Стивен Браст: Tiassa

“Nice name,” I said. “Take good care of it.”

I bowed to her because I felt like it, and went on my way.

Time to end things.

Zhayin put his book down as I came in. “Well, what do you—”

“Shut up or I’ll kill you. Is that clear enough? I hate killing people for free, but I’m already inclined to make an exception for you, so don’t give me any more reasons.”

“I’ll—”

“You’ll what? Discaru is gone. That monster of yours is dead. Who—”

“Dead?”

“—is going to protect you? The dry-nurse or the butler?”

He glared at me. The news that his son was dead seemed to affect him not at all. Maybe I shouldn’t let that bother me, especially with what else he’d done, and the fact that his son had become an inhuman monster hundreds of years before. As I said, maybe I shouldn’t have, but I thought about my own son, and I liked him even less.

He reached for a pull-rope next to him. I said, “You don’t want to do that. Your guards are in the past, and in the old castle, and they have to go through the mirror room and down stairs to get here. By the time they’ve done that, I will have sliced open your belly to see how many times I can wrap your entrails around your neck.” Hey, look: if you’re going to threaten someone, making it graphic is always better. I wouldn’t really have done that, but it was effective, all right? Don’t judge me.

“And you don’t even want to, do you? You want as few people from the past here as possible, because the more who know about it, the more chance someone will figure out what you did, and find a way to get the message out, even from two hundred years ago. But I still want to see how much your entrails will stretch. Or maybe I won’t even bother. Maybe I’ll just stick you. With this.” I drew Lady Teldra. She appeared as I’d first seen her, a very long, thin knife, slight teardrop shaping along the blade. She was beautiful.

I once had someone explain to me that we don’t have real interactions with people, we have interactions with the image of those people we carry in our heads. I don’t know. Maybe. But I figure if I stick a Great Weapon into a guy’s eye, it’s close enough to a real interaction for most purposes.

“What do you want?” he said. His voice was hoarse.

“Take your clothes off,” I said.

His eyes widened.

“What do you think—”

I walked toward him until the point was inches from his face. “Take. Your. Clothes. Off.”

He was shaking. He had every right to. He stood up, undid the belt of his robe, and let it fall off his shoulder. He wore thin yellow pants under it. I let him keep those.

“Hand me the robe,” I said.

He stared down the length of Lady Teldra, then picked up the robe and handed it over.

“Sit down,” I said.

He did.

I sheathed Lady Teldra, and he visibly relaxed. “What are you—”

“Shut your mouth or I will cut out your tongue,” I suggested.

I drew a small throwing knife from inside of my cloak, found a piece of purple thread on the robe, and cut it. Then I looked Zhayin in the eyes, and started pulling on the thread. He swallowed. It all came out in one long tear; it took maybe a minute. When I was done, there were pieces of yellow silk on the floor, and a length of purple thread in my hand. I dropped the thread, and as I did so I heard, as if from far away, a deep metallic “click.”

“There,” I said. “Now the door is open.”

He started to speak, but someone else did first. “Uncle Vlad!”

“Hello, Devera. This is Lord Zhayin, who murdered his own daughter and trapped you here.”

She turned and looked at him, then turned back to me. “I don’t like him very much,” she announced.

“Yeah, that’s two of us. But you’re free now.”

“I know.”

“And so is the woman who brought you here.”

She nodded.

“I should get going now, Uncle Vlad. I need to go back to yesterday and find you.”

“Of course you do,” I said.

“Are you, are you going to hurt him?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t.”

“Well, thank you, Uncle Vlad.”

“You’re welcome, Devera.”

She vanished, like she does. I moved a chair so it was facing him and a little too close. Then I leaned forward. I said, “I know what you did, I just want to know why you did it. I have a suspicion, but I hope I’m wrong, because I don’t want there to exist anyone who—never mind. Start talking.”

He didn’t speak.

I said, “Tethia solved the problem, didn’t she? She figured it all out, how to cut through the Halls of Judgment to permit travel to other worlds.”

He grunted, which I took as a yes.

“But you’re not there yet. You just put the touches on the basics of it, and now you’re ready to extend the platform to wherever you can find access points. And you had a friendly demon lined up to help with that, except now you’ll have to find another, because he accidentally fell on my Morganti knife when he was trying to kill me. I feel bad.”

He went back to glaring.

“Or maybe I’ll kill you, in which case you won’t have to worry about it. But, here’s my question: Why is Tethia dead? And not only dead, but trapped here, locked into this place? Oh, I know how you did it. You bound her to the Paths of the Dead with your key, that robe. I get that part. But why ? Did you need a soul in order to make it work? No, you didn’t. Was it a tragic accident that the monster you accidentally created happened to get loose just at the point when her work was done? No, it wasn’t. Was it some fluke of her having designed the place that, after she died, she was unable to leave? No, it wasn’t.

“You control the door to the thing’s lair, don’t you? You released it first when I showed up, but—and here’s the part that took me the longest to figure out—you failed to tell Discaru, so he thought it escaped and recaptured it. That’s pretty funny, when you think about it. You’re really bad at this stuff. Then you released it again when I started messing with the mirrors, only this time there was no Discaru, so I put it out of its misery. If that makes you sad you’re the worst hypocrite this sad Empire has ever produced. You used your son—what remained of him—to kill your daughter, didn’t you? Only this time your friend the demon was in on it with you. You’d sealed the entire structure so no one could leave, but he opened it up just enough for her to jump off it, didn’t he? That way she’d be dead and you wouldn’t even have a mess to clean up. He was a good friend to you, always ready to do your dirty work. I’d say I’m sorry I dispatched him, but I’d be lying.

“Only that wasn’t the end of it. After she died, Discaru bound her to the manor, so you could keep her here. He used the front room to contain her soul, to keep her trapped. I know he did it, and I know he did it for you, but why? That’s my question. Why did you kill your own daughter, and then prevent her soul from moving on? What did you get out of it?”

“If you’re going to kill me, just—”

I pulled the dagger from my boot. Not Lady Teldra, not this time, but a nasty stiletto. “Answer the question.”

“I don’t like answering people who are threatening me.”

“Okay, fair enough. I won’t threaten.” I transferred the blade to my other hand, then slapped him across the face. His head rocked, and when it came back, I transferred the dagger again and slapped him with the other hand. He put his arm up and slid forward and I gut-punched him. He doubled over on his knees on the floor and started retching.