Fall of Light (The Kharkanas Trilogy 2)

They waved her through. ‘Not a good night,’ the first guard said as she passed. ‘Killings in town below, we heard. Black-skinned assassins, agents of Lord Anomander. Officers of the Legion getting backstabbed. It’s what it’s come to.’

‘Best stay here at the keep tonight,’ called out the other guard.

She continued on.

There were lights in the tower, where Urusander kept his private abode. She thought she saw a dark shape move past a window, but could not be sure. The courtyard was slippery underfoot, slick with frost. She glanced over at the squad mustered up near the barracks, and saw some of them watching her as she crossed to the keep’s main entrance.

She’d probably taken a few of them to her bed, but at this distance, and in the uneven light, there was no way to tell.

Father, I should tell you. I have intimate knowledge of your legion, its soldiers, with their myriad faces, their singular needs. I know them better than you. It’s how certain things blur together, you see. The heat of sex and the heat of battle. Death entwined with love, or something like love, if we are generous enough to gauge the motions, there beneath the furs.

Tents and temples, beds and altars, the propitiations and rituals, all the forms of confession, weakness and desire. The conceits and pride’s fragile temerity. All the appetites, Father, flow together in those

times, those places. I could list for you the cowards, and the ones who would stand fast. I could speak to you about conscience and grief, and above all, about what a soldier needs.

Alas, that need no mortal can answer, though I can see you, Father, I can see you trying. When few others would dare.

Shall we give it a name, that need? Dare we venture inward, to face that sorrowful child?

Tent and temple, we raise them to disguise all that haunts our soul. Between lover and priest, I think, it is the lover who can reach closest to that shivering, wide-eyed child. The priest, ah, well, the priest killed his inner child long ago, and now but plays at wonder, dancing joy’s steps with shuffling, self-conscious feet.

Consider this, Father. No whore has ever sexually abused a child. I know this – I watch them, my hard women and men of the stained cloth. Some are harsh bitches and bastards, no doubt about that. Hardened beyond pain. For all that, they know innocence when they see it.

But priests? Most are fine, I’m sure. Honest, diligent, trustworthy. But what of those few others who took on the robes and vestments for unholy reasons? What do they see – the ones so eager to ruin a child?

Best ask the High Priestess, Father, because I have no answer to that question. All I know, and I know this with certainty, is that inside that abusing bastard priest there is the corpse of a child. Wanting company.

She was in the house now, upon the stairs, reaching the landing and making her way towards Urusander’s wing of the keep.

Soldiers stood at guard in the corridor. They eyed her warily as she approached.

‘My father is awake,’ she said. ‘Captain Sharenas summoned me to him, at his request.’

They moved aside.

One spoke as she passed. ‘Taking the night off, Renarr?’

Low laughter, dying away when she opened the door and strode into the first chamber.

A desk buried beneath scrolls and the strange seashell cases the Forulkan used to store their sacred writing. Behind this misshapen monument, her adoptive father. He had half risen at her appearance, and now, upon his weary face, there was the look of a cornered man.

She recognized that expression: she had seen it on occasion in her tent. Indeed, she had seen it this very night.

Renarr unclasped her cloak and folded it carefully against the back of a chair. Then she walked over to a side table. ‘The last wine I had this evening,’ she said, taking up a decanter and sniffing at the mouth, ‘was sour.’ She poured herself a glass. ‘Father,’ she said, turning to face him, ‘I have so many things to say to you.’

He would not meet her gaze, intent instead on a scroll laid out before him. ‘It’s rather late for a conversation,’ he said.

‘If you mean the time of night, then, yes, perhaps.’

‘I did not mean the time of night.’

‘Oh, that bulwark,’ she said, sighing. ‘I know why you threw it up, of course. Your love for my mother, and what did I do? I went into the camps, into the taverns, to learn a trade. Was I punishing you? Perhaps I was simply bored. Or at that age where rebellion seems a good idea, an idea full of … ideals. So many of us, at around my age, will flare bright, with the vague, despondent understanding that it will all fade. Our fire. Our nerve. The belief that it all means something.’

He studied her at last, with the heaped desk between them.

‘Osserc is out there,’ Renarr continued, ‘flaring bright. Somewhere. Me, I didn’t walk that far.’

‘Then, Renarr, is your … rebellion … at an end?’