‘Naturally. As captain you will be paid twenty silver councils per week, Tor-vald Nom. Scorch and Leff, as guards, at fifteen. Acceptable?’
All three quickly nodded.
He felt slightly shaky on his feet, but Murillio knew that had nothing to do with any residue of weakness left by his wound. This weakness belonged to his spirit. As if age had sprung on to his back with claws digging into every joint and now hung there, growing heavier by the moment. He walked hunched at the shoulders and this seemed to have arrived like a new habit, or perhaps it was always there and only now, in his extremity, had he become aware of it.
That drunken pup’s sword thrust had pierced something vital indeed, and no Malazan healer or any other kind of healer could mend it.
He tried forcing confidence into his stride as he made his way down the crowded street, but it was not an easy task. Half drunk. Breeches at my ankles. Worthwhile excuses for what happened that night. The widow Sepharla spitting venom once she sobered up enough to realize what had happened, and spitting it still, it seems. What had happened, yes. With her daughter. Oh, not rape-too much triumph in the girl’s eves for that, though her face glowed with delight at her escort’s charge to defend her honour. Once the shock wore off. I should never have gone back to explain-
But that was yesterday’s nightmare, all those sparks raining down on the do-mestic scene with its airs of concern, every cagey word painting over the cracks in savage, short jabs of the brush. What had he expected? What had he gone there to find? Reassurance?
Maybe. I guess I arrived with my own brush.
Years ago, he would have smoothed everything over, almost effortlessly. A murmur here, a meeting of gazes there. Soft touch with one hand, the barest hint of pressure. Then again, years ago, it would never have happened in the first place. That drunken fool!
Oh, he’d growled those three words often in his head. But did they refer to the young man with the sword, or to himself?
Arriving at the large duelling school, he made his way through the open gate and emerged into the bright sunlight of the training ground. A score of young, sweating, overweight students scraped about in the dust, wooden weapons clattering. Most, he saw at once, lacked the necessary aggression, the killer’s instinct. They danced to avoid, prodding the stick points forward with a desultory lack of commitment. Their footwork, he saw, was abysmal.
The class instructor was standing in the shade of a column in the colonnaded corridor just beyond. She was not even observing the mayhem in the compound, intent, it seemed, on some loose stitching or tear in one of her leather gauntlets.
Making his way along one side of the mob getting lost in clouds of white dust, Murillio approached the instructor. She noted him briefly then returned her attention to the gauntlet.
‘Excuse me,’ Murillio said as he arrived. ‘Are you the duelling mistress?’