‘Orfantal, grief is a difficult thing, and you have already been through a lot. Be patient with yourself. There is a substance to living, and sadness is woven through it.’
‘Are you sad, milady?’
‘You will find a balance. Whence comes the answer to sadness few can predict, but it does come, in time, and you will learn to appreciate pleasure for the gift that it is. What you must never expect, Orfantal, is joy unending, because it does not exist. Too many strive for the unachievable, and this pursuit consumes them. They rush frantic and desperate and so reveal weakness in the face of sadness. More than weakness, in fact. It is in truth a kind of cowardice, that which espouses an evasive disposition as if it were a virtue. But this bluster is frail work.’ Then she sighed. ‘I am too complex, I fear, and make of advice things insubstantial.’
Orfantal shook his head. ‘I am no stranger to feeling sad, milady. Tonight I will weep for Wreneck, and for the horse I killed.’
They had crossed a short span and now ascended the lesser bridge over the Citadel’s moat. At Orfantal’s confession, Gripp Galas reined in and turned his horse to block the way.
‘That beast was on its last legs,’ he said.
‘You did not see its last struggles, sir,’ Orfantal replied.
‘True, I did not. But if you had not sacrificed your mount in the manner you did, you would not be here now.’
Orfantal nodded. ‘My spirit would be free, and back on the grounds of House Korlas, and it would play in the ruins with the ghost of Wreneck, from before he decided to not like me any more. I would have a friend again, and that horse would be alive now, with a few memories of the boy it carried, a boy who was not cruel to it.’
Gripp looked down, seemed to study the cobbles for a long moment, and then he sighed and swung his mount round.
They continued on, beneath the arch of the gatehouse, watched by black-skinned Houseblades in the livery of House Purake.
Lady Hish Tulla spoke. ‘Take him inside, Gripp. I will meet you later in the Grand Hall.’
‘Milady?’
‘Go on, Gripp. Give me a few moments, I beg you.’
The old man nodded. ‘Come along, hostage, and I will see you home.’
Hish Tulla watched them ride across the courtyard, still fighting the sob that threatened to tear loose from deep inside her. A boy’s innocent words had left her broken. The flimsy frame of her self-control, so hastily resurrected in the wake of her comforting embrace of Lord Andarist, weathering his grief on their knees at the foot of the hearthstone, had collapsed once again.
By day’s end she would be leading her company of Houseblades back to her keep. With the shattering of traditions, she was no longer confident that Sukul Ankhadu was safe, although she knew enough of Castellan Rancept’s talents to hope he could mitigate any possible threat, at least for the moment. But this decision strained her resolve from another direction now, one unexpected and almost unbearably precious. She thought of the man accompanying Orfantal into the Citadel, and felt once again a quickening of her breath.
She was not as old as her experience reputed, while Gripp Galas had seen a century, if not more. There would be amusement and not a little scorn behind their backs, once it became known that Lady Hish Tulla, for so long believed to be unattainable, had given her love to Lord Anomander’s manservant. On better days, in times past, she would be proof against their mockery, but there was a new frailty in her now, exposed and raw.
She had believed herself settled into bitter resolution, making peace with what she imagined to be a life spent in solitude, offering up a straight line in her march through all the days and the nights to come. Even the prospect of war, detestable as it was, had voiced to her a bold welcome, if by fighting she could find reason to live, and if by righteous defence of worthy things she could give meaning to that stern march, no matter how long or how short her life’s trek.
In the Citadel ahead, with its seething tumult of troubled spirits, and its host of opinions and arguments clothed in flesh and heated expressions, she would find the fate of her future. Drawing a deep, settling breath, she nudged her mount forward once again.
A groom rushed up to take her horse and she dismounted, regretting that she had elected to leave her armour behind, to await her departure from the city. But neither chain nor iron scale could serve to defend her against the ridicule to come, once her surrender became known, and bright eyes settled upon Gripp Galas, limping at her side. She imagined the disdain from her fellow highborn, and perhaps something of perturbation in her breaking with the ranks of nobility; and without doubt many would see her as fallen from the rung, divested of propriety. Among others, there would be contempt for Gripp Galas, as he would be seen as overreaching, even grasping, betraying some brazen lust for elevation. A clamour awaited them both, with the shunning by old friends and kin to make a siege of the isolation awaiting them.