They would wince at their own wounds, reminded of the gaps in their own lines, and they would feel like shadows cast by something greater than anything they had known before. There was a name for this, she knew. Atri-Ceda Aranict pulled again on the stick, mindful of the bright swimming glow hovering before her face.
Some scholar once likened this to the mastery fire and all it symbolized. Huh. Some scholar was working hard to justify her habit. Stupid woman. It’s yours, so just revel in it and when it comes to justifying what you do, keep your mouth shut. Philosophy, really .
Ask a soldier. A soldier knows all about smoke. And what’s in and what’s out, and what’s the fucking difference in the end .
The Letherii had comported themselves with honour on that horrid field of battle. They had distracted the enemy. They had with blood and pain successfully effected the Malazan withdrawal – no, let’s call it what it was, a rout. Once the signals sounded, the impossible iron wall became a thing of reeds, torn loose and whipped back on the savage wind .
Even so . Letherii soldiers walked out at dusk, or in the moments before dawn, right out to the camp’s edge, and they looked across the empty expanse of scrub to the Malazans. They weren’t thinking of routs, or withdrawals. They were thinking of all that had gone before that.
And there was a word for what they felt.
Humility .
‘My dear.’ He had come up behind her, soft-footed, as uncertain as a child.
Aranict sighed. ‘I am forgetting how to sleep.’
Brys Beddict came up to stand at her side. ‘Yes. I awoke and felt your absence, and it made me think.’
Once, she had been nervous before this man. Once, she had imagined illicit scenes, the way a person might conjure up wishes they knew could never be filled. Now, her vanishing from his bed wakened him to unease. A few days, and the world changes . ‘Think of what?’
‘I don’t know if I should say.’
The tone was rueful. She filled her lungs with smoke, eased it back out slowly. ‘I’d wager it’s too late for that, Brys.’
‘I have never been in love before. Not like this. I have never before felt so … helpless. As if, without my even noticing, I gave you all my power.’
‘All the children’s stories never talked about that,’ Aranict said after a moment. ‘The prince and the princess, each heroic and strong, equals in the grand love they win. The tale ends in mutual admiration.’
‘That tastes a tad sour.’
‘That taste is of self-congratulation,’ she said. ‘Those tales are all about narcissism. The sleight of hand lies in the hero’s mirror image – a princess for a prince, a prince for a princess – but in truth it’s all one. It’s nobility’s love for itself. Heroes win the most beautiful lovers, it’s the reward for their bravery and virtue.’
‘And those lovers are naught but mirrors?’
‘Shiny silver ones.’
She felt him watching her.
‘But,’ he said after a few moments, ‘it’s not that even a thing, is it? You are not my mirror, Aranict. You are something other . I am not reflected in you, just as you are not reflected in me. So what is this that we have found here, and why do I find myself on my knees before it?’
The stick’s end glowed like a newborn sun, only to ebb in its instant of life. ‘How should I know, Brys? It is as if I stand facing you from an angle no one else can find, and when I’m there nothing rises between us – a trick of the light and your fortifications vanish. So you feel vulnerable.’
He grunted. ‘But it is not that way with Tehol and Janath.’
‘Yes, I have heard about them, and it seems to me that no matter which way each faces, he or she faces the other. He is her king and she is his queen, and everything else just follows on from there. It is the rarest of loves, I should think.’
‘But it is not ours, is it, Aranict?’
She said nothing. How can I? I feel swollen, as if I have swallowed you alive, Brys. I walk with the weight of you inside me, and I have never before felt anything like this . She flicked the stick-end away. ‘You worry too much, Brys. I am your lover. Leave it at that.’
‘You are also my Atri-Ceda.’
She smiled in the darkness. ‘And that, Brys, is what brought me out here.’
‘Why?’
‘Something hides. It’s all around us, subtle as smoke. It has manifested only once thus far, and that was at the battle, among the Malazans – at the place where the Adjunct fell unconscious. There is a hidden hand in all of this, Brys, and I don’t trust it.’