Toll the Hounds

‘Fine,’ she snapped, flouncing off in a billow of skirts.



Cutter squeezed the bridge of his nose in an effort to fend off a burgeoning headache. He didn’t want to think about the night just past, the bell after bell spent in that graveyard, sitting on that stone bench with Challice all too close by his side. Seeing, as the dawn’s light grew, what the handful of years had done to her, the lines of weariness about her eyes, the lines bracketing her mouth, the maturity revealed in a growing heaviness, her curves more pronounced than they had once been. The child he had known was still there, he told himself, beneath all of that. In the occasional gesture, in the hint of a soft laugh at one point. No doubt she saw the same in him-the layers of hardness, the vestiges of loss and pain, the residues of living.



He was not the same man. She was not the same woman. Yet they had sat as if they had once known each other. As if they were old friends. Whatever childish hopes and vain ambitions had sparked the space between them years ago, they were deftly avoided, even as their currents coalesced into something romantic, something oddly nostalgic.



It had been the lively light ever growing in her eyes that most disturbed Cut-ter, especially since he had felt his own answering pleasure-in the hazy reminis-cences they had played with, in the glow lifting between them on that bench that had nothing to do with the rising sun.



There was nothing right about any of this. She was married, after all. She was nobility but no, that detail was without relevance, for what she had proposed had nothing to do with matters of propriety, was in no way intended to invite public scrutiny.



She is bored. She wants a lover. She wants what she could have had but didn’t take. A second chance, that’s what she wants.



Do second chances even exist?



This would be… sordid. Despicable. How could he even contemplate such a thing?



Maybe Apsalar saw all too well. Saw right into me, to the soul that was less than it should have been, to the will that was weak. I do not stand before a woman, do I? No, I fall into her arms. I change shape to fit each one, to make things snug, as if matching their dreams is the only path I know into their hearts.



Maybe she was right to walk away.



Was this all that Challice wanted? An amusing diversion to alleviate the drudgery of her comfortable life? He admitted to some suspicion that things were not that simple. There had been a darker current, as if to take him meant some-thing more to Challice. Proof of her own descent, perhaps. Her own fall. Or some-thing else, something even more pernicious.



The Rhivi server had brought him a pot of tea, a plate of fresh bread, a dipping jar of honey, and a bowl of diced fruit. He now stared at the array on the table in front of him, trying without success to recall the moment it had all arrived.



‘I need you,’ she had said, the words cutting through his exhaustion as the sky began to show its colour. ‘Crokus. Cutter. Whatever name you want. I knew it the moment I saw you. I had been walking, most of the night, just walking. I didn’t know it, but I was looking for someone. My life’s become a question that I thought no one could answer. Not my husband, not anyone. And then, there you were, standing in this cemetery, like a ghost.’



Oh, he knew about ghosts, the way they could haunt one day and night. The way they found places to hide in one’s own soul. Yes, he knew about ghosts. ‘Challice-’



‘You loved me once. But I was young. A fool. Now, I am neither young nor a fool. This time, I won’t turn away.’



‘Your husband-’



‘Doesn’t care what I do, or with whom I do it.’



‘Why did you marry him then?’



She had looked away, and it was some time before she replied. ‘When he saved my life, that night in the garden of Simtal’s estate, it was as if he then owned it. My life. He owned it because he saved it. He wasn’t alone in believing that, ei-ther. So did I. All at once, it was as if I no longer had any choice. He possessed my future, to do with as he pleased.’



‘Your father-’



‘Should have counselled me?’ She laughed, but it was a bitter laugh. ‘You didn’t see it, but I was spoiled. I was obnoxious, Crokus. Maybe he tried, I don’t really recall. But I think he was happy to see me go.’



No, this was not the Challice he had known,



‘House Vidikas owns nn annexe, a small building down by the docks. It’s a l-most never used. There are two levels. On the main floor it’s just storage, fi llcd with the shipwright’s leavings after the trader boat was finished. On the upper level is where the man lived while under contract. I’ve… seen it, and I have a key.’