Out in the dark of the balcony, they were silent. The sea shadowed back and forth beneath.
‘It’ll be good to work with you,’ he’d ventured.
‘Any friend of Arissa’s is a friend of mine,’ she’d replied.
‘I’m not really …’ he’d started. Stopped, turned to her. ‘I’m useless at this, sorry. And a bit drunk. This was sprung on me.’
She smiled then, soft and genuine, her head tipped down. Her hair just catching the edge of the fading light. ‘Oh, me too. That … uh…’ she glanced over her shoulder. ‘That seems to be how they do things here.’
He laughed. ‘Oh, yes, absolutely. A very Hesper thing. So, we could exchange professional pleasantries?’ He smiled, ‘I’m sure we could do it if we tried.’
She blanched a little.
‘Or,’ he said, gesturing up at the forest behind them, ‘there is another option …’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘What’s that?’
He turned, took a bottle from a discarded tray, and waggled it in what he hoped was an enticing manner. ‘We could go somewhere a lot quieter and get a little drunker.’
She looked at him for a second, the sharp bones of his face in the firelight, the wind from the sea pulling his long, dark hair across his eyes. ‘I think this might work out after all.’
After that, the party fell away behind them, and they climbed the winding hill in the gathering dark, beneath the gently buzzing branches, until the forest, the sea, and the city left them alone with each other.
37
not all flames may be extinguished
some burn perpetual, as is the way of the world
all matter trending inexorably towards fire.
—Archivist Splitwater
Declan sits in the room at the top of the tower for a long time after Shipwright and Shroudweaver have left. He watches the dust move in the light, watches the shadows shift over the map as the sun ticks slowly over the sky, hot against the fly-blown windows.
He tries to ignore that feeling in his chest, like a burnt stone. Foreboding. Deep and heavy as a well.
He doesn’t really want another war; never really expected one. Two should be enough for any lifetime.
‘One won, one lost. Same mess at the end of it all.’
He smiles bitterly at the thought, walks to the window and looks at the city, gathering speed as the day gathers light. Already the shouts and songs of Peacock’s Rest filling the air, as the bars and brothels spill tempting shade out into the warming streets. The distant pop and shimmer of fireworks. Some noble brat’s birthday party, most like. He hated them, the way they scared the animals. Scared him, if he admitted it. Always just too close to the sound of war. Altogether too many people around him fond of blowing things up.
That thought rustles his memory and he walks back to the table, stretching his hands out over the map. Vivid still, if food-stained and wine-spattered. Things couldn’t be kept pretty if you used them.
Amazing how much it had changed in a span of years. Redrawn twice over. First to expunge the black stain of the Empire in thenorth, then again to scratch the remains of the city Crowkisser killed into the burnt mess of the south. His fingers lingered there. That whole southern stretch just a ragged line below the villages of the Rim. Nothing to sketch in. Nothing rebuilt. No one able to go there to see what, if anything, remained.
He reaches for his desk drawer, finds the bottle and pours. It was early, but somehow, it was always early these days. Pours, drinks, and swills the sour taste of his own teeth around his head.
Somewhere beneath his chest, the fading bruises of Slickwalker’s fists press against his gut. He takes another pull, half to dull the pain, half to try and put a little fire back into his bones.
Tallest walls on the whole Western seaboard and that ratshit had waltzed in like it was nothing, holding his wife’s name in his mouth as he beat him bloody. He’d be bits and brains on the flagstones now if it wasn’t for Shipwright, and even that truth stunk. The pair of them rolling in, old as they were, bowed as they were, still with power pulsing at their backs. Silver thread and spinner brass.
And what did he have? An ego, and enough money to back it up. A strong sword arm that got weaker by the day. A hip and a shoulder that ached with slow fire in the mornings and cold fire at nights.
He could stave it off, of course. He was old enough and smart enough to strike the pose and hurl the bluster. But it was all dance. All smoke and mirrors.
He ran on fire and spite these days, and even that fire was a guttering flame, death growing in the bone.
