A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

He
then leaned forward with an expression of gravid dismay.
'Are you not delighted, Lady Envy? Shall I hasten to her
to forward your invitation to visit this wondrous garden?
Instruct me as your servant, please! Whatever you wish, I
will do! Of course I won't! I'll do whatever I want to. Let
her think otherwise – maybe it'll bring some colour back
to her face, maybe it'll calm the storm in her eyes, maybe
it'll stop the water in this trough from boiling – impressive
detail, by the way, now, what should I say next?'
    Sordiko Qualm and Lady Envy never did get to their
conversation that day.
    Grainy-eyed and exhausted, Cutter went in search of
somewhere to eat breakfast. Once his belly was full, he'd
head back to the Phoenix Inn and collapse on his bed
upstairs. This was the extent of his tactical prowess and
even achieving that had been a struggle. He would be the
last man to downplay the extraordinary variety of paths
a life could take, and there were few blessings he could
derive from having come full circle – from his journey and
the changes wrought in himself between the Darujhistan
of old and this new place – and yet the contrast with the
fate that had taken Challice Vidikas had left him numbed,
disorientated and feeling lost.
    He found an empty table in the half-courtyard restaurant
facing Borthen Park, an expensive establishment that
reminded him he was fast running out of coin, and sat
waiting for one of the servers to take note of him. The
staff were Rhivi one and all, three young women dressed
in some new obscure fashion characterized by long
swishing skirts of linen streaked in indigo dye, and tight
black leather vests with nothing underneath. Their hair
was bound up in knotted braids, revealing bisected clamshells
stitched over their ears. While this latter affectation
was quaint the most obvious undesirable effect was that
twice one of the servers sauntered past him and did not
hear his attempts to accost her. He resolved to stick out a
leg the next time, then was shocked at such an ungracious
impulse.
    At last he caught the attention of one of them and she
approached. 'A pot of tea, please, and whatever you're
serving for breakfast.'
    Seeing his modest attire, she glanced away as she asked,
in a bored tone, 'Fruit breakfast or meat breakfast? Eggs?
Bread? Honey? What kind of tea – we have twenty-three
varieties.'
    He frowned up at her. 'Er, you decide.'
    'Excuse me?'
    'What did you have this morning?'
    'Flatcakes, of course. What I always have.'
    'Do you serve those here?'
    'Of course not.'
    'What kind of tea did you drink?'
    'I didn't. I drank beer.'
    'Rhivi custom?'
    'No,' she replied, still looking away, 'it's my way of dealing
with the excitement of my day.'
    'Gods below, just bring me something. Meat, bread,
honey. No fancy rubbish with the tea, either.'
    'Fine,' she snapped, flouncing off in a billow of skirts.
    Cutter squeezed the bridge of his nose in an effort to
fend off a burgeoning headache. He didn't want to think
about the night just past, the bell after bell spent in that
graveyard, sitting on that stone bench with Challice all
too close by his side. Seeing, as the dawn's light grew, what
the handful of years had done to her, the lines of weariness
about her eyes, the lines bracketing her mouth, the
maturity revealed in a growing heaviness, her curves more
pronounced than they had once been. The child he had
known was still there, he told himself, beneath all of that.
In the occasional gesture, in the hint of a soft laugh at
one point. No doubt she saw the same in him – the layers
of hardness, the vestiges of loss and pain, the residues of
living.
    He was not the same man. She was not the same woman.
Yet they had sat as if they had once known each other. As
if they were old friends. Whatever childish hopes and vain
ambitions had sparked the space between them years ago,
they were deftly avoided, even as their currents coalesced
into something romantic, something oddly nostalgic.
    It had been the lively light ever growing in her eyes
that most disturbed Cutter, especially since he had felt his
own answering pleasure – in the hazy reminiscences they
had played with, in the glow lifting between them on that
bench that had nothing to do with the rising sun.
    There was nothing right about any of this. She was married,
after all. She was nobility – but no, that detail was
without relevance, for what she had proposed had nothing
to do with matters of propriety, was in no way