A Malazan Book of the Fallen Collection 4

she
turned away. And he could forget nothing.
    At this moment, Challice, having ascended to the top of
the estate tower – that ghoulish Gadrobi embarrassment
– now stepped out on to the roof, momentarily buffeted by
a gust of smoke. She held in her hands the glass globe in
which shone the prisoner moon, and she paused, lifting her
gaze, and stared in wonder at the destruction now filling a
third of the sky.
    *
    But she had left him with bad habits. Terrible ones,
and they had proceeded to shape his entire life. Cutter
remembered the expression on Rallick's face – the shock
and the dismay – as he looked down at the knife buried
in his shoulder. The recognition – yes, Cutter was Apsalar's
creation, through and through. Yes, another man had been
lost.
    It seemed wryly fitting that the moon was breaking into
pieces in the night sky, but to find amusement in such a
poignant symbol was proving a struggle. He did not possess
Rallick's hardness, the layers of scar tissue worn like
armour. And, for all that she had given him, Cutter was
not her perfect reflection. He could not silence the anguish
he felt inside, the legacy of delivering murder, making the
notion of justice as unpalatable as a prisoner's gruel. And
these were things she did not feel.
    He rode on.
    The Hounds knew him, he was sure of that, and if that
meant anything on this night, then he had no reason to
fear them.
    The occasional refugee darted across his path. Like
ousted rats, the desperate hunt for cover filled their minds,
and the faces flashing past seemed empty of anything
human. Survival was a fever, and it left eyes blank as those
of a beached fish. Witnessing this, Cutter felt his heart
breaking.
    This is my city. Darujhistan. Of the Blue Fires. It does not
deserve this.
    No, he did not fear the Hounds of Shadow. But he now
despised them. The devastation they were delivering was
senseless, a pointless unleashing of destruction. He did not
think Cotillion had anything at all to do with that. This
stank of Shadowthrone, the fickleness, the cruel indifference.
He had freed his beasts to play. In blood and snapped
bones. In flames and collapsed tenements. All this fear, all
this misery. For nothing.
    Awkward or not, the lance felt reassuring in his hand.
Now, if only Shadowthrone would show himself, why, he'd
find a place to plant the damned thing.
    There, within its tiny, perfect world, the moon shone pure,
unsullied. There had been a time, she realized, when she
too had been like that. Free of stains, not yet bowed to
sordid compromise, feeling no need to shed this tattered
skin, these glazed eyes.
    Women and men were no different in the important
things. They arrived with talents, with predispositions,
with faces and bodies either attractive to others or not.
And they all made do, in all the flavours of living, with
whatever they possessed. And there were choices, for each
and every one of them. For some, a few of those choices
were easier than others, when the lure of being desirable
was not a conceit, when it reached out an inviting hand
and all at once it seemed to offer the simplest path. So little
effort was involved, merely a smile and thighs that did not
resist parting.
    But there was no going back. These stains didn't wash
off. The moon shone pure and beautiful, but it remained
for ever trapped.
    She stared up into the sky, watched how fragments spun
out from a fast-darkening core. The momentum seemed to
have slowed, and indeed, she thought she could see pieces
falling back, inward, whilst dust flattened out, as if transformed
into a spear that pierced all that was left of the
moon.
    The dust dreams of the world it had once been.
But the dust, alas, does not command the wind.
    Cutter knew now that he had – since her – taken into
his arms two women as if they were capable of punishing
him, each in turn. Only one had succeeded, and he rode
towards her now, to stand before her and tell her that he
had murdered her husband. Not because she had asked him
to, because, in truth, she did not have that sort of hold
over him, and never would. No, Gorlas Vidikas was dead
for other reasons, the specifics of which were not relevant.
    She was free, he would say. To do as she pleased. But
whatever that would be, he would tell her, her future would
not – could never – include him.
    'See, there he is, at her side. What gall! Kills her husband and
now she hangs on his arm. Oh, made for each other, those two.
And may Hood find them the deepest