The Book of Athyra

by Steven Brust

  “Where’s the boy?”

  “With friends.”

  “You have friends?” I said, not entirely being sarcastic.

  He gave me a brief smile and said, “Rocza is watching him.”

  He accepted the bundle of ledgers and papers, trying not to look eager. I made faces at Loiosh while he perused them; at last he looked up and nodded. “This is what I’m after,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “What do they mean?”

  “I haven’t any idea.”

  “Then how do you know—?”

  “From the notations at the top of the columns.”

  “I see,” I lied. “Well, then—”

  “What am I after?”

  “Yes.”

  He looked at me. I’d seen Vlad happy, sad, frightened, angry, and hurt; but I’d never before seen him look uncomfortable. At last he said, “All right,” and began speaking.

  2

  ON THE WALL OF a small hostelry just outside of Northport someone had written in black, sloppy letters: “When the water is clean, you see the bottom; when the water is dirty, you see yourself.”

  “Deep philosophy,” I remarked to Loiosh. “Probably a brothel.”

  He didn’t laugh. Call me superstitious, but I decided to find another place. I nodded to the boy to follow. I’m not sure when he started responding to nonverbal cues; I hadn’t been paying that much attention. But it was a good sign. On the other hand, that had been the only improvement in the year he’d been with me and that was a bad sign.

  Wait for it, Kiera; wait for it. I’ve done this before. I know how to tell a Verra-be-damned story, okay?

  So I kept walking, getting closer to Northport. I’d come to Northport because Northport is the biggest city in the world—okay, in the Empire—that doesn’t have any sort of university. No, I have nothing against universities, but you must know how they work—they act like magnets to pull in the best brains in an area, as well as the richest and most pretentious. They are seats of great learning and all that. Now I had a problem that required someone of great, or maybe not-so-great learning, but walking into a university, well, I didn’t like the idea. I don’t know how to go about it, and that means I don’t know how to go about it without getting caught. For example, what happens if I go to, say, Candletown, and inquire at Lady Brindlegate’s University, and someone is rude to me, and I have to drop him? Then what? It makes a big stink, and the wrong people hear about it, and there I am running again.

  But I figured, what if I find a place with a lot of people but no institution to suck up the talented ones? It means it’s going to be a place with a lot of hedge-wizards, and wise old men, and greatwives. And that’s just what I was looking for—what I had been looking for for most of a year, and not finding, until I hit on this idea.

  I’ll get to it, I’ll get to it. Trust me.

  I got a little closer to town, stopped at an inn, and—look, you don’t need to hear all this. I stayed out of a fight, listened to gossip, pumped a few people, went to another inn, did the same, repeat, repeat, and finally found myself at a little blue cottage in the woods. Yes, blue—a blue lump of house standing out from all the greens of the woods surrounding Northport. It was one of the ugliest objects I’ve ever seen.

  The first thing that happened was a dog came running out toward us. I was stepping in front of Savn and reaching for a knife before Loiosh said, “His tail is wagging, boss.”

  “Right. I knew that.”

  It was some indeterminate breed with a bit of hound in it—the sleek build of a lyorn with the sort of long, curly, reddish hair that needed cleaning and combing, a long nose, and floppy ears. It didn’t come up to my waist, and it generally seemed pretty nonthreatening. It stopped in front of me and started sniffing. I held out my left hand, which it approved, then it gave a half-jump up toward Loiosh, then one toward Rocza, went down on its front legs, barked twice, and stood in front of me waiting and wagging. Rocza hissed; Loiosh refused to dignify it by responding.

  The door opened, and a woman called, “Buddy!” The dog looked back at her, turned in a circle, and ran up to her, then rose on its hind legs and stayed there for a moment. The woman was old and a foot and a half taller than me. She had grey hair and an expression that would sour your favorite dairy product. She said, “You’re an Easterner,” in a surprisingly flutelike voice.

  “Yes,” I said. “And your house is painted blue.”

  She let that go. “Who’s the boy?”

  “The reason I’m here.”

  “He’s human.”

  “And to think I hadn’t noticed.”

  Loiosh chuckled in my head; the woman didn’t. “Don’t be saucy,” she said. “No doubt you’ve come for help with something; you ought to be polite.” The dog sat down next to her and watched us, his tongue out.

  I tried to figure out what House she was and decided it was most likely Tsalmoth, to judge by her complexion and the shape of her nose—her green shawl, dirty white blouse, and green skirt were too generic to tell me anything.

  “Why do you care?” said Loiosh.

  “Good question.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be polite. You’re a—do you find the term ‘hedge-wizard’ objectionable?”

  “Yes,” she said, biting out the word.

  “What do you prefer?”

  “Sorcerer.”

  She was a sorcerer the way I was a flip-dancer. “All right. I’ve heard you are a sorcerer, and that you are skilled in problems of the mind.”

  “I can sometimes help, yes.”

  “The boy has brain fever.”

  She made a harrumphing sound. “There is no such thing.”

  I shrugged.

  She looked at him, but still didn’t step out of her door, nor ask us to approach. I expected her to ask more questions about his condition, but instead she said, “What do you have to offer me?”

  “Gold.”

  “Not interested.”

  That caught me by surprise. “You’re not interested in gold?”

  “I have enough to get by.”

  “Then what do you want?”

  “Offer her her life, boss.”

  “Grow up, Loiosh.”

  She said, “There isn’t anything I want that you could give me.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I said.

  She studied me as if measuring me for a bier and said, “I haven’t known many Easterners.” The dog scratched its ear, stood, walked around in a circle, sat down in the same place it had been, and scratched itself again.

  “If you’re asking if you can trust me,” I said, “there’s no good answer I can give you.”

  “That isn’t the question.”

  “Then—”

  “Come in.”

  I did, Savn following along dutifully, the dog last. The inside was worse than the outside. I don’t mean it was dirty—on the contrary, everything was neat, clean, and polished, and there wasn’t a speck of dust; no mean trick in a wood cottage. But it was filled with all sorts of magnificently polished wood carvings—magnificent and tasteless. Oil lamps, chairs, cupboards, and buffets were all of dark hardwood, all gleaming with polish, and all of them horribly overdone, like someone wanted to put extra decorations on them just to show that it could be done. It almost made it worse that the wood nearly matched the color of the dog, who turned around in place three times before curling up in front of the door.

  I studied the overdone mantelpiece, the tasteless candelabra, and the rest. I said, “Your own work?”

  “No. My husband was a wood-carver.”

  “A quite skillful one,” I said truthfully.

  She nodded. “This place means a lot to me,” she said. “I don’t want to leave.”

  I waited.

  “I’m being asked to leave—I’ve been given six months.”

  Rocza shifted uneasily on my right shoulder. Loiosh, on my left, said, “I don’t believe this, boss. The widow being kicked out of her house? Come on
.”

  “By whom?”

  “The owner of the land.”

  “Who owns the land?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Why does he want you to leave?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you been offered compensation?”

  “Eh?”

  “Did he say he’d pay you?”

  “Oh. Yes.” She sniffed. “A pittance.”

  “I see. How is it you don’t know who owns the land?”

  “It belongs to some, I don’t know, organization, or something.”

  I instantly thought, the Jhereg, and felt a little queasy. “What organization?”

  “A business of some kind. A big one.”

  “What House?”

  “Orca.”

  I relaxed. “Who told you you have to move?”

  “A young woman I’d never seen before, who worked for it. She was an Orca, too, I think.”

  “What was her name?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And you don’t know the name of the organization she works for?”

  “No.”

  “How do you know she really worked for them?”

  The old woman sniffed. “She was very convincing.”

  “Do you have an advocate?”

  She sniffed again, which seemed to pass for a “no.”

  “Then finding a good one is probably where we should start.”

  “I don’t trust advocates.”

  “Mmmm. Well, in any case, we’re going to have to find out who holds the lease to your land. How do you pay it, anyway?”

  “My husband paid it through the next sixty years.”

  “But—”

  “The woman said I’d be getting money back.”

  “Isn’t there a land office or something?”

  “I don’t know. I have the deed somewhere in the attic with my papers; it should be there.” Her eyes narrowed. “You think you can help me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sit down.”

  I did. I helped Savn to a chair, then found one myself. It was ugly but comfortable. The dog’s tail thumped twice against the floor, then it put its head on its paws.

  “Tell me about the boy,” she said.

  I nodded. “Have you ever encountered the undead?”

  Her eyes widened and she nodded once.

  “Have you ever fought an Athyra wizard? An undead Athyra wizard with a Morganti weapon?”

  Now she looked skeptical. “You have?”

  “The boy has. The boy killed one.”

  “I don’t believe it.”

  “Look at him.”

  She did. He sat there, staring at the wall across from him.

  “And he’s been like this ever since?”

  “Ever since he woke up. Actually, he’s improved a little—he follows me now without being told, and if I put food in front of him, he eats it.”

  “Does he keep himself—?”

  “Yes, as long as I remember to tell him to every once in a while.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “He took a bash on the head at the same time. That may be part of the problem.”

  “When did it happen?”

  “About a year ago.”

  “You’ve been wandering around with him for a year?”

  “Yeah. I’ve been looking for someone who could cure him. I haven’t found anyone.” I didn’t tell her how hard I’d been looking for someone willing and able to help; I spared her the details of disappointments, dead ends, aimless searches, and trying to balance my need to help him with my need to stay away from anywhere big enough for the Jhereg to be a danger—anywhere like Northport, say. I didn’t tell her, in other words, that I was getting desperate.

  “Why haven’t you gone to a real sorcerer?” There was more than a hint of bitterness there.

  “I’m on the run.”

  “From whom?”

  “None of your business.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I helped the boy kill an undead Athyra wizard.”

  “Why did he kill him?”

  “To save my life.”

  “Why was the wizard trying to kill you?”

  “You ask too many questions.”

  She frowned, then said, “We’ll begin by looking at his head wound.”

  “All right. And tomorrow I’ll start on your problem.”

  * * *

  SHE SPREAD OUT A few blankets on the floor for us, and that’s where we slept. I woke up once toward morning and saw that the dog had curled up next to Savn. I hoped it didn’t have fleas.

  A few hours later I woke up for real and got to work. The old woman was already awake and holding a candle up to Savn’s eyes, either to see if he’d respond to the light or to look into his mind, or for some other reason. Rocza was on the mantel, looking down anxiously; she’d developed a fondness for Savn and I think was feeling protective. The dog lay there watching the procedure and thumping its tail whenever the old woman moved.

  I said, “Where are the papers?”

  She turned to me and said, “If you’d like coffee first, help yourself.”

  “Do you have klava?”

  “You can make it. The deed and the rest of my papers are in boxes up there.” She gestured toward the ceiling above the kitchen, where I noticed a square door.

  I made the klava and filled two cups. Then I found a ladder and a lamp, and took myself up to a large attic filled—I mean filled—with wooden crates, all of which were filled with junk, most of the junk being papers of one sort or another.

  I grabbed a crate at random, brought it back down, and started going through it.

  In the course of my career, Kiera, I’ve done a few odd things here and there. I mean, there was the time I spent half a day under a pile of refuse because it was the only place to hide. There was the time I took a job selling fish in the market. Once I ended up impersonating a corporal in the Imperial Guard and had to arrest someone for creating a disturbance in a public place. But I hope I never have to spend another week going through a thousand or more years’ worth of an old lady’s private papers and letters, just to find the name of her landlord, so I could sweet-talk, threaten, or intimidate him into letting her stay on the land, so she’d be willing to cure—Oh, skip it. It was a long week, and it was odd finding bits of nine-hundred-year-old love letters, or scraps of advice on curing hypothermia, or how to tell if an ingrown toenail is the result of a curse.

  I spent about fourteen hours a day grabbing a crate, going through the papers in it, arranging them neatly, then bringing the crate back up to the attic and setting it in the stack of those I’d finished while getting another. I discovered to my surprise that it was curiously satisfying work, and that I was going to be disappointed when I found what I was looking for and would have to leave the rest of the papers unsorted.

  Sometimes locals would show up, no doubt with some problem or another, and on those occasions I’d leave them alone and go walking around outside, which helped to clear my head from all the paperwork. If any of her customers had a problem with the boy or the jhereg, I never heard about it, and I enjoyed the walks. I got so I knew the area pretty well, but there isn’t much there worth knowing. One day when I got back after a long walk the old woman was standing in front of the fireplace holding a crumpled-up piece of paper. I said, “Is that it?”

  She threw the paper into the fire. “No,” she said. She didn’t face me.

  I said, “Is there something wrong?”

  “Let’s get back to our respective work, shall we?”

  I said, “If it turns out the lease isn’t in any of these boxes—”

  “You’ll find it,” she said.

  “Heh.”

  But I did find it at last, late on the fifth day after going through about two-thirds of the crates: a neat little scroll tied up with green ribbon, and stating the terms of the lease, with the rent payable to something called We
stman, Niece, and Nephew Land Holding Company.

  “I found it,” I announced.

  The old woman, who turned out to have some strange Kanefthali name that sounded like someone sneezing, said, “Good.”

  “I’ll go visit them tomorrow morning. Any progress?”

  She glared at me, then said, “Don’t rush me.”

  “I’m just asking.”

  She nodded and went back to what she was doing, which was testing Savn’s reflexes by tapping a stick against his knee, while watching his eyes.

  Buddy watched us both somberly and decided there was nothing that had to be done right away. He got up and padded over to his water bowl, drank with doglike enthusiasm, and nosed open the door.

  “Are we going to kill someone tomorrow, boss?”

  “I doubt it. Why? Bored?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Exercise patience.”

  Loiosh and I went outside and tasted the air. He flew around while I sat on the ground. Buddy came up, nosed me, and scratched at the door. The old woman let him in. Loiosh landed on my shoulder.

  “Worried about Savn, boss?”

  “Some. But if this doesn’t work, we’ll try something else, that’s all.”

  “Right.”

  I started to get cold. A small animal moved around in the woods near the house. I realized with something of a start not only that I’d come outside without my sword but that I didn’t even have a dagger on me. The idea made me uncomfortable, so I went back inside and sat in front of the fire. A little later I went to bed.

  * * *

  I’D BEEN TO NORTHPORT a few years before, and I’d been hanging around the edges these last few days, but that next morning was really the first time I’d seen it. It’s a funny town—sort of a miniature Adrilankha, the way it’s built in the center of those three hills the way Adrilankha is built between the cliffs, and both of them jutting up against the sea. Northport has its own personality, though. One gets the impression, looking at the three-story inns and the five-story Lumber Exchange Building and the streets that start out wide and straight and end up narrow and twisting, that someone wanted it to be a big city but it never made it. The first section I came to was one of the new parts, with a lot of wood houses where tradesmen lived and had shops, but as I got closer to the docks the buildings got smaller and older, and were made of good, solid stonework. And the people of Northport seem to have this attitude—I’m sure you’ve noticed it, too—that wants to convince you what a great place they’re living in. They spend so much time talking about how easygoing everyone is that it gets on your nerves pretty quickly. They talk so much about how it’s only around Northport that you can find the redfin or the fatfish that you end up not wanting to taste them just to spite the populace, you know what I mean?