Mayer Alan Brenner - Spell of Fate

“I guess that means yes,” said Karlini, his scowl (if that was possible) deepening further. He pushed himself to his feet. “I guess I’d better deal with it.”

“Guess?” said Haddo. “Guess not. Only do.”

“What?” Karlini muttered. “What, you want me to start paying you for those pearls of wisdom now too?”

Roni watched Karlini move reluctantly off with his retainers, and Tildamire watched Roni. She hadn’t seen Roni like this before. Roni sighed. Actually, Tildy thought, remembering that all of them kept telling her precision was important, it was more a masculine exclamation of “huh!” than a feminine sigh. To say it was a sigh would put the wrong spin on it. “I don’t know, Tildy,” Roni was saying, oblivious to Tildy’s internal battle with vocabulary. “You spend years with somebody, you start to think you know them, then you blink at them one day and see they’ve turned into someone else.”

“Uh, maybe it’s like he said, he’s just worried,” Tildy suggested. “He thinks he’s got to watch out for me, keep the sailors off me. I wish he’d back off a little. I mean, there’s my father and everything. My father thinks I can take care of myself or he wouldn’t have let me go off with you.” She noticed Roni wasn’t listening again. Just as well; Tildy thought she might have gone overboard a little with the bit about her father. As far as the Lion was concerned, the only one who could take care of themselves was the Lion. “Karlini said he doesn’t like boats.”

Roni was playing with a grape from the bowl on the table. “He doesn’t like boats, but he’s never reacted like this before. He usually just turns green and sits in a locker moaning. I’m not a shrew. It’s him - he’s keeping something from me. He was always a terrible liar.”

“Okay, maybe he is. Why would he do that? If he is, he sure doesn’t seem very happy about it either.”

“Well, whatever it is, I’ll tell you this. I’m going to find out.” Grape juice squirted. Roni wiped the crushed grape skin off her fingers.

Tildy found she was staring at the remains of the grape. Don’t go making a metaphor out of this, she told herself. The image of the pulped fruit stayed with her, though. If this kept up somehow Tildy didn’t think grapes were the only things that might get crushed.

The Great Karlini stopped on the far side of the deck, leaned on the rail so he could look over the side, and said in a low voice, “Is this far enough out of anybody’s earshot for you?”

Haddo regarded him, his arms beneath his cloak planted solidly on what in any similarly proportioned humanoid would have been his hips. “Bum are turning yourself into, you.”

“What Haddo means to say -” Wroclaw began.

“What means Haddo to say,” snapped Haddo, “Haddo will say. Not for you is business this, you with for liver the lilies. When tough must get - are doing you what?”

“Would you like to sleep with the fishes?” asked Wroclaw, in the same urbanely unruffled tone he always used. The other incongruity in the scene, aside from his words, was contributed by the way in which Haddo was now dangling over the side of the boat above the rushing water below, suspended by the bunched material of his hood caught up in Wroclaw’s clenched hand. “Answer now, if you would, Haddo my colleague.”

From the strangled sound of Haddo’s voice, Karlini thought, you might think Wroclaw had him by the neck instead of by the hood. “Down put me!” he gargled. “Point have you made!”

Karlini blinked. Haddo was back on the deck. There’d been a slight black-tinged blur in the air, but that was the only sign that Wroclaw had swung him back rather than using some kind of quick-zap teleport number. Haddo shook out his cloak and reached up to adjust the hang of his hood. “Regret will you this,” he muttered. Rather than a manifesto of vendetta and doom, though, the remark sounded to Karlini like a statement made pro forma, for the sake of appearance and conversational nicety.

But Wroclaw? “Uh, have you been taking some kind of martial arts lessons or something, Wroclaw?” Karlini said tentatively.

“As always, sir, my services are yours to command,” said Wroclaw. “As Haddo was commenting, though, with his usual velvety manner, we have been noting a certain ... decline in your condition of mind of late, sir. We beg your pardon for our boldness in raising this, but there it is.”

“Condition of mind? What are you talking about?”

“A term that comes to hand, sir, is ‘mope;’ also ‘brood’ or ‘sulk.’ We would all much rather see you engaged in some productive activity than slipping into, excuse me sir, as I mentioned before, decline.”

There it was. A sorcerer in “decline” was one who’d lost his or her touch and was an accident waiting to happen; raw meat for the next predator who walked up with half an appetite, a sinking ship to be deserted. The seagull shifted its balance uneasily on Karlini’s shoulder. “Is that what this is about?” said Karlini. “Are you telling me you’re quitting?”

“No, sir,” Wroclaw stated, “certainly not at just this moment. Peridol in this season is likely to be rather a challenge, though, if I might say so.”

“I’ll be ready! Don’t worry about me, I’ll be ready.”

Wroclaw scrutinized him. “Indeed, sir, of that I had no doubt. Please pardon our impertinence. Haddo, shall we go?”

“I’ve got something else to discuss with Haddo,” said Karlini. “Leave him with me.”

“As you say, sir.” Wroclaw bowed and withdrew.

Karlini directed a hard stare at Haddo, which the seagull still perched next to his head duplicated. Haddo stared back. “Well?” Karlini said. “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

“Close enough is matter. Better can you do than doing have been you.”

Karlini closed his eyes, and kneaded his forehead. “All this plotting and· scheming, scheming and plotting. It never ends, Haddo, it only gets worse.”

“Word gave you.”

“I know I gave my word, Haddo, but this is not going to work. I haven’t kept anything from Roni since I met her. Now I’m supposed to work against her behind her back?”

“Not as extreme as statement is situation. Know this you.”

Karlini turned back to the ocean and drooped over the rail. The seagull squawked and hopped off his shoulder, flapped once, and came to a neat landing next to him on the gunwales. “I can’t do this, Haddo. It’s only going to get worse, it’s not going to get better.”

Karlini felt Haddo’s leathery hand on his back. “Do it you can,” Haddo told him, “because do it you must. In Peridol perhaps will be all things resolved.”

“You don’t really believe that.”

Haddo shrugged. “Happen it could. Happened have stranger things.”

“That’s not very reassuring.”

“How things go, that is. Help you perhaps can I. On this think I should.” Karlini had fallen silent. Haddo watched him a moment longer, though, before deciding Karlini was in no significant danger of falling or leaping over the rail. As he retreated, Haddo cast another glance back to be on the safe side. Karlini was still drooping, his back to Haddo, but the seagull fixed him with an intent, watchful look.

Checking periodically over his shoulder, Haddo made his way below decks and into the hold. The crates and lashed bales of their cargo had been packed tightly into the available space, with only a few narrow passageways left to twist and dodge their way between them. Haddo, however, was a being of less than average size. He had also assisted in the packing. This was not the first time during the trip he had been down in the hold, either. He was sure no one had been following him, and no one was in sight when he scuttled around a bend in one of the passageways, dropped to the deck, and slid himself to the left. Anyone carrying a lamp through the hold would have seen no hint of an opening, since the sacks that flanked the passage at that point bulged out at the front, casting a maze of shadows on everything below them. To detect the narrow recess at the bottom where a cleverly raised palette kept the sacks off the deck an observer would have had to crawl, hope for a quiet bilge as they put their eye down on the deck, and aim their light just right.