by Steven Brust
I said, “So there you were when Kelly came along, and he changed your life, and made you see this and that and the other, right?”
She smiled. “Something like that. I used to see him selling papers on the corner every day when I ran my errands. But one day, just out of nowhere, I realized that I could buy one and it would be something new to read. I had never heard of bookstores. I think Kelly was around twenty then.
“For the next year I’d buy a paper every week, then run off before he could talk to me. I had no idea what the paper was about, but I liked it. After a year or so, it finally began to sink in and I started thinking about what it was saying, and what it had to do with me. I remember it coming as a shock to me when I realized that there was something, somehow, wrong when a ten-year-old child had to go into inns to steal.”
“That’s true,” I said. “A ten-year-old child should be able to steal in the streets.”
“Stop it,” she snapped, and I decided she probably had a point so I mumbled an apology and said, “So, anyway, that’s when you decided to save the world.”
I guess her years had taught her a certain kind of patience, because she didn’t glare at me cynically as Paresh would have, or close up as Cawti would have. She shook her head and said, “It’s never that simple. I started talking to Kelly, of course, and we started arguing. I didn’t realize until later that the only reason I kept returning to him was that he was the only person I knew who listened to me and seemed to take me seriously. I don’t think I ever would have done anything about it, but that was the year the tavern tax came down.”
I nodded. That had been before my time, but I could still remember my father talking about it in that peculiar, hushed tone he always used when talking about something the Empire did that he didn’t like. I said, “What happened then?”
She laughed. “A lot of things. The first thing was that the inn closed, almost right away. The owner sold it, probably for just enough to live on. The new owner closed it until the tax fuss settled, so I was out on the street without a job. That same day I saw Kelly, and his paper had a big article about it. I said something to him about his silly old paper, and this was real, and he tore into me like a dzur after lyorn. He said that was what the paper was about, and the only way to save the jobs was this and that and the other. I don’t remember most of it, but I was pretty mad myself and not thinking too clearly. I told him the problem was the Empress was greedy, and he said that no, the Empress was desperate, because of this and that, and the next thing I knew he was sounding like he was on her side. I stormed off and didn’t see him again for years.”
“What did you do?”
“I found another inn, this one on the Dragaeran side of town. Since Dragaerans can’t tell how old we are anyway, and the owner thought I was ‘cute,’ they let me serve customers. It turned out that the last waiter had been killed in a knife fight the week before. I guess that should have told me what kind of place it was, and it was that kind of place, but I did all right. I found a flat just on this side of Twovine, and walked the two miles to work every day. The nice thing was that the walk took me past a little bookstore. I spent a lot of money there, but it was worth it. I especially loved history—Dragaeran, not human. And the stories, too. I guess I couldn’t tell them apart very well. I used to pretend I was a Dzurlord, and I’d fight the battle of the Seven Pines then go charging up Dzur Mountain to fight the Enchantress all in one breath. What is it?”
I suppose I must have jumped a bit when she mentioned Dzur Mountain. I said, “Nothing. When did you meet Kelly again?”
My klava was cool enough to pick up and just barely warm enough to be worth drinking. I drank some. Natalia said, “It was after the head tax was instituted in the Eastern section. A couple who lived downstairs from me also knew how to read, and they ran into a group of people who were trying to get up a petition to the Empress against the tax.”
I nodded. Someone had come to my father’s restaurant with a similar petition years later, even though we lived in the Dragaeran part of the city. My father had thrown him out. I said, “I’ve never understood why the head tax was even instituted. Was the Empire trying to keep Easterners out of the city?”
“It had to do largely with the uprisings in the eastern and northern duchies that ended forced labor. I’ve written a book on it. Would you like to buy a copy?”
“Never mind.”
“Anyway,” she continued, “my neighbors and I got involved with these people. We worked with them for a while, but I didn’t like the idea of going to the Empire on our hands and knees. It seemed wrong. I guess my head was just filled with those histories and stories I’d read, and I was only fourteen, but it seemed to me that the only ones who ever got anything from the Empress had to ask boldly and prove themselves worthy.” She said “boldly” and “worthy” with a bit of emphasis. “I thought we ought to do something wonderful for the Empire, then ask that the tax be lifted as our reward.”
I smiled. “What did they say to that?”
“Oh, I never actually proposed it. I wanted to, but I was afraid they’d laugh at me.” Her lips turned up briefly. “And of course they would have. But we had a few public meetings to talk about it, and Kelly started showing up at them, with, I think, four or five others. I don’t remember what they said, but they made a big impression on me. They were younger than a lot of those there, but they seemed to know exactly what they were talking about, and they came in and left together, like a unit. They reminded me of the Dragon armies, I guess. So after one of the meetings I went up to Kelly and said, ‘Remember me?’ And he did, and we started talking, and we were arguing again inside of a minute, only this time I didn’t walk away. I gave him my address and we agreed to stay in touch.
“I didn’t join him for another year or so, after the riots, and the killings. It was just about the time the Empress finally lifted the head tax.”
I nodded as if I knew the history she was speaking of. I said, “Was Kelly involved in that?”
“We were all involved. He wasn’t behind the riots or anything, but he was there all the time. He was incarcerated for a while, at one of the camps they set up when they broke us up. I managed to avoid the Guards that time, even though I’d been around, too, when the Lumber Exchange was torched. That was what finally brought the troops in, you know. The Lumber Exchange was owned by a Dragaeran; an Iorich, I think.”
“I hadn’t known that,” I said truthfully. “You’ve been with Kelly ever since?”
She nodded.
I thought about Cawti. “It must be difficult,” I said. “I mean, he must be a hard man to work with.”
“It’s exciting. We’re building the future.”
I said, “Everyone builds the future. Everything we do every day builds the future.”
“All right, I mean we’re building it consciously. We know what we’re doing.”
“Yeah. Okay. You’re building the future. To get it, you’re sacrificing the present.”
“What do you mean?” Her tone was genuinely inquisitive rather than snappy, which gave me some hope for her.
“I mean that you’re so wrapped up in what you’re doing that you’re blind to the people around you. You’re so involved in creating this vision of yours that you don’t care how many innocent people are hurt.” She started to speak but I kept going. “Look,” I said, “we both know who I am and what I do, so there’s no point pretending otherwise, and if you think it’s inherently evil, then there isn’t anything more to say. But I can tell you that I have never, never intentionally hurt an innocent person. And I’m including Dragaerans as people, so don’t think I’m pulling one on you that way because I’m not.”
She caught my eye and held it. “I didn’t think you were. And I won’t even discuss what you mean by innocent. All I can say is that if you really believe what you’ve just said, nothing I can say will change your mind, so there isn’t any point in discussing it.”
I relaxed, not realizing that
I’d been tense. I guess I’d expected her to lambaste me or something. I suddenly wondered why I cared, and decided that Natalia seemed to be the most reasonable of these people that I’d yet met, and I somehow wanted to like, and be liked by, at least one of them. That was stupid. I’d given up trying to make people “like” me when I was twelve years old, and had the results of that attitude beaten into me in ways I’ll never forget.
And with that thought a certain anger came, and with the anger a certain strength. I kept it off my face, but it came back to me then, as a chilly, refreshing wave. I had started down the path that led me to this point many, many years before, and I had taken those first steps because I hated Dragaerans. That was my reason then, it was my reason now, it was enough.
Kelly’s people did everything for ideals I could never understand. To them, people were “the masses,” individuals only mattered by what they did for the movement. Such people could never love. Not purely, unselfishly, with no thought for why and how and what it would do. And, similarly, they could never hate; they were too wrapped up in why someone did something to be able to hate him for doing it.
But I hated. I could feel my hatred inside of me, spinning like a ball of ice. Most of all, right now, I hated Herth. No, I didn’t really want to hire someone to send him for a walk, I wanted to do it myself. I wanted to feel that tug of a body as it jerks and kicks while I hold the handle and the life erupts from it like water from the cold springs of the Eastern Mountains. That’s what I wanted, and what you want makes you who you are.
I put down a few coins to pay for the klava and the tea. I don’t know how much Natalia knew of what was going on in my head, but she knew I was done talking. She thanked me and we stood up at the same time. I bowed and thanked her for her company.
As I walked out, she picked up her two companions by sight and they left the place just ahead of me, turned, and waited for her by the door. As I left, the Easterner looked at my grey cloak with the stylized jhereg on it and sneered. If the Teckla had done it I’d have killed him, but it was the Easterner so I just kept walking.
13
. . . remove cat hairs . . .
THE CHIMES SOUNDED, LIGHT and tinkling, as I stepped into the shop. My grandfather was writing in a bound tablet with an old-fashioned pencil. As I came in he looked up and smiled.
“Vladimir!”
“Hello, Noish-pa.” I hugged him. We sat down and he said hello to Loiosh. Ambrus jumped into my lap and I greeted him properly. Ambrus never purred when stroked, but he somehow let you know when he liked what you were doing anyway. My grandfather told me once that Ambrus only purred when they were working magic together; the purr was a sign that everything was all right.
I studied my grandfather. Was he looking a bit older, a little more worn than he used to? I wasn’t sure. It’s hard to look at a familiar face as if it were that of a stranger. For some reason my eyes were drawn to his ankles, and I noticed how thin and frail they looked, even for his size. Yet, again for his size, his chest seemed large and well-muscled beneath a faded tunic of red and green. His head, bald save for the thinnest fringe of white hair, gleamed in the candlelight.
“So,” he said after a while.
“How are you feeling?”
“I am fine, Vladimir. And you?”
“About the same, Noish-pa.”
“Yes. There is something on your mind?”
I sighed. “Were you around in two twenty-one?”
He raised his eyebrows. “The riots? Yes. That was a bad time.” He shook his head as he spoke and the corners of his mouth fell. But it was funny; it seemed, at the same time, that his eyes lit up just a bit, way down deep.
I said, “You were involved?”
“Involved? How could I not be involved? It was everyone; we were part of it or we hid from it, but we were all involved.”
“Was my father involved?”
He gave me a look that I couldn’t read. Then he said, “Yes, your father, he was there. He and I, and your grandmother too, and my brother Jani. We were at Twovine and Hilltop when the Empire tried to break us.” His voice hardened a bit as he said that. “Your father killed a Guard, too. With a butcher knife.”
“He did?”
He nodded.
I didn’t say anything for a while, trying to see how I felt about this. It seemed odd, and I wished I’d known it while my father was still alive. There was a brief pang from knowing that I’d never see him again. I finally said, “And you?”
“Oh, they gave me a post after the fight, so I guess I was there too.”
“A post?”
“I was a block delegate, for M’Gary Street north of Elm. So when we met, I had to go there for everyone from our neighborhood and say what we wanted.”
“I hadn’t known about that. Dad never talked about it.”
“Well, he was unhappy. That was when I lost your grandmother—when they came back in.”
“The Empire?”
“Yes. They came back with more troops—Dragons who had fought in the East.”
“Would you like to tell me about it?”
He sighed and looked away for a moment. I guess he was thinking about my grandmother. I wished I’d met her. “Perhaps another time, Vladimir.”
“Sure. All right. I noticed that Kelly looked at you as if he recognized you. Was it from then?”
“Yes. I knew him. He was young then. When we spoke of him before I didn’t know it was the same Kelly.”
“Is he a good man, Noish-pa?”
He glanced at me quickly. “Why this question?”
“Because of Cawti, I suppose.”
“Hmmph. Well, yes, he is good, perhaps, if what he does you call good.”
I tried to decipher that, then came at it from another angle. “You didn’t seem to think much of Cawti being involved with these people. Why is that, if you were involved in it yourself?”
He spread his hands. “Vladimir, if there is an uprising against the landlords, then of course you want to help. What else can you do? But this is different. She is looking to make trouble where there is none. And it was never something that came between Ibronka—your grandmother—and me.”
“It didn’t?”
“Of course not. That happened, and we were all a part of it. We had to be part of it or we would be with the counts and the landlords and the bankers. It was one or the other then, it was not a thing for which I abandoned my family.”
“I see. Is that what you want to tell Cawti, if she comes to see you?”
“If she asks I will tell her.”
I nodded. I wondered how Cawti would react, and decided that I no longer knew her well enough to guess. I changed the topic then, but I kept noticing that he gave me funny looks from time to time. Well, I could hardly blame him.
I let things churn around in my head. Franz’s ghost or no Franz’s ghost, it would be most convenient for me if Kelly and his whole band were to fall off the edge of the world, but there was no good way to arrange that.
It also seemed that the biggest problem with getting to Herth was that he could take as much time as he wanted in getting me, and it wasn’t hurting him at all. The Easterners had cut back on his business in some neighborhoods, but not all, and he still had his contacts and hired muscle and legmen all set to go back to business as usual as soon as the time was right. And he was a Dragaeran; he would live another thousand years or so, so what was his hurry?
If I could make him move at all, I might be able to force him out into the open, where I could get another shot at him. Furthermore . . . hmmm. My grandfather was silent, watching me as if he knew how fast my brain was working. I started putting together a new plan. Loiosh had no comment on it. I looked at it from a couple of different directions as I sipped herb tea. I held the plan in my head and bounced it off several different possible problems, and it rebounded just fine. I decided to go ahead with it.
“You have an idea, Vladimir?”
“Yes, Noish-pa.”<
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“Well, you should be about it then.”
I stood up. “You’re right.”
He nodded and said nothing more. I bade him good-bye while Loiosh flew out of the door in front of me. Loiosh said everything was all right. I was still feeling worried about Quaysh. It would be much harder to implement my plan if I were dead.
I had only walked a couple of blocks when I was approached. I was passing an outdoor market, and she was leaning against a building, her hands behind her back. She seemed to be about fifteen years old and wore a peasant skirt of yellow and blue. The skirt was slit, which meant nothing, but her legs were shaved, which meant a great deal.
She moved away from the wall as I walked by and she said hello. I stopped and wished her a pleasant day. It suddenly occurred to me that this could be a set-up; I ran a hand through my hair and adjusted my cloak. She seemed to think I was trying to impress her and showed me a pair of dimples. I wondered how much extra the dimples were worth.
“Anything, Loiosh?”
“Too crowded to tell for sure, boss, but I don’t see Quaysh.”
I decided it was probably just what it seemed to be.
She asked if I cared to take her somewhere for a drink. I said maybe. She asked if I cared to take her somewhere for a screw. I asked her how much, she said ten and seven, which worked out to an Imperial, which was a third of what my tags were charging.
I said, “Sure.” She nodded without bothering with the dimples and led me around the corner. I let a knife fall into my hand, just in case. We entered an inn that displayed a sign with several bees buzzing about a hive. She spoke to the innkeeper and I put my knife away. I handed him seven silver coins. He gestured with his head toward the stairs and said, “Room three.” The inn was pretty full for the afternoon, and there was a haze of blue smoke. It smelled old and foul and stale. I would have guessed that everyone in the place was a drunk.