He passed a hand across his eyes. “Anyway, I refuted my obligations and broke off the arranged marriage. It killed my father, I think, when I married Aystal-that was the whore's name, though she's changed it since.” He laughed harshly at the night sky. “Didn't take her long. I'm still not sure how she managed the details, how many men she took to bed to buy their influence, or how they did it. All I know is I woke up one day and found myself stripped of title, stripped even of my family name. The estate was hers, the money was hers, it was all hers, and her need for me had ended.”
The flames licked the dry wood between them. Paran said nothing. He sensed that more was to come from the man opposite him, and that Coll was struggling with it.
“But that wasn't the worst betrayal, Paran,” he said at length, meeting the captain's eyes. “Oh, no. That came when I walked away from it. I could've fought her. I might even have won.” His jaw tautened-the only hint of anguish that escaped his self-control-then he continued, in a flat, empty voice, “Acquaintances I'd known for decades looked right through me. To everyone I was dead. They chose not to hear me. They just walked past, or didn't even come to the gates of their estates when I called on them. I was dead, Paran, even the city's records claimed it. And so I agreed with them. I walked away. Disappeared. It's one thing to have your friends mourn your passing in your face. But it's another to betray your own life, Paran. But, as you said, it's done.”
The captain looked away, squinting into the darkness. What's this human urge, he wondered, that brings us to such devastation? “The games of the high born,” he said quietly, “span the world. I was born a noble, like you, Coll. But in Malaz we'd met our match in the old Emperor. He crushed us at every turn until we cowered like whipped dogs. Cowered for years. But it was only an issue of power, wasn't it?” he said, more to himself than to the man who shared the fire. “There are no lessons worthy enough for a noble to heed. I look back on my years within that twisted, hungry company-I look back on that life now, Coll, and I see it wasn't a life at all.” He was silent for a time, then a slow smile curved his mouth and his gaze swung to Coll. “Since I walked away from the Malazan Empire, and severed once and for all the dubious privileges of my noble blood, damn, I've never felt so alive. It was never a life before, only the palest shadow of what I've now found. Is that a truth most of us are too frightened to face?”
Coll grunted. “I'm not the sharpest man you'll meet, Paran, and your thoughts are running a touch too deep for me. But if I understand you right, you're sitting there looking at a chopped-up old fool of a man and you're telling him he's alive. Right now. As alive as can be. And whatever he betrayed back then, it wasn't life, was it?”
“You tell me, Coll.”
The man grimaced and ran a hand through his thinning hair. “The thing is, I want it back. I want it all back.”
Paran burst out laughing, and continued to laugh until sharp pains cramped his stomach.
Coll sat watching him, then a low, rumbling chuckle rose from his chest. He reached back, retrieved a handful of sticks and tossed them into the fire, one at a time. “Well, dammit, Paran,” he said, amused lines crinkling around his eyes, “you've come out of the blue like a god-sent bolt of lightning. And I appreciate it. I appreciate it more than you'll ever know.”