Walegrin looked right past it.
"Want to talk?" Thrusher asked, pushing a wooden mug across the table.
The commander shook his head, but the skeleton of the story rose out of him. "What's happening to this place?" he asked rhetorically. "An honest soldier helps a foolish woman buy garbage from a merchant whose ancestors were snakes and fish."
Thrusher shook his head. "You could've left when the orders came. You could still leave," he stated the obvious.
Walegrin drained his mug and poured another from the pitcher. He hadn't seriously considered throwing his lot in with the Stepsons when they left. In three years he could convert his officer's commission into a tidy pile of gold and enough land to support a handful of heirs. All his adult life he'd been planning for that conversion. Yet he stayed in Sanctuary where there was no guarantee the Torch or the prince would acknowledge the years he'd spent in the Empire's service.
"Damn your eyes-this is my porking home!" He slammed the mug against the table somewhat more forcefully than he'd'intended. The entire room went wary. Thrusher sat back in his chair, taking careful measure of his commander between cautious sips of ale.
There was no doubt the last few years had aged Walegrin. Gods knew, those years aged everyone they hadn't killed. Age had softened the angles of the commander's face, giving it the semblance of wisdom without compromising its strength. He was a good deal calmer than he'd been before leading his men back to the city of his birth with the secret of Enlibar steel almost five years ago.
Thrusher reckoned he might head north to the capital himself if the haunted, self-cursed Walegrin reappeared-and with that reckoning, the lieutenant got a handle on his friend's problem.
"Women, eh? The woman on the wharf?"
Walegrin grunted and spun his mug between his fingers. He preferred not to talk about women. His father had been killed because of a woman -killed and thoroughly cursed. Walegrin wasn't certain that he'd inherited the curse; his half-sister, Illyra, said he hadn't. But even S'danzo Sight couldn't say for certain where ordinary bad luck left off and a curse began.
For Walegrin, the dividing line between luck and curse ran straight through Chenaya Vigeles. Chenaya was the sort of woman a poor man dreams about: beautiful and wealthy, sensual and wealthy, eager and wealthy. When Molin Torchholder said the palace needed eyes and ears at the sprawling Vigeles estate, Walegrin volunteered. Even then Chenaya had a reputation that would have given a wiser man pause. And that led to the question: Was it bad luck or stupidity that catalyzed a curse?
Chenaya took a fancy to him, much as a breeder fancies a particular bull or stallion at the stalls. She'd taken him to her bedroom and given him experiences he could never afford on the Street of Red Lanterns. For a week, maybe two, but certainly no more than a month, Walegnn dwelt in heaven. Then Chenaya figured out just whom her lover worked for. Molin Torchholder's distrust of his niece was a paltry thing compared to Chenaya's hatred of her uncle. A lesser woman might have killed him while he lay defenseless in her bed, but not Chenaya.
The battle lines were drawn and Walegnn of the garrison was both weapon and battlefield. When Chenaya was finally driven from the cityno thanks to the Torch-Walegrin forswore the company of women. He'd need to take a wife when he converted his commission, but a wife was not necessarily the same as a woman. She's back.
The word came a month ago, in the midst of the awkward investigation into the midnight assassination of the Torch's estranged wife and Chenaya's father.
Be my eyes, my ears, again.
This time Walegrin risked his carefully nurtured patronage with Sanctuary's most powerful bureaucrat. She'll kill me, he'd argued, which, though true, wasn't the real reason he feared Land's End. He knew he wouldn't mind dying if she took him upstairs first. The Torch hadn't pressed the issue, and Chenaya had yet to cross Walegrin's path, but the commander couldn't talk to a woman without thinking about Chenaya. He was as jumpy as a cat on a griddle.
Thrusher knew about Chenaya. There wasn't a man in Sanctuary who didn't know something about the legendary Chenaya. Thrusher even knew about Walegrin and Chenaya. He'd asked for details at the beginning, and, after receiving a florid description of experiences he would never know himself, lost interest. He didn't know how Chenaya haunted Walegrin's idle thoughts; he couldn't imagine confounding Chenaya with a timid, scrawny weaver.
They finished the pitcher and returned to their patrolling. Their camaraderie was broken for the moment. The afternoon was an endless succession of circuits along the wharf and past the customs and storage houses. The big black ship had pulled in all but one of its hoists. The fish merchants were up at the palace making private transactions, but in general the fish stayed to themselves. Cross-culture brawls were the exception rather than the rule.
The big black ship might stay in the harbor a week or more, but after the first day few paid any attention to it. Walegrin returned to a commander's duties. Once a day he went over to the caravan gate to inspect whomever the other officers might have recruited. Walegrin pointed out that the recruit would receive the same wages as a soldier in the Rankan army-five soldats a month, less expenses-but he never said the recruit was, joining the Rankan army. Business wasn't brisk, but the ranks were starting to fill. The third watch, formerly made up largely of Zip and his semi-feral commandos, was reinstituted. The two existing watches were reorganized. Thrusher went to the new unit and Walegrin found himself training a wet-behind-the-ears lieutenant named Wedemir.
Wedemir was short and dark, like Thrusher, but with a round face and flat forehead that fairly shouted Wriggly. He gave his age as twenty-two, the same age Walegrin was when he jumped from soldier to officer. Walegrin judged that the man was young for his years. At the very least Wedemir wasn't burdened with the shield of distrust that Walegrin had carried through his teens and twenties. There was no faulting Wedemir's record. He'd been on the barricades through the worst of the anarchy and seen things, no doubt, that he'd never told his dose-knit family.
"My father's Lalo, the artist," the boy said defensively as he and Walegrin left the barracks on a get-acquainted patrol.
Walegrin grunted. Wedemir's mother was Gilla. His younger brother died in the False Plague Riots and his sister waited on the fish in the palace. Walegrin knew all that and more from the Torch's dossiers. For the moment, the commander was more interested in the movements of a woman coming from the Justice Hall toward the West Gate. He led Wedemir, still prattling about his family, toward the practice ground where Thrusher was explaining the difference between right and left to the newest recruits.
"I don't think they were ever very happy about me joining. Not that they'd ever say anything outright ... Well, my mother wouid, but not my father ..."
The woman turned. Walegrin caught a glimpse of her profile before Thrush's recruits came between them, not long enough to be sure if the woman was Chenaya or not. Probably not. Chenaya had little cause to come to the palace, and when she did she was usually dressed for war.
"Something wrong, Commander?" Wedemir asked.
Walegnn snapped to attention. He hadn't realized how much time he spent absorbed in his own thoughts until Wedemir had been glued to his side. Thrusher knew how to be invisible; Wedemir didn't. It wasn't the young man's fault, but it kept both of them from relaxing.
"Wait here, I want to get something from the tower room."
"Can't I get it for you?"