‘I had a clay jar,’ Urusander resumed. ‘I spent my days capturing the beetles, and then releasing them into the streams. Nothing mattered more to me than saving their small lives. Unlike those bugs, you see, I knew what was coming. This incurred in me a responsibility, young as I was, and from that an obligation. I could not stand to one side, yielding to cruel nature.’
‘The water beetles,’ said Renarr, ‘probably bred in the mud left behind by the pools, and there the eggs remained until the next season of flood.’
Urusander was silent for a time then.
Renarr twisted slightly round to observe the soldiers marching behind them. After the midday’s break, they had donned their armour and readied their weapons. Scouts had reported the enemy massing on the south side of the valley. It seemed that no one was much interested in delaying the battle. The following dawn offered no gift of light – not this close to Kharkanas. And yet it seemed precipitous nonetheless, at least to Renarr’s mind. The soldiers would be weary after the day’s march, after all.
‘Did I kill in my misplaced mercy?’ Urusander suddenly asked.
‘You were a child, as you say. At that age, we are easy playing at gods and goddesses. Carve a trough at the pool’s edge, watch it drain away. Stir up the silts and mud, scattering whatever had been hidden there. We become fickle chance to the life that knows nothing of us. The life we victimize, the life buckling to our misguided will.’ She paused, and then shrugged. ‘The thaw offers up a world of pools. Year after year. All that you altered eventually returned to what it had been before. You but passed through, hastening as always into an older body, older interests, older desires.’
‘You speak with the voice of a crone, Renarr, not a woman half my age. In your company, I am belittled. How then was this wisdom of yours earned? In the whores’ tent? I should think not.’
Perhaps, Urusander, beneath the eager weight of your son. Now there was a self-proclaimed god, far past the age when he should have abandoned the conceit. He settled his body on mine, pushed himself inside to my small cry of pain, and looked into my eyes seeking the twin reflections of his own face. Just as every woman he takes finds herself gazing up into his frantically searching eyes. A boy desperate to find the man he should have been. And no amount of thrusting cock can grant him that one benediction.
To your son, Urusander, every woman is a whore.
‘You confuse age with wisdom,’ she said. ‘The whores’ tent was my temple. I paid in years for the blessing of moments. While the men and women who used me bled out worthless coin, and thought themselves absolved of the bargain’s sad and sordid truth. Consider, sir, the abject failure that is sex without love. The act denigrates both flesh and soul, and all the gasps and moans that cut through the night cannot replace what was so willingly surrendered.’
‘And what, Renarr, did you and your men and women surrender?’
‘Why, dignity, I should imagine.’
‘Just that?’
‘No. If intimacy is a virtue.’
‘And is it?’
She turned her head away from his regard, as if hearing a strange sound to one side, and this was sufficient to hide her unbidden and unwelcome smile. ‘A fragile one, of course. Too fragile, perhaps, for this world.’ The smile lingered, a thing of unbearable pain and grief, and then faded. A moment later and she was able to look ahead once more, offering the man at her side an untroubled profile.
‘You confound me, Renarr.’
‘There is an unexpected gift to my years of unrelieved education. But you know it as well. See us here, two dispassionate orphans. Uprooted before a flood of foreign ideas, unexpected discoveries and terrible realizations. Your eternal hunt for justice, sir, but circles a host of simple truths. We are all believers in justice as applied to others, but never to ourselves. And this is how we make virtue a weapon, and delight in seeing it make people bleed.’
‘The imposition of law is civilization’s only recourse, Renarr.’
‘And in its inevitable exceptions lies civilization’s downfall.’ She shook her head. ‘But we have argued this before, and again I say to you, make every law subservient to dignity. By that rule and that rule alone, sir. Dignity to and for each and every citizen, each and every enslaved beast of burden, each and every animal led to slaughter – we cannot deny our needs, but in serving those needs, we need not lose sight of the tragedy of those who in turn serve us with their lives.’
‘The people are never so enlightened, Renarr, as to comprehend such a thing.’
‘A judgement inviting your contempt.’
‘Perhaps. But sometimes, contempt is all many of them deserve.’
Renarr nodded, her gaze on the army’s vanguard. ‘Yes. Too many gods and goddesses in this world, this world and every other.’
‘I am a figurehead,’ said Lord Urusander.
She felt no need to respond to that. Some things were too obvious for words.
‘I fear Hunn Raal,’ he added.
‘So do we all.’
* * *
Sagander fidgeted, his watery gaze darting again and again to the leg that was not there. He licked his lips, sipping constantly from a flask of water he carried in a pocket on the inside of his robe. The carriage rocked its occupants, sliding at times on slick ice covering one or two cobbles, crunching down with a jolt that rattled the shutters and made the dozen bright lanterns swing wildly on their hooks. Each jarring motion made the old man wince.