by Steven Brust
He dropped his sword.
“Kneel, hands behind your back.”
I sheathed my rapier and picked up the dagger I’d dropped, reversed it.
Okay, let’s stop and talk about knockout points for a minute. Years ago, Cawti and I saw The Falling Damps at Axon House. We had excellent seats (five rows back, just off center) thanks to Morrolan, and we had a wonderful time. We especially loved the banter and the fights (when Highrunner picks up Rakkos and throws him into the Baron’s men, I cheered like everyone else). But on the fourth day there was a sequence where Atasu, in sneaking into Valguard, knocks out three guards with three perfect shots to the head and then knows exactly when they’ll wake up. Mostly what this did was provide a lot of conversation between Cawti and me that night, because she didn’t buy it either. Yes, you can knock out a Dragaeran (or, presumably, a human) with one good, hard smack, especially on the chin (Cawti explained it in terms of smashing the brain against the skull, which sounds sort of reasonable). There are other knockout points as well. But the thing is, none of them are reliable or predictable. Sure, if I hit a guy perfectly, I can be pretty sure he’ll be out—for five seconds, or maybe ten minutes, or maybe a day, or maybe forever. And I said pretty sure, not absolutely sure.
Point is, if you’d rather knock someone out than kill him, that’s fine, but don’t bet your life on getting him in one shot, and don’t make predictions on how long he’ll be out.
Okay, so, where was I? Right. The guy was on his knees. I walked behind him, wound up and swung with the dagger hilt like I was serving in courtball (I’ve never played courtball, though I’ve seen it), and he went down. I took the time to see if they were both really good and out. I couldn’t be sure, but from their eyes and their breathing I was pretty confident. I put my weapons away and looked up at the top of the castle; no one seemed to be watching us. Good, then.
My plan was to take a walk around the place, noting what I could, until either I attracted attention, or the strange properties of the manor told me I’d reached some sort of boundary by transporting me to somewhere. In fact, I didn’t get very far: I was maybe a quarter of the way around what I guessed was the back of the place, walking just to the side of a narrow cart road, when my eye was caught by an odd door: It was almost parallel to the ground, angled up just slightly. I’d seen a door at just that angle.
I made sure no one had spotted me yet, and approached it. It was a single door but nearly as wide as two, and secured by a padlock. If we were to rate padlocks by time, this one was only about ten seconds. I did the thing, it made the click, and I removed it. I put it aside, pulled the door open, and descended three steps into the same wine cellar I’d seen at the manor.
12
THE RIVER AT HOUSETOWN
I stood for a minute at the bottom of the stone stairway, looking around to convince myself that, yes, this really was the same wine cellar, and trying to figure out what it meant. Same size, same number of racks, and what sealed it was the drip of water in the corner exactly where there had been a brownish stain in the manor. As I stood there, it occurred to me that I might as well steal a bottle. And my thought after that was, what if I took a bottle that still existed back where I was going? What would happen if two wine bottles from different times existed together? How often have you had to worry about that?
I poked around a little more, enough to convince myself that the hallways and storage rooms—now full of fruits, vegetables, bolts of cloth, and boxes of nails—were also the same. I stopped short of going through the door out of the cellar, but I looked through it, and there was a wide stairway.
I went back the other way, and eventually found the stairway that, in the manor, had gone down to a cave. Here, too, there were torches, but they weren’t burning. I stopped and lit one with the flint and steel they sell in the Easterners’ quarter, and without which I don’t know how I’d have lived for the last few years. Once the torch was burning well, I followed the stairway down. In the manor, this had let out into a cave, here it was—
A cave, but a completely different one. Lower, narrower, a lot sandier. For a minute I was completely disoriented, I guess because my brain wanted to orient itself by a sea that wasn’t there, but then it gave it up and got back to work. I went left, and the cave unceremoniously ended after a dozen paces; there were no marks on the wall. I turned and went back. As I passed the door, I thought for a moment I was smelling the ocean-sea again, but no, it was all wrong.
It was a long walk, and at times I had to turn sideways when the walls narrowed. What makes caves? Why do they behave like that? Someone must know.
I saw light ahead of me, and took some consolation that at least the back of the cave and the front went in the directions they were supposed to. I stepped out of the cave and into the fading light of early evening. Not the ocean-sea, it was a river, the cave opening onto its bank, perhaps thirty feet from the water, flowing from my right to my left. It was not a big river, and not a fast river, certainly puny compared to the one that cut through Adrilankha, but I could tell it was navigable because I have a good eye for such things and because there were a couple of small barges poling their way along it, both heading downriver.
I waited until the barges were past, just out of habitual sneakiness, then walked down to the edge.
There were tall weeds growing almost up to the water, but right on the bank was sand. It was soft, but not wet. As I said, it was slower than the Adrilankha River, and that meant quieter. I studied it as it went by. The day was still bright enough that I was able to locate the Furnace, and I concluded that, as before, it was late afternoon, which was what it had been when I left the cave, and made sense for when I’d last been outside of the castle. That meant I might still be where I had been, in what was the past, walking around merrily a few hundred years before I was born. What could possibly go wrong? I watched the river, speculating. I kept wanting to make a connection between the river and the fountain, but the source of the fountain was Dark Water, water that had never seen the light of day, and this river was exposed to the daylight.
I knelt down, scooped up some water, let it dribble through my fingers. Another barge came around the bend upriver. I thought about hiding, decided I didn’t care. I watched it as it went by. They came close enough so I could see the features of the bargemen, and they stared at me as they passed; one of them almost went into the water from staring so hard, and the others laughed at him. The barge was full of casks; I had no idea what was in them, but that was okay because I had no idea where they were going, either.
There were a few trees of a kind I didn’t recognize—short and spindly, with few branches—amid clumps of reeds. The water was a dirty brown. I turned back, but I couldn’t see the castle, although my guess was that I’d only walked around fifty rods. I turned back to the river as if it could explain what was going on, make sense of the whole thing. I walked with the water, caught a hint of motion from ahead of me, and stopped. The motion continued, too small or too far away from me to see anything but a sort of darting movement on the other side of the river, near the bank. I got closer, and it didn’t stop. Still closer, and about the time I was directly across the river it stopped. I froze and waited, and in a minute or so it started again.
As I watched I picked up more detail, until I was able to make sense of what I was seeing. It was a vallista, of course, because how could it not be? On a riverbank, just where it belonged. As I watched, it would tear off the top of one of the reeds with a quick motion, then chew it for a while, and set it down. At some point it stopped, fiddled around with something—presumably the chewed reeds—then went down to the water holding something in its mouth. It transferred what looked like a box of some kind into its paws, set it carefully in the water, then returned and began chewing more reeds.
I watched, fascinated, for at least a quarter of an hour until the fading light made it impossible. I looked around, and there was a glow coming from behind me. It took a while to realize
that it had to be coming from the castle. They must have lit the place up for the night. The light dispersed well enough that I was able to pick out general features of the area, though I couldn’t make out details. Loiosh and Rocza had better night vision than me, so presumably they could keep an eye out for anything that needed eyes out. What now? Find a place to sleep, try to make it back to my own time, or wander around aimlessly until something ate me?
All right. Wander aimlessly it is, then.
I continued farther downstream since I’d been going that way to begin with.
“Do you know what it was doing, Loiosh?”
“The vallista? Fishing.”
“Fishing.”
“Building a fish trap.”
“Oh. Hmmm. I’ll bet that’s significant or something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know. The whole manor is a trap? There’s a trap in it? I’ve fallen into a trap?”
“You think?”
“I don’t know. Devera’s trapped, anyway. I don’t think anything. I’m guessing, trying to plug meaning into things to see if an answer pops out.”
Loiosh shut up. I continued downriver, thinking. There was a lot of truth to what I’d told him: there was something about this whole mess, the manor, the movement through time, that felt like there was a clue I wasn’t seeing, some key that would explain everything. But while you’re waiting for that flash of inspiration, keep picking up pieces. T-A-L … never mind, that one wasn’t that good. My point is, keep learning what bits of information you can while you wait for it all to make sense. Or, in this case, keep walking down the river.
“Okay, fly around, keep an eye out for anything unfriendly or interesting.”
They took off, I kept walking, taking it slow, looking around as well as I went. It was becoming dark, though the process seemed slower than it did in Adrilankha. Probably my imagination.
“Nothing so far, Boss. Think we should go back to where we arrived here and see if we can get back?”
“Think you can find it?”
“Not sure.”
“Let’s stay with this for a while longer.”
My mind kept coming back to Dark Water, and trying to make sense of the river having something to do with it—the cave emerging right on its bank had to mean something. Well, probably meant something. Might mean something.
One of the dangers in trying to solve riddles is a temptation to force answers where they don’t belong because things would look neat and pretty that way. I’d been aware of this since I started exploring the manor, but I kept falling into it, or nearly falling into it, anyway.
I made a point to note the softness of the ground, the sounds (more varied than near the ocean-sea, with the lapping of the water only the smallest part), and the complex mix of scents, with the smell of fish predominating.
I hadn’t walked that far from the cave—half a mile at the most, perhaps less—when I came to a curving bridge made of stone and wood. I crossed it, and continued in the same direction I’d been going. A few minutes later, Loiosh said, “Boss? There are buildings, people.”
“Where?”
“Just ahead of you. You’ll reach them in a few minutes.”
“Anything obviously threatening?”
“You mean, are there a bunch of Dragonlords hiding behind a wall looking like they want to jump out and cut you to pieces? No. I’d have mentioned that.”
“Sorry.”
A few steps later, following the river around a bend, I saw lights. There was a road not far from the river, so I followed it into the village. For reasons that I’m sure would make perfect sense if I knew more, the village was built on one of the steeper hillsides, rather than the relatively flat areas nearby. There were a couple of dark structures right on the bank, and a small pier, although no boat, extending out into the river itself.
The other structures were placed at various points up the hill, purely by chance as far as I could tell. Most of them were dark; a few showed faint flickering light, like maybe a candle was going, or there were the embers of a fire. The one exception was about halfway up: there was a lot of light coming from it, and as I got closer I saw there was a sign hanging in front of it, though I couldn’t read the sign at all. But I know what a peasant inn looks like; I’ve been in enough of them over the last few years.
I made my way up without meeting anyone. Now I could see the sign well enough to identify a painted ring of gemstones: diamond, ruby, emerald, sapphire, opal, pearl, and another one that I think was supposed to be a beryl. The paint was fresh enough to make me think it was renewed often, which meant the house was prosperous.
As I reached the door, Loiosh said, “With you, or wait out here, Boss?”
That was always the question. Walk in to a Teckla public house with two jhereg on my shoulders, or without? Intimidate, or try to go for the harmless and friendly approach?
“Windows?”
“Plenty of them.”
“Then wait outside for now.”
He didn’t say anything. I knew he didn’t like it, and he knew I knew, and he accepted it as part of the job.
I opened the door slowly, entered, and tried to make myself small. The place wasn’t as big as I thought it would be, so it probably had back rooms. There were about a dozen tables of various sizes and different kinds of construction, and what decoration there was consisted of poor-quality landscape drawings: a coastal scene, rolling hills with sheep, mountains. The kind of art you like if you want to be anywhere but where you are. At the back was a small stage, hardly big enough for two people to stand on, and I suddenly thought of Sara.
Three of the tables were occupied: all Teckla, of course, and varying ages. It wasn’t very busy, but that could be because it was still early, or because … that was when I realized that I had no idea what day of the week it was. I don’t know why that was so disorienting. I should probably have asked Gormin.
Of course, all the patrons were looking at me. I smiled and bobbed my head a little, and tried not to look too intelligent. The host was a tiny woman, for a Dragaeran, who looked like everyone’s grandmother.
I found a table in the corner near the door and sat down with my back to the room. It made me a little nervous without Loiosh and Rocza watching for me, but it’s how you invite the room to look at you. The grandmother hesitated, but eventually decided my money was good. I asked for wine and was brought a bottle I didn’t recognize. It was already opened, and she poured some and waited while I dug out a coin.
She left, and I drank and wished I hadn’t. It was all aftertaste, and none of the aftertaste was taste you’d want to be tasting either after or before anything. If I were a good person, I’d give you the name of the wine so you can avoid it, but I’m not, and also I don’t remember. I’m going to bet it was local, and that this was a terrible area for grapes.
I sat there and pretended to drink my wine for half an hour or so, and no one came to talk to me. To the left, no one tried to hit me over the head with a chair either, so we can call it even. I shifted to another chair at the same table where I could get a better view of the room. No one was looking at me, and everyone was engaged in quiet conversation, though what they had to talk about other than me I couldn’t guess. That’s not true, actually. I’d been around Teckla before, and I knew what they talked about. They weren’t talking about how the weather would affect the crop of—I don’t know, whatever they grew here. They also weren’t talking about how His Lordship treated them, or the share he took. They weren’t talking about how much better that plow was now that it’d been sharpened. No, they were talking about what their youngest had been up to, and about that project for the fair, and about how the local merchant had raised the price of dreamgrass and wouldn’t he be surprised when no one bought it anymore, and about that funny thing that had happened when the cat got too close to the mama goat as she was giving birth. I didn’t need to overhear them, because I’d been in a score of places just like it. The hostess
watched the place like a mother bear, occasionally venturing out to fill an order.
The nearest table had two middle-aged women and a young man. I stood up and drifted over. “May I?”
It was obvious that none of them liked the question much. They didn’t know what to make of this guy—this Easterner—walking around openly armed, and, after all, Easterners were the only people below them socially. Tough decision for them. I put on my best non-threatening smile and waited.
Eventually, one of the women grunted and nodded, which answered my first question: which one of them was in charge. She had almost perfectly round eyes, pale skin even in the dim light of the house, and I’ve had daggers duller than her nose.
“I’m Vlad,” I said.
They rattled off odd-sounding names. The one with the nose I caught as something like a cough. Ouffach, or something like that. I said, “What do you drink here? I tried the wine.”
They all laughed, the way you laugh when someone has just discovered what you’ve known for years.
“Beer,” she said. “Stay with the beer.” She waved the hostess over and ordered one for me. I made a gesture indicating I wanted to buy a round, and she nodded. I’m not much of a beer drinker, but it was all right.
“What are you doing here?” said Ouffach.
“Just passing through,” I said.
“Where are you going?”
“Where? I’m not even sure what direction I’ll head in. Whatever I can find. Is there anything to see around here?”
The other woman, whose name I hadn’t quite caught, said, “Just a few miles west of here are the fairgrounds.”
“Is there a fair?”
“It ended eight days ago.”
“Okay.”
The younger man said, “The ribbons are still up.”
The other woman shook her head. “No, they’re gone now.”
“You sure? I was by there day before yesterday and—”
Ouffach cleared her throat, and the other two stopped. She turned back to me. “Are you looking for work?”