Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,215

in the cabin. 'I am a man of deep thoughts,' he said.

'You're a lazy toad trapped in a pit of self-obsession.'

'That, too.'

'We will soon be ashore. I would have thought you'd be eager at the gunnel, given all your groaning and moaning. Mother Dark knows, I would never have known you for a Meckros with your abiding hatred of the sea.'

'Abiding hatred, is it? No, more like . . . frustration.' He lifted his huge hands. 'Repairing ships is a speciality. But it's not mine. I need to be back doing what I do best, wife.'

'Horseshoes?'

'Precisely.'

'Shield-rims? Dagger-hilts? Swords?'

'If need be.'

'Armies always drag smiths with them.'

'Not my speciality.'

'Rubbish. You can fold iron into a blade as well as any weaponsmith.'

'Seen plenty of 'em, have you?'

'With a life as long as mine has been, I've seen too much of everything. Now, our young miserable charges are probably down in the hold again. Will you get them or will I?'

'Is it truly time to leave?'

'I think the Adjunct is already off.'

'You go. They still make my skin crawl.'

She rose. 'You lack sympathy, which is characteristic of self-obsession. These Tiste Andii are young, Withal. Abandoned first by Anomander Rake. Then by Andarist. Brothers and sisters fallen in pointless battle. Too many losses – they are caught in the fragility of the world, in the despair it delivers to their souls.'

'Privilege of the young, to wallow in world-weary cynicism.'

'Unlike your deep thoughts.'

'Completely unlike my deep thoughts, Sand.'

'You think they have not earned that privilege?'

He could sense her growing ire. She was, after all, no less Tiste Andii than they were. Some things needed steering around. Volcanic island. Floating mountain of ice. Sea of fire. And Sandalath Drukorlat's list of sensitivities. 'I suppose they have,' he replied carefully. 'But since when was cynicism a virtue? Besides, it gets damned tiring.'

'No argument there,' she said in a deadly tone, then turned and marched out.

'Brooding's different,' he muttered to the empty chair across from him. 'Could be any subject, for one thing. A subject not at all cynical. Like the meddling of the gods – no, all right, not like that one. Smithing, yes. Horseshoes. Nothing cynical about horseshoes . . . I don't think. Sure. Keeping horses comfortable. So they can gallop into battle and die horribly.' He fell silent. Scowling.

* * *

Phaed's flat, heart-shaped face was the colour of smudged slate, a hue unfortunate in its lifelessness. Her eyes were flat, except when filled with venom, which they were now as they rested on Sandalath Drukorlat's back as the older woman spoke to the others.

Nimander Golit could see the young woman he called his sister from the corner of his eye, and he wondered yet again at the source of Phaed's unquenchable malice, which had been there, as far as he could recall, from her very earliest days. Empathy did not exist within her, and in its absence something cold now thrived, promising a kind of brutal glee at every victory, real or imagined, obvious or subtle.

There was nothing easy in this young, beautiful woman. It began with the very first impression a stranger had upon seeing her, a kind of natural glamour that could take one's breath away. The perfection of art, the wordless language of the romantic.

This initial moment was short-lived. It usually died following the first polite query, which Phaed invariably met with cold silence. A silence that transformed that wordless language, dispelling all notions of romance, and filling the vast, prolonged absence of decorum with bald contempt.

Spite was reserved for those who saw her truly, and it was in these instances that Nimander felt a chill of premonition, for he knew that Phaed was capable of murder. Woe to the sharp observer who saw, unflinchingly, through to her soul – to that trembling knot of darkness veined with unimaginable fears – then chose to disguise nothing of that awareness.

Nimander had long since learned to affect a kind of innocence when with Phaed, quick with a relaxed smile which seemed to put her at ease. It was at these moments, alas, when she was wont to confide her cruel sentiments, whispering elaborate schemes of vengeance against a host of slights.

Sandalath Drukorlat was nothing if not perceptive, which was hardly surprising. She had lived centuries upon centuries. She had seen all manner of creatures, from the honourable to the demonic. It had not taken her long to decide towards which end of the spectrum Phaed belonged.

She had answered cold regard with her own; the