Steven Brust - Athyra

“Oh. Did you tell them?”

The Master’s eyes squeezed tightly shut. “Eventually,” he said.

“Oh,” said Savn. The importance of this sank in gradually. He imagined Vlad, lying quietly in the cave with no way of knowing he’d been betrayed. “I wish there was some way to warn him.”

“There isn’t.”

“I know.” But the Easterner had means of receiving a warning. Maybe he’d escape after all. But he’d think that Savn, who had vanished, had been the betrayer. Savn shook his head. It was petty of him to worry about that when Vlad’s life was in danger, and pointless to worry about Vlad’s life when Master Wag was in pain that Savn could do something about. “Can we get more light in here?”

“No.”

“All right.” Savn took a deep breath. “I’m going to undress you now.”

“Of course. Be careful.”

“Then I will—”

“I know what you’re going to do.”

“Do you need more dreamgrass?”

“No.” The Master’s voice was almost inaudible now. He said, “Carry on, Savn.”

“Yes. It is true and it is not true that once there was a village that grew up at a place where two rivers came together. Now, one river was wide, so that one—”

“Shallow and wide.”

“Oh, yes. Sorry. Shallow and wide, so that one could walk across the entire length and still be dry from the knees up. The—”

Master Wag winced.

“—other was very fast, and full—I mean, fast and deep, and full of foamy rapids, whirlpools, rocks, and twisting currents, so that it wasn’t safe even to boat on. After the rivers came togeth—”

The Master gasped.

“—er, the river, which they called Bigriver, became large, deep, fast, but tame, which allowed them to travel down it to their neighbors, then back up, by means of—”

The Master began moaning steadily.

“—clever poles devised for this purpose. And they could also travel up and down the wide, slow river. But no one could travel on the fast, dangerous river. So, as time went on—”

The moans abruptly turned to screams.

“—the people of the village began to wonder what lay along that length, and talk about—”

The screams grew louder.

“—how they might find a way to travel up the river in spite of the dangerous rapids and the swiftness of the current. Some spoke of using the wind, but ...”

Soon Savn no longer heard either his own voice or the Master’s cries, except as a distant drone. His attention was concentrated on straightening the bones, and remembering everything his Master had taught him about using firm, consistent pressure and an even grip with his hands, being certain that no finger pressed against the bone harder or softer than it should, which would cause the patient unnecessary pain. His fingers felt the bones grinding against one another, and he could hear the sounds they made, even through the drone of his own voice, and his eyes showed him the Master turn grey with the pain, in spite of the dreamgrass, but he neither stopped nor slowed in his work. He thought the Master—the real Master, not this wrecked and broken old man he was physicking—would be proud of him.

The story told itself, and he worked against its rhythm, so that the rise in his voice and the most exciting parts of the story came when his hands were busiest, and the patient most needed to be distracted. Master Wag turned out to be a good patient, which was fortunate, because there was no way to render him immobile.

But it seemed to take a very long time.

Savn looked at his Master, who lay back moaning, his ankles cross-bound with strips of his own clothing and his face covered with sweat. Savn’s own face felt as damp as the Master’s looked. Savn started to take a drink of water, saw how much was left, and offered it to the Master along with more dreamgrass. Master Wag accepted wordlessly.

As Savn helped the Master eat and drink, he noticed that his own hands were shaking. Well, better now than while he’d been working. He hoped he’d done an adequate job. The Master opened his eyes and said, “They were about to start on my fingers. I couldn’t let them—”

“I understand, Master. I think I would have told them right away.”

“I doubt that very much,” said the Master, and closed his eyes. Savn moved back against the wall to relax, and, when he tried to lean against it, found that there was something digging into his back. He felt around behind himself, and discovered a bundle jammed into the back of his pants. It took him a moment to recognize it as the good kitchen knife, all wrapped up in a towel.

He unwrapped it, took it into his hand, and stared at it. He had cleaned it carefully after cutting the norska to make the stew for Vlad, so it gleamed even in the feeble light of the cell. The blade was ten inches long, wide near the handle, narrowing down toward the point, with an edge that was fine enough to slice the tenderest bluefish, but a point that was no better than it had to be to pry kethna muscle from the bone. As he looked, he wondered, and his hands started shaking harder than ever.

He imagined himself holding the knife and fighting his way past all of His Lordship’s guards, then rescuing Vlad at the last minute. He knew this was impossible, but the thought wouldn’t go away. How would he feel, he wondered, if he allowed the Easterner to be killed, and maybe Master Wag as well, when he had a knife with him and he never tried to use it? What would he say to himself when he was an old man, who claimed to be a physicker, yet he had let two people in his care die without making any effort to stop it? Or, if he left home, he would spend his life thinking he was running away from his own cowardice. It wasn’t fair that this decision, which had become so important, should be taken away by something that wasn’t his fault.

He turned the knife this way and that in his hand, knowing how futile it would be to challenge a warrior with a sword when he had nothing but a cooking knife, and had, furthermore, never been in a knife fight in his life. He had seen Vlad fighting some of His Lordship’s soldiers, and couldn’t imagine himself doing that to someone, no matter how much he wanted to.

He shook his head and stared at the knife, as if it could give him answers.

He was still staring at it some half an hour later, when there came a rattling at the door, which he recognized as the opening of the lock and removal of the bar. He stood up and leaned against the wall, the knife down by his side. A guard came into the room and, without a glance at Savn or Master Wag, slopped some water into the mug. He seemed very big, very strong, very graceful, and very dangerous.

Don’t be an idiot, Savn told himself. He is a warrior. He spends all of his life around weapons. The sword at his belt could slice you into pieces before you took two steps. It is insanity. It is the same as killing yourself. He had been telling himself these things already, but, now that it came to it, with the guard before him, the mad ideas in his head would neither listen to reason nor bring themselves forward as a definite intention. He hesitated, and watched the guard, and then, while the man’s back was turned, Savn inched his way closer to the door, the knife still held down by his side.

It’s crazy, he told himself. If your knife had a good point, you could strike for his kidneys, but it doesn’t. And you aren’t tall enough to slit his throat.

The guard finished and straightened up.

The knife is heavy, and there is some point on it. And I’m strong.

Still not deigning to look at Savn or Master Wag, the guard walked to the door.

If I strike so that I can use all of my strength, and I find just the right place, then maybe ...

Savn was never aware of making a conscious decision, but, for just a moment, he saw an image of His Lordship standing next to the Jhereg as they broke the Master’s bones. He took a deep breath and held it.