a thief once. Plenty of hatred then, both ways. But then I walked a step behind your sister and watched her bleed for us all. And then there was you, too, for that matter. That rearguard action that saved all our skins. So now,’ she scowled at the Lightfall, ‘well, I’ll stand here, and I’ll fight until the fight’s left them or it’s left me.’

Yedan studied her in earnest now. ‘And why would you do that, Pithy Islander?’

‘Because it’s the right thing to do, Yedan Derryg.’

Rightness. The word was lodged in Yan Tovis’s throat like shards of glass. She could taste blood in her mouth, and all that had seeped down into her stomach seemed to have solidified into something fist-sized, heavy as stone.

The Shore invited her, reached out and clawed at her with its need. A need it yearned to share with her. You stand with me, Queen. As you once did, as you shall do again. You are the Shake and the Shake are of the Shore, and I have tasted your blood all my life.

Queen, I thirst again. Against this enemy, there shall be Rightness upon the Shore, and you will stand, and you will yield not a step.

But there was betrayal, long ago. How could the Liosan forget? How could they set it aside? Judgement, the coarse, thorn-studded brambles of retribution, they could snag an entire people, and as the blood streamed down each body was lifted higher, lifted from the ground. The vicious snare carried them into the righteous sky.

Reason could not reach that high, and in the heavens madness spun untamed.

Rightness rages on both sides of the wall. Who can hope to halt what is coming? Not the Queen of Darkness, not the queen of the Shake. Not Yedan Derryg — oh no, my brother strains for that moment. He draws his wretched sword again and again. He smiles at the Lightfall’s lurid play on the blade. He stands before the silent shrieking insanity of hatred made manifest, and he does not flinch.

But, and this was the impossible contradiction, her brother had not once in his life felt a single spasm of hatred — his soul was implacably incapable of such an emotion. He could stand in the fire and not burn. He could stand before those deformed faces, those grasping hands, and … and … nothing.

Oh, Yedan, what waits within you? Have you surrendered completely to the need of the Shore? Are you one with it? Do you know a single moment of doubt? Does it? She could understand the seductive lure of that invitation. Absolution through surrender, the utter abjection of the self. She understood it, yes, but she did not trust it.

When that which offers blessing predicates such on the absolute obeisance of the supplicant … demands, in fact, the soul’s willing enslavement — no, how could such a force stand tall in moral probity?

The Shore demands our surrender to it. Demands our enslavement in the glory of its love, the sweet purity of its eternal blessing.

There is something wrong with that. Something … monstrous. You offer us the freedom of