They looked older now. Picker, Antsy. Wan and red-eyed, shoulders slumped, not bothering to rinse the dried blood from their faces, hands and forearms.
Duiker alone seemed unchanged, as if these last deaths had been little more than someone pissing into a wide, deep river. His sadness was an absolute thing, and he never came up for air. She wanted to take him in her arms and shake the life back into him. Yet she would not do that, for she knew such a gesture would be a selfish one, serving only her own neteds. As much, perhaps, as her initial im-inline to embrace him in sympathy.
Because she too felt like weeping. For having dragged the historian out into the city-away from what had happened here the past night. For having saved his life,
When they’d first arrived back; when they’d seen the bodies on the.street; when they’d stepped inside to look upon the carnage, Duiker had shot her a single glance, and in that she had read clearly the thought behind it. See what you look me away from? A thought as far away from the sentiment of gratitude that it might as well be in another realm.
The truth was obvious. He would rather have been here. He would rather have died last night. Instead, interfering bitch that she was, Scillara had refused him that release. Had instead left him in this sad life that would not end. That glance had been harder, more stinging, than a savage slap in the face.
She should have gone below. Should be standing there in that narrow, cramped cellar, holding Chaur’s hand, listening to them all grieve, each in their own way. Antsy’s curses. Picker at his side, so close as to be leaning on him, but otherwise expressionless beyond the bleakness of her glazed stare. Barathol and his glisten-ing beard, his, puffy eyes, the knotted muscles ravaging his brow.
The door opened suddenly, sending a shaft of daylight through suspended dust, and in stepped the gray-haired bard.
She and Duiker watched as the man shut the door behind him and replaced the solid iron bar in its slots-how he had ended up with that bar in his hands was a mystery, yet neither Scillara nor the historian commented.
The man approached, and she saw that he too had not bothered to change his clothes, wearing the old blood with the same indifference she had seen in the others.
There’d been a half-dozen bodies, maybe more, at the stage. A passing observa-tion from Blend implicated the bard in that slaughter, but Scillara had trouble be-lieving that. This man was gaunt, old. Yet her eyes narrowed on the blood spatter on his shirt.
He sat down opposite them, met Duiker’s eyes, and said, ‘Whatever they have decided to do, Historian, they can count me in.’
‘So they did try for you, too,’ said Scillara.