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Murillio said to Bellao now’

They watched him walk away

‘Look at hiate, ‘all elbows and knees’

‘That’ll pass,’ he said

‘A stage, is it?’

‘Yes’ And of course he knew this particular ga of hiht await him, or the future taken away from him, stolen by her cruel denial She would inflict this on herself again and again, at every opportunity Seeellation For this to work, she required someone like Murillio, ould stand and listen and speak and pretend that all this was nor round her boots She had trapped hi the fact of his adoration, his love for her-and he was no longer certain that his love could survive such abuse

The world is s smaller

He had walked the pauper pits south of the city, just outside the wall between the two ates He had looked upon scores of recent unclai of a ritual for hih he had only secondhand descriptions of Harllo, he did his best, since no one who knew the boy would accompany him Not Stonny, not Myrla nor Bedek On occasion, Murillio had been forced to descend into one of the pits to make closer examination of some small body, a soft, lime-dusted face, eyes lidded shut as if in sleep or, on occasion, scrunched in some last moment of pain, and these ht, a procession of such sorrow that he aith tears strea from his eyes ‘

He told Stonny none of this He’d said nothing of how his and Kruppe’s enquiries a the sailors and fisherfolk had failed to find any evidence of so a five-year-old boy And that every other possible trail thus far had turned up nothing, not even a hint or reriated-just another dead child abandoned long before death’s arrival, known only in the records of found corpses as the "twice-dead"

‘I a over my stakes in this school,’ Stonny now said ‘To you’

Startled, he turned to stare at her ‘I won’t accept’

‘Then you’d be a fool-as if I didn’t already know that You’re better suited You’re a better teacher I barely ed any interest in this from the very start-it was always the coin-and now I find I could not care less About the school, the students-even pro, in fact’

Including you, Murillio Yes, he heard that unspoken addition without the need for her to actually say it aloud Well, she would of course want to push hiames with her, she needed even more the solitude necessary for complete self-destruction Isolation was more than a simple defence mechanism; it also served to prepare one forin suicide On another level, she would view her desire to drive him off as an act offoriven his heart to the wrong wo With sword in hand

With love in hand

Oh, well I’d figured it out with a rapier, at least

‘Don’tI can try’ It won’t be pleasant, but you don’t need to know that

Stonny simply turned away ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, then’Many adults, in the indurated immobility of years, acquire a fear of places they have never been, even as they long for so new But this new thing is a world of the fantastical, fors, and is as much defined by absence as presence It is a conjuration of es, whichsuch a place demands a succession of breaks with one’s present situation, always a traumatic endeavour, and upon completion, why, sudden coes in their lives Soht mind would ever choose In K’rul’s Bar, a once-soldier of the Malazan E over the unconscious for self-recriminations under his breath, interrupted every now and then with a streaes

Blend understood all that had motivated Picker to attee her fury The very sah Denul healer that had just attended to her had set to a thorough examination of Picker as soon as Antsy had returned with his charge lying in the bed of a hired oxcart, only to pronounce that there was nothing to be done Either Picker would awaken or she wouldn’t Her spirit had been torn loose and noandered lost