Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

Shaa lowered his gaze to the greenish-brown water lapping the shore. “And what exactly were the source ingredients for this concoction?” he inquired.

“The usual - tea, I suppose, and water, and that freezer-spell thingy,” Tildy said.

“Water?” Shaa said.

He was ostentatiously watching something between the boat and the shore - oh, she got it. “Not from the river, at least I don’t think so, and anyway it’s been through Max’s still.” She moved around to stand beside Shaa and leaned her own elbow on the gunwale, eyeing him from what might have been a safe distance. “Here.” She planted the mug between them on the gunwale; protruding from its wide mouth were a sprig of mint and another leaf from Shaa’s stash of his self-prescribed herbal glycoside.

“Thank you,” said Shaa, making an effort to hold himself in check. She was only trying to be pleasant, after all, and there was a substantial margin between grouchy and barbaric. “I don’t think I’ll have any right at the moment, though.”

“Suit yourself,” Tildy told him. She looked out across the water, spotting two muskrats cavorting near the shore. “It’s pretty nice out here.”

“I suppose,” Shaa said morosely.

“What’s the matter?”

“I dislike feeling useless. “

“Why should you feel that way?” said Tildy. “You redesigned Roni’s experiment, didn’t you, to make it harder for her animalcules to escape? And aren’t you doing your own experiment with their nutrients? How’s that going?”

Shaa looked at her, canting his head as he brought it around so that the gaze emerged sidelong from beneath a sarcastically inclined eyebrow. “Patience is required,” he responded, “as in most experimentation. As opposed to tinkering, or outright invention. Nevertheless, investigation into obligatory nutrients is clearly a sideshow to the main event. Watching someone else do the interesting work you’d just as soon do yourself is not my idea of a spectator sport with growth potential.”

“But what you’ve done yourself is –”

“There’s no need to coddle me,” Shaa said. “If I want to be patronized, I’m perfectly competent to let you know.”

Tildy frowned. “I’m just telling you what I think. Why should you be moping around? Because your curse keeps you from doing hands-on spell work? Because there’s not more trouble to get into on the boat? Why not just think of this as a vacation, then? I mean, this is a trip, isn’t it? A cruise down a river - people pay good money for this sort of thing.”

Shaa turned his gaze back toward the water. For some reason that was not immediately apparent, an ice floe about the size of a bathtub had appeared off the bow; the boat was traveling downstream with the current but slightly faster than it, due to the effect of the sail amidships, and so the ice floe was drifting and revolving leisurely toward the stern. Surprisingly for the presence of ice, though, the water temperature was, if not downright tepid, at least well above freezing, and the nearest snow or glacier was hundreds of miles upstream and a few months removed in time. It wasn’t even winter. “There is this unfortunate element of coercion involved,” Shaa said abstractedly, most of his attention now concentrated on the matter of the miniature iceberg. “ Having to take a vacation takes most of the fun out of it. A vacation is usually an internal reward for a job well done, or at least done; or even more enjoyably one takes a vacation because one just up and feels like it. Vacation under duress, enforced idleness, is a thoroughly tedious prospect.”

“What about burnout, though? You’ve been a professional magic person, right? What do you do when you need a major recharge?”

“Sink gracefully into a light coma for a week or two,” Shaa said. Tildy thought his tone sounded a bit arch. Of course, this was Shaa, and his tone usually sounded a bit something-or-other.

“If you need to be busy, I’m sure there are any number of things you could catch up on; reading, say? I mean, we are here on a boat on a river - you could do worse than just sit out on deck and work on your tan.”

“Accelerated dermatological aging,” grumbled Shaa. “Skin cancer.” Yet here he was, unquestionably sitting (or lounging) on a deck, and the sun was indeed high overhead. He pulled the brim of his hat lower over his eyebrows. “You don’t have to sit around out here with me, you know,” he said pointedly. “I realize my company at the moment leaves something to be desired. If asked, I’ll certify that your nursemaid obligation was thoroughly and responsibly discharged.”

“You don’t have to be a crab when someone’s just trying to be pleasant,” Tildy mumbled.

Shaa wished he had a pincer on his person, or an appropriately exoskeletal piece of apparatus, so that he could produce it from beneath his shirt for ironic effect. He was not, however, prepared for every conceivable eventuality. He did try to be, though, and realizing that an unusual opportunity with a cooperating straight-man, or girl, was slipping past made him even testier. “You don’t have to provide me with an audience,” he said, supplementing the remark by waving his hand at her and clacking his fingers and thumb together in pincer-pantomime, while making a synchronized clicking sound with his teeth. It was at best a poor alternative to the display of an actual visual aid, but then since Shaa was feeling like a poor excuse for a person of action he supposed it was reasonably fitting. The momentary look of incomprehension of Tildy’s face was replaced by one of mild horror mixed with reproof. She said, “Ah, right,” edged back away from the rail, and then turned and fled into the laboratory cabin.

Shaa watched as the ice floe slipped beyond the stern. He was not necessarily a person of action at most times in any case, but he did go through phases. The one he was in at the moment was certainly frustrating. Shaa wanted nothing better than to be up and around, pursuing leads, stirring things up, and generally getting into trouble, but his health had betrayed him. More to the point, his curse had betrayed his heart, which had in turn passed the betrayal on to the rest of his system. This time, no sooner had he gotten involved in enough shenanigans to get his senses keyed up than he was undercut by his body. Now look at me , he thought, reduced to banter with an underage keeper on a placid river in the middle of civilized territory . It was enough to make a grown man ... whine.

He was the first to admit that his funk had nothing to do with good sense. He wasn’t ready to out-and-out die , after all. If that was his goal, he could just jump ship and strike out alone looking for someone else’s business in which to embed himself. He wasn’t willing to be quietly content with his present fate, either, though, so he had decided to adhere to the middle ground of being tolerably miserable for anyone else to be around until he got too bored with that and shifted to being impossibly noble for awhile, or until something worth getting excited about finally showed up.

Not that there was much excitement to look for from the River Oolvaan. Shaa ticked off the possibilities in his mind. The river did flood, true, but unfortunately it was now the wrong season, although there might be hope for a lightning storm or two before they reached Oolsmouth. There was undoubtedly a war on somewhere, the world being what it was, but these days the Oolvaan basin was devoted to peaceful trade, and he’d never been fond of random carnage anyway. As far as Shaa knew, the river pirates had all retired. Most of the shoreline they were passing was cultivated or lightly wooded; no interesting creatures would be found within a hundred miles, and the local nonhumans were as domesticated as the people. Well, perhaps his brother would show up.