[Vlad Taltos 06] Athyra

  “I don’t think he is,” said Savn.

  Polyi started to speak, looked at the sleeping Easterner, and shut her mouth. Savn turned the spit once more. Fat dripped; the fire blazed up, then died down again. Savn’s mouth was beginning to water and his stomach was growling.

  “How long?” asked Polyi, who was evidently feeling the same way.

  “I don’t know. How do you tell when it’s done?”

  “Well, it’s brown on the outside. Pae always cuts it open, though.”

  “Yeah, but what does he look for?”

  “I guess if it looks like it’s ready.”

  Savn scowled and found Vlad’s dagger, and cut open the norska. Some of the flesh was white, but some of it seemed translucent. “Well?” he said.

  “I don’t know what norska should look like,” said Polyi. “I’ve never eaten any.”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s done. Let’s let it cook some more.”

  “I’m hungry,” said Polyi.

  “Me, too.”

  She stared at the fire and the roasting norska, and said, “Why does he hate His Lordship so much?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. But he thinks His Lordship killed Reins, and—”

  “He couldn’t have!” said Polyi.

  “Why not?” said Savn.

  “Well, because, he just couldn’t have.”

  “I don’t know. But Vlad thinks so, and I guess he liked Reins or something.”

  “Liked him? Were they, you know, lovers?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “They must have been,” said Polyi. “I mean, you don’t go killing somebody just because he killed someone you like, do you? If people did that, we’d have killed every soldier in the army by now.”

  “Well, I don’t know if it’s the same thing.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because ... I don’t know. Maybe you’re right.”

  “I’ll bet they were lovers.”

  “So now you think maybe His Lordship really did kill him?”

  “Well, no, I’m not saying that.”

  “Then what?”

  “Well, just that maybe Vlad thinks so.”

  “He seemed pretty sure.”

  “So? He’s an Easterner; maybe they’re always like that.”

  “Maybe,” said Savn, and fell silent.

  This was, he realized, what anyone would call an adventure, and it felt like it. Yes, in a way it was terrifying, but it also had an odd, storylike quality to it—it wasn’t quite real.

  Savn had never seen people killed before his eyes, and yet here was this Easterner talking very seriously of killing His Lordship. None of it had a sense of being his own memories; it was as if these were things he heard of in a song. The cave was real, and the feeling that he had embarked on something that he’d be able to tell stories about for the rest of his life; but the death and danger were off in the distance, not actually present, like when he had been standing outside of his house.

  He kept coming back to that experience, he decided, because it puzzled and intrigued him, and because it seemed to mark a starting point. It had seemed, at the time, to be the beginning of something, but he hadn’t expected it to be the beginning of a time when he would be going through one thing after another that seemed unreal. In retrospect, though, it made a certain kind of sense.

  He looked at Polyi. Was it real for her? She was wearing a frown of great concentration. He hoped that whatever her thoughts, they were not carrying her into a place she’d have trouble coming back from, because that would be truly, truly sad. For that matter, how was it going to affect him when it was over? Would he have nightmares for the rest of his life? Would he and Polyi wake up screaming for no reason that they could explain? He shuddered.

  He caught Polyi glancing at him speculatively, and it occurred to him that she had seen him with the Easterner, and heard him agreeing that something that she might—no, would see as a great crime—was reasonable. He thought about trying to explain things to her, but realized that he really had no explanation; he was going to have to wait until she brought it up herself, if she ever did.

  After a time, she said hesitantly, “Savn ...”

  “What is it, Polyi?”

  “Will you tell me something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you like Lova?”

  “Vlad, wake up,” said Savn. “I think the food’s ready.”

  “I’m awake,” said the Easterner in a voice so low Savn could hardly hear it. “Let’s see the norska.”

  Savn suddenly wondered how much of the conversation Vlad had overheard, and decided it had been stupid to talk about it right in front of him in any case. He took the spit off the stones and showed it to Vlad.

  “It’s done,” announced the Easterner. “Help me sit up.”

  Savn and Polyi put the spit back on the stones, then helped him sit up.

  “Now I want to stand.”

  Savn said, “Are you sure you should—”

  “And help me to the latrine.”

  “Oh. All right.”

  They took his arms and helped him up, and guided him to the other cave, and held him up until he was done. Then they brought him back and helped him sit up against the wall of the cave. The jhereg scampered along with him all the way. He sat there for several moments, breathing deeply, then nodded. “Let’s eat,” he said.

  While they’d been helping him, part of the norska had burned slightly, but the rest was fine.

  They ate in silence at first. Savn thought it was one of the best things he’d ever eaten. He wasn’t certain what Polyi thought, but she was eating with great enthusiasm.

  “Do you know,” said Savn suddenly, “it just occurred to me that if there are people looking for us, and if they are at all nearby, the smell will bring them right to us.” He took another bite of roasted norska.

  Vlad grunted and said, “Should my friends take that as a compliment on their choice of food?”

  Savn took his time chewing and swallowing, then said, “Yes.”

  “Good. I think the cave is deep enough that no smells will escape.”

  “All right,” said Savn.

  Polyi was still eating and not talking. Savn tried to decide if she was looking sullen, but he couldn’t tell.

  “It’s the wine that does it,” said Vlad. His voice seemed slightly stronger; at any rate, he seemed to have no trouble talking. “Cooking over an open flame is its own art, and doesn’t have much to do with oven cooking or stove cooking. I’m not really good at it. But I know that wine always helps.”

  Savn wondered if it was the wine that made the norska taste so good, or if it was really the circumstances—if it wasn’t still the feeling that he was on some sort of adventure. He knew there was something wrong with thinking about it this way, but how could he help it? He was sitting in a cave with a man who spoke of killing His Lordship, and he was eating norska taken with magic—

  “Vlad,” he said suddenly.

  “Mroi?” said Vlad. Then he swallowed and said, “Excuse me. What?”

  “I had always heard that it was bad luck to hunt with magic, except for finding the game.”

  “I’ve heard that, too.”

  “Well, then,” said Savn. “What about—”

  “Oh, this? Well, it wasn’t exactly magic. At least, not directly.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Never mind. It isn’t important.”

  Savn decided that he was probably never going to understand what Vlad thought important. The most trivial things seemed to provoke the biggest reactions, like when Savn had mentioned that His Lordship’s men hadn’t been using Morganti weapons. Savn shook his head, wondering.

  All of a sudden Polyi said, “You can’t kill His Lordship.”

  Vlad looked at her without speaking.

  Savn said, “Polyi—”

  “Well,” she said to Vlad. “You can’t.”

  “Of course not,” said Vlad.

>   “But you mean to. I know it.”

  “Polyi—”

  “Just out of curiosity,” said Vlad, “why couldn’t I kill him?”

  “He’s a wizard.”

  “So?”

  Polyi frowned. “They say that he can never die, because his magic protects him. They say that there are rooms in his keep where he just walks in and comes out younger, and that he is only as old as he wants to be. They say—”

  “And how much of this do you believe?”

  “I don’t know,” said Polyi.

  Savn said, “If it’s true, though—”

  “It’s true that he’s a sorcerer.”

  “Well, then?”

  “No matter how subtle the wizard, a knife between the shoulder blades will seriously cramp his style.”

  Savn couldn’t find an answer to that, so he didn’t make one. He looked at Polyi, but she was just staring angrily at Vlad. There was a sense of unreality about the entire conversation—it was absurd that they could be talking about killing His Lordship as if discussing the price of linen. There had been a time, some five years before, when he, Coral, and Lan had drunk wine until they had become sick. The thing he remembered most clearly about the incident, other than walking around for the next week hoping Mae and Pae didn’t find out about it, was sitting with his head bent over, focusing on nothing except the tabletop, slowly memorizing every mark on it. The memory came back to him with such a rush that it almost brought along the giddy, sickly, floating feeling he had had then.

  At last he said, “But what if he is undead, like you say?”

  “He is,” said Vlad. “That makes it a little trickier, that’s all.”

  “Then you admit you’re going to do it,” said Polyi, in the same tone of voice she used upon discovering the piece for her game under Savn’s blankets.

  “What if I am?” said Vlad. “Do you think I should just let him kill me?”

  “Why don’t you teleport away?” said Savn.

  “Heh,” said Polyi. “Teleport? If he could do that, he could have fixed his finger.”

  “Polyi—” said Savn.

  “First of all,” said Vlad, looking at Polyi. “I’m not a physicker. A physicker who knew sorcery could have healed my hand if I’d gotten to him quickly. Now it would be very difficult, and I haven’t been in touch with anyone that good in some time.

  “Second,” he continued, looking now at Savn, “never attempt complicated sorcery—and teleportation is complicated—when you’re weak in the body. It upsets the mind, and that can be fatal. I’ve done it, when I’ve had to, and I will again, if I have to. But I’ve been lucky, and I don’t like to depend on luck.

  “Third,” he said, addressing them both, “I do, indeed, intend to kill Loraan—Baron Smallcliff. But I’m in no shape to do so now. He knows I want to kill him; he killed Reins in order to draw me in, so that when I tried to kill him he could kill me. I don’t know everything that’s going on yet, so I don’t know how I’m going to kill him. If I did, I certainly wouldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t have told you this much if I hadn’t betrayed myself already, and if I didn’t owe it to you.

  “But there it is,” he said. “I’ve told you my plans, or as much of them as I have. If you want to betray me, I can’t stop you.”

  He looked at them and waited. At last Savn said, “I don’t know what to do.”

  “I think we should go home,” said Polyi.

  “Then what?” said Savn.

  “I don’t know.”

  Savn looked at the Easterner, who was watching them carefully, his expression blank. “She’s right,” said Savn. “We really should go home.”

  “Yes,” said Vlad. “I’ll be all right here.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. And, whatever happens, no one is going to be able to take me by surprise.”

  Savn glanced at the jhereg and nodded.

  Vlad settled back against the wall of the cave and closed his eyes. “I believe I will sleep now. Will you help me to lie down?”

  When they were done eating, they gave the bones to the jhereg, who seemed well pleased with them. Savn wanted to say goodbye to Vlad, but the Easterner was sound asleep. He and Polyi left the cave together, blinking in the bright afternoon sun. They started for home.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I will not marry a handsome soldier,

  I will not marry a handsome soldier.

  He would not want me when I’m older.

  Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

  Step on out ...

  By unspoken agreement they took the long way, not passing through town; as a result they didn’t see anyone. Savn wondered if there were still parties out looking for Vlad, and if Mae and Pae had joined them. Thinking of Mae and Pae filled him with a vague unease over and above his fear of whatever punishment they’d inflict on him for staying out all night. He thought about it, trying to figure out why, and eventually remembered how oddly they’d acted the night Vlad had come to their home, at which point Savn realized that he wasn’t afraid of what Mae and Pae would say; he was afraid of what they wouldn’t say.

  It was as bad as Savn had feared, or worse. Mae looked up, nodded at them, and went back to stripping seeds. Pae, who was counting sacks, just gave them a brief smile and said, “Savn, isn’t it time for you to be at Master Wag’s?”

  “Yes, Pae,” said Savn, trying to keep his voice from trembling.

  “Well, be on your way, then.”

  Savn watched Polyi, who was obviously trying to conceal how upset she was. She said, “Don’t you want to know where we’ve been?”

  “Well,” said Mae, straightening up and stretching her back, “you’re here, aren’t you? You’ve been fine, haven’t you?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Savn caught her eye and she fell silent.

  “We’ll be going, then,” said Savn.

  Mae and Pae nodded abstractedly and returned to their work. Savn and Polyi didn’t speak until they reached the house, where Savn gallantly offered to let Polyi bathe first.

  She ignored his offer and said, “What’s wrong with them?”

  “With who?”

  “Cut it out,” said Polyi. “You know what I mean.”

  Savn started to protest, then gave up and said, “I don’t know. I think—No, I don’t know.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Never mind.”

  “Is it something Vlad did to them?”

  Savn looked away and repeated, “I don’t know.”

  “Maybe he—”

  “I don’t know.”

  “AH right,” she said, pouting. “Don’t yell at me.”

  “Do you want to bathe first, or should I?”

  “I don’t care. Go ahead. No, I will.”

  “Let me, I have to get to Master Wag’s.”

  “Then why did you ask?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll hurry.”

  Savn bathed quickly, and leaving the house, cut across the fields away from the counting bin so he wouldn’t have to face Mae and Pae again. He also skirted the town, although he was frightfully curious about whether they were still searching for Vlad.

  When he arrived at Master Wag’s, he was greeted with the words, “I didn’t expect you to be here today. How’s our patient?”

  “He was well when I left him, about five hours ago.”

  “Had he eaten?”

  “Yes.”

  “No fever?”

  “None.”

  “Still weak?”

  “Very.”

  “Did he empty his bowels?”

  “No. Liquid only.”

  “Hmmm. Not good, but not yet bad, either.”

  “Are they still looking for him?”

  The Master nodded. “Not with any great intensity, perhaps, but Speaker insisted that they keep searching the area until they were certain he had left.”

  “That sounds like they think he did.”

  “Speaker probably does, but tha
t doesn’t much matter. They’ll keep looking, I’m afraid, and eventually they’ll find the caves.”

  “It may take a long time.”

  “Oh, yes. It would take days to just search the caves—they’re immense, convoluted, and lead all the way back into the cliff. But still—”

  “Yes. I hope they don’t get to them soon.”

  “In any case, Savn, the Easterner shouldn’t be alone for very long. He could relapse at any time.”

  “All right,” said Savn. “I’ll return at once.”

  “No, as long as you’re here, you may as well relax for a while. We can discuss that procedure you performed. I want to show you just what you did, and why it worked, so you can be more certain next time.”

  Which is what they did for the next hour; the Master explained the problem and the cure, while Savn listened more intently than he ever had before. It was different, he realized, when you knew exactly why you were doing something, when you’d actually seen someone with the injury and were learning how to save him.

  After that, the conversation drifted onto other matters of the healing arts, and even here Savn noticed a difference in the Master’s attitude: he was less brusque and somehow more respectful of Savn—as if by saving the Easterner, Savn had proven himself to Master Wag.

  At one point, the Master stopped in the middle of explaining the sort of thoughts that must be kept out of the head of a person in danger of fever, and said, “What is bothering you, Savn? You seem disturbed about something.”

  “I’m not certain, Master.”

  The Master looked at him closely. “Is it,” he said, “that you aren’t certain you should have saved the Easterner? Because, if that is the trouble, it shouldn’t bother you. Saving lives is our trade—all lives. Even, sometimes, that of livestock. Yes, if it is a choice between saving the life of a human being and saving the life of an Easterner, that is one thing. But in this case, you found someone who was injured and you cured him. It is no betrayal of His Lordship for you to perform your calling.”

  “It isn’t that, Master. I think it’s Mae and Pae.”

  “What about them?”

  “Well, they’ve been acting funny, that’s all.”

  “Funny? What do you mean?”

  “Well, they seem distracted, like they’re far away.”

  “Explain what you mean, Savn. Be precise.”