‘Bainisk! I’m at the knot!’ He craned his neck to look down. Blackness, unre-licved, depthless. ‘Bainisk! Where arc you?’
Since Harllo’s first call, Bainisk had not moved. The last thing he wanted to do was accidentally dislodge the boy, not after they’d made it this far. And, truth be told, he was experiencing a growing fear. This wall was too even-no cracks, the strata he could feel little more than ripples at a steeply canted angle. They would never be able to hold on once past the rope-and there was nothing he could use to slip the loop round.
They were, he realized, in trouble.
Upon hearing Harllo’s last call-the boy reaching the knot-he readied himself to resume his descent.
And there was a sharp upward tug on the rope.
He looked up. Vague faces peering over, hands and more hands reaching to close on the rope. Venaz-yes, there he was, grinning.
‘Got you,’ he murmured, low and savage. ‘Got you both, Bainisk.’
Another tug upward.
Bainisk drew his knife one-handed. He reached down to cut the rope beneath him, and then hesitated, looking up once more at Venaz’s face.
Maybe that had been his own, only a few years ago. That face, so eager to take over, to rule the moles. Well, Venaz could have them. He could have it all.
Bainisk reached up with the knife, just above his fist where it held tight. And he sliced through.
Dig heels in, it will not help. We must wing back to the present. For everything to be understood, every facet must flash alight at least once. Earlier, the round man begged forgiveness. Now, he pleads for trust. His is a sure hand, even if it trembles. Trust.
A bard sits opposite an historian. At a nearby table in K’rul’s Bar, Blend watches Scillara unfolding coils of smoke from her mouth. There is something avid in that gaze, but every now and then a war erupts in her eyes, when she thinks of the woman lying in a coma upstairs. When she thinks of her, yes. Blend has taken to sleeping in the bed with Picker, has taken to trying all she could think of to awaken sensation once more in her lover. But nothing has worked. Picker’s soul is lost, wandering far from the cool, flaccid flesh.
Blend hates herself now, as she senses her soul ready to move on, to seek the blessing of a new life, a new body to explore and caress, new lips to press upon her own.
But this is silly. Scillara’s amiability was ever casual. She was a woman who preferred a man’s charms, such as they were. And truth be told, Blend had played in that crib more than once herself. So why now has this lust awakened? What made it so wild, so needy?
Loss, my dear. Loss is like a goad, a stinging shove that sets one lunging for-
ward necking handholds, seeking ecstasy, delicious surrender, even the lure of self destruction. The bud cut at the stem throws its last energy into one final flowering, one glorious exclamation. The flower defies, to quote in entirety an ancient Tistc Andii poem. Life runs from death. It must, it cannot help it. Life runs, to quote a round man’s epitome of poetic brevity.
Slip into Blend’s mind, ease in behind her eyes, and watch as she watches, feel as she feels, if you dare.
Or try Antsy, there at the counter on which are arrayed seven crossbows, twelve flatpacks of quarrels amounting to one hundred and twenty darts, six shortswords, three throwing axes of Falari design, a Genabarii broadsword and buckler, two local rapiers with fancy quillons-so fancy the weapons were snagged together and Antsy had spent an entire morning trying to separate them, with no luck-and a small sack containing three sharpers. He is trying to decide what to wear.
But the mission they were about to set out on was meant to be peaceful, so he should just wear his shortsword as usual, peace-strapped as usual, everything as usual, in fact. But then there were assassins out there who wanted Antsy’s head on a dagger point, so maybe keeping things usual was in fact suicidal. So he should strap on at least two shortswords, throw a couple of crossbows over his shoulders and hold the broadsword in his right hand and the twin rapiers in his left, with a flatpack tied to each hip, the sharper sack at his belt, and a throwing axe between his teeth-no, that’s ridiculous, he’d break his jaw trying that. Maybe an extra shortsword, but then he might cut his own tongue out the first time he tried saying anything and he was sure to try saying something eventually, wasn’t he?
But he could run the scabbards for all six shortswords through his belt, and end up wearing a skirt of shortswords, but that’d be all right, wouldn’t it? But then, where would he carry the sharpers? One knock against a pommel or hilt and he’d be an expanding cloud of whiskers and weapon bits. And what about the cross-bows? He’d need to load them all up but keep everything away from the releases, unless he wanted to end up skewering all his friends with the first stumble.