Стивен Браст: Tiassa

I sat down again and waited. After a minute, I said, “There. You see? No threat. Would you like me to not threaten you again?”

After a minute he looked like he could maybe form words. I got up and assisted him back into his chair; he flinched when I moved, but sat down.

“I’m listening,” I said.

“What do you want?”

“Why did you have your own daughter killed?”

He raised his head and looked at me. “I’d been working on it all my life.”

“It? You mean—”

“Creating a crossplanar platform. A place to live through which one could walk the halls and visit worlds as if they were rooms.”

“Well, at any rate, you’ve managed a place where you walk into rooms and end up in places that make no sense.”

He shook his head. “That is nothing, trivial. A matter of adjusting the mirrors. The principle is there, it works; that is how you can reach the Halls of Judgment, and the Housetown castle. It works.”

“Okay, I believe you. It works. And?”

“All my life. More than three thousand five hundred years I devoted to this. That is a hundred times as long as your kind lives.”

I didn’t correct his arithmetic, or comment that it explained why he was having trouble adjusting the mirrors. I said, “Okay, whatever. That doesn’t explain—”

“Three thousand, five hundred years. And after all of that, she , my own daughter, would get all the credit.”

“But she solved the problem, didn’t she?”

“No! I did! I solved it by bringing her to the Halls to be born! That was my idea! I arranged for her to have the power, to be able to walk from world to world, bringing reality with her as if it were a length of string, tied in one place, carried to another. The House gives an award, you know. An award for superlative design, for building something no one else has been able to build. For all time, that award—”

“Which you’d cheated to get?”

He snuffled like a puppy. “Cheated,” he said. “I didn’t cheat. I restored things to the way they should have been.”

“Fine, you did all that amazing stuff,” I said, “I’m sure if I were an Athyra I’d understand that, and if I were a Vallista I’d care. But I’m just a humble, simple Easterner. So I just say, so what?”

“So what? So what? Didn’t you hear me?”

“Yeah, I heard you. You had the bright idea to forge your daughter as if she were a tool, and it worked, and all you care about is whose name gets in which history books. I heard it, I just don’t believe it. What sort of worthless waste of skin and bones cares more about that than his own daughter? Not to mention your wife; you got her killed too, didn’t you. Because of reasons that are none of your business, I get to see my son every month. Maybe every week if I’m lucky. Those are the best days I have. And, hey, maybe family isn’t the most important thing to everyone. Fine. But you had your own daughter killed, and are now trying to erase the memory of the thing she … you know, you just might be the most disgusting, worthless specimen of a Dragaeran I’ve ever seen, and I’ve killed dozens of you guys, all of whom deserved it. I’m impressed.”

I might as well have saved my breath for all the effect it had on him. “There’s no point in trying to make you understand,” he said.

“No,” I agreed. “There isn’t.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“I’m going to go home, find someplace where they let Easterners stay, and take a long bath and try to scrub your filth out of my soul.”

He couldn’t come up with an answer to that, so he just looked disgusted.

“And that isn’t all, is it? You sealed the place. No one can get in or out? You kept all of your servants in the past, where there was no one to tell, except three, and your pet dancer who is too good for you. And you sealed the doors to make sure they couldn’t leave. Only I got in, and you never could figure out how that happened.”

“Tethia—”

“She’ll be fine,” I said. “As for you, I’m not so sure.”

“Do what you will,” he said. “The manor still stands. I accomplished what no one else has before.”

“Yeah,” I said. “And if that had been enough for you, I wouldn’t be standing here deciding whether to kill you before I leave.”

Reader, I murdered him. I know I’d said I might let him live, but I meant that might . I hadn’t made up my mind. The smug look on his face made it up for me.

He seemed more offended than frightened. I think he was going to say something, but I put the dagger into his left eye and twisted, and the sounds he made had no more significance than an award falsely given. He stopped twitching and I left him there to rot and stink up the place; they could move him if they felt like it. For all I know, he’s still sitting in his chair, my knife in his eye, and some justification still on his lips.

As for Precipice Manor, well, it’s still there, overlooking the ocean-sea. Back in the past, servants still prepare food, and, not knowing what they do, carry it forward into the future, then clean up the trays. An empty wizard’s chamber collects dust, and wine that is already bad becomes worse. On a stage that is on the first floor but reached by the second, an Issola still dances, and a Teckla who was once an Issola watches her as she spins, jumps, and with every movement, gradually allows her body to injure itself more and more, in the name of art, in the name of love. Whether it is worth it is none of my business, or yours.

I walked down the hallway to the entry. I still had to deal with all that crap Verra had laid on me. But no, forget it. Not now. Now was the time to just concentrate on surviving, because the instant I left the place, I’d be back in a world where people were trying to kill me, and for now, that was enough to worry about. If the Mighty Hand of Destiny had something planned for me, it could either squash those who were threatening my life, or make itself into a fist and strangle itself. Ideally, both.

The doors opened for me, and I began the long walk back to Adrilankha, the pitiless ocean crashing in my ears.