Стивен Браст - Tiassa

“Well, I’m talking to an Easterner with a jhereg on each shoulder, acting like that’s normal.”

“Your point?”

“I sympathize.”

I rubbed my chin with the back of my fist. “You know, I can’t imagine doing that.”

“Sympathizing?”

“No, being a butler. I mean, I can imagine slaving away on some long-holding if it was that or starve, and I can imagine being the Lord of some short-holding, and I can imagine singing for tavern meals if I could sing, and I can imagine being a foot soldier—I’ve been a foot soldier. But I just can’t imagine walking around all stiff and proper and telling some rich fuck when his dinner is ready, and never saying anything I felt like saying. It’d make me crazy.”

“Why do you care so much?”

“I don’t know. Maybe something about your dance brought it out. Is it magic?”

“Not the way you mean it.”

“Okay.”

“To answer your question, I think some people take satisfaction just from doing their duty.”

“Um. Okay.”

She smiled. “I wish I could help you.”

“You have,” I said. “Good luck with the injuries. And the dancing.”

I got up and walked to the aisle. There was a door in the back, but I had to wonder if there was another. I walked forward like I knew what I was doing, hopped up on the stage, and kept going. I glanced back. Hevlika was still sitting there, watching me. “Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s just a stage I’m going through.”

The door opened with no sound. I went through, and was back in the dining room. I continued to the balcony, stopping directly in front of the set of doors I hadn’t yet opened.

“Predictions, Loiosh?”

“Hah.”

I flung open the doors.

“Mirrors,” I said.

“Lots of them, Boss.”

The walls were mirrored, the ceiling was mirrored, the floor was mirrored. I stood there looking at myself over and over again.

“Who would do this?”

“Whoever did all the rest of it?”

“But who would make a room like this? I mean, really, someone said, ‘I know! I’ll fill a room up with mirrors! That will be fun!’”

“You know they’re magic, Boss.”

Yeah, by now there was no doubt that they were magic. It was just annoying that given all the spells that involved mirrors, I understood none of them.

“We going in, Boss?”

“No.”

“Good choice.”

“Although we could—”

“Boss!”

“All right. But it does make me realize something: I’m a pretty good-looking guy.”

“Sure, Boss.”

“But I should trim my mustache.”

“Yeah, that’s just what I was thinking.”

I shut the door and turned around, and—

“Devera!” I said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

She nodded. “I know. I’ve been looking for you, too.”

If she’d been human, she’d have been about nine years old, and would have looked a bit like one of those skinny waifs you see in South Adrilankha begging you for coins while another cuts your purse. Well, except for how she dressed. She wore loose-fitting black pants with a silver stripe and an even looser-fitting shirt that was also black but decorated with silver, all of it worth more than those waifs would ever manage to steal. She had a black ribbon in her shoulder-length blond hair to keep it rigorously back out of her eyes.

I said, “Can you tell me what I’m supposed to be doing here?”

“Help me get out.”

“Help you get out? You led me here.”

“That was tomorrow-me. It’s today-me that’s trapped.”

“Oh. Of course. How foolish of me.”

“Boss, did you really understand—”

“Not even close, Loiosh.”

“Oh, good.”

“Can you explain, Devera?”

“I don’t understand it, Uncle Vlad.”

“Oh. So, what do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know.”

I’d have made some remark there about how helpful she was being, but while you can be gently ironic with Devera, you can’t be sarcastic with her. You just can’t.

“Okay, can you tell me which way to go from here?”

She looked around, then shook her head. Great.

“All right,” I said. “Why don’t you just tell me the story. I mean, what happened.”

“Okay. I was visiting Daddy, and—”

“So, excuse me, that would be in the Halls of Judgment?”

She nodded.

“And that was yesterday?”

She nodded again, and I realized that that was not a useful question; “today” and “yesterday” and “tomorrow” obviously meant something to Devera, but they didn’t mean the same things they meant to me: her “yesterday” might be a thousand years ago, or next month, or right now. My head didn’t actually start hurting, but it felt like it wanted to, and would if I kept thinking about it.

I said, “So you were there. How did you end up here?”

“I don’t know, but I couldn’t get out.”

“Then how did you find me?”

“Oh, I did that tomorrow.”

“Oh,” I said. “Yes, of course.”

She nodded.

I took a deep breath and let it out. “Please, Devera. Try to explain as clearly as you can, what happened, and how I can help you.”

“But, Uncle Vlad, I don’t know what happened.” She looked like she was about to cry, which I found more upsetting than any number of attempts on my life had been.

“That’s okay,” I said. “Just do your best.”

She wiped a wrist over her eyes and nodded. She wasn’t a little kid, but when she acted like one, was it an act? You tell me.

“All right,” she said. “After I saw Daddy, I went to the Vestibule to visit Great-Grandmama, and—”

“Wait, who? Where?”

“The Vestibule. Darkness.”

“You were visiting darkness?”

She nodded.

“Uh, you mean there was no light?”

“No, no. I mean her. Darkness.”

“Darkness is a person?”

“She’s a god, silly,” said Devera, as if anyone should have known.

“Oh,” I said. “Yes, of course. How foolish of me.”

“Uncle Vlad!”

“Yeah, okay. Go on.”

“And you know how when you walk through the Halls there are all those time spikes? Well—”

“Wait, what?”

“You know. The time spikes.”

“I—I don’t remember those.”

“Oh. Well, that’s how you get to the Vestibule.”

“I guess there were things I didn’t get to see.”

She nodded. “It’s a big place,” she said. She’s very understanding.

“So, the Vestibule?”

“Yeah, and I was visiting Darkness, and then, well, I just took a step and I was here.”

“Right. Okay. And then you got out tomorrow, right?”

“Yes, but only because you helped me. That’s why I came to get you.”

“Why me? Why not your mother, or Sethra Lavode, or Morrolan, or the Necromancer? For that matter, why not Verra?”

She shook her head, her hair flinging about. “I can’t,” she said. “Mama would … if I…” She looked at the floor. “I’m not supposed to visit Darkness.”

“Oh. Okay, you came to me because you were doing something you shouldn’t have, so you can’t go to any of the others, and you don’t know what happened or how I can fix it, but I’m the only one you can go to. There. I think I’m caught up.”

“Does it scare you?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Then you aren’t caught up,” she said, nodding vigorously.

“That makes a little too much sense. Why aren’t you supposed to visit Darkness?”

“Mama says she isn’t proper company.”