Стивен Браст: Tiassa

“Thank you, sir.”

“Look, I’m not trying to tell you your business—no, wait, I am. I just want you to know that I had a talk with Harro, and if you go to the House and claim it was all a lie, he’ll admit it.”

“Sir? He will?”

“Yeah. If you go to the Iorich Wing of the Palace, there’s an advocate named Perisil who can either help you, or point to someone who will. If he’s willing to deal with an Easterner, he’ll be willing to deal with a Teckla. So you can probably fix all of this without ignoring the House thing. But I still think you should. Anyway, think about it, and do whatever you bloody want to.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“That will be all,” I said, because I’ve always wanted to say that to a servant, and I don’t dare say it to Tukko.

Gormin didn’t appear to find it odd; he just bowed and went about his business. I sat there and considered. What I really wanted to do now was ask Discaru a few questions. Unfortunately, I’d made that impossible.

“Boss? Is there a plan?”

“Getting there.”

“I was afraid of that. It worries me when you have a plan.”

“Yeah, me too.”

I made my way back to that room with the long table and didn’t run into anyone. I walked in like it was no big deal, sat down, and waited. There was some of the emotional deadening I’d felt before, but not as intense—which is an odd word to use about something that removes intensity, but you know what I mean. I waited, and eventually even that passed, and then I said, “Hey, Tethia. It’s Vlad. Got a minute?”

I waited, and after a while my glib words didn’t seem so clever. I was in the middle of trying to come up with some other way to perhaps reach her when Loiosh said, “Boss!”

I turned around and there she was, sitting in a chair on the other side of the table. I looked closely, and from what I could see, the padding on the chair wasn’t compressed the way it would be if she were really there. But I could see her, and presumably we could hear each other, so who cared about the rest? Corporeality is overrated. Taltos. You remember the spelling.

“Hey there,” I said. “Remember me?”

“Vlad,” she said.

“Good. That means time isn’t—never mind. Can we talk?”

“We are talking now.”

“Yeah. You say you built this place. This ‘platform.’”

“No, I designed it. My father built it.”

“Right. But you figured out how to anchor it in the Halls of Judgment so it could cross worlds.”

“It isn’t anchored in the Halls, it only passes through them.”

“Okay. But tell me something: why is it you keep disappearing?”

“I don’t know. Is it important?”

“I want to understand how this platform works. And that’s part of it.”

“You’re a necromancer?”

“No.”

“Then I don’t think I can explain.”

“Try?”

She nodded. I thought that would be an appropriate, or at least an ironic, moment for her to vanish, but thank Verra, for once the world withheld its irony. “Let’s try it this way, then. You have a familiar. Do you understand the mechanism for how you communicate with him?”

“No, but I’m very curious.”

“Ah. Well. All right, then. Another way: You say I vanish. I don’t vanish, and I don’t even move, really. Not much, at any rate. I turn.”

“Turn. All right. You have my attention.”

“That’s why it happens so randomly. Right now, I’m working very hard to hold myself still, because the least shift in position”—she smiled—“I almost moved just now to demonstrate it, will bring me to another state.”

“I’m still listening.”

“Time and space seem like distinct things, but they’re not. They’re the same. This matters because, where I was born, places and times come together as—” She looked frustrated, then she vanished, but reappeared just as I was preparing a good curse. I didn’t tell her that at least some of that I’d figured out, because I didn’t want to interrupt the flow. She said, “Do you understand what it means to be a god or a demon?”

“Yes. It means you can manifest in more than one place at the same time. Oh. Are you a god or a demon?”

“No. If I were, I would have control of this process, and I wouldn’t shift the way I do.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I know.” She frowned. “All right, I think I can explain it. To acquire powers of a god or a demon means to gain the awareness of the connections between different worlds, and to be able to move among them, and to control that movement. If you do not have these powers, but were born in a place where they meet, you can always see them, sometimes move among them, and only occasionally control the movement. Does that help?”

I nodded slowly. “Yes. Yes, that helps.”

She was silent while I compared this with what I knew about Devera. Yeah, it made sense. But—

“Okay, here’s what I’m not getting. How is it you ended up being born in the Halls of Judgment?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I wish I did.”

Me too. “Maybe I’ll find out,” I said.

She smiled a little. “Maybe you will.”

I wondered what all of this had to do with how I communicated with Loiosh. I wondered how Devera seemed able to move where she wanted to—except here. I wondered how—

“I have another question,” I said.

“I’m still here.”

“This room. The effect it has. How is that possible? It’s not sorcery, because I’m protected from sorcery. It feels like a psychic effect, but I’m protected from that too. Before you said it was the nature of the room itself, but I don’t understand how that’s possible.”

“There is an art to it,” she said. “It has been studied by the Vallista for thousands of years. The windows, the color, the tilt of the chairs and their height: all work to produce the effect.”

“There’s more to it than that, I think.”

“Oh, yes. But you see, that’s the heart of it. Those feelings become part of the designer of the room, and part of every craftsman who works on it. You draw it into yourself, like inhaling, and then you exhale it in your craft.”

“Um. Sounds like witchcraft.”

“The Eastern art. I’ve heard of it, but know nothing about it.”

“I’m not saying that’s what it is, it’s just, it sounds like it. Or I guess feels like it would be more accurate.”

“It is as much art as it is sorcery, but the result is that the feelings become inseparable from the room. As I said before, the effect on you was more pronounced than it would have been on a human.” She was polite enough not to add, “because your brain is weaker,” or something.

“I think I kind of get it,” I said, though I didn’t really and I still don’t. But with any luck, I wouldn’t need to. I’d gotten the answer to the question I’d come for, and that by itself made this an occasion for celebrating if I’d had anything to celebrate with. I needed more of Verra’s wine.

“What do you know of your state?” I asked her.

“I don’t entirely understand it. I feel like I died. But I’m here.”

“What do you remember?”

“Running.”

“To something, or from something?”

“From something, I think.”

“From what?”

“I don’t know.”

“All right. You don’t seem exactly like a ghost.”

“How much experience with ghosts do you have?”

“A little. Tell me something. What do you want?”

She was silent for a long time, then she said, “If I am dead, then I’d like to be free so I can move on, or rest, or reincarnate, however fate should decide.”