Abercrombie, Joe - The Heroes

If she’d argued harder with Black Dow. If she’d pushed, demanded, she could have brought Aliz with her, instead of … in the darkness, her blubbering wail as Finree’s hand slipped out of hers, the door rattling shut. A blue cheek bulged as the steel slid underneath it, and she bared her teeth, and moaned, and clutched at her head, and squeezed her eyes shut.

‘Fin.’

‘Hal.’ He was leaning over her, candlelight picking out the side of his head in gold. She sat up, rubbing her face. It felt numb. As if she was kneading dead dough.

‘I brought you fresh clothes.’

‘Thank you.’ Laughably formal. The way one might address someone else’s butler.

‘Sorry to wake you.’

‘I wasn’t asleep.’ Her mouth still had a strange taste, a swollen feeling from the husk. The darkness in the corners of the room fizzed with colours.

‘I thought I should come … before dawn.’ Another pause. Probably he was waiting for her to say she was glad, but she could not face the petty politeness. ‘Your father has put me in charge of the assault on the bridge in Osrung.’

She did not know what to say. Congratulations. Please, no! Be careful. Don’t go! Stay here. Please. Please. ‘Will you be leading from the front?’ Her voice sounded icy.

‘Close enough to it, I suppose.’

‘Don’t indulge in any heroics.’ Like Hardrick, charging out of the door for help that could never come in time.

‘There’ll be no heroics, I promise you that. It’s just … the right thing to do.’

‘It won’t help you get on.’

‘I don’t do it to get on.’

‘Why, then?’

‘Because someone has to.’ They were so little alike. The cynic and the idealist. Why had she married him? ‘Brint seems … all right. Under the circumstances.’ Finree found herself hoping that Aliz was all right, and made herself stop. That was a waste of hope, and she had none to spare.

‘How should one feel when one’s wife has been taken by the enemy?’

‘Utterly desperate. I hope he will be all right.’

‘All right’ was such a useless, stilted expression. It was a useless, stilted conversation. Hal felt like a stranger. He knew nothing about who she really was. How can two people ever really know each other? Everyone went through life alone, fighting their own battle.

He took her hand. ‘You seem—’

She could not bear his skin against hers, jerked her fingers away as though she was snatching them from a furnace. ‘Go. You should go.’

His face twitched. ‘I love you.’

Just words, really. They should have been easy to say. But she could not do it any more than she could fly to the moon. She turned away from him to face the wall, dragging the blanket over her hunched shoulder. She heard the door shut.

A moment later, or perhaps a while, she slid out of bed. She dressed. She splashed water on her face. She twitched her sleeves down over the scabbing chafe marks on her wrists, the ragged cut up her arm. She opened the door and went through. Her father was in the room on the other side, talking to the officer she saw crushed by a falling cupboard yesterday, plates spilling across the floor. No. A different man.

‘You’re awake.’ Her father was smiling but there was a wariness to him, as if he was expecting her to burst into flames and he was ready to grab for a bucket. Maybe she would burst into flames. She would not have been surprised. Or particularly sorry, right then. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Well.’ Hands closed around her throat and she plucked at them with her nails, ears throbbing with her own heartbeat. ‘I killed a man yesterday.’

He stood, put his hand on her shoulder. ‘It may feel that way, but—’

‘It certainly does feel that way. I stabbed him, with a short steel I stole from an officer. I pushed the blade into his face. Into his face. So. I got one, I suppose.’

‘Finree—’

‘Am I going mad?’ She snorted up a laugh, it sounded so stupid. ‘Things could be so much worse. I should be glad. There was nothing I could do. What can anyone do? What should I have done?’

‘After what you have been through, only a madman could feel normal. Try to act as though … it is just another day, like any other.’

She took a long breath. ‘Of course.’ She gave him a smile which she hoped projected reassurance rather than insanity. ‘It is just another day.’

There was a wooden bowl, on a table, with fruit in it. She took an apple. Half-green, half-blood-coloured. She should eat while she could. Keep her strength up. It was just another day, after all.

Still dark outside. Guards stood by torchlight. They fell silent as she passed, watching while pretending not to watch. She wanted to spew all over them, but she tried to smile as if it was just another day, and they did not look exactly like the men who had strained desperately to hold the gates of the inn closed, splinters bursting around them as the savages hacked down the doors.

She stepped from the path and out across the hillside, pulling her coat tight around her. Wind-lashed grass sloped away into the darkness. Patches of sedge tangled at her boots. A bald man stood, coat-tails flapping, looking out across the darkened valley. He had one fist clenched behind him, thumb rubbing constantly, worriedly at forefinger. The other daintily held a cup. Above him, in the eastern sky, the first faint smudges of dawn were showing.

Perhaps it was the after-effects of the husk, or the sleeplessness, but after what she had seen yesterday the First of the Magi did not seem so terrible. ‘Another day!’ she called, feeling as if she might take off from the hillside and float into the dark sky. ‘Another day’s fighting. You must be pleased, Lord Bayaz!’

He gave her a curt bow. I—’

‘Is it “Lord Bayaz” or is there a better term of address for the First of the Magi?’ She pushed some hair out of her face but the wind soon whipped it back. ‘Your Grace, or your Wizardship, or ‘your Magicosity?’

‘I try not to stand on ceremony.’

‘How does one become First of the Magi, anyway?’

‘I was the first apprentice of great Juvens.’

‘And did he teach you magic?’

‘He taught me High Art.’

‘Why don’t you do some then, instead of making men fight?’

‘Because making men fight is easier. Magic is the art and science of forcing things to behave in ways that are not in their nature.’ Bayaz took a slow sip from his cup, watching her over the rim. ‘There is nothing more natural to men than to fight. You are recovered, I hope, from your ordeal yesterday?’

‘Ordeal? I’ve almost forgotten about it already! My father suggested that I act as though this is just another day. Then, perhaps it will be one. Any other day I would spend feverishly trying to advance my husband’s interests, and therefore my own.’ She grinned sideways. ‘I am venomously ambitious.’

Bayaz’ green eyes narrowed. ‘A characteristic I have always found most admirable.’

‘Meed was killed.’ His mouth opening and closing silently like a fish snatched from the river, plucking at the great rent in his crimson uniform, crashing over with papers sliding across his back. ‘I daresay you are in need of a new lord governor of Angland.’

‘His Majesty is.’ The Magus heaved up a sigh. ‘But making such a powerful appointment is a complicated business. No doubt some relative of Meed expects and demands the post, but we cannot allow it to become some family bauble. I daresay a score of other great magnates of the Open Council think it their due, but we cannot raise one man too close in power to the crown. The closer they come the less they can resist reaching for it, as your father-in-law could no doubt testify. We could elevate some bureaucrat but then the Open Council would rail about stoogery and they are troublesome enough as it is. So many balances to strike, so many rivalries, and jealousies, and dangers to navigate. It’s enough to make one abandon politics altogether.’