Return to the Whorl (The Book of the Short Sun #3)

Return to the Whorl (The Book of the Short Sun #3) Page 21

"No, mysire. At shadeup we close, but soon my son comes so sleep I get."

"Most people here don't say shadeup anymore," I told him, "or shadelow, either."

"For this my son at me laughs, mysire." He sat on Auk's stool, to my great relief. "The old place I do not forget. Back I cannot go, but remember I do. Old as me you are, mysire. Why come you did?"

For a moment I could not decide whether to tell him that I was told to (as I was by Silk) or that I was made to (as I was by Hari Mau and his friends); in the end I decided to change the subject and said, "For the same reasons as many others, I suppose. Would you like that drink? If you'll get it I'll pay for it, as I said."

"No, mysire. In my house sometimes, but here never I drink. For my trade ruin it is. From where to our Dorp do you come?"

"New Viron."

"A long voyage it is, but last night another from New Viron to my tavern comes. For you it is he searches?"

"I doubt it. What was his name?"

The shopkeeper scratched his bald head. "This forgotten I have, mysire. What yours is? Him I tell if again he comes."

I smiled and told him, "Horn it is, mysire. To him this you say. Mysire Horn for your company asks. Your townsman he is. With Beroep he is to be found. Help you he will."

The shopkeeper laughed. "Better talking you are, mysire."

"But not perfectly? How would you say it?"

" `For' not you say."

As I sipped from my chipped glass, I struggled to recall just what I had said. "Mysire Horn your company asks?"

"Yes, mysire. That the right way it is. Also must you say, with Beroep to be found he is."

"I see, and I appreciate your instruction. I'll wait a bit before I try again."

"A good man where we are Beroep is." The shopkeeper winked and pretended to drink, then turned gloomy. "Soon ruined he is. Destroyed he is. His boats they want, mysire."

A younger man joined us. "Strik already ruined is."

The shopkeeper introduced him. "My son, mysire. Wapen he is."

Wapen said, "Strik tried will be. Everything they take."

"For what tried?"

Wapen shrugged. "If not wanted it is, too heavy it is."

His father told me, "They us destroy, mysire. One man and another."

"My father's tavern soon they take." The younger man was not tall, but he looked tough; and as he leaned toward me I saw a scar that must have been made by a knife or a broken bottle across one pitted cheek.

"Soon, not now, it is," the shopkeeper said.

"Better the tavern we sell and a boat buy. Back not coming, we are."

I said, "Better destroying those who would destroy you, you are."

The shopkeeper looked around fearfully, but his son spat on the floor, saying, "What more to us they will do?"

Soon after that the shopkeeper left for home, and Wapen excused himself to wait on another patron.

"They're y'are."

I looked around at the swaying woman behind me and said, "Chenille?"

"Tha' lady on Green? No, 's me." Jahlee dropped onto Auk's stool and leaned across the table her chin on her hands. "Guesh my faish's not sho good, huh?"

"Don't smile," I told her.

"I won'. I'sh jush show hungry. I foun' thish woman in a alley."

"Not so loud, please."

"I drank 'n drank, 'n I fell down 'n I knew I better shtop."

"Did you kill her, Jahlee?"

"Don' thin' sho. She'sh big woman." She paused, her eyes unfocused and her nose softening and seeming to sink into her face. "Never wash sho drunk. D'you like it, Rashan?"

I shook my head, wondering how long it would be before she was sober again. It could be a matter of minutes, I decided; it was also possible that what we were interpreting as drunkenness was permanent brain damage.

"I'sh jus' sho hungry," she repeated.

"A part of the blood you drink becomes your own blood. Surely you must know that."

"Washn't thinkin', Rashan. It'sh jush like th' cow." She waited, expecting (as I saw) to be scolded. "Sho then I shed go back to tha' big housh, only I'sh locked up there."

I nodded.

"An' I can' find it but I shaw you."

"Basically you're right," I told her. "We must get you out of sight, and it would probably be unwise to return to Cijfer's."

"My hair'sh crooked?" Her hands went up to it.

"No. But I wouldn't touch it if I were you." Seeing a face I recognized, I called, "Hoof, come over and sit with us."

He came to the table and offered me his hand. "I'm afraid I don't remember you, sir. Are you from New Viron?"

I was worried about Oreb and my trial and a dozen other things; but I could not help laughing, just as I was to laugh a few minutes later when Hide came in with his bruised face and swollen eye, still angry and eager to fight. "Yes, I am," I told Hoof. "I'm your father, and this is your sister, Jahlee."

Chapter 8. SAD EXPERIENCE TEACHES ME

"Horn!" As he stumbled, dripping, into the cavernous room that had been Blood's reception hall, Hound goggled.

"Bucky?" Pig's blind face looked not quite at him. "That yer, bucky?" Donkeys more than half asleep raised their heads and turned long ears to hear the moist scuffle of his shoes on the scarred and stained parquet floor.

"Yes, it's me." He sat down between Pig and Hound, wiping water from his hair and eyes. "Tired and exceedingly wet."

"Bird too!"

"Yes. Dry your feathers. But not on my shoulder, please. It can scarcely support its own weight."

"A godling had you..." Hound sounded as if he did not believe it himself. "I told Pig."

"Did you? And what did Pig say?"

"Prayed fer yer, bucky."

He glanced at Pig, then laid a shivering hand on one of Pig's enormous knees. "You're wet, too."

"Aye, bucky. Been rainin' h'out there? H'it has!"

He turned to study Hound. "So are you."

Hound did not reply.

"It's raining outside, Pig, exactly as you said. But not in here. There's a tile roof, and tile lasts if it isn't broken."

"H'in through ther winders, bucky."

"Bird too," Oreb remarked.

His owner stroked him. "Do you mean that you fly into the house through its broken windows as the rain does, Oreb? Or that you are as wet as Hound and Pig?"

"Bird wet!" Oreb spread his wings, warming them at the dying fire.

"Indeed you are, and for very the same reason-that is to say, because you were out there with me."

"I wasn't." Hound spoke to the fire. "I've got to tell you that, and there it is. I heard the godling when it spoke to you, and I hid in here, in one of the little rooms off this one, until Pig came."

"I don't blame you."

"I tried to get him to hide too, but he wouldn't. He went out into the rain to help you."

"Good man!" Oreb exclaimed.

"Then you went out to bring him back?"

Hound nodded, still looking at the fire.

"Hung h'on me h'arm," Pig explained.

"I made him listen. And you and the godling were talking, were conversing, really, like a man and his servant. We-I couldn't make out what you were saying. Could you, Pig?"

"Nae ter speak a'."

"We could only catch a word here and there, but we knew from your voices that it wasn't going to hurt you. So Pig put away his sword again and came back here."

"Good Silk!"

"He most certainly is, Oreb, which is why we must find him. But you and Hound and Pig are good, too, each in your own wayfriends far better than I deserve. You came to me while I sat in the godling's hand, and that took a great deal of courage. Hound's hiding in here was merely good sense, since he couldn't have achieved anything if he had tried to save me from what was actually a nonexistent threat. When there was a life to be saved, he acted as courageously as any man could.

"As for Pig, what he was ready to do leaves me speechless. I've sat cross-legged in the palm of that godling's hand, Pig, and the mere notion of attacking it in any way, of firing on it with a slug gun from a window of this house, for example, much less rushing at it with a sword..." He shook his head.

Pig chuckled. "Candy fer me, bucky. Could nae see h'it."

"But you saw Mucor? I mean the second time, when I sent her out to you?"

"Ho, aye." Pig's tone was no longer bantering.

Hound said, "Without offense, Horn. I hesitate to ask, but... I was terrified. I admit it."

"So was I," he said.

"I still am." Hound looked him in the face for the first time. "I'd like to know what the two of you were talking about. It wasn't... It isn't going to kill us or anything?"

He shook his head. "It's trying to help us, actually."

"Auld Pig'd like ter hear ter, bucky."

"I'll be happy to tell you, and in fact it's my duty to; but there are other questions. Perhaps Hound has asked them already. If so, I didn't get to hear your answers."

Hound said, "I haven't."

"Then I will. Can you tell us what Mucor said to you, Pig? It may be important."

There was a silence so long that Oreb croaked, "Pig talk!"

"Nae easy ter get h'it right," Pig muttered apologetically. "H'asked h'about me een. Knew I would, dinna yer?"

"Yes, I assumed so."

"Said she dinna know. A wee chat then, an' she said ter stay wi' yer, an' I might get 'em. Sae when Hound said h'it had yer, 'twas hoot sword, an' h'at 'em."

"I understand-or at least I understand more than I did. Did she tell you why she thought you might regain your sight in my company?"

"Did she, bucky? She did nae."

"After I left Mucor's room, Pig, I wanted to go into the suite that Silk's wife Hyacinth once occupied. It took me some while to find it, and when I did you were already there. You were angry, I believe, because I threatened to intrude."

"Aye, bucky."

For a moment or two he stared at the broad, fleshy face, made pitiable by the damp gray rag across its eyes. "May I ask what you were doing there, Pig?"

"A place ter think's h'all."

"You didn't know that the room you chose to think in had been Hyacinth's bedroom?"

"Did he? He dinna."

"You were outdoors, standing on the lawn, when you spoke with Mucor."

"Aye."

"It wasn't raining then-it can't have been, because it hadn't begun to rain yet when Hound and I went out to look for firewood sometime later. Why did you go back into the house, Pig? Was it to get out of the wind?"

"Why, bucky? Why nae? Dinna think h'about h'it."

"Did you come back here where Hound was waiting for us?"

Hound touched his knee and mouthed the word no.

"Dinna think sac," Pig murmured. "Crawlt h'in a winder."

"And went up to the second floor, which is where Hyacinth's suite was, to think?"

"Aye, bucky."

He felt his face and found that it had been dried by the fire, then ran his hand through his untidy hair, which was damp still. "You're fencing with me, Pig."

"H'is he?" It was not followed by the expected "he h'is nae!"

"Yes, he is. You are, and I'm too tired to fence. I've never taken fencing lessons, Pig, but Silk did and I got to know his fencing teacher, an old man named Xiphias. It seemed a glamorous business then, fencing."

"Did h'it noo?"

"Yes. Yes, it did." He recalled the ruined sword-stick, leaning forgotten in a corner of the Calde's Palace. He (or had it been Silk?) had drawn its hidden blade to feel the place where Blood's azoth had notched it. He recalled the moment, and with it the texture of a bamboo practice sword and the swift pattering steps when there was no time to boast, time only for the mock-deadly business of winning or losing, thrust and parry, advance and retreat. "Later," he said, "when I was building my mill, I wondered why anyone bothered. Other than by arrangement, the occasions when two combatants with swords fight it out must be very rare. On Green-have I told you I went to Green, Pig?"

"Aye."

He lay down, hands behind his head. "I got a sword there; and after I had used it to clear a sewer clogged with corpses, I used it to kill red leapers and animals of that kind. There's an art to that, if you will allow-but it isn't fencing."

Pig's deep, rough voice seemed to come from very far away. "Want ter tell yer, bucky. Truly do."

"You've sworn not to?"

"Dinna know meself. Somethin' h'inside, ca'in' me. Kept goin' an' goin', till h'it felt hamy. Believe h'in ghaists?"

Hound said, "No."

"Yes. Certainly."

"Ane h'in there, bucky. Felt a' her."

A half-strangled sob elicited, "Poor Pig," from Oreb.

"Winded perfume. Kissed me, ter. Believe h'it?"

"Yes. She kissed a great many men in there, Pig."

"If yer'd come h'in..." The long, brass-tipped scabbard stirred, scraping the hearthstone.

There was a long silence, broken by Hound. "You said you'd tell us what the godling told you."

"So I did. It's bad news for you, I'm afraid; and bad news for me as well. I should tell you first, however, that I haven't the least intention of doing what I was instructed to do."

"You're going to disobey it?"

"I am indeed. What right has it to expect obedience from me?" Again he felt the pelting rain, the freezing wind that had driven it like sleet, and the faint warmth of the huge hand. He opened his eyes. "It is not a rhetorical question, Hound. Pig, I ask it of you, too. What gives that godling-or any other-a moral right to our obedience? You've been here for the past twenty years, as I have not. Answer me if you can."