Steven Brust - Dzur

I badly wanted to be able to be able to communicate with her, but all I got was a vague sensation; pleasant, but frustrating.

If I’m not around when she wakes up, you’ll remember to say hello for me, Sethra had said, or something like that.

“Hey! Lady Teldra! Wake up!”

She didn’t.

I wanted to go to sleep, or get drunk, or something. What I needed was my old Organization, with all its sources of informa­tion, and legwork; but I couldn’t reach Kragar or even Morrolan’s network. I was isolated, and frighteningly helpless. Which was odd, considering that I still had all of my skills, my familiars, a lot of money, and a Great Weapon. If I could just—

Hmmmm.

I did have a lot of money, didn’t I?

“Boss? You have something?”

“Yeah,” I told Loiosh. “Yeah, I think I do.”

“Is it something stupid?”

“Oddly enough, no. There was something I’d forgotten.”

“Which means—?”

I checked the time. It had made it to evening; there would now be people starting to fill the streets.

“Come on, Loiosh. It’s time to move.”

“Sounds good. Does that mean there’s a plan?”

“Just watch me.” 9. Chilled Defrina

Mihi removed the wine and replaced it with a new bottle, providing us with new glasses, as well. Again the feather, the glove, the tongs.

Defrina is a white wine with just a hint of, of all things, cherries. The sweetness, which would normally have been too much for me, was cut by an extra chill that Mihi had put on it just for me. The first sip said a merry hello to the flavors already dancing around my tongue, and then it slid down my throat still leaving behind it the taste of the trout, but brightened just a little, if that makes any sense.

I leaned back and studied my dinner companion. “Fun,” I repeated. He grinned and nodded.

The first several things that came to mind were all sarcastic, but sarcasm didn’t really go with Valabar’s trout and a good, chilled white wine. I said, “Can you explain that?”

He frowned and considered for a moment, then said, “You know, I don’t think I can. I’ll try.”

I drank some wine and nodded.

“You see,” he said. “There’s this feeling you get when things are happening almost too fast for you to handle, and if you make a mistake, you’re dead. You’d be scared out of your mind if you weren’t too busy. Do you know what I mean?”

“Well, I know how I feel at times like that. I don’t much care for it.”

“Don ’ t you?”

I ate some more fish and drank some more wine.

“In fact,” I said, “I don ’ t remember enjoying it, or not enjoying it. Like you said, I’m too busy.”

“Well, there you are.”

I grunted. “Afterward, though, I hate it.”

He grinned. “I guess that’s the difference.”

“As long as there is one.”

“That’s just what I was thinking, Loiosh.”

“Of course,” he added, “the cause enters into it as well.”

“The cause?”

“The reason you’re fighting.”

“Oh. It isn’t just to fight?”

“Well, sometimes it is.”

“You mean, most of the time it is?”

“Yeah, most of the time.”

“Uh huh.”

“But not the important times.”

“Mmm. Care to explain that?”

“It isn’t difficult. When you do something big, you want it to matter.” He looked at me. “Well, don’t you?”

“I don’t usually get into things by my own plan. I get dumped into them, and then I’m too busy trying to stay alive to think about the im­portance of the cause.”

He nodded as if he understood.

I had another bite of fish, and another sip of wine.

I remembered a friend I’d had named Ricard—one of the few peo­ple I knew who weren’t involved with the Organization. He was an Easterner, a stocky fellow with thin hair, and we’d eaten dinner to­gether, gotten drunk on his boat on the bay, and argued about matters great and small. He worked ten hours a day, four days a week, doing what I pretended to do—keeping the books for a slaughterhouse—and two or three evenings a week would play obscure music on the cimbalon at an obscure house in South Adrilankha. Every couple of months he would have saved up enough silver to take me out for dinner at Val­abar’s, and I’d take him a month later; we might or might not have dates with us. He enjoyed good food more than anyone else I’ve ever met, which made him a very pleasant companion. Right about this point in the meal, he’d look up at me with a big grin and say, “This is why we work so hard.”

Sandor—that’s me, if you’ve forgotten—made his way generally southward, to the area where the streets start running downhill toward the eastern docks of Adrilankha. The streets were, indeed, more crowded now as evening fell. As people passed me by, I was struck again by a little thing I’d noticed before, when comparing people in this part of Adrilankha to those in “the City”: Scars. I don’t mean anything big or grotesque, but, like, one guy I passed had this little scar on the corner of his mouth; another had a slight white mark above an eyebrow. And, yes, here and there were miss­ing limbs, or obvious, dramatic scars that spoke of someone who had a story to tell his grandchildren; but even the little ones you’d never see among Dragaerans, among those who could just pop over to a physicker and make the injury look like it had never happened.

Dragaerans: the scarless people.

“What’s funny, Boss?”

“Nothing, Loiosh. I was just imagining walking up to Morrolan and saying, ‘Greetings, oh scarless one.’”

“And that was funny?”

“Imagining the look on his face was funny.”

The streets in this part of the city were very narrow indeed, and twisted even more than in most of South Adrilankha; I was once told that this was done by design, and had something to do with water runoff. While I won’t claim to understand it, I have vague memories of being here once or twice as a child during heavy rainstorms, and that I enjoyed playing in the water that rushed down toward the sea.

There was nothing here to indicate the names of any of the streets, but I recognized the one I wanted, took it, and started climbing again. Except when the street widened now and then to make room for a market, everything was the same: cheap, wooden houses, each one with a single door, a stairway around the side, two windows on each floor, and rooms for four families. One after another, just like that, as if some peasant had planted them in rows, watered them, and they’d grown up and were just waiting to be harvested.

I found the one I wanted and walked up the stairway on the side.

“Remember, Boss. Pound, don’t clap.”

“I remember.”

I pounded on the door with my fist.

After a moment, the door opened, and Ricard was standing there, wearing a raggedy white shirt and a pair of shorts. “Yes?”

“Hey there, Ricard.”

He tilted his head at me, then his eyes widened and I got a big grin.

“Vlad! Come in! Mornin’!”

For Ric it was always morning, no matter what time of day it was. I’d never asked him why because I was afraid of the answer. “Brandy?” he said.

“Always.”

It is very difficult to say no to Ricard.

His place, two rooms hung with pastoral watercolors, with a sort of kitchen attached to the main room, was comfortable enough, and I don’t know what sort of brandy he brought me, but it was much silkier than what I usually drink, maybe not as complex, but there was no question it had been made from peaches, and it was just fine. We drank some and smiled.