Hish Tulla said to her husband, ‘You did as Kellaras asked. You returned Lord Anomander to his senses. He commands you no longer.’

‘Yes, beloved.’

‘Never again.’

He nodded.

Pelk departed the chamber, feeling strangely elated, almost content. Whatever came of this day, love would survive. She understood Lord Anomander, and the offence he had taken at Gripp’s return. In this one instance, honour had lost the battle, and simple decency would prevail.

She approached the outer door, eager to both delight and irritate Venes Turayd. Then they would set out for the Valley of Tarns, leading the Houseblades of House Tulla, and she would ride behind Venes and, at her side, old bent Rancept, his breaths as harsh as those of the horse he straddled.

Kellaras would live or he would die. No different from Pelk herself. And you, Ivis, you old fool. Find your new love if you can when all this is done. We’re past every regret, and the past has lost all its claws, all its teeth, and can hurt us no more.

Now, time had come to face the dying day. She kicked open the door.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

ALTHOUGH IT LEFT HIM WITH CONFUSED EMOTIONS TUGGING him this way and that, the idea pursued Orfantal, and no matter where his mind raced, the idea swept up around him the instant he paused. Children should be able to choose their own mothers. Of course such a thing was impossible. And yet, was it not even worse that mothers could not choose their children? He knew enough about being unwanted and unwelcome. He knew even more about being a disappointment.

The mother he sought, could he so choose, would have the strength to look him in the eye, and to see and not fear who he was. There would be a reserve about her, a kind of selfishness, perhaps, that in itself would give him enough room to grow into his own world, making his own choices about how to live.

Gripp Galas would have laughed at the notion. The child, he would say, needs guidance. The child, he would insist, was not ready to understand the world, not ready to make a place in it. And these things were probably true, but a balance was needed nonetheless. Until his arrival in the Citadel, Orfantal had been smothered beneath his mother’s needs. He had been weighted down with the fears and dreads of his grandmother. Of his father there was only absence, a vast realm of ignorance in which Orfantal could raise heroes standing beneath bold standards, and that suited him well enough.

Heroic death appealed to him like nothing else, when he imagined his future life, when at last he clawed free of his mother and her shrinking world.