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She turned to him. ‘Recall his assertion,’ she observed.
‘His what?’
‘He names Osserc his heir, Hunn Raal. We have witnessed, and so it is, as you say, done.’
Something dark flitted across his expression, then was gone, his smile returning. ‘Ah, the boy. Yes indeed. Well, he was the pup in my shadow, and should he ever return …’ Shrugging, Hunn Raal turned away.
Closer to the thrones, both High Priestesses were speaking with their deities, quietly, for the moment at least.
Swinging round to follow Hunn Raal, Renarr found herself facing the historian.
‘I would know more about you,’ he said to her. ‘For the official version.’
‘Invent what you need,’ Renarr replied.
‘I would rather not misrepresent you.’
‘You would have me the detritus to cling to, amidst the flood of lies?’
‘Something like that.’
‘Perhaps later, historian,’ she said as she reached the door ‘I will give you all that you need, and more.’
* * *
Renarr did her best, then, to walk away from all of it. Vatha Urusander had been given a series of opulent rooms, as if anticipating a delay in the consummation of his marriage to Mother Dark, and it was in these rooms that she found her momentary refuge.
Witnessing the battle had left her drained. The sorcery had been shocking, appalling. It had been unfortunate that Hunn Raal had not only survived but prevailed, inasmuch as he had been the last one left standing.
In the company of the men and women who sold their bodies, and the near-feral pack of children swarming the ridge, Renarr had watched the sordid consequences of the failed magicks as soldiers clashed in the valley below. She had tried to imagine her mother down there, in the press, commanding her company in the slaying of fellow Tiste. But that proved difficult. Something about it did not – could not – fit, and it was some time before she realized that her mother would never have participated in such a travesty.
Military honour was bound to service. The virtue of honour could not stand alone, could not stand for itself. Service sustained honour, when nothing else could. Tearing it away from all that gave it meaning reduced the soldier to a thug, a bully. She had, with that realization, stepped back, her attention shifting to all the children gathered now along the crest to watch the killing below.
They were a neglected, contrary lot. Weak and brutal, small but hardened, broken but sharp-edged. And like any broken thing, they existed in the realm of the discarded. When they looked up, they saw women eager to lift their skirts and men exposing ornate painted codpieces. They saw other men and women walking the camps, swords belted at their hips, coarse in humour and coldly practical in their needs.
Lessons on a pragmatic life. Whatever we do as adults, we make in our children more of what we are. Is there no end to this? Scholars speak of progress, but I fear now that they are mistaken. This is not progress that we see, it is elaboration. Nothing of the old ways ever goes away, it just hides beneath modernity’s confusion.
No, her mother would have refused the charade. She would, indeed, have forced Urusander to act. In the name of honour. In the name of the soldier.
Renarr found herself the sole occupant of Urusander’s intended quarters, with not even a servant present. She wandered through the rooms, stirring the ashes of her regret. A single ember remains, and surely it shall burn me, and my name, for ever more. But some things we do not choose. Some things are chosen for us.
She heard the outer door open and then shut. Returning to the main room she saw Vatha Urusander. He seemed startled to see her, but only momentarily. He smiled. ‘I am glad to find you here, Renarr.’
‘Is she done with your company already?’
‘It has been a long time since we last slept. There are storms in our heads, and storms between us. Of the latter, I see a calm ahead. Of the former …’ He shrugged, and walked towards the window overlooking the broad sward behind the Citadel.
‘Will you deal with Hunn Raal?’ she asked, drawing closer to him.
His back was broad, but it now belonged to an ageing man. There was sadness in this detail.
‘Deal with him? I had ambitions there, didn’t I? He names himself my Mortal Sword. This should make plain who serves whom.’
‘And does it?’ She hesitated a few steps behind him, watching as he leaned forward close to the windowpane and looked down.
‘A keep’s refuse,’ he muttered. ‘How it backs the wall, below the chutes. I wonder, do we build houses simply to keep the garbage out? It should be buried.’
‘It buries itself,’ Renarr replied. ‘Eventually.’
