A bag of coins thumps on to the tabletop before a woman new to her blessed widowhood, and she feels as if she has awakened from a nightmare of decades, and this is, for her, a private kind of love, a moment for herself and no one else.
Picker strides into the bar and there waits Blend, tears in her eyes, and Samar Dev watches from a table and she smiles but that smile is wistful and she wonders what doors wait for her, and which ones will prove unlocked, and what might He beyond.
And in a temple, Iskaral Pust blots dry the ink and crows over his literary ge-nius. Mogora looks on with jaded eyes, but is already dreaming of alliances with Sordiko Qualm.
The bhokarala sit in a clump, exchanging wedding gifts.
Two estate guards, after a busy night, burst into a brothel, only to find nobody there. Love will have to wait, and is anyone really surprised at their ill luck?
At the threshold of a modest home and workshop, Tiserra stands facing the two loves of her life. And, for the briefest of moments, her imagination runs wild. She then recovers herself and, in a light tone, asks, ‘Breakfast?’
Torvald is momentarily startled.
Rallick just smiles.
There is a round man, circumference unending, stepping ever so daintily through rubble on his way back to the Phoenix Inn. It will not do to be a stranger to sorrow, if only to cast sharp the bright wonder of sweeter things. And so, even as he mourns in his own fashion (with cupcakes), so too he sighs wistfully. Love is a city, yes indeed, a precious city, where a thousand thousand paths wend through shadow and light, through air stale and air redolent with blossoms, nose-wrinkling perfume and nose-wrinkling dung, and there is gold dust in the sewage and rebirth in the shedding of tears.
And at last, we come to a small child, walking into a duelling school, passing through gilded streams of sunlight, and he halts ten paces from a woman sitting on a bench, and he says something then, something without sound.
A moment later two imps trundle into view and stop in their tracks, staring at Harllo, and then they squeal and rush towards him.
The woman looks up.
She is silent for a long time, watching Mew and Hinty clutching the boy. And then a sob escapes her and she makes as if to turn away-
But Harllo will have none of that. ‘No! I’ve come home. That’s what this is, it’s me coming home!’
She cannot meet his eyes, but she is weeping none the less. She waves a hand. ‘You don’t understand, Harllo. That time, that time-I have no good memories of that time. Nothing good came of it, nothing.’
‘That’s not true!’ he shouts, close to tears. ‘That’s not true. There was me.’
Now, as Scillara now knew, some doors you cannot hold back. Bold as truth, some doors get kicked in.
Stonny did not know how she would manage this. But she would. She would. And now she met her son’s eyes, in a way that she had never before permitted herself to do. And that pretty much did it.
And what was said by Harllo, in silence, as he stood there, in the moments be-fore he was discovered? Why, it was this: See, Bainisk, this is my mother.
Xx
Rage and tell me then
Not every tale is a gift
When anguish gives the knife
One more twist
And blood is thinned by tears
Cry out the injustice
Not every tale is a gift
In a world harsh with strife
Leaving us bereft
Deeds paling through the years
And I will meet your eye
Neither flinching nor shy
As I fold death inside life
And face you down
With a host of mortal fears
And I will say then
Every tale is a gift
And the scars borne by us both
Are easily missed
In the distance between us
– Bard’s Curse, Fisher Kel That
Nimander stood on the roof of the keep, leaning with his arms onthe battlement’s cold stone, and watched the distant figure of Spinnock Durav as he crossed the old killing ground. A fateful, fretful meeting awaited that warrior, and Nimander was worried, for it was by Nimander’s own command that Spinnock now went to find the woman he loved. Skintick arrived to stand at his side.
‘It’s madness,’ said Nimander. ‘It should be Durav on the throne. Or Korlat.’
‘It’s your lack of confidence we find so charming,’ Skintick replied. ‘Is that supposed to be amusing?’
‘Well, it amuses me, Nimander, I settle for that, most times. Listen, it’s simple and it’s complicated. His blood courses strong within you, stronger than you realize. And like it or not, people will follow you. Listen to you. Spinnock Durav was a good example, I’d venture. He took your command like a body blow, and then he set out to follow it. Not a word of complaint-your irritated impatience stung him.’