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‘I have been thinking on that, highness. On war. I have been thinking that it does not matter where the war is, or who fights it. Or whether we hold blood ties to the slayers, or not. It could well be on the other side of the world, fought by strangers, for reasons we cannot even understand. None of that matters, highness. It is our war nonetheless.’
‘How so, Yedan Narad?’
‘Because, in the end, nothing divides us. Nothing distinguishes us. We commit the same crimes, taking lives, holding ground, yielding ground, crossing blood-drenched borders – lines in the sand no different from this one here. With fires at our backs, and fires ahead – I thought I understood this sea, highness, but now I see that I did not understand it at all.’ He raised his sword and pointed its tip at the shimmering, flame-wrought surface beyond the shore. The weapon bucked and trembled in his hand, as if bound to its very own will. ‘That, my queen, is the realm of peace. We dream of swimming it, but when at last we do, we but drown.’
‘Then, O brother, you give us no hope, if war defines our existence, and peace our death.’
‘We all commit violence on ourselves, highness. It is more than just brother against brother, sister against sister, or any other combination you care to imagine. Our thoughts wage savage mayhem in our skulls, with no respite. We fight desires, wave banners of hope, tear down the standards of every promise we have dared utter. In our heads, my queen, is a world that is without peace, and by that description we define life itself.’
‘You question your purpose, brother,’ she said. ‘After all this. It is no surprise.’
‘I was a lover of men, Twilight—’
‘No. That is not you.’
Confusion took him and he almost stumbled. Drunkenly righting himself, he let the sword drop again, the point sending up a burst of sparks as it struck the sands. They walked on. He shook his head. ‘Forgive me, it nears the time.’
‘Yes. I understand, brother. The night crawls; even should we lie in sleep and so see nothing of it, still, it crawls.’
‘I would have you, my queen, uproot the spike.’
‘I know,’ she replied in a soft voice.
‘Their faces were my shame.’
‘Yes.’
‘So I cut them all down.’
‘White faces,’ she murmured. ‘Not sharing our … inde
cision. We are their only shadow, brother, and in that, we can never lie to them. You did what you had to do. You did what they demanded of you.’
‘I died in my sister’s arms.’
‘Not you.’
‘Are you sure, my queen?’
‘Yes.’
He halted, shoulders hunching, head bowing. ‘Highness, I must ask you – who set this world afire?’
She reached out to him, one soft gore-smeared hand touching the line of his jaw, lifting his gaze to her own. The rapists had done their work. There was no forgetting that. He remembered the feel of her broken body beneath him, and the ragged mess that had been her wedding dress. With dead eyes, she looked upon him, and her dead lips parted, to utter the dead words, ‘You did.’
Narad’s eyes blinked open. It was night. The few fires had burned down, and the scorched stumps of trees stood thin and black on all sides of the camp. The others were asleep. He sat up, tugged aside the ratty furs of his bedding.
He welcomed her haunting, but not the illusions it delivered. He was not her brother. She was not his queen – although perhaps, in some ways, he had made her so – but that honour, as he felt it in that place, on that fiery shoreline, was not his alone. It was an earned thing. She led her people, and her people were an army.
Wars inside make wars outside. It has always been this way. There is nothing left, but everything to fight for. Still, who dares imagine this a virtue?
He lifted hands to his scarred, mangled face. The aches never quite faded away. He could still feel her grimed fingers along the line of his jaw.
Motion caught his eye. He quickly stood and faced it. Two figures were walking into the camp.
The heavier of the two reached out to stay his companion, and then strode towards Narad.
He is not Tiste. He wears the guise of a savage.
