Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Intrigue

“I do indeed, and I am heartily sick of it. This time there may actually be a chance of slipping out of it; that is why I’m going.”

Mont snorted. “You’re not sick of it at all. I mean, you may be sick of the curse, but you’re not sick of adventuring, I know you’re not. You like it.”

“I like it more when I have some discretion about the situation. The thought that it is quite likely to bring about my death does not exactly exert a calming influence, either.”

“I thought adventuring was supposed to be risky.”

“This is true. Yet my risk factors are not merely those of the typical job description,” Shaa said, “as you know perfectly well.”

“That’s a pretty good one, when you think about it,” said Mont. “You’re cursed to keep running after something that’s probably going to kill you.”

“Hmm, yes,” Shaa commented, “it is rather classic. My brother did know what he was doing.”

Mont actually made a small “whoof”ing noise, as though he had been punched unexpectedly beneath the diaphragm. His mouth fell open. “Your -” he said. “Wait a second. I thought you had a sister .”

“I do have a sister. I also have a brother.”

“But I thought your sister was the one causing you all the trouble.”

Shaa swiveled an eye in Mont’s direction. “One of the major things you have yet to learn is not to presume that just because you know one fact, you know all, or just because you know facts, you know their proper interpretation.”

“But - “ said Mont, “but -”

“Why should I tell my life’s story to a lout who wants to rot in Roosing Oolvaya for the rest of his days?”

Mont subsided into a sullen pout. “I’ll go with Max, “ he said eventually.

“Don’t do me any favors. You still appear reluctant,” Shaa observed. “Is there some other hidden frustration you wish to vent?”

“No,” said Mont. “Yes. Why do we have to go off and try to get in more trouble, anyway? I mean, Roosing Oolvaya’s an out-of-the-way kind of place, nothing much ever happens here, and now that that whole bit with the coup and Oskin Yahlei and so forth’s finished with, I’m sure nothing’s going to happen again for years and years, if it ever does, so why can’t we just stay here and do the same training and -”

“ A characteristic example,” stated Shaa, “of limited thinking, wishful at its source, narrow in its development. Events have a way of seeking one out, under their own momentum, or -” Shaa lengthened the word, so as to override the objection Mont, backtracking toward literal-mindedness, was about to voice- “ or ” (he repeated for good measure) “the characters behind the events, caught up in the same momentum, are the seekers; the difference is of semantic concern alone. The fact remains that events, once loosed, are as difficult to contain as vapor in a burst balloon. There may in fact be some entropic correlation. We may want to consult Roni, I believe that falls in her area.”

Mont, his jaw set, was clinging grimly to his original idea, always a difficult thing when you happened to be waging a conversation with Shaa, but then he had been getting a lot of practice, at that , anyway. “You’re being ridiculous. Why couldn’t I just stay here and be a clerk or a merchant or something? Things like you’re talking about never seek out clerks.”

“These events may not, although I could recite a list of counter-examples that might curdle your hair, but what about your father? Would he seek you out, hmm? And another point for your consideration, just as a reminder. Yes, I have a curse, but you have a gift. Tell me, my friend - which is the stronger motivator? Perhaps you could just stay at home, though, at that,” Shaa mused. “Would you want to?”

Mont opened his mouth, then paused, his head tilted slightly to one side, visions of heroism (Shaa suspected) no doubt circulating in his mind. “I guess not,” Mont said slowly. “I just want to know my options, that’s all. I don’t want to be dragged around like a toy with a pull string. I want to be able to make choices for myself.”

“What more does any rational person want? A valid goal, if an ambitious one. How, do you suppose, would one go about achieving it?”

One of these days, Mont thought, he might learn to see these coming. “Luck?”

Both of them knew that Mont had merely been tossing out a useless response to buy himself some time to really think about the question, but Shaa was willing to grant him some room for cogitation at the moment; he was feeling expansive. “Far too random for a man planning to rise above the march of fate. You might as well say you hope to hide from the gods, from destiny, from good fortune as well as bad, indeed, from the world at large.”

“Uh,” said Mont, “as a matter of fact, that thought had crossed my mind. Why not hide out? Isn’t that what Max has been doing, and what about you, yourself?”

“Ah,” said Shaa, “indeed. Hiding out can without question be a valuable strategy, if not a totally open-ended one, but that doesn’t mean it’s at all a matter of sitting back and staying off the streets. How effective do you think it might be for someone whose primary skill is a reliance on luck?”

“All right, all right, I can tell what you’re getting at. If you want to try to control your fate, you have to know what you’re doing, and if you want to do that , you’ve got to have skills. Experience. Right?”

Shaa raised an eyebrow, the expression on his face affable, and then let the motion of his forehead draw his head back for an appreciation of the clear sky above. A waggling speck moved far overhead, a speck that could perhaps have been a large bird.

“But what’s the urgency now ? Why do we have to leave town all of a sudden now, after sitting around for a month. I mean, nothing’s happening yet . Is it?”

“One never wants to be the last to know,” Shaa said sagely. “One must always expect the worst. There is a certain attitude one must strive to cultivate. One must always think, in the midst of the clearest sky, that something could be happening already.”

“Since you want to bring that up,” I said, “you might as well sit down.”

The desk was staying with the office, too, not that I’d have had much use for it on the road, and along with it the two chairs. I took the one at the business side of the desk and the woman I’d never seen before took the other. Then we sat there and stared at each other. I couldn’t begin to guess what she was thinking, but at the moment that was the least of my worries. My concern centered around the things she had given me to think about already.

I’d never been a particularly promiscuous guy; at least, not as far as I could remember. The “not as far as I could remember” pan was the kicker in that sentence, of course. I wasn’t sure which was going to be worse: having her realize she’d mistaken me for someone else, or having her recognition of me as her husband actually be correct. I didn’t remember having been married, and it didn’t seem like the sort of thing I’d be likely to forget, but if you were in an inquisitorial mood you could probably say the same thing about my name. Even if I took the tack that I could have been married to her and totally forgotten it, I didn’t think that was the answer. She’d implied that she’d recognized me even though I’d changed my appearance. I had a feeling she hadn’t been referring to my hairstyle, either, but to some major total body rework that sounded like pretty heavy magic indeed. I suppose it was possible that whoever had hit me with the curse had put me through such a transformation. As long as I was playing the odds, though, it made a lot more sense to go with the most obvious explanation. The one named Gashanatantra.