Frowning, she slowly nodded.
‘We’ll stay here for a while longer,’ Ivis said, helping her to sit up. Seeing her notice her half-undressed state, Ivis took up her outer cloak and draped it about her. ‘You were overheating in that carriage,’ he explained. ‘You fainted. Mistress, we could well have lost you — you’ve given us all a serious fright.’
‘I am weak with imagination, captain.’
He studied her, trying to make sense of that confession.
‘I am better now,’ she said, managing a faint smile. ‘Thirsty.’
Ivis gestured and a soldier closed in with a canteen. ‘Not too much all at once,’ he advised.
‘You’re holding my key, captain.’
‘It was constricting your throat, mistress.’ When she looked across at the strongbox, he added, ‘We’ll rig a harness between two horse-men.’ He smiled. ‘No idea what’s in that thing, but it’s damned heavy. Young women and their toiletry — it seems there’s no end to paints and perfumes and such. I know — got me a daughter, you see.’
Sandalath’s gaze dropped away and she seemed to concentrate solely on sipping from the canteen. Then she looked up in alarm. ‘The coachman-’
‘Sent him away, mistress.’
‘Oh. Did he-’
‘No. On my honour.’
It seemed she was about to press him on this, but lacked the strength, sagging back down as if moments from collapsing once more.
Ivis took her weight. ‘Mistress? Are you all right?’
‘I will be,’ she assured him. ‘So, how old is she?’
‘Who?’
‘Your daughter.’
‘Only a few years younger than you, mistress.’
‘Pretty?’
‘Well, I’m her father…’ And then he ventured a wry grin. ‘But she’ll need more wits about her than most, I’d wager.’
Sandalath reached out and touched his upper arm, a gesture that a princess might make upon a kneeling subject. ‘I am sure,’ she said, ‘she is very pretty.’
‘Yes, mistress,’ he replied. He straightened. ‘If you will excuse us for a time — I need to see to my troop, and see to the strongbox. Gather your strength, mistress, and when you feel able we will resume our journey to House Dracons.’
When he moved round to the other side of the carriage, Sillen edged close and said, ‘Mother help her if she looks like you, sir. That daughter of yours, I mean.’
Ivis scowled. ‘You’ve got a mouth on you, soldier, that’s going to see you looking up at us from the bottom of a latrine.’
‘Yes, sir. Didn’t know you had a daughter, that’s all. It’s, uh, hard to work my way round, sir.’
Behind them, Corporal Yalad snorted. ‘You really that thick, Sillen?’
‘See to that harness, Sillen,’ Ivis said.
‘Yes sir.’
Proper men had two arms for good reason. One to reach for things, the other to keep things away. Galdan had lost the arm that kept things away, and now, when every temptation edged into his reach, he snatched it close to be hungrily devoured.
He’d discovered this grim curse in the depths of cheap wine, and then in a young, innocent woman who lived only to dream of a better life. Well, he’d promised it, hadn’t he? That better life. But the hand that touched belonged to the wrong arm — the only arm he had left — and the touch did nothing but stain and leave bruises, marring all the perfect flesh that he should never have taken in the first place.
Love had no limbs at all. It could neither run nor grasp, couldn’t even push away though it tried and tried. Left lying on the ground, unable to move, crying like an abandoned baby — people could steal it; people could kick it until it bled, or nudge it down a hillside or over a cliff. They could smother it, drown it, set it on fire until it was ashes and charred bone. They could teach it how to want and want for ever, no matter how much it was fed. And sometimes, all love was, was something to be dragged behind on a chain, growing heavier with each step, and when the ground opened up under it, why, it pulled a person backwards and down, down to a place where the pain never ended.
If he’d had two arms, he could have stabbed it through the heart.
But nobody around here understood any of that. They couldn’t figure the reasons why he drank all the time, when in truth there weren’t any. Not real ones. And he didn’t need to do much to throw out excuses — the empty sleeve was good enough, and the beautiful woman stolen away from him — not that he’d ever deserved her, of course, but those who reached too high always fell the furthest, didn’t they? Forulkan justice, they called it. He’d had his fill of that, more than most people. He’d been singled out; he was certain of it. Touched by a malign god, and now its grisly servants stalked him, there in the shadows at his back.
One of them squatted close now, in this narrow, rubbish-choked alley beside the tavern, crouching low in the pit below the four steps leading down to the cellar. It was softly laughing at all the excuses he had for being what he was, for doing what he did. Reasons and excuses weren’t the same thing. Reasons explained; excuses justified, but badly.
They’d sent her away — he’d seen the carriage, rolling down the centre street — and he’d caught a flash of her face behind the dirty window. He’d even shouted her name.
Galdan dragged closer the day’s jug of wine. He’d drunk more from it than he should have, and Gras didn’t like it when he had to give up another one too soon. One a day was the rule. But Galdan couldn’t help it. Sand was gone now, for ever gone, and all those nights when he weaved his way to the edge of the estate, like a reaver haunting a border, and fought against his desire to find her, take her away from this useless life — he would never make that journey again.
Of course, it hadn’t been her life that was useless, and that journey in the dark had been a sham, despite all the river stones he left in the hidden place only they knew about. She found them; he knew that much. Found them and took them somewhere, probably to the refuse heap behind the kitchen.
Galdan stared at the jug, at the filthy hand and the fingers twisted down into the ceramic ear. It was all like this wine — he would grasp it, only to have it disappear — the hand that only took could hold nothing for very long.
Proper men had two arms. With two arms they could do anything. They could keep the world just far enough away, and take only what they needed and it didn’t matter if it then vanished, because that’s how it was for everybody.
He’d been such a man once.
From the deep shadows at the bottom of the stairs, his stalker laughed on, and on. But then, everyone in the village laughed when they saw him, and in their faces he saw all his excuses, the ones he liked to call reasons, and those were good enough for him. And, it seemed, for everyone else, too.
Galar Baras knew that the Forulkan had believed themselves pure in their enmity towards disorder and chaos. Generations of their priests, their Assail, had devoted entire lives to the creation of rules of law and civil conduct, to the imposition of peace in the name of order. But to Galar’s mind they had taken hold of the sword from the wrong end. Peace did not serve order; order served peace, and when order became godlike, sacrosanct and inviolate, then the peace thus won became a prison, and those who sought their freedom became enemies to order, and in the elimination of such enemies, peace was lost.
He saw the logic to this, but it was a form of reasoning that surrendered its power when forced; as was the case with so many lines of reasoning. And arrayed against its simplicity was a virulent storm of emotional extremity, an array of vehemence, with fear wearing the crown.
The Forulkan Assail solution was order born of fear, a peace deemed for ever under assault, for ever threatened by malicious forces, many of which wore the face of strangers. There was, he had to acknowledge, a kind of perfection to their stance. Dissent could find no purchase, so quickly was it cut down, annihilated in a welter of violence. And being unknown, strangers always posed a threat to those serving fear.