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Seeing something in his gaze, or hearing the change in his breathing, Toras Redone smiled slyly. ‘At last, lover. Come to me. It is dissolution you long to caress. Others might deem that, well, sordid, but you and I, we understand each other.’
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He stepped forward, and then his hands were upon her cool skin. ‘Toras,’ he said, ‘I came here to speak to you of Lord Henarald.’
‘Cast him from your mind, Galar. He’s found his own dissolution.’ She brushed her lips against his, pressing more of her body against him. ‘If he hasn’t already, he will talk to you about smoke, and things left to waste.’
‘Yes.’
‘Him and us, Galar, we but worship different aspects of the same grisly god. The end of things will lure us, until in our lust we make an end of our world. It’s nothing but variations in scale. This … dissolution.’
He wanted to pull away from her. Instead, he drew her tighter into his arms.
She laughed. ‘Oh, Galar, how I’ve missed you.’
She had ever been, he reminded himself, good with lies. That all that she had said before her last statement had been true, he did not doubt. But Toras Redone’s world was a private one, with room only for herself. She would take visitors, provided they understood well enough to expect only what she offered.
So he mulled on the lie, even as his body fell into the motions of long held desires. She had indeed been honest, he discovered, in how she had described her new shape, and what in his mind had been soft as pillows now proved impediments to reaching her at all, in any place where pleasure might be found. Curiously, even this challenge proved alluring.
Later, Galar Baras found himself wondering which man he was: the one he both saw in himself and showed to virtually everyone else, or the man she made him into, with such knowing in her eyes, such recognition in her low laughter, that he felt himself reduced to … to a faint script, scrawled across her skin, riding every undulation and curve, every fold.
The night writes me upon her, in a language only she can understand. I stagger away, all meaning undone, all sense stripped away. Where, in this wretched love, is my reason?
He would return her to the Legion. The officers and soldiers would see him as a man of formidable powers, if not an unassailable will. And only in the occasional glance she would send his way would he be reminded of their hidden language, there upon its sweet vellum of stretched skin, unseen by anyone else.
Which man is the truth of me?
To that question, he had no answer.
* * *
As if even metal lips could somehow be soft, the Hust armour muttered like mouths pressed against flesh. But this was a cruel seduction. From the vambraces, from the chain and scale and greaves, came a sound like rain threading through trees, cold streams upon a forest floor, a chorus of whispering. With the helm fixed upon his head, Wareth listened to the faint imprecations and felt an uncanny chill ripple through him. There was something almost suffocating in the weight, with its cloying murmurs, as if he was in the embrace of a woman he did not desire.
Stepping out from his tent, he found himself facing Rebble. He too was armoured, and from the tangle of his wild beard there was the white flash of a rueful grin.
‘Like wearing your fears, isn’t it, Wareth?’ He then rapped knuckles against the scabbarded sword at his hip. ‘And this thing. Abyss take me but she’s eager for my temper.’
‘She?’
He shrugged. ‘As close as I’ll get, I suppose, to having a wife. Beautiful in hand until she cuts.’
Shaking his head, Wareth said, ‘I must attend a meeting with the captains.’
Rebble’s small eyes narrowed. ‘You’ll shadow Rance, then? Well, it was only a matter of time.’
‘What was?’
He glanced away, shrugged again. ‘For me, it’s out to the pickets. I need the walk, need to get used to all this weight. It’s the helm I hate the most – I got enough voices in my fucking skull.’
‘Find Listar for your patrol, Rebble.’
Rebble cocked his head. ‘For a coward, you’ve uncommon loyalty, Wareth. Makes you hard to figure. I’m not complaining, sir. Maybe the opposite, in fact. It’s something that gets noticed.’
‘Enough of that, Rebble. You’d be better off listening to your armour, and sword. There’s a battle coming, but it won’t be me in the front ranks. Remember that. Galar knows enough to keep me as far from the fighting as he can. But you, and Listar – and all the other officers and squad leaders – you’re heading into something else. My loyalty won’t put me at your side when that time comes.’
There was a momentary glint of something ugly in Rebble’s eyes, and then he smiled. ‘No one’s planning on your statue, sir. Not even a painted portrait, or a fucking bust or something. You’re Wareth, and we all remember that.’
Wareth nodded. ‘It’s well that you do.’
