Reaper's Gate & Toll the Hounds - By Steven Erikson Page 0,801

their lovemaking, it was the selfish kind, quickly plucked apart once they were both spent. He also suspected that he had hurt her – with their landing in his city, some part of him had sought to sever what they had had aboard the ship, as if by closing one chapter every thread was cut and the tale began anew.

But that wasn't possible. All breaks in the narrative of living had more to do with the limits of what could be sustained at any one time, the reach of temporary exhaustion. Memory did not let go; it remained the net dragged in one's wake, with all sorts of strange things snarled in the knotted strands.

He had behaved unfairly, and that had hurt her and, indeed, hurt their friendship. And now it seemed he had gone too far, too far to ever get back what he now realized was precious, was truer than everything he was feeling now, here beneath this woman.

It's said joy's quick crash was weighted in truth. All at once Challice, sprawled prone atop him, felt heavier.

In her own silence, Challice of House Vidikas was thinking back to that morning, to one of those rare breakfasts in the company of her husband. There had been sly amusement in his expression, or at least the tease of that emotion, making his every considerate gesture slightly mocking, as if in sitting facing one another at the table they were but acting out clichéd roles of propriety. And finding, it seemed, a kind of comfort in the ease of their mutual falsehoods.

She suspected that some of Gorlas's satisfaction involved a bleed-over into her private activities, as if it pleased him to take some credit for her fast-receding descent into depravity; that his unperturbed comfort was in fact supportive, something to be relied upon, a solid island she could flail back to when the storm grew too wild, when her swimming in the depths took on the characteristics of drowning.

Making her so-called private activities little more than extensions of his possession. In owning her he was free to see her used and used up elsewhere. In fact, she had sensed a sexual tension between them that had not been there since . . . that had never been there before. She was, she realized, making herself more desirable to him.

It seemed a very narrow bridge that he chose to walk. Some part of her, after all, was her own – belonging to no one else no matter what they might believe – and so she would, ultimately, be guided by her own decisions, the choices she made that would serve her and none other. Yes, her husband played a most dangerous game here, as he might well discover.

He had spoken, in casual passing, of the falling out between Shardan Lim and Hanut Orr, something trivial and soon to mend, of course. But moments were strained of late, and neither ally seemed eager to speak to Gorlas about any of it. Hanut Orr had, however, said some strange things, offhand, to Gorlas in the few private conversations they'd had – curious, suggestive things, but no matter. It was clear that something had wounded Hanut Orr's vaunted ego, and that was ever the danger with possessing such an ego – its constant need to be fed, lest it deflate to the prods of sharp reality.

Sharden Lim's mood, too, had taken a sudden downward turn. One day veritably exalted, the next dour and short-tempered.

Worse than adolescents, those two. You'd think there was a woman involved . . .

Challice had affected little interest, finding, to her own surprise, that she was rather good at dissembling, at maintaining the necessary pretensions. The Mistress of the House, the pearlescent prize of the Master, ever smooth to the touch, as delicate as a porcelain statue. Indifferent to the outside world and all its decrepit, smudged details. This was the privilege of relative wealth, after all, encouraging the natural inclination to manufacture a comforting cocoon. Keeping out the common indelicacies, the mundane miseries, all those raw necessities, needs, wants, all those crude stresses that so strained the lives of normal folk.

Only to discover, in gradual increments of growing horror, that the world within was little different; that all those grotesque foibles of humanity could not be evaded – they just reared up shinier to the eye, like polished baubles, but no less cheap, no less sordid.

In her silence, Challice thought of the gifts of privilege, and oh wasn't she privileged