‘Well, go on, damn you.’
‘Just this, Hedge. The Finnest. Of Scabandari Bloodeye. It’s here.’
‘Here? What do you mean, here?’
‘Here, sapper. Right here.’
The gate was a shattered mess on one side. The huge cyclopean stones that had once formed an enormous arch easily five storeys high had the appearance of having been blasted apart by multiple impacts, flinging some of the shaped blocks a hundred paces or more from the entrance-way. The platform the arch had once spanned was heaved and buckled as if some earthquake had rippled through the solid bedrock beneath the pavestones. “The other side was dominated by a tower of still standing blocks, corkscrew-twisted and seemingly precariously balanced.
The illusion of bright daylight had held during this last part of the journey, as much by the belligerent insistence of Udinaas as by the amused indulgence of Clip. Or, perhaps, Silchas Ruin’s impatience. The foremost consequence of this was that Seren Pedac was exhausted-and Udinaas looked no better. Like the two Tiste Andii, however, Kettle seemed impervious-with all the boundless energy of a child, Seren supposed, raising the possibility that at some moment not too far off she would simply collapse.
Seren could see that Fear Sengar was weary as well, but probably that had more to do with the unpleasant burden settling ever more heavily upon his shoulders. She had been harsh and unforgiving of herself in relating to the Tiste Edur the terrible crime she had committed upon Udinaas, and she had done so in the hope that Fear Sengar would-with a look of unfeigned and most deserving disgust in his eyes-choose to reject her, and his own vow to guard her life.
But the fool had instead held to that vow, although she could see the brutal awakening of regret. He would not-could not-break his word.
It was getting easier to disdain these bold gestures, the severity so readily embraced by males of any species. Some primitive holdover, she reasoned, of the time when possessing a woman meant survival, not of anything so prosaic as one’s own bloodline, but possession in the manner of ownership, and survival in the sense of power. There had been backward tribes all along the fringe territories of the Letherii kingdom where such archaic notions were practised, and not always situations where men were the owners and wielders of power-for sometimes it was the women. In either case, history had shown that such systems could only survive in isolation, and only among peoples for whom magic had stagnated into a chaotic web of proscriptions, taboos and the artifice of nonsensical rules-where the power offered by sorcery had been usurped by profane ambitions and the imperatives of social control.
Contrary to Hull Beddict’s romantic notions of such peo-
pie, Seren Pedac had come to feel little remorse when she thought about their inevitable and often bloody extinction. Control was ever an illusion, and its maintenance could only persist when in isolation. Not to say, of course, that the Letherii system was one of unfettered freedom and the liberty of individual will. Hardly. One imposition had been replaced by another. But at the very least it’s not one divided by gender.
The Tiste Edur were different. Their notions… primitive. Offer a sword, bury it at the threshold of one’s home, the symbolic exchange of vows so archaic no words were even necessary. In such a ritual, no negotiation was possible, and if marriage did not involve negotiation then it was not marriage. No, just mutual ownership. Or not-so-mutual ownership. Such a thing deserved little respect.
And now, here, it was not even a prospective husband laying claim to her life, but that prospective husband’s damned brother. And, to make the entire situation yet more absurd, the prospective husband was dead. Fear will defend to the death my right to marry a corpse. Or, rather, the corpse’s right to claim me. Well, that is madness and I will not-1 do not-accept it. Not for a moment.
Yes, I have moved past self-pity. Now I’m just angry.
Because he refused to let his disgust dissuade him.
For all her notions of defiance, that last thought stung her.
Udinaas had moved past her to study the ruined gate, and now he turned to Clip. ‘Well, does it yet live?’
The Tiste Andii’s chain and rings were spinning from one finger again, and he offered the Letherii slave a cool smile. ‘The last road to walk,’ he said, ‘lies on the other side of the gate.’
‘So who got mad and kicked it to pieces, Clip?’
‘Of no consequence any more,’ Clip replied, his smile broadening.
‘You have no idea, in other words,’ Udinaas said. ‘Well, if we’re to go through it, let’s stop wasting time. I’ve almost given up hoping that you’ll end up garrotting yourself with that chain. Almost.’