Steven Brust - Athyra

“Don’t you think so?”

“Maybe. Nature usually doesn’t excite me very much. I’m impressed by what man makes of his world, not what we started with.”

“Oh.” Savn considered. “I guess I’m just the opposite.”

“Yes.”

“Does it matter?”

Vlad looked at him, and something like amusement glittered for a moment in his eyes. Then he turned back to watching the river. “Yes and no,” he said. “A couple of years ago “i met a philosopher who told me mat Chose Yike me build, while those like you take more pleasure in life.”

“Aren’t there those who like both?”

“Yes. According to this lady, they become artists.”

“Oh. Do you enjoy life?”

“Me? Yes, but I’m naturally lucky.”

“Oh.” Savn thought back to what the Easterner told him the night before. “You must be, to still be alive with people trying to kill you.”

“Oh, no. That isn’t luck. I’m alive because I’m good enough to survive.”

“Then what do you mean?”

“I’m lucky that, living the way I do, with people trying to kill me, I can still take pleasure in life. Not everyone can, and I think if you can’t, there isn’t much you can do about it.”

“Oh. I’ve never met a philosopher.”

“I hope you do some day; they’re always worth talking to.”

“Pae says such things are a waste of time.”

“Your Pae, I’m sorry to say, is wrong.”

“Why?”

“Because everything is worth examining, and if you don’t examine your view of the world, you are still subject to it, and you find yourself doing things that—never mind.”

“I think I understand.”

“Do you? Good.” After a moment he said, as if to himself, “I learned a lot from that lady. I was sorry I had to kill her.”

Savn looked at him, but the Easterner didn’t seem to be joking. They continued watching the River Flats and said nothing more for a while.

I will not marry a blessing priest,

I will not marry a blessing priest,

In his devotions I’d be least.

Hi-dee hi-dee ho-la!

Step on out ...

They were close enough so that Savn could identify some of the people below, more by how they dressed and moved than by their features. There were a few whose names he knew, but he knew none of the people well, and for the first time he wondered why that was. Smallcliff was closer to Bigcliff than to either Whiterock or Notthereyet, but those were the places he had visited, and from a little traveling and from his work with Master Wag, he knew a few people who lived in each of those villages; but the dwellers below were strangers, even those he could identify and had spoken with.

Mae and Pae hardly ever mentioned them at all, except for an occasional reference Pae made to its being filthy to bathe in the same place that you wash your clothes. Yet when those from below came to visit Master Wag, they seemed pleasant enough, and Savn didn’t see any difference.

Odd, though, that he’d never thought about it before. Next to him, Vlad was watching them with single-minded concentration that reminded Savn of something he’d seen once, long ago, but couldn’t quite remember. He felt something akin to fear as he made the comparison, however.

“Vlad?” said Savn at last.

“Yes?”

“Those people are ... never mind.”

“They are what?”

Savn haltingly tried to tell the Easterner what he’d been thinking about them, but he couldn’t seem to find the right words, so eventually he shrugged and fell silent.

Vlad said, “Are they also vassals of Baron Smallcliff?”

“Yes. He’s also the Baron of Bigcliff.”

Vlad nodded. “What else?”

“I don’t know. I know that someone else is lord over in Whiterock, though. A Dzurlord. We hear stories about him.”

“Oh? What kind of stories?”

“Not very nice ones. You have to work his fields two days of the week, even in the bad years when it takes everything to keep your own going, and he doesn’t care how hard that makes it for you, or even if you starve, and sometimes he does things that, well, I don’t really know about because they say I’m too young to know about them, but they’re pretty awful. His tax collectors can beat you whenever they want, and you can’t do anything about it. And his soldiers will kill you if you get in their way, and when the Speaker tried to complain to the Empire they had him killed, and things like that.”

“Things like that don’t happen here?”

“Well, the tax collectors can be pretty mean sometimes, but not that bad. We’re lucky here.”

“I suppose so.”

They fell silent again. Vlad continued staring down at the River Flats. Eventually Savn said, “Vlad, if you aren’t enjoying nature, what are you doing?”

“Watching the people.”

“They’re odd,” said Savn.

“So you said. But you didn’t tell me in what way they’re odd.”

Savn opened his mouth and shut it. He didn’t want to pass on what Mae and Pae said about them, because he was sure Vlad would just think he was being small-minded. He finally said, “They talk funny.”

Vlad glanced at him. “Funny? How?”

“Well, there used to be a tribe of Serioli who lived down there. They only moved away a few hundred years ago, and until then they lived right next to the people from Bigcliff, and they’d talk all the time, and—”

“And the people from Bigcliff use Serioli words?”

“Not when they talk to us. But it’s, that, well, they put their words together different than we do.”

“Can you understand them?”

“Oh, sure. But it sounds strange.”

“Hmmm,” said Vlad.

“What are you watching them for?”

“I’m not certain. A way to do something I have to do.”

“Why do you always talk that way?”

Vlad spared him a quick glance, which Savn could not read, then said, “It comes from spending time in the company of philosophers and Athyra.”

“Oh.”

“And having secrets.”

“Oh.”

A strange feeling came over Savn, as if he and Vlad had achieved some sort of understanding—it seemed that if he asked the Easterner a question, he might get an answer. However, he realized, he wasn’t certain what, of all the things he wondered about, he ought to ask. Finally he said, “Have you really spent a great deal of time around Athyra nobles?”

“Not exactly, but I knew a Hawklord once who was very similar. And a drummer, for that matter.”

“Oh. Did you kill them, too?”

Vlad’s head snapped up; then he chuckled slightly. “No,” he said, then added, “On the other hand, it came pretty close with both of them.”

“Why were they like Athyra?”

“What do you know of the House?”

“Well, His Lordship is one.”

“Yes. That’s what brought it to mind. You see, it is a matter of the philosophical and the practical; the mystical and the mundane.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know that,” said Vlad, still staring out at the River Flats.

“Would you explain?”

“I’m not certain I can,” said Vlad. He glanced at Savn, then back out over the cliff. “There are many who are contemptuous of the intellectual process. But those who aren’t afraid of it sometimes discover that the further you go from the ordinary, day-to-day world, the more understanding you can achieve of it; and the r ore you understand of the world, the more you can act, nstead of being acted upon. That,” he added, almost as an afterthought, “is exactly what witchcraft is about.”

“But you said before you ought to get involved, and now you’re saying you should stand apart.”

“Got me,” said Vlad, smiling.