Steven Brust - Dzur

“Oh, good, Boss. That’s just what I was hoping for.”

“Okay, almost all. I need to reach a couple of the Irregulars for another piece, but it ought to be easy enough!’

It was. It took being patient for a few hours, but I got it.

I got back late that night after picking up a celebratory bottle of a wine I’d never encountered before. Lying on the bed I found a brief note from Kiera saying she would look for me tomorrow. I was pleased that my friends were watching out for me, and sorry that I’d missed her; especially as I’d have had the chance to brag a bit about having solved the puzzle, or at least a big chunk of it.

What would I have told her if she’d been here? Maybe something obscure and epigrammatical, like, at some point, every complex situation will resolve itself into something simple and straightforward. The trouble is, by then it’s usually too late.

Maybe this time it wasn’t.

“You sure, Boss?”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, I’m just thinking, if the Demon Goddess has been messing around in your head—”

“Loiosh, are you trying to be funny?”

“No, Boss. I mean it. I’m just a little worried. You have a plan, you’ve figured out what’s going on, only what if—”

“This is just what I need right now. I desperately need to have my confidence shattered by—”

“Boss, I’m just—”

“Yeah, okay.”

Well, he’s my familiar. That means that it’s his job to worry about stuff like that. It also means that, if I have something nig­gling around in the back of my head, sometimes it’s his job to bring it to the front. But I didn’t like it much. I didn’t like think­ing about it, and I particularly didn’t like it that he might be right. If you can’t trust your own thoughts, what do you have?

“Uh, did that help, Boss?”

“No, but it didn’t hurt. It was lousy wine anyway.”

I went downstairs to borrow a broom and cleaned up the bro­ken glass. The wine-stain on the wall I left there, figuring it would make a good reminder, though of what I wasn’t exactly sure.

What if Loiosh were right? What if everything in my head was planted there by the Demon Goddess for her own reasons—reasons which I no longer trusted, if I ever had? Or what if it was just the product of illusory logic and warped perceptions?

And what if I spent all my time so worried about that I couldn’t do anything?

Well, okay then. Sometime, there was a reckoning due be­tween me and the Demon Goddess. But for now

“You’re right, Boss. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

“Don’t worry about it, Loiosh. You’re just bouncing back what’s in my own head. We move on. It’s time to make it bloody. And if some of the blood is mine, so be it.”

I took out my daggers and sharpened them up.

Tomorrow was liable to be an interesting day. 12. Chicken With Shallots

Mihi cleared away the salad plates, and topped off our wine. I only knew in general what was coming next—it would be some sort of fowl. In the past, there had been the old standard capon in Eastern red pepper sauce, duck with plum sauce, pheasant stuffed with truffles, skirda in wine sauce, and what Valabar’s modestly called—

“Chicken with shallots,” said Mihi, holding a platter and those won­derful spoons he wielded so deftly.

“What are shallots?” said Telnan.

“Something like scallions,” said Mihi, before I could say the same thing.

As Mihi served us, steam rolled up like a beckoning hand.

I can’t tell you everything about how they build it, but I know that it involves de-boned and skinned chicken (which is unusual—Valabar’s generally prefers its fowls with bone and skin) and then sliced up, and pan-fried in butter, along with minced garlic, shallots, and the delicious (in spite of its name) Imperial fungus. There is salt, of course, and I’m pretty sure there’s white pepper. They pour a sauce over it, and I’m afraid I can tell you little about the sauce, except that it’s built with the chicken, and so has a lot of the same flavors, along with a bit of tomato, the ubiquitous Eastern red pepper, and wine.

Along with the chicken, they served us baby steamed carrots and miniature red tubers with clarified butter.

I had to just sample things; there was no way to eat it all if I were planning to even taste the next course. But that’s the sort of decision you have to make—less of one thing to have some of another. I wish all of my decisions were as painless.

“This is very good,” said Telnan after his first bite of the chicken.

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, it is.”

We ate in silence for a while. I was communing with the chicken—the slight sting on the tongue, the surprise of the fungus, the way the hint of wine and the red pepper bounced off the shallots. Separate fla­vors, which suddenly come together in the mouth producing an amaz­ing combination that isn’t inherent in any of the parts, but, after a few bites, you realize was there all along.

Whether Telnan was having the same joyful discovery, I couldn’t know. I decided I was glad he was there; it really is more pleasant to share a meal, even with a comparative stranger. And I’d certainly had less pleasant dinner companions. It occurred to me with a brief pang that I had never shared a meal with Lady Teldra, and now I couldn’t. I wondered if she were able to take vicarious pleasure.

“Do you think your weapon enjoys the meal, Telnan?”

“Hmmm?”

“I mean, you’re enjoying the meal, right?”

“Oh, yeah! This is great!”

“Well, you have this link to a weapon. Do you know if it can share any of the pleasure from—”

“Oh, I see.” He frowned. “I’ve never thought about it. Maybe. My communication with Nightslayer isn’t all that—”

“Nightslayer?”

“My sword is called Nightslayer.”

“What is the Serioli name for it?”

“Um ... I think it was something like—” He made a sound that, if it had been louder, might have made the staff think someone was choking to death.

“Okay. And that means what, exactly?”

“Sethra said it means something like, ‘Loci for different levels of energy from various phases of existence.’”

“Loci for different ... How did they get Nightslayer out of that?”

“Oh, they didn’t. I call her Nightslayer because I like how that sounds. You know, dangerous, and evil, and like that.” He grinned. Dangerous, and evil, and like that. “Okay.”

Which didn’t tell me if Lady Teldra were able to enjoy my enjoy­ment of the food. I hoped she could. Well, maybe someday I’d know.

I woke up fast the next morning. Not fast in the way I wake up when Loiosh screams a warning, or when I hear some sound that makes me reach for a weapon, but fast in the sense that I was in­stantly wide awake, thinking, “Today I’m done waiting. Today I can move. Today I can start to act.”

You see, it’s all about contrasts: I don’t usually get that excited just because I’m about to go charging into a situation where I might get sliced up into my component parts. And, to be sure, there was an element of fear in my belly. But after days of the sort of drudgery I despise it was such a relief to know that I was going into action at last, that I could almost understand how a Dragonlord felt before a battle, or a Dzur before a duel. Or, well, maybe I couldn’t, but I thought I could, and that’s almost as good.