He was walking along a street, close now to his abode, yet the passers-by had all lost their faces, had become nothing more than mobile pieces of meat, and he wanted to kill them all.
A glance down at his hands and he saw the black slashes of the tiger’s barbs deep as dusty jet, and he knew then that his eyes blazed, that his teeth were bared, the canines glistening, and he knew, too, why the amorphous shapes he passed were shrinking from his path. If only one would come close, he could lash out, open a throat and taste the salty chalk of blood on his tongue. Instead, the fools were rushing off, cringing in doorways or bolting down alleys.
Unimpressed, disappointed, he found himself at his door.
She didn’t understand, or maybe she did all too well. Either way, she’d been right in saying he did not belong in this city, or any other. They were all cages, and the trick he’d never learned was how to be at peace living in a cage.
In any case, peace was overrated-look at Stonny, after all. I take my share, my fortune, and I buy them a new life-a life with servants and such, a house with an enclosed garden where he can be carried out and sit in the sun. The chil-dren properly schooled; yes, some vicious tutor to take Snell by the throat and teach him some respect. Or if not respect, then healthy terror. And for Harllo, a chance at a future.
One should be all I need, and I can survive one, can’t I? It’s the least I can do for them. In the meantime, Stonny will take care of things-making sure the coin reaches Myrla.
Where did I see that damned carriage anyway?
He was at his door again, this time facing the street. Loaded with travel gear, with weapons and his fur-lined rain-cloak-the new one that smelled like sheep-and so it was clear that some time had passed, but the sort that was inconsequen-tial, that did nothing but what needed doing, with no wasted thought. Nothing like hesitation, or the stolid weighing of possibilities, or the moaning back-and-forth that some might call wise deliberation.
Walking now, this too of little significance. Why, nothing had significance, un-til the moment when the claws are unsheathed, and the smell of blood gives bite to the air. And that moment waited somewhere ahead and he drew closer, step by step, because when a tiger decides it’s time to hunt, it is time to hunt.
Snell ame up behind his quarry, delighted by his own skill at stealth, at stalking the creature who sat in the high grasses all unknowing, proving that Harllo wasn’t fit for the real world, the world where everything was a threat and needed taking cure of lest it take care of you. It was the right kind of lesson for Snell to deliver, out here in the wilds.
He held in one hand a sack filled with the silver councils Aunt Stonny had brought two linings of burlap and the neck well knotted so he could grip it tight. The sound the coins made when they struck the side of Harllo’s head was most satisfying, sending a shock of thrill through Snell. And the way that hateful head snapped to one side, the small body pitching to the ground, well, that was a sight he would cherish.
He kicked at the unconscious form for a while, but without the grunts and whimpers it wasn’t as much fun, so he left off. Then, collecting the hefty sack of dung, he set out for home. His mother would be pleased at the haul, and she’d plant a kiss on his forehead and he could bask for a time, and when someone won-dered where Harllo had got to, why, he’d tell them he’d seen him down at the docks, talking with some sailor. When the boy didn’t come home tonight, Myrla might send for Gruntle to go down and check the waterfront, where he’d find out that two ships had sailed that day, or three, and was there a new cabin boy on one of them? Maybe so, maybe not, who paid attention to such things?
Dismay, then, and worries, and mourning, but none of that would last long. Snell would become the precious one, the one still with them, the one they needed to take care of, protect and coddle. The way it used to be, the way it was supposed to be.
Smiling under the bright morning sun, with long egged birds pecking mud on the flats out on the lake to his left, Snell ambled his way back home. A good day, a day of feeling so alive, so free. He had righted the world, the whole world.
The shepherd who found the small boy in the grasses of the summit overlooking the road into Maiten and then Two-Ox Gate was an old man with arthritic knees who knew his usefulness was coming to an end, and very soon indeed he would find himself out of work, the way the herdmaster watched him hobbling and leaning too much on his staff. Examining the boy, he was surprised to find him still alive, and this brought thoughts of what he might do with such an urchin in his care.
Worth the effort? He could bring his wife back here, with the cart, and together they could lift the body into the bed and wheel him back to their shack on the shore of the lake. Tend to him and see if he lived or died, feed him enough if it came to that, and then?
Well, he had thoughts, yes, plenty of thoughts on that. None of them pleasant, but then, whoever said the world was a pleasant place? Foundlins were fair game and that was a rule somewhere, he was sure of it, a rule, just like finding salvage on the beach. What you found you owned, and the money would do them good, besides.
He too concluded that it was a good day.
He remembered his childhood, running wild in the streets and alleys, clambering on to the rooftops at night to stare about in wonder at the infamous Thieves’ Road. So inviting this romance of adventure under the moon’s secret light, whilst slept all the dullards and might-be victims in the unlit rooms below.
Running wild, and for the child one road was as good as another, perhaps bet-ter so long as there was mystery and danger every step of the way. Even later, when that danger had become all too real, it had been for Cutter a life unfurling, revealing a heart saturated with wonder.
Romance was for fools, he now knew. No one valued the given heart, no one saw that sacrifice for the precious gift it was. No, just a thing to be grasped, twisted by uncaring hands, then wrung dry and discarded. Or a commodity and nothing more, never as desirable as the next one, the one in waiting, or the one held by someone else. Or, something far worse, a gift too precious to accept.
The nature of the rejection, he told himself, was irrelevant. Pain and grief ar-rived in singular flavours, bitter and lifeless, and too much of them rotted the soul. He could have taken other roads. Should have. Maybe walked Murillio’s path, a new love every night, the adoration of desperate women, elegant brunches on balconies and discreet rendezvous beneath whispering leaves in some private garden.
Or how about Kruppe? A most wily master to whom he could have appren-ticed himself yet further than he already had, in the art of high thievery, in the disposition of stolen items, in the acquisition of valuable information available to whoever was willing to pay and pay well. In the proper appreciation of wines, pas-tries and inappropriate attire. A lifetime of cherubic delight, but was there really room in the world for more than one Kruppe?
Assuredly not!
Was it preferable, then, this path of daggers, this dance of shadows and the tak-ing of lives for coin without even a soldier’s sanction (as if that mattered)? Rallick would not agree. And Murillio would shake his head, and Kruppe waggle his eye-brows, and Meese might grin and make another grab for his crotch, with Irilta looking on with motherly regard. And there’d be that glow in Sulty’s eyes, tinged now with the bitter truth that she was no longer enough for one such as him, that she could only dream, that somehow his being an assassin set him upon such a high station that her lowly existence as a serving wench was beneath all notice. Where even his efforts at friendship were perceived as pity and condescension, sufficient to pitch her into tears at the wrong word, the missed glance.