Lostara looked around and decided that her present surroundings were ideal for staying put for the night. A shallow basin in the lee of the slope. By lying flat they would not be visible from anywhere but the ridge itself, and even that was unlikely with night fast falling. She checked on Pearl, frowning at the purple-ringed bump on his temple. But his breathing was steady, the beat of his heart unhurried and even. She laid out his cloak and rolled him onto it, then bound and gagged him.
As gloom gathered in the basin, Lostara settled down to wait.
Some time later a figure emerged from the shadows and stood motionless for a moment before striding silently to halt directly over Pearl.
Lostara heard a muted grunt. ‘You came close to cracking open his skull.’
‘It’s harder than you think,’ she replied.
‘Was it entirely necessary?’
‘I judged it so. If you’ve no faith in that, then why recruit me in the first place?’
Cotillion sighed. ‘He’s not a bad man, you know. Loyal to the empire. You have sorely abused his equanimity.’
‘He was about to interfere. Unpredictably. I assumed you wished the path clear.’
‘Initially, yes. But I foresee a certain usefulness to his presence, once matters fully… unfold. Be sure to awaken him some time tomorrow night, if he has not already done so on his own.’
‘Very well, since you insist. Although I am already deeply fond of my newfound peace and solitude.’
Cotillion seemed to study her a moment, then the god said, ‘I will leave you then, since I have other tasks to attend to this night.’
Lostara reached into the pouch and tossed a small object towards him.
He caught it in one hand and peered down to study it.
‘I assumed that was yours,’ she said.
‘No, but I know to whom it belongs. And am pleased. May I keep it?’
She shrugged. ‘It matters not to me.’
‘Nor should it, Lostara Yil.’
She heard a dry amusement in those words, and concluded that she had made a mistake in letting him keep the object; that, indeed, it did matter to her, though for the present she knew not how. She shrugged again. Too late now, I suppose . ‘You said you were leaving?’
She sensed him bridling, then in a swirl of shadows he vanished.
Lostara lay back on the stony ground and contentedly closed her eyes.
The night breeze was surprisingly warm. Apsalar stood before the small window overlooking the gully. Neither Mogora nor Iskaral Pust frequented these heights much, except when necessity forced them to undertake an excursion in search of food, and so her only company was a half-dozen elderly bhok’arala, grey-whiskered and grunting and snorting as they stiffly moved about on the chamber’s littered floor. The scattering of bones suggested that this top level of the tower was where the small creatures came to die.
As the bhok’arala shuffled back and forth behind her, she stared out onto the wastes. The sand and outcrops of limestone were silver in the starlight. On the rough tower walls surrounding the window rhizan were landing with faint slaps, done with their feeding, and now, claws whispering, they began crawling into cracks to hide from the coming day.
Crokus slept somewhere below, whilst resident husband and wife stalked each other down the unlit corridors and in the musty chambers of the monastery. She had never felt so alone, nor, she realized, so comfortable with that solitude. Changes had come to her. Hardened layers sheathing her soul had softened, found new shape in response to unseen pressures from within.
Strangest of all, she had come, over time, to despise her competence, her deadly skills. They had been imposed upon her, forced into her bones and muscles. They had imprisoned her in blinding, gelid armour. And so, despite the god’s absence, she still felt as if she was two women, not one.
Leading her to wonder with which woman Crokus had fallen in love.
But no, there was no mystery there. He had assumed the guise of a killer, hadn’t he? The young wide-eyed thief from Darujhistan had fashioned of himself a dire reflection-not of Apsalar the fisher-girl, but of Apsalar the assassin, the cold murderer. In the belief that likeness would forge the deepest bond of all. Perhaps that would have succeeded, had she liked her profession, had she not found it sordid and reprehensible. Had it not felt like chains wrapped tight about her soul.
She was not comforted by company within her prison. His love was for the wrong woman, the wrong Apsalar. And hers was for Crokus, not Cutter. And so they were together, yet apart, intimate yet strangers, and it seemed there was nothing they could do about it.
The assassin within her preferred solitude, and the fisher-girl had, from an entirely different path, come into a similar comfort. The former could not afford to love. The latter knew she had never been loved. Like Crokus, she stood in a killer’s shadow.
