Still, Gruntle kept coming back to all these unpleasant truths, the life he was busy wasting, the pointlessness of all the things he chose to care about-well, not entirely true. There was the boy, but then, the role of an occasional uncle could hardly be worth much, could it? What wisdom could he impart? Very little, if he looked back on the ruin of his life so far. Companions dead or lost, followers all rotting in the ground, the ash-heaps of past battles and decades spent risking his life to protect the possessions of someone else, someone who got rich without chancing anything worthwhile. Oh, Gruntle might charge for his services, he might even bleed his employers on occasion, and why not?
Which was why, come to think on it, the whole thing with the Trygalle Trade Guild was starting to make sense to him. A shareholder was just that, someone with a stake in the venture, profiting by their own efforts with no fat fool in the wings waiting with sweaty hands.
Was this a death wish? Hardly. Plenty of shareholders survived, and the smart ones made sure they got out before it was too late, got out with enough wealth to buy an estate, to retire into a life of blissful luxury. Oh, that was just for him, wasn’t it? Well, when you’re only good at one thing, then you stop doing it, what’s left but doing nothing!
With some snivelling acolyte of Treach scratching at his door every night. ‘The Tiger of Summer would roar, Chosen One. Yet here you lie indolent in silk bed-ding. What of battle? What of blood and the cries of the dying! What of chaos and the reek of spilled wastes, the curling up round mortal wounds in the slime and mud? What of the terrible strife from which you emerge feeling so impos-sibly alive?’
Yes, what of it? Let me lie here, rumbling this deep, satisfied purr. Until war finds me, and if it never does, well, that’s fine by me.
Bah, he was fooling nobody, especially not himself. He was no soldier, true enough, but it seemed mayhem found him none the less. The tiger’s curse, that ‘ even when it is minding its own business a mob of beady-eyed fools come chant-ing into the jungle, beating the ground. Was that true? Probably not, since there was no reason for hunting tigers, was there? He must have invented the scene, or caught a glimpse of Treach’s own dreaming. Then again, did not hunters beard beasts of all sorts in their dens and caves and burrows? After some fatuous excuse about perils to livestock or whatever, off the mob went, eager for blood.
Beard me, will you? Oh, please do- and all at once, he found his mood changed, mercurial and suddenly seething with rage.
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.