Robert Redick - The River of Shadows

“And you imagine that this old tavern-keeper can help you break what you yourself have just referred to as one of ‘the most ancient of laws’?” Orfuin sat back in his chair with a sigh. “Finish your tea, Felthrup. Come inside and eat gingerbread, listen to the music, be my guest. No matter how many years we’re allotted, we should never squander life in pursuit of the impossible.”

“Forgive me, sir, but I cannot accept your answer.”

Orfuin’s eyes grew wide. Felthrup, however, was possessed of a sudden absolute conviction. “I must take the warning back with me, somehow. I cannot possibly sit down and enjoy your hospitality if that means pretending I don’t know the fate Arunis has in mind for half the people of Alifros. If you will not help me, I must thank you for the tea and the delightful conversation, and go in search of other allies.”

“In your dreams?”

“Where else, sir? Perhaps one of the ghosts aboard Chathrand will help me, since you find yourself unable to do so.”

“There is something you must understand,” said Orfuin. “I am no one’s ally, though I try to be everyone’s friend. This club survives only because it has, since time unfathomable, stood outside the feuds and factions that plague so many worlds. No one is barred who comes here peaceably. Whether the words they exchange are words of peace or barbarism I rarely know. Wars have been plotted here, no doubt-but how many more have been averted, because leaders of vision and power had a place to sit down together, and talk at their ease? It is my faith that the universe is better off for having a place where no one fears to talk. Arunis was right, Felthrup: when I closed the club and threw them out into the River, I was doing something I had never done before, and will not hasten to do again. I was breaking the promise of this house.”

“Because you heard them plotting the murder of millions of human beings!” said Felthrup. “What else could you do at such a pass?”

“Oh, many things,” said Orfuin, rising again from his chair. “I could sell this club, and purchase a home in the Sunken Kingdom, or an apartment in orbit around Cbalu, or an entire island in your world of Alifros, complete with port and palace and villages and farms. I could break my house rule again, and then again, and soon be one more partisan in the endless wars beggaring the universe. Or I could contemplate my tea, and pretend not to have heard anything my guests were discussing.”

Felthrup rubbed his face with his paws. “I will wake soon; I can feel it. I will forget all of this, and have no way of helping my friends. I should not have come.”

Orfuin stepped close to the table and put his hands under Felthrup’s chin, lifting it gently. “You may sleep a little longer, I think.”

And suddenly Felthrup sensed that it was true: the flickering, stirring feeling, the teasing scent of Admiral Isiq’s cigars still clinging to his uniforms, had quite faded away.

“Most visitors to a tavern,” said Orfuin, “don’t come to speak to the barman.”

Felthrup glanced quickly at the inviting doorway. You cannot help me, he thought suddenly, but you spelled it out, didn’t you? What your guests speak of is none of your concern.

“Do you mean, I might yet find-?”

Orfuin released his chin. “Go inside, Felthrup. You’re a talking rat; someone’s certain to buy you a drink.”

6. Orfuin here slightly amends the original, though not perhaps for the worse. He is also mistaken about the artist’s race. Falargrin (in The Universal Macabre) presents conclusive evidence that Mr. Poe was a transplanted selk. -EDITOR.

24 Ilbrin 941

“How did it happen, Ludunte?”

The young ixchel man stood with his back to the bulkhead, sweating. “My lord Taliktrum,” he said, “I swear to you I don’t know.”

“Three of our prisoners walk free,” Taliktrum continued, pacing back and forth in the lamplight, his Dawn Soldiers lounging behind him, predators at rest. “Two are allies of my treacherous aunt. The third-tell me, Ludunte, who is the third?”

“C-captain Rose, my lord,” stammered Ludunte.

“Captain Rose,” echoed Taliktrum furiously. “The sadist who kept an ixchel locked in his desk for years. In a birdcage. The only man aboard to oversee an actual extermination-did you know he once killed an entire clan of our people, aboard an Auxlei grain ship? We just gave him his freedom on a satin pillow, Ludunte. And the blane antidote was in your keeping.”

From a far corner, Ensyl looked on with unease. It was not going well for Ludunte. Taliktrum wanted someone to fall on his sword, to accept the blame for the disaster quickly and fully, sparing the Visionary Leader (yet another ridiculous title) any further embarrassment. But Ludunte was not playing along. Taliktrum, never one to endure much contradiction, was furious.

They were in the ixchel stronghold on the mercy deck: a series of crates boxed in particularly deep by other cargo, all but unreachable by the crew that had stowed them. Of course there had always been the danger that the humans would abruptly want something from the crates: ixchel clans lived in perpetual readiness to evacuate their homes. But Taliktrum’s decision to seize hostages had changed all that. No humans walked the lower half of the ship unescorted. They were, in a certain respect, safer than most members of the clan had ever been in their lifetime. But that safety had just been shaken to the core.

“You’re Treasure Keeper to the clan,” said Taliktrum, glowering at Ludunte. “You had a key to the strongbox, and changed its location each month, for the sake of security.”

“I do not choose the locations, my lord.”

“I choose them,” Taliktrum snapped. “And you went alone to collect the pills when we decided on this furlough, this hour’s charity. How could you possibly confuse the temporary antidote with the permanent? It’s inexcusable.”

Atop the hunting cabinet that had become his solitary refuge, Lord Talag nodded in agreement. The cabinet was one of some twenty furnishings from the Isiq mansion back in Etherhorde that had passed, in effect, to the ixchel: old Admiral Isiq had never come for his belongings-some whispered that he’d been quietly killed after the fiasco of Thasha’s wedding-and Thasha herself had forgotten about the crates, or else never realized that any of her family’s goods remained in storage. Or perhaps, thought Ensyl, she knows perfectly well, but wants no reminders of the father she lost in Simja.

“You’d be wiser to come clean, Ludunte,” said Taliktrum.

“But my good lord! I’ve done nothing wrong!”

“You cannot keep secrets from me,” said Taliktrum, raising his voice suddenly. “I have been given a fate. I see further, deeper than you. I see our final triumph as a people-and every selfish, stupid act that impedes that triumph.”

“Then you know I speak the truth,” said Ludunte.

“I know all the truth you speak, and all the falsehood.” Suddenly Taliktrum whirled and seized Ludunte by the jaw. “I must make you see it as well,” he purred. “I must hear it from your lips, know that your mind has accepted the truth, if you are to go on serving me-serving the clan, the clan of course, through me, its rightful leader.”

Ludunte made a grave error, then. His head could not move, but at the words rightful leader his eyes flickered briefly to Lord Talag on his sullen perch. The look did not escape Taliktrum. His mouth twisted with rage. “I will drown you,” he said. “I will call on the clan to sanction your punishment, and they will do so.”

Ludunte closed his eyes, trembling. But he said what honor demanded, and with an air of certainty at that. “If the clan requires my death, I give it gladly. My life is in its keeping.”