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‘You have left childhood behind, then. Should you mourn its passing in the years to come, remember this day.’
I will, whether I want to or not. ‘Thank you, milord, for saving my life. When I’m done at the Citadel, I’ll go to Tarns, too, with my spear in hand, and I’ll fight beside you.’
His vow was meant to please the lord, and yet Anomander’s face seemed to fold in on itself, as if retreating from the promise of grief instead of glory. Wreneck straightened. ‘You have your vengeance, milord, and I have mine.’
‘Then,’ the man said, ‘how is it possible for me to deny you? Until then, Wreneck.’
Nodding, Wreneck bowed, and then he leaned the spear over one shoulder and stepped on to the cobbled road leading into Kharkanas.
The ghosts watched him, but like all the gathered spirits and gods, they too remained silent.
Maybe that’s what death is. The place you find yourself when there’s nothing left to say.
* * *
‘Envy has many teeth,’ said Prazek as he rode alongside Dathenar, near the head of the train. ‘For men such as you and myself, for whom love can deliver the promise of downy cheeks, soft lips and the sweetest nest of delight; or, through the opposite door, a bristled chin and manly tenderness … such as it is.’ He paused to mull, and then resumed, ‘Is it any wonder others look on and feel the gnaw and nip of outrage? Envy, say I, Dathenar.’
‘I am minded, friend Prazek, of the many artful expostulations of love, by decidedly lesser poets and bards of our age, and ages past. Shall I plumb this wretched trench? Ah, know you this one? “Love is a dog rolling on a dead fish.” ’
‘Strapala of the South Fork. Guess this one: “I wallow in my love, and you the heart of a sow …”’
‘Vask, dead now a hundred years!’
‘And still mired in mediocrity, no blow to his fame, no mar to his name, no challenge to all that is lame—’
‘Barring what you peddle, Prazek.’
‘I yield the floor, step lightly over the chalk defining my place, and call an end to toeing the line.’
‘Consider this one, then. So heartbroken this poet he spent four years and a hundred bottles of ink defending his suicide, only to break his neck upon a bar of soap—’
‘Lye to die, dead by suds, quick to the slick and slip away no time for a quip.’
‘“Forsaken this love, my tongue doth probe, to touch – but touch! – the excretion of the snail’s slime, and now all atingle at exquisite poison, my heart dances like a rat on a griddle, but still she stands with but a faint smile ’pon her sweet lips, tending the fire and tending, tending, and tending the fire!” ’
‘There is a delicacy to that anguish, urging me to admiration.’
‘His talent was all accidental. And yet, not.’
‘Stumbling panged into genius – this does seem a rare talent. By nature of suffering, indulged with passion, to make something sticky of excess, and yet the lure of honey in the flower’s budding mouth, drawing one in, and, as he might say, in.’
‘And in,’ Dathenar added, nodding. ‘Have I confounded you?’
‘No, a moment longer. I am on fertile ground and must only sharpen the plough. Was it Liftera?’
‘Of the Isle? No. Her railing was ever too sour to do aught but crush the petals in desperate grip.’
‘Teroth?’
‘That alley cur? You insult the name of the accidental suicide. One more effort and then I must proclaim my triumph.’
‘Still it echoes oh so familiar …’
‘Well it might.’
Before them, the city’s south wall – dismantled here and there, slumping elsewhere – drew closer, the buildings beyond it dark as smoke-stained stone. The gates were open and unattended. Not even a guard was visible.
‘Four years of wallowing?’
