M McNally - The Sable City

John leaned across the table and held Tilda with his eyes.

“It is over, Matilda. The Assembly will carve up the House, and all the assets will be divided. That includes the Guild, and the Guilders. If you return to Miilark as a Deskata Guilder in good standing, you get assigned to another Guild of another House. Is that what you want?”

“I want to fight for my own House!” Tilda said. “My family has served yours for three generations.”

John waved a hand. “They’ll be fine. The merchants always go smoothly.”

“But the Guild will fight. As will the fleet!”

“Not if nobody asks them to,” John said. Tilda stared.

“Even if you don’t make the Assembly, there will still be time…”

“Tilda, you are not listening. No one is going to fight for Deskata if no Deskata asks. And I won’t do that. I won’t.”

“It is your House!”

“The hell it is!” John said bitterly, banging a hand on the table so hard that the inkwell jumped and tipped on its side, drops of the viscous black fluid burbling out onto the wood. The two Miilarkians sat there with neither making a move to right the pot.

“Then why go back?” Tilda asked. John stared at the inkwell.

“Personal business,” he said. He held out a hand toward Tilda, and she slowly handed him back the note. He wet the quill from a blob on the table and signed the note in a flourishing hand. He put it back on the table in front of Tilda and stood, hoisting his shield to his back.

“I want to go home too, John,” Tilda said quietly, keeping her voice still.

“Wait a few months,” he said as an order. “Things will be quiet by then. Business will be back to normal.” He looked at Tilda, though now it was she who did not lift her eyes to meet his.

“You are good at what you do, Matilda Lanai. You can have your pick of another Guild if you want it. Or do something else. Your life is your own. Goodbye.”

John turned and walked with his long, legionnaire stride for the porch stairs. Tilda stopped him at the top of them.

“Captain Block did not die for you, you know,” she said. “He died for the House of Deskata.”

John froze, but only for a moment. He stepped down the stairs and moved onto the street, soon losing himself among many others making their way to someplace else.

*

Zeb tried to be nonchalant as he kept an eye on Tilda and John out on the porch, but Amatesu was not fooled for a second. His conversation with the shukenja had trailed off into silence for quite a while before he remembered to look over at her. When he did, Amatesu was smiling at him faintly.

“I’m sorry, what?” he asked.

Amatesu lowered her eyes and sipped her coffee.

“You should ask if you may go with her,” the shukenja said.

Zeb blinked. “What?”

“With Tilda.”

Zeb stared at her. “I don’t even know where she is going.”

Amatesu glanced at him with an eyebrow raised. “Do you care?”

“Not even a little bit.”

Amatesu smiled again. “Then ask.”

Zeb looked back out the window. Tilda and John were speaking intently, and Zeb thought Tilda looked troubled, or sad.

“Do you think she would say yes?”

Amatesu set down her cup. “I do not know, Zebulon. But I know that if she leaves and you have said nothing, you will regret it for the rest of your life.” The Shukenja’s smile faded. “One should not have regrets, if it can be helped. They are very burdensome, and the large ones never become less so.”

Outside, John stood up at the table, slung his shield and turned away. Tilda said something Zeb could not hear through the window, and the man paused at the top of the porch stairs before he took them down and walked away. Tilda sat alone, staring after him.

“Someone should take Tilda her coffee, at least,” Amatesu said.

“What?”

Amatesu pointed at Tilda’s untouched cup, sitting atop a polished board beside a seashell mounded with sugar, and a tiny glass ladle.

“Tilda’s coffee grows cold. Some kind soul should take it to her.”

Zeb narrowed his eyes at the shukenja. “You know, you are very cunning for a priestess.”

Amatesu looked at him levelly. “I had bad training in my youth.”

Zeb rose and balanced the board, made his way out the door and around to the table where Tilda sat. She saw him coming but hardly glanced over before staring again off into the crowd where John had disappeared. Her shoulders were slumped and her face, normally so expressive and warm, was only blank.

Zeb set the board down in front of her, and Tilda thanked him absently.

“Anything else, Ma’am? Buttered scone? Turtle soup? Pickled orc foot? Bucket of whiskey?”

Tilda glanced up and Zeb straightened, snapping his heels.

“Cheddar wheel? Sparrow shish kebab? Squirrel surprise? Groggy varmint?”

Tilda broke into a smile despite herself. “Groggy varmint?”

“’Tis how you know they are fresh, Ma’am.”

Tilda laughed, and it was the best thing Zeb had heard all day. She finally noticed the coffee and clapped both hands, then started dumping sugar into the cup and stirring. Zeb sat down next to her as innocuously as possible.

“You’re a very strange man, Zebulon,” Tilda said, taking a sip and closing her eyes with a contented sigh. It was very good coffee, Zeb had thought.

Tilda opened her eyes and looked at him. Her eyes were nut brown and a slight squint gave them an almond shape as well.

“What happened to you?” she asked. “When you went through the gate?”

“Was I less strange before that?”

“Not really. I am just wondering.”

Zeb frowned and scratched his head. “I don’t know if I can really say. I mean, one moment I was on the dais, then I fell into deep snow. A woman helped me up…”

“A woman?”

“Yes, in furs and a scarf. There was a man there, a one-armed mage with a staff, but only the woman spoke. She called me by name, told me to run through the next gate, and then pushed me through one standing in the snow.”

“Through another gate?” Tilda asked.

“Yes, it looked like the one in the tower but it was made out of giant tusks instead of metal. When I went through it, I fell out into woods. Nice woods. Trees, and flowers, and a blue sky above. I could hear water, like a stream, and it all seemed…familiar, somehow.”

“It sounds like it was pleasant,” Tilda said, looking very earnestly at Zeb. He nodded.

“It was. I think…I think I might have stayed. But the woman in the snow had told me not to, so I ran through a third gate. Shaped like the others but made from the trunks of trees.”

“Why did you do what she told you?”

Zeb shook his head slowly. “I don’t know. She seemed worried about me, and I trusted her. She told me to go, so I did. And then I ran back into the tower, and into you.”

Tilda’s smile slowly returned at the left side of her mouth. “I remember,” she said. “That is what I mean. You’re a very strange man. That may be why strange things happen to you.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “Though really, that was only the fourth or fifth strangest thing that happened that day.”

“Sure,” Tilda nodded. “Nesha-tari turned into about half a lion.”

“Right. And a big Black Dragon yelled at us.”

Tilda nodded. “Amatesu got shot by a demoness in skin-tight leather.”

Zeb frowned. “Darn. I actually didn’t see that demon. I saw the big pig-ape. And an upstart Circle Wizard teleported us twice without killing us. You know, falling through two or three magic gates may have been the least strange thing that happened.”

“Maybe so,” Tilda said. “I even think you might actually have hit one of the hobgoblins you were aiming at. Maybe.”