The beast paused and looked back at him, ears cocked, eyes askew.
‘By the confusion of your vision, friend, I name you Providence. Is that too long a name for a scrawny thing like you? No matter. Perversity pleases me, unless it is too perverse, upon which I am known to bark a laugh. You can join me in this, if you care to. But I call you not to call you names, friend, but to tell you that I am tired and hungry and
in
my sack is a fish, or two, and I see certain herbs that entice my eyes. In short, since I see you fret impatient, we shall make camp in some suitable glade or clearing in the forest upon the left. Thus: keep an eye out for a likely roost.’
When the animal resumed its trot, Grizzin smiled and continued walking.
A short time later the dog loped into the line of trees and vanished from sight.
The Azathanai shrugged, not expecting to see its return. He was thankful for the brief companionship, however, and thought the animal well named for that brevity.
The creature suddenly reappeared, tail wagging. It halted just outside the forest’s ragged edge.
Grizzin stood on the road and squinted at the dog. ‘Can it be you gleaned my desire? Your stance is most expectant, yet you draw no nearer. Very well, show me a place to sleep and show me, indeed, that Providence can do no less.’
He moved down from the road and approached. The animal spun round and bounded back into the forest.
A short distance in waited a glade, the grasses thick and soft, barring in the centre where the blackened stones encircled an old campfire.
Grizzin ventured into the clearing, up to the old hearth, where he set down his sack. ‘You alter the course of this night’s conversation, friend,’ he said to the dog, now lying near the stones. ‘I did anticipate the pleasure of not being understood, thus freeing me to heights of appalling honesty and blue confession. Instead, I now fear fleas will carry the tale, and so must be circumspect. And I fear more the matching of wits with you, and losing the game, O Providence. Now, rest here while I collect wood, herbs and the like. We shall feast tonight, and then pick clean our teeth with fish spines, and make fresh our breaths with the twigs of bitter juniper. What say you?’
But the dog was already asleep, legs twitching as it swam through dreams.
* * *
Hish Tulla watched Gripp Galas gingerly lift himself on to the saddle of his horse. She met his eyes and he nodded. They rode out from the small courtyard, ducking as, Hish in the lead, they passed beneath the gate’s heavy lintel stone. The street they trotted onto revealed similar gates lining its winding length, and stationed before a number of them were guards, their eyes shadowed by the visors of their helms.
The river might have receded, but currents of fear lingered. She wondered how many of these guards they rode past had once been soldiers in Urusander’s Legion. Questions of loyalty haunted every
street
, even here where dwelt the highborn behind high walls. This matter of grievances irritated Hish, since they seemed so ephemeral. If by way of recognition of their service to the realm, these soldiers would now demand coin and land, then the matter of compensation could readily be addressed. Negotiations and honourable brokering could take the place of belligerence. But it was not that simple. From what she could determine, the soldiers yearned for something more, of which coin and land were but material manifestations.
Perhaps it was no more than a meeting of the eye, every station made level, as if birthright were irrelevant. A laudable notion, but one she knew to be unworkable. A realm of nothing but highborn would quickly crumble. Without servants, without workers of crafts – potters and weavers and carpenters and cooks – civilization could not function. But even here, this was not part of the new world as envisioned by the decommissioned soldiers. What they sought was only for them and what they sought was an elevation of their profession, to a level of social importance matching that of the highborn.
It was this that so disturbed her. Soldiers already possessed the means and the skills to impose violence or brandish its threat. To yield and heap wealth and land on them could only nurture the gardens of greed and ambition, and these were poison fruit that every highborn well understood.
Position and privilege imposed responsibilities. Unquestionably the defence of the realm was also a great responsibility.
But defence against whom? With all enemies beyond the borders vanquished, who remains to stand in their stead, but those within our borders? An army is a fist poised to strike, but that clenching of fingers and focus of desire cannot be held for ever. It is made to strike and strike it must
.
The poor Deniers of the forests and hills were now dying, but these were the lowest of the believers. How soon before the Legion struck the monasteries, and put to flame temples and abbeys? And who could not but see this in the most venal light? None were safe within the borders of Kurald Galain, from the very army created to defend them.
She thought of the highborn as the counterweight to Urusander’s Legion.
But we present a sordid example, all things considered. Squabbling among ourselves, scrabbling for the highest elevation above our neighbours, and spitting venom upon the one who stands at Mother Dark’s side, as if questions of justice and propriety did not curdle on our own tongues!
No, this was a wretched mess and in many respects the highborn had only themselves to blame. If a soldier risked her or his life, then it should be in defence of worthy things: family, promise, comfort and freedom from strife. But if a trench were cut across such virtues, where so many were left to scramble for the paltry
leavings
of those who most profited by that soldier’s sacrifice, then it was no wonder that scarred hands should itch.
They rode through the highborn district, with its clean cobbles and ornate gates, its blackwood carriages and healthy horses, its scurrying servants burdened beneath wares they did not own, and of which they would not partake. And the wealthy strolled – fewer than usual – through the dusk, warded by bodyguards, and, as always, contentedly unmindful of the world beyond their ken. She had travelled through the lower quarters of the city; she had seen the destitution and disease breeding in the airs of neglect. But such boldness was rare among her kin.
It would be easy to blame the dwellers for the filth in which they lived, and to see that wreckage as a symptom of moral weakness and spiritual failure; as, indeed, proof of the inequity of blood and the making of privilege a birthright. In the manner of horses, breeding would tell, and if nags struggled before creaking wagons and bore whip marks upon their flanks, and warhorses knew only fields turned muddy with blood and gore, and the upper terraces of the city offered dry even cobbles under well-filed, iron-shod hoofs, then surely this marked a natural order of things?
She had begun to doubt. Too comforting by far these assumptions. Too self-serving the pronouncements. Too inhuman the judgements. The trenches were deepening, and the eyes that looked up and across that gulf were hardening. The privileged had a right to fear these days, just as the dispossessed had a right to their resentment.
But Urusander’s Legion stood nowhere between that divide. They stood apart, wanting only for themselves, and they now gathered into ranks with weapons on hand, to take what the poor did not have and the rich had not earned.
She would be the first to scoff at the notion of hard work among her own kind. Tasks of organization were devoid of value without those being organized; without workers herded together with eyes downcast and the next day no different from this day and this life no different from the next one. She knew that she had been born to her wealth and land, and she knew how that inheritance had skewed her sense of the world, and of people – especially those in their hovels, who huddled in a fug of fear and crime and dissolution. She knew, and was helpless before it.
They approached the bridge and saw before them a large party of highborn, and Hish caught sight of Anomander – the silver hair, the mother’s legacy of his skin.
Gripp Galas rode up beside her on the concourse and said, ‘Milady, I am as unsuited to this company as the tale I bring to my master.’
‘Nevertheless, sir.’
Still he hesitated.
Hish Tulla scowled. ‘Gripp Galas, how long have you served your lord?’
‘Since he was born, milady.’
‘And how do you weigh the words you bring?’
‘An unwelcome burden on this day, milady. They journey to celebration.’
‘Think you your lord not aware of the violence in the countryside? He rides into smoke and ash this evening.’
‘Milady, the Deniers are a feint. The Legion but clears the field in preparation. They intend to march Urusander into the Chamber of Night. They intend, milady, a second throne.’
She studied him, chilled by the raw language of his assertion.
After a moment, Gripp continued, ‘I don’t know my master’s awareness of this situation. Nor do I know if my report will twist pleasure from his brother’s day. We all know a paucity of joyous memories and I wouldn’t assail this one.’
‘Must it always be paucity, Gripp Galas?’ Her question was asked softly and yet it seemed to strike him like a slap to the face.
He looked away, eyes tightening, and Hish Tulla sensed the gulf that stretched between her and him, a gulf he had acknowledged in acquiescing to the child Orfantal’s insistence that he deliver the boy to her first. This was a man who had stood in the highborn shadow: a servant, a bodyguard, his life subservient and dependent upon the very privilege he was avowed to defend. By this measure, one of mutual necessity, all of civilization was defined. The bargain was brutal and implicitly unfair and it sickened her.
Gripp said, ‘Milady, there’s enough to worry about without thinking too much. Too much thinking ain’t never but bred problems. A bird builds a nest, lays her eggs and feeds and defends her chicks, and there’s no thinking to any of it.’
‘Are we birds, Gripp?’
‘No. The nest is never big or pretty enough, and the chicks disappoint at every turn. The trees don’t give enough cover and the days are too short or too long. The food’s short on supply or too stale and your mate looks uglier with every dawn.’
She stared at him in shock, and then burst out laughing.
Her reaction startled him and a moment later he shook his head. ‘I do not expect my master to do my thinking for me, milady. We must each of us do that for ourselves, and that’s the only bargain worth respecting.’
‘Yet you will take his orders and do his bidding.’
He shrugged. ‘Most people don’t like to think too hard. It’s easier that way. But I’m content enough with the bargain I’ve made.’
‘Then he would know your thoughts, Gripp Galas.’
‘I know, milady. I simply rue what he will lose in the telling.’
‘Would he rather you said nothing? That you wait until after the marriage?’
‘He would,’ Gripp acknowledged, ‘but will face what he must and voice no complaint, nor blame.’
‘You are indeed content with your bargain.’
‘I am.’
‘You remind me of my castellan.’
‘Rancept, milady? A wise man.’
‘Wise?’
‘Never thinks too hard, does Rancept.’
She sighed, eyeing the retinue once more. ‘I wish to be back in my estate, arguing with my castellan over his cruelty to his favoured dog. I wish I could just hide away and discuss nothing more significant than a dog’s wretched tapeworms.’
‘We would mourn your absence, milady, and envy the castellan your regard.’
‘Will you seduce me now, Gripp Galas?’
His brows lifted and his face coloured. ‘Milady, forgive me! I am always honourable in my compliments.’
‘I fear I mistrust men who make such claims.’
‘And so wound yourself.’
She fell abruptly silent, studying the man’s eyes, seeing for the first time the softness in them, the genuine affection and the pain he clearly felt for her. These notions only deepened her sorrow. ‘It is my fate to lose the men for whom I care, Gripp Galas.’
His eyes widened slightly and then he looked down, fidgeting with the reins.
‘In what comes,’ she said then, ‘take care of yourself.’
There was a shout from the party, and at once riders and carriages were crossing the bridge.
Gripp squinted at the group and then drew a deep breath. ‘It is time, milady. I thank you for the clean clothes. I will of course recompense you.’
She thought back to the torn, bloodstained garments he had been wearing on the night of his appearance at her door, and felt tears in her eyes. ‘I did not sell them to you, Gripp. Nor loan them.’
He glanced at her and managed an awkward nod, and then urged his mount towards the party.
Hish Tulla guided her warhorse into his wake. When he drew nearer, she would angle her mount to one side, seeking to join the procession at the rear. With luck, Anomander would not notice her arrival and so be spared embarrassment.
Instead, he caught sight of them both while still on the bridge, and as suddenly as the procession had begun moving it was stopped by a gesture from Anomander. She saw him turn to his brother Silchas. They spoke, but she and Galas – both now reined in – were too distant to make out the exchange of words. Then Anomander was riding towards them, with the attention of all the others now fixed upon the two interlopers.