So unlike sour old Bidithal. Tall, thin, a laughing face, remarkably long-fingered, almost effeminate hands-hands the sight of which awakened in her new emotions.
Emotions that stuttered her mechanical dancing, that sent her shadow twisting into a rhythm that was counterpoint to that cast by not only her fellow students, but the Shadow Dancers themselves-as if a third strain had slipped into the main chamber.
Too striking to remain unnoticed.
Bidithal himself, his face darkening, had half risen-but the stranger spoke first.
‘Pray let the Dance continue,’ he said, his eyes finding Lostara’s own. ‘The Song of the Reeds has never been performed in quite this manner before. No gentle breeze here, eh, Bidithal? Oh no, a veritable gale. The Dancers are virgins, yes?’ His laugh was low yet full. ‘Yet there is nothing virginal about this dance, now, is there? Oh, storm of desire!’
And those eyes held Lostara still, in fullest recognition of the desire that overwhelmed her-that gave shape to her shadow’s wild cavort. Recognition, and a certain pleased, but cool… acknowledgement. As if flattered, but with no invitation offered in return.
The stranger had other tasks that night-and in the nights that followed-or so Lostara would come to realize much later. At the moment, however, her face burned with shame, and she had broken off her dance to flee the chamber.
Of course, Delat had not come to steal the heart of a Caster. He had come to destroy Rashan.
Delat, who, it proved, was both a High Priest and a Bridgeburner, and whatever the Emperor’s reason for annihilating the cult, his was the hand that delivered the death-blow.
Although not alone. The night of the killings, at the bell of the third hour-two past midnight-after the Song of Reeds, there had been another, hidden in the black clothes of an assassin…
Lostara knew more of what had happened that night in the Rashan Temple of Ehrlitan than anyone else barring the players themselves, for Lostara had been the only resident to be spared. Or so she had believed for a long time, until the name of Bidithal rose once more, from Sha’ik’s Apocalypse army.
Ah, I was more than spared that night, wasn’t I?
Delat’s lovely, long-fingered hands…
Setting foot onto the city’s streets the following morning, after seven years’ absence, she had been faced with the terrifying knowledge that she was alone, truly alone. Resurrecting an ancient memory of when she was awakened following the fifth birthday, and thrust into the hands of an old man hired to take her away, to leave her in a strange neighbourhood on the other side of the city. A memory that echoed with a child’s cries for her mother.
The short time that followed her departure from the temple, before she joined the Red Blades-the newly formed company of Seven Cities natives who avowed loyalty to the Malazan Empire-held its own memories, ones she had long since repressed. Hunger, denigration, humiliation and what seemed a fatal, spiralling descent. But the recruiters had found her, or perhaps she found them. The Red Blades would be a statement to the Emperor, the marking of a new era in Seven Cities. There would be peace. None of this interested Lostara, however. Rather, it was the widely-held rumour that the Red Blades sought to become the deliverers of Malazan justice.
She had not forgotten those impassive eyes. The citizens who were indifferent to her pleas, who had watched the acolyte drag her past to an unknown fate. She had not forgotten her own parents.
Betrayal could be answered by but one thing, and one thing alone, and the once-captain Lostara Yil of the Red Blades had grown skilled in that answer’s brutal delivery.
And now, am I being made into a betrayer?
She turned away from the wooden chest. She was a Red Blade no longer. In a short while, Pearl would arrive, and they would set out to find the cold, cold trail of Tavore’s hapless sister, Felisin. Along which they might find opportunity to drive a blade into the heart of the Talons. Yet were not the Talons of the empire? Dancer’s own, his spies and killers, the deadly weapon of his will. Then what had turned them into traitors?
Betrayal was a mystery. Inexplicable to Lostara. She only knew that it delivered the deepest wounds of all.
And she had long since vowed that she would never again suffer such wounds.
She collected her sword-belt from the hook above the bed and drew the thick leather band about her hips, hooking it in place.
Then froze.
The small room before her was filled with dancing shadows.
And in their midst, a figure. A pale face of firm features, made handsome by smile lines at the corners of the eyes-and the eyes themselves, which, as he looked upon her, settled like depthless pools.
